Inside the Renaissance of Iranian Cinema

in Current Affairs, Film | September 14th, 2011

Iran had a rich tra­di­tion of film­mak­ing before the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1979, when the fun­da­men­tal­ists burned cin­e­mas and shut down pro­duc­tions. But, by the late 80s, the cler­ics warmed up to cin­e­ma again and a film­mak­ing renais­sance got under­way. Then, in 1997, the whole world took notice when Abbas Kiarosta­mi won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for Taste of Cher­ry. Nowa­days, Iran­ian films show up reg­u­lar­ly at film fes­ti­vals world­wide.

Get­ting inside the vibrant Iran­ian film scene has­n’t been ter­ri­bly easy, espe­cial­ly for Amer­i­cans. Blame that on pol­i­tics. But last year, the folks behind the Vice Guide to Film trav­eled to Tehran and put togeth­er a reportage on Iran­ian cin­e­ma past and present. It runs 23 min­utes and over­turns a few stereo­types along the way. Def­i­nite­ly worth a watch.

Note: Accord­ing to our Twit­ter friends, the film should be view­able around the world. We only encoun­tered one excep­tion — Cana­da. So we offer our apolo­gies in advance to Cana­di­an view­ers. You can find us on Twit­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

North Korea’s Cin­e­ma of Dreams

420 Free Movies Online

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The Sins of the Renaissance, or The History That Shaped Michele Bachmann’s Worldview

in Current Affairs, Religion | August 12th, 2011

Dur­ing the 1970s, Fran­cis A. Scha­ef­fer, an evan­gel­i­cal the­olo­gian, wrote and nar­rat­ed How Should We Then Live?, a ten-part film series that traced the his­to­ry of West­ern cul­ture and thought. Lots of art and phi­los­o­phy were put on dis­play. But the real nar­ra­tive focused on some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent — the his­to­ry of human­i­ty’s lapse from God and a Bib­li­cal world­view. The film became a sen­sa­tion at evan­gel­i­cal church­es across Amer­i­ca, some­times draw­ing 5,000 peo­ple per screen­ing. And, as Ryan Liz­za writes in a New York­er pro­file pub­lished this week, the film had a life-alter­ing effect on Michele Bach­mann, the US Rep­re­sen­ta­tive now vying for the pres­i­den­cy.

For Scha­ef­fer, the big turn­ing point came dur­ing the Renais­sance. That’s when things went wrong. He laments (start­ing around the 10:45 mark above):

At the begin­ning of the Renais­sance, it could have gone either way. Nature could have had its prop­er place. Man could have been in his prop­er place, and it would have been absolute­ly beau­ti­ful. But at a cer­tain point in the Renais­sance, the scales tipped, and man put him­self at the cen­ter absolute­ly, and this opened the door com­plete­ly to the whole destruc­tive force of human­ism that fol­lowed down through the Enlight­en­ment [oth­er­wise called “The Age of Non Rea­son”] and into our own day.

If you want to see where this destruc­tive force brings us, you need only turn to the last seg­ment “Final Choic­es.” (Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3) Accord­ing to Scha­ef­fer, we end up under the con­trol of an author­i­tar­i­an elite that impos­es its arbi­trary will on the peo­ple, some­times inject­ing birth con­trol into the water sup­ply, and some­times decid­ing who will be born, and who won’t. The author­i­tar­i­an elite resides in no one place. It’s shad­owy, doing its work in many places. But one place you def­i­nite­ly find it? The Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade.

Should you wish, you can watch the remain­ing seg­ments via the links below.

Episode I — The Roman Age
Episode II — The Mid­dle Ages
Episode III — The Renais­sance
Episode IV — The Ref­or­ma­tion
Episode V — The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Age
Episode VI — The Sci­en­tif­ic Age
Episode VII — The Age of Non Rea­son
Episode VIII — The Age of Frag­men­ta­tion
Episode IX — The Age of Per­son­al Peace & Afflu­ence
Episode X — Final Choic­es (Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3)

via The LA Times

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David Lynch’s Video Response to Washington Debt Deal

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics | August 3rd, 2011

No one is hap­py with Wash­ing­ton D.C. this week, and that includes film­mak­er David Lynch, who gives you his com­men­tary in sounds and images, not words. The sym­bol­ism? Amer­i­ca is in a dark posi­tion and mov­ing back­wards? The deficit deal is flat out garbage?

H/T @opedr


Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch and Inter­pol Team Up on Short Film

David Lynch’s Organ­ic Cof­fee (Bar­bie Head Not Includ­ed)

David Lynch on his Favorite Movies and Film­mak­ers

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Al Jazeera: The Top 1% in America

in Business, Current Affairs, Economics | August 3rd, 2011

Al Jazeera forced many West­erns view­ers to take their report­ing seri­ous­ly dur­ing the Egypt­ian upris­ing this spring, and now the Qatar-based news net­work has released a time­ly reportage (Aug. 2) on the fault lines in Amer­i­ca — on the gap between rich and poor that only grew wider this week. Alex­is de Toc­queville they’re not. There’s no sub­tle soci­ol­o­gy here. But, at the same time, I sus­pect that this for­eign per­spec­tive on the U.S. won’t appear unfa­mil­iar to many Amer­i­cans. The pro­gram runs 24 min­utes, and oth­er shows in the Fault Lines series can be viewed on YouTube here. H/T @courosa

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Animated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church

in Animation, Current Affairs, Religion | August 2nd, 2011

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Each debate fea­tures one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, and three pan­elists argu­ing for a motion, and three argu­ing against. Should Air­ports Use Racial and Reli­gious Pro­fil­ing? Is Islam A Reli­gion Of Peace? Is The Two-Par­ty Sys­tem Mak­ing the U.S. Ungovern­able? These are some of the recent top­ics that have been tack­led.

Now, tak­ing a page out of the RSA play­book, Intel­li­gence Squared has pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed video that gives artis­tic life to a debate held in Octo­ber 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was sup­port­ed by Ann Noreen Wid­de­combe, a for­mer British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty politi­cian turned nov­el­ist. And tak­ing the con­trary posi­tion was pop­u­lar British actor and writer Stephen Fry.

You can watch the ani­mat­ed ver­sion above, and the full debate (which also fea­tured Christo­pher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Chan­nel, which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels. H/T @joabaldwin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

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Doonesbury Confronts Creationism in the Classroom

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Education | July 11th, 2011

Gar­ry Trudeau has tak­en on cre­ation­ism before. He’s doing it again, this time com­ment­ing on the oxy­moron­ic “Louisiana Sci­ence Edu­ca­tion Act,” which allows the teach­ing of cre­ation­ism in the pub­lic class­room. You can view Trudeau’s car­toon in full, and in high res here.

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Renata Salecl: The Paradox of Choice

in Current Affairs, Psychology | June 22nd, 2011

With free­dom come choic­es. Every choice is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to select the best pos­si­ble out­come, the one that would make us hap­pi­est. More choic­es lead to more hap­pi­ness, right? Of course we find the oppo­site to be true. As choic­es increase, so does anx­i­ety. In the lat­est install­ment of the RSA ani­mat­ed lec­ture series, Sloven­ian social and legal the­o­rist Rena­ta Sale­cl argues that this anx­i­ety, cou­pled with the cap­i­tal­ist ide­al of the self-made per­son, leads to a kind of social paral­y­sis. “Today’s ide­ol­o­gy of choice,” says Sale­cl, “actu­al­ly paci­fies peo­ple and makes us con­stant­ly turn crit­i­cism to our­selves instead of orga­niz­ing our­selves and mak­ing a cri­tique of the soci­ety we live in.” The ani­mat­ed fea­ture was adapt­ed from a lec­ture Sale­cl gave last sum­mer in Lon­don. (You can watch the entire lec­ture here.) It draws on ideas pre­sent­ed in her book, Choice.

Oth­er RSA Videos:

Sir Ken Robin­son: A Cre­ative Edu­ca­tion

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

Smile or Die: The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Steven Pinker: How Innu­en­do Makes Things Work

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My Water’s On Fire Tonight: The Fracking Song

in Current Affairs, Video - Science | June 16th, 2011

In 2005, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney per­son­al­ly engi­neered a loop­hole in the U.S. ener­gy bill exempt­ing com­pa­nies that use an oil- and gas-drilling pro­ce­dure known as hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “frack­ing,” from reg­u­la­tion under the Safe Drink­ing Water Act. As a result, tons of diesel fuel and assort­ed chemicals–some of them tox­ic, like benzyne–are inject­ed at high pres­sure into the earth at the sole dis­cre­tion of the com­pa­nies doing the inject­ing. One of the chief ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Cheney’s string-pulling is the com­pa­ny that invent­ed the pro­ce­dure, Hal­libur­ton, which employed Cheney as chair­man and CEO just pri­or to his becom­ing vice pres­i­dent. (A coin­ci­dence?)

In the wake of the Hal­libur­ton Loop­hole, as it has come to be known, there have been a grow­ing num­ber of water pol­lu­tion cas­es, from Penn­syl­va­nia to Col­orado, asso­ci­at­ed with frack­ing. Some of those cas­es were doc­u­ment­ed in last year’s Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary, Gasland, by Josh Fox, who said in a PBS inter­view, “I could take a car bat­tery and throw it in the water­shed and go to fed­er­al prison, but these guys can take the same chem­i­cals and inject it by the thou­sands of gal­lons, and they’re exempt. It makes no sense.”

It’s a seri­ous issue involv­ing two of Amer­i­ca’s vital interests–the need for ener­gy and the need for safe drink­ing water–but a group of jour­nal­ism stu­dents in New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s Stu­dio 20 mas­ter’s pro­gram, in asso­ci­a­tion with the pub­lic-inter­est jour­nal­ism group ProP­ub­li­ca, has tak­en a light-heart­ed approach, cre­at­ing a music video to raise aware­ness of frack­ing. It’s called “My Water’s on Fire Tonight (The Frack­ing Song).”  The pur­pose of the project, accord­ing to group leader David Holmes, is to encour­age peo­ple to read ProP­ub­li­ca’s report­ing on the issue. “We were con­cerned with build­ing a bet­ter entry­way into that inves­ti­ga­tion,” Holmes told Poynter.org, “and we fig­ured a song would be the per­fect way to do it–especially since it’s called frack­ing.”

via Explainer.net

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