Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli Releases Free Backgrounds for Virtual Meetings: Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Art, Film | April 17th, 2020

To a degree that sur­pass­es any oth­er stu­dio in ani­ma­tion his­to­ry, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has cre­at­ed a real­i­ty of its own. All of its fans around the world appre­ci­ate the artistry of its films, direct­ed by such lumi­nar­ies of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion as Hayao Miyaza­ki and Isao Taka­ha­ta, and many appre­ci­ate it so fer­vent­ly that they’d pre­fer to occu­py any of Ghi­b­li’s worlds to this one. The stu­dio has respond­ed to their desires by not just con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce motion pic­tures — the “retired” Miyaza­ki is now at work on his lat­est, How Do You Live? — but by autho­riz­ing a wide and ever-chang­ing range of mer­chan­dise, and even build­ing a muse­um out­side Tokyo and a theme park out­side Nagoya.

Alas, like most muse­ums, Ghi­b­li’s is tem­porar­i­ly closed. Nei­ther the Ghi­b­li theme park nor How Do You Live? will open any time soon, and even if they could open today, it would hard­ly be an oppor­tune time to do so. With so few of us any­where able to go to movie the­aters, let alone theme parks (though we can now, at long last, stream Ghi­b­li movies online), we have to enter the realm of Ghi­b­li in a dig­i­tal fash­ion.

To make this a bit more pos­si­ble, the stu­dio has offi­cial­ly released a set of eight back­grounds, suit­able for use as back­drops on Zoom or oth­er video-con­fer­enc­ing appli­ca­tions. You’ll find them all at Ghi­b­li’s web site: in Japan­ese only, true to form, but even non-Japan­ese speak­ers can eas­i­ly click and save the images. (For instruc­tions on how to set one as your back­ground, see our pre­vi­ous post on the sub­ject.)

Drawn from the sweep of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s his­to­ry, from Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind to Cas­tle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle, Ponyo, Arri­et­ty, and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, the back­drops show the wide aes­thet­ic range of its work. Some of them depict mem­o­rable set­tings from these films (any Ghi­b­li fan will know exact­ly where you “are” the moment you con­nect) but oth­ers cap­ture a char­ac­ter, an icon, or an atmos­phere.

Whichev­er Ghi­b­li back­ground you pick, it will remind your inter­locu­tors of the for­mi­da­ble imag­i­na­tion exer­cised by each and every one of the stu­dio’s films, whether its char­ac­ters soar across the sky, live beneath the sea, or plunge into an unseen under­world — do any­thing, essen­tial­ly, but stay at home mak­ing calls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Reimag­ined in the Style of 19th-Cen­tu­ry Wood­block Prints

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Cus­tomize Your Zoom Vir­tu­al Back­ground with Free Works of Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Samuel Beckett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

in Film, Literature | April 17th, 2020

Samuel Beck­ett long had a fond­ness for Berlin, from his first trip in the late 1920s–when he fell in love with his cousin while vis­it­ing his uncle on his mom’s side–to his long­time rela­tion­ship with his Ger­man trans­la­tor Eri­ka Tophoven and with the Schiller The­ater, which pro­duced many of his plays.

The above footage shows the 63-year old Beck­ett walk­ing the streets of Berlin, ask­ing for direc­tions, or read­ing the dai­ly paper at a cafe. At one point he is seen walk­ing with a woman (pos­si­bly Tophoven?).

Why was this film shot? It has the feel­ing of sur­veil­lance footage, but the more log­i­cal expla­na­tion is that it was b‑roll for some news fea­ture. Beck­ett was award­ed the Nobel Prize for Lit­er­a­ture in 1969, so that might be the rea­son.

How­ev­er, the illog­i­cal but *best* rea­son is that Beck­ett was film­ing the title sequence for his detec­tive show pilot, named, of course, Beck­ett. YouTube user oobleck­boy cre­at­ed this hilar­i­ous rework a few years ago, which we told you about then. But it’s worth anoth­er look, sure­ly.

On a more seri­ous note, Beck­et­t’s main tour of Berlin came long before his jour­ney as a play­wright. Self-taught in the lan­guage and inter­est­ed in the cul­ture, he trav­eled to Berlin right after the 1936 Olympic Games and stayed through 1937. He had lost his job in Dublin, and he had fall­en out with James Joyce, so he was avoid­ing Paris. So Beck­ett trav­eled to Berlin to devour the arts. He knew the dan­gers of the ris­ing Nazi threat and took it seri­ous­ly. Instead he want­ed to see the cul­ture before it dis­ap­peared. (And it would, on one hand through the Nazis and their cam­paign against “degen­er­ate art.” On the oth­er, from the Allies bomb­ing dur­ing the war.) Beck­ett spent count­less hours in muse­ums. He attend­ed operas. He got so flu­ent in the lan­guage he could read Schopen­hauer (for the style, not the con­tent, appar­ent­ly).

But it was such a pri­vate trip that his Ger­man friends from the ‘60s nev­er knew of it. He did not men­tion it to them. The only rea­son we know is because in 1989, his nephew dis­cov­ered his diary from that time–the only diary Beck­ett ever kept–and after years of it being avail­able only to researchers, it was pub­lished in 2011. (Or rather, selec­tions of the 120,000 word jour­nal, were pub­lished.)

Last­ly, it was on one of those Berlin muse­um trips where he saw the paint­ing Two Men Con­tem­plat­ing the Moon by Cas­par David Friedrich. The image would stick in his mind until many years lat­er when it would influ­ence the set design for his most famous play, Wait­ing for Godot. (A coun­try road. A tree. Evening.) You can see the paint­ing here.

via Ubu Web

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Books That Samuel Beck­ett Read and Real­ly Liked (1941–1956)

When Robin Williams & Steve Mar­tin Starred in Samuel Beckett’s Wait­ing For Godot (1988)

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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A Vintage Advertising Film Intelligently Satirizes the Selling of the American Dream: Watch The Your Name Here Story (1960)

in Film, History | April 15th, 2020

When did the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca attain peak earnest­ness? It had to have hap­pened some­time in the long 1950s, begin­ning with vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond World War and end­ing with the cul­tur­al shifts of the ear­ly 60s. Though indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans back then might express dis­con­tent and even cyn­i­cism about the nation, U.S. mass cul­ture kept the dial set to tri­umphant opti­mism. And in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca there was no cul­tur­al force quite as mass as adver­tis­ing, which broad­cast its mes­sages in not just the media of print, radio, tele­vi­sion, and bill­board, but film as well. This gold­en age of Amer­i­can earnest­ness coin­cides with the gold­en age of the Calvin Com­pa­ny, once the coun­try’s dom­i­nant mak­er of adver­tis­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, and indus­tri­al films.

Found­ed in Kansas City in 1931, the Calvin Com­pa­ny cap­i­tal­ized ear­ly on the adver­tis­ing poten­tial of 16-mil­lime­ter film. At first con­sid­ered suit­able only for “home movies,” the for­mat turned out to be ide­al for sales pitch­es, cor­po­rate train­ing ses­sions, and class­room screen­ings. Calv­in’s client list soon grew to include Gen­er­al Mills, Goodyear, Mon­san­to, West­ing­house, and Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, as well as the Navy, the Air Force, and the Office of Edu­ca­tion.

That we can still watch some of the com­pa­ny’s many pro­duc­tions today we owe to the efforts of Rick Prelinger, whose epony­mous film archives we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. At the Inter­net Archive you can watch such Calvin clas­sics as Cof­fee Break, Forty Bil­lion Ene­mies, Fifty Years of Pow­ered Flight, The Bright Young New­com­er, and Enforc­ing Rules and Pro­ce­dures.

None have the rep­u­ta­tion of The Your Name Here Sto­ry, pro­duced by Calvin in 1960 as “the first tru­ly all-pur­pose film.” While pre­vi­ous jobs were made to order, painstak­ing­ly tai­lored by an ever-expand­ing staff of film­mak­ers to the needs the com­mis­sion­ing clients, The Your Name Here Sto­ry is com­plete­ly gener­ic. “From the dawn of human his­to­ry, a bet­ter way of life has been man’s dream,” booms its nar­ra­tor, launch­ing into an open­ing whose epic form will be famil­iar to any­one who’s put off writ­ing a term paper until the night before. After telling the sto­ry of civ­i­liza­tion — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion — in a brisk two min­utes, the film arrives in high-tech moder­ni­ty. Alas, “despite the world’s high­est liv­ing stan­dards, the aver­age Amer­i­can remained vague­ly dis­con­tent, aware that his goal of a bet­ter way of life had still not been ful­ly real­ized. There was some­thing miss­ing.”

“Gad, it’s iron­ic,” says a pro­to­typ­i­cal Amer­i­can hus­band of the day, lying awake along­side his wife, both of them sleep­less with dis­sat­is­fac­tion. “With all our tech­nol­o­gy and indus­tri­al know-how, we still don’t have the one thing that could give us a bet­ter way of life.” That “one thing” is any­thing the com­pa­ny that licens­es The Your Name Here Sto­ry hap­pens to make, footage of which they can eas­i­ly insert into the var­i­ous spaces pro­vid­ed through­out the film. “In count­less ways, direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, YOUR PRODUCT HERE serves the nation and its cit­i­zens,” says the nar­ra­tor, cred­it­ing what­ev­er it may be with play­ing a vital role in help­ing them to “achieve suc­cess,” “enjoy health­ful recre­ation,” “grow big­ger crops,” “strength­en our nation­al defense,” and of course “get real smok­ing sat­is­fac­tion.”

Some may now watch most of The Your Name Here Sto­ry before catch­ing on to the film’s satir­i­cal intent. That owes to the fact that the Calvin Com­pa­ny itself defined the look and feel of the orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture of the 1950s, at least as it remains in cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a bit of fun for the “Calvin Work­shop,” the com­pa­ny’s annu­al gath­er­ing of indus­tri­al film pro­duc­ers and tech­ni­cians, the film’s spoofs of what Sapi­ens author Yuval Noah Harari has termed the “mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-sci­en­tif­ic com­plex” almost feel made for audi­ences of the future. Among the Calvin Com­pa­ny’s sur­viv­ing films we also find 1956’s A Mag­ic Bond, direct­ed by no less notable a son of Kansas City than Robert Alt­man. Know­ing what we now do of its self-aware cor­po­rate cul­ture, does it comes as a sur­prise that Calvin would have been the train­ing ground for Hol­ly­wood’s pre-emi­nent smart-aleck?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Sell & Spin: The His­to­ry of Adver­tis­ing, Nar­rat­ed by Dick Cavett (1999)

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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365 Free Movies Streaming on YouTube

in Film, YouTube | April 9th, 2020

The wail resounds in every cor­ner of the house, you can­not stop it—the books have all been read, the new releas­es streamed, every video game played to the end mul­ti­ple times. I’m bored… You gave up quar­an­tine home­school weeks ago. Just who did you think you were? Here’s an idea, par­ent at your wit’s end: sit the kids in front of Lone Wolf McQuade or Over the Top.

Tell them how every­thing used to look like that when you were young. No sec­ond or third screen to turn to when you lost inter­est. You’d catch a free movie on a Sun­day afternoon—streaming in real time, as it were—on one of four or five chan­nels. No pause, rewind, or save for lat­er. (Play it up—maybe you didn’t live this, they don’t know that.)

Oh, and there were com­mer­cials every ten min­utes or so—lots and lots and lots of ads. This is a les­son in media history—you’re an edu­ca­tor! They’ll read­i­ly admit how much bet­ter they have it as they watch Chuck Nor­ris and Stal­lone rack up the kills on YouTube, free to stream (and pause, rewind, and save for lat­er), with many few­er ad inter­rup­tions than in your day, and with 363 oth­er films to watch and more to come.

But say you find this con­tent objec­tion­able, or… well, bad. You could cer­tain­ly do much worse, believe me, as you’ll see in a cur­so­ry look at the many fea­ture enter­tain­ments avail­able to stream free with ads on YouTube. But, in all seri­ous­ness, you care about your children’s edu­ca­tion, and with some care­ful dig­ging, you’ll find quite a lot to give them a real cul­tur­al les­son, and to enlight­en the grown-ups, too.

Learn, for exam­ple, about the Wreck­ing Crew, in a doc­u­men­tary of the same name, the famous cohort of stu­dio musi­cians who played on hun­dreds of the best pop, rock, soul, etc. records in the 60s. As the Funk Broth­ers were to Motown, Book­er T. & the MGs to Stax, so were the Wreck­ing Crew to the West Coast Sound (and the sound of Elvis, The Beach Boys, Frank Sina­tra, Nat King Cole, the Mamas and the Papas, Son­ny & Cher, Simon & Gar­funkel, and so on).

And as the Wreck­ing Crew were to the West Coast so was Mus­cle Shoals to the deep South. The tiny Alaba­ma town and its FAME Stu­dios fea­tured some of the great­est R&B, soul, and coun­try rhythm play­ers in the world, major con­trib­u­tors to records by Dylan, the Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aretha Franklin, Wil­son Pick­ett, and so many more. There’s a film about them too. (We can’t embed the full movies here, but you’ll find them in the links below.)

There are many oth­er qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion­al enter­tain­ments about pop music his­to­ry, like the Dave Grohl-direct­ed Sound City. You’ll also find doc­u­men­taries like Super Size Me, Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry, and Freako­nom­ics. (An eco­nom­ics course!) Many oth­er plat­forms have intro­duced free stream­ing movies with ads. In YouTube’s case, as AdAge notes, the move to stream­ing free films comes as a way to recoup adver­tis­ers who increas­ing­ly found their ads run­ning “inside offen­sive videos, some with ter­ror­ist pro­pa­gan­da and hate speech.”

The com­pa­ny is clean­ing up its image, and in the process becom­ing some­thing like the TV chan­nels of old, only with all the dig­i­tal ease that makes stream­ing so con­ve­nient. “They are now a TV net­work,” says an exec­u­tive for one video ad tech­nol­o­gy plat­form, mov­ing away from low-qual­i­ty, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent and toward high dol­lar series and the gold­mine of old movies. Adver­tis­ing is every­thing, so, there’s anoth­er les­son for you—even in the new media busi­ness, his­to­ry repeats.

See a list of rec­om­mend­ed films avail­able to stream free on YouTube, with ads, below. Enter the gen­er­al col­lec­tion here. And feel free to explore our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Super Size Me

The Wreck­ing Crew

Cap­i­tal­ism: A Love Sto­ry

Fred­die Mer­cury: The King of Queen

Mus­cle Shoals

Freako­nom­ics

Bob Mar­ley: The Roots of Man

Sound City

All Things Must Pass (Doc­u­men­tary on Tow­er Records)

The Bird Cage

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Cour­tesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Ter­mi­na­tor, Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al & More

60 Free Film Noir Movies 

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

in Fashion, Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 8th, 2020

How does cloth­ing mesh with set design, cin­e­matog­ra­phy, sound design, etc. to cre­ate the mood in a film? Whit­ney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gats­by, the Hap­py Death Day films and sev­er­al indie flicks. She joins Eri­ca, Mark and Bri­an to dis­cuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, design­ing vs. curat­ing, his­toric vs. mod­ern vs. genre, when cos­tumes get dis­tract­ing, her cur­rent TV and film picks for notable cos­tum­ing, and how an inter­est in (or total obliv­i­ous­ness to) clothes affects the watch­ing expe­ri­ence.

Read a few inter­views with Whit­ney about her process:

More arti­cles to make you think about cos­tumes:

Fol­low Whit­ney on Insta­gram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the styl­ist for Bri­an Tyree Hen­ry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Pierc­ing, The Eyes of My Moth­er, and Irre­place­able You.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Watch Online 75 Short Films from 2020’s South by Southwest Festival

in Film | April 1st, 2020

South by South­west, one of Amer­i­ca’s biggest cul­tur­al events, won’t hap­pen this year. The cause, of course, is the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, its own sta­tus as an event unprece­dent­ed in our age evi­denced by the fact that South by South­west has nev­er in its 33-year his­to­ry been can­celed before. When SXSW, as it’s now known, launched in Austin, Texas back in 1987, it did so pure­ly as a music fes­ti­val; cin­e­ma came in 1994, when it became the “SXSW Film and Mul­ti­me­dia Con­fer­ence.” Since then quite a few movies have launched from Austin into inter­na­tion­al renown, includ­ing Jef­frey Blitz’s spelling-bee doc­u­men­tary Spell­bound, Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War thriller The Hurt Lock­er, and the entire genre of “mum­blecore.”

Spare a thought, then, for the film­mak­ers with work accept­ed into SXSW 2020 — or bet­ter yet, spare some time to watch their films online. While the fes­ti­val’s orga­niz­ers fig­ure out whether and how to resched­ule, e‑mail newslet­ter ser­vice Mailchimp and inde­pen­dent film com­pa­ny Oscil­lo­scope Lab­o­ra­to­ries “have cre­at­ed a dig­i­tal home for this incred­i­ble slate of short films, so you can watch them from wher­ev­er you are.”

That slate includes selec­tions from sub­cat­e­gories such as ani­ma­tion, doc­u­men­tary, the “pre­view of the next film­mak­ing gen­er­a­tion” offered by the work of Texas high-school film­mak­ers, and even the beloved “mid­nighters,” offi­cial­ly described as “bite-sized bits for all of your sex, gore, and hilar­i­ty crav­ings.”

One such mid­nighter, a piece of domes­tic hor­ror by Jan­i­na Gavankar and Rus­so Schelling called Stuc­co, appears at the top of the post. You’ll find it on this Youtube playlist of short offi­cial selec­tions from SXSW 2020, which also includes Zoe and Hanh, Kim Tran’s exam­i­na­tion of “girls, boys, and moth­ers,” a “tri­an­gle of ten­sion since… for­ev­er,” and Char­lie Tyrel­l’s Bro­ken Orches­tra, a doc­u­men­tary on a Philadel­phia com­mu­ni­ty’s effort to breathe life into a trou­bled pub­lic-school music pro­gram. There isn’t much over­lap between this playlist and the many shorts avail­able to watch free on Mailchim­p’s site, so if you want to dis­cov­er the film­mak­ers you would have at Austin this year — includ­ing the mak­ers of Grand Jury Prize win­ners No Cry­ing at the Din­ner Table, Regret, Just Hold On, and Wish Upon a Snow­man — head over there and have your own pri­vate SXSW Film Fes­ti­val.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Watch Curat­ed Playlists of Exper­i­men­tal Videos & Films to Get You Through COVID-19: Miran­da July, Jan Švankma­jer, Guy Maddin & More

Stream Free Online 200 Films from Tribeca Film Fes­ti­vals

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch 3,000+ Films Free Online from the National Film Board of Canada

in Film | March 29th, 2020

What, exact­ly, is Cana­da? The ques­tion some­times occurs to Amer­i­cans, liv­ing as they do right next door. But it might sur­prise those Amer­i­cans to learn that Cana­di­ans them­selves ask the very same ques­tion, liv­ing as they do in a coun­try that could be defined by any num­ber of its ele­ments — its vast­ness, its mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, The Kids in the Hall — but nev­er seems defined by any one of them in par­tic­u­lar. Many indi­vid­u­als and groups through­out Cana­di­an his­to­ry have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the project of explain­ing Cana­da, and indeed defin­ing it. Few have done as much as the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da and the film­mak­ers it has sup­port­ed, thanks to whom “three thou­sand films, from doc­u­men­taries to nar­ra­tive fea­tures to exper­i­men­tal shorts, are avail­able to stream free of charge, even for Amer­i­cans.”

Those words come from The Out­line’s Chris R. Mor­gan, who writes that, “for the ‘Canuckophile’ (not my coinage but a term I hap­pi­ly own), the NFB’s Screen­ing Room is one of the supreme plea­sures of the inter­net. Since 1939, the NFB has facil­i­tat­ed the telling of Canada’s sto­ry in its people’s own words and images.”

Mor­gan points up to such NFB-sup­port­ed pro­duc­tions as 1965’s Ladies and Gen­tle­men … Mr. Leonard Cohen, which “fol­lows the tit­u­lar 30-year-old poet giv­ing wit­ty read­ings, par­ty­ing, and liv­ing around Mon­tre­al,” and the 2014 Shame­less Pro­pa­gan­da, described at the Screen­ing Room as an exam­i­na­tion of “Canada’s nation­al art form.” That art form devel­oped in the years after the NFB’s found­ing in 1939, a time when its found­ing com­mis­sion­er John Gri­er­son called doc­u­men­taries a “ham­mer to shape soci­ety.”

Not that most of what you’ll find to watch in the NFB’s screen­ing room comes down like a ham­mer — nor does it feel espe­cial­ly pro­pa­gan­dis­tic, as we’ve come to under­stand that term in the 21st cen­tu­ry. Take, for instance, the doc­u­men­tary por­traits of Cana­di­an writ­ers like Mar­garet Atwood and Jack Ker­ouac.

The lat­ter lead a life described by film­mak­er Her­ménégilde Chi­as­son as “a Fran­co-Amer­i­can odyssey,” which will remind even the most Cana­da-unaware Amer­i­cans of one thing that clear­ly sets Cana­da apart: its bilin­gual­ism. That, too, pro­vides mate­r­i­al for a few NFB pro­duc­tions, includ­ing 1965’s Instant French, a short about “the adven­tures of a group of busi­ness­men who are forced into tak­ing French lessons to stay com­pet­i­tive in their field.”

“At first put out by this news,” con­tin­ues the descrip­tion at the Screen­ing Room, “one by one they begin to real­ize that gain­ing flu­en­cy in anoth­er lan­guage has its ben­e­fits.” Hokey though it may sound — “def­i­nite­ly a prod­uct of its time,” as the NFB now says — a film like Instant French offers a glimpse into not just Canada’s past but the vision for soci­ety that has shaped Canada’s present and will con­tin­ue to shape its future. You can browse the NFB’s large and grow­ing online archive by sub­ject (with cat­e­gories includ­ing lit­er­a­ture and lan­guage, music, and his­to­ry) as well as through playlists like “Expo 67: 50 Years Lat­er,” “Extra­or­di­nary Ordi­nary Peo­ple,” — and, of course, “Hock­ey Movies,” which  reminds us that, elu­sive though Cana­di­an cul­ture as a whole may some­times feel, cer­tain impor­tant parts of it aren’t that hard to grasp.

Find more free films in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch More Than 400 Clas­sic Kore­an Films Free Online Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Watch 70 Movies in HD from Famed Russ­ian Stu­dio Mos­film: Clas­sic Films, Beloved Come­dies, Tarkovsky, Kuro­sawa & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch a Sweet Film Adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s Story, “Long Walk to Forever”

in Books, Film | March 27th, 2020

Shame, shame to have lived scenes from a women’s mag­a­zine. —Kurt Von­negut

In his intro­duc­tion to Wel­come to the Mon­key House, a col­lec­tion of his short fic­tion pub­lished in 1968, Kurt Von­negut shows no com­punc­tion about throw­ing its most main­stream entry under the bus:

In hon­or of the mar­riage that worked I include in this col­lec­tion a sick­en­ing­ly slick love sto­ry from The Ladies Home Jour­nal, God help us, enti­tled by them “Long Walk to For­ev­er.” The title I gave it, I think, was “Hell to Get Along With.”

The sim­ple tale, pub­lished, as not­ed, by Ladies Home Jour­nal in 1960, bears a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to events of Vonnegut’s own life. After WWII, hav­ing sur­vived the bomb­ing of Dres­den as a POW, he made his way back to Indi­anapo­lis, and invit­ed Jane Cox, the friend he’d known since kinder­garten, who was engaged to anoth­er man, to take a walk, dur­ing which he sug­gest­ed she should mar­ry him instead.

Direc­tor Jes­si­ca Hes­ter’s recent, Kurt Von­negut Trust-sanc­tioned adap­ta­tion, above, plays it pret­ty straight, as do sev­er­al oth­er unau­tho­rized ver­sions lurk­ing on the Inter­net.

She ups Newt’s rank to cor­po­ral from pri­vate, and replaces the glossy bridal mag­a­zine Cather­ine is thumb­ing through when Newt knocks with a coterie of atten­tive brides­maids and lit­tle girls, appar­ent­ly get­ting a jump on their nup­tial fuss­ing.

The mag­a­zine’s omis­sion is unfor­tu­nate.

In the sto­ry, Newt asks to see “the pret­ty book,” forc­ing Cather­ine to bring up the impend­ing wed­ding. Its phys­i­cal real­i­ty then offers Newt a handy emo­tion­al refuge, from whence he can crack wise about rosy brides while pre­tend­ing to read an ad for flat­ware.

With­out that prop, he’s preter­nat­u­ral­ly aware of the names of sil­ver pat­terns.

And as an Indi­anapo­lis native who went to school in the orchard where the sto­ry is set, and who can con­firm that it’s in earshot of the bells from the Indi­ana School for the Blind, I found it jar­ring to see the action trans­posed to New York’s Westch­ester Coun­ty. (For those keep­ing score, it was shot on loca­tion in Cro­ton State Park and the Rock­e­feller State Park).

(Break­ing Away’s rock quar­ry aside, the Hoosier State just doesn’t have those sorts of high-up water views.)

Hes­ter hon­ors Vonnegut’s dia­logue—near­ly every­thing that comes out of the char­ac­ters’ mouths orig­i­nat­ed on the page, while pro­vid­ing a young female director’s spin on this mate­r­i­al, half a cen­tu­ry removed from its pub­li­ca­tion.

As she describes it on the sto­ry­telling plat­form Fem­i­nist Wednes­day, the film gen­tly sat­i­rizes the insti­tu­tion of mat­ri­mo­ny and the impor­tance placed upon it. It is also, she says:

…a sto­ry about courage, as the female has to face her­self, her ideas, and her val­ues… Catherine’s jour­ney is so raw, ter­ri­fy­ing in the most hon­est way, and heart­felt yet extreme­ly fun­ny because it is so relat­able. 

Some­thing tells me the author would­n’t have put it that way … his Mon­key House intro, maybe.

But his admi­ra­tion for his less-than-tra­di­tion­al muse, avid read­er and writer Jane Cox, from whom he split after 26 years of mar­riage, was immense.

Gin­ger Strand’s pro­file in The New York­er quotes the house­hold con­sti­tu­tion Cox draft­ed after their 1945 mar­riage:

We can­not and will not live in and be hogtied by a soci­ety which not only has not faith in the things we have faith in, but which reviles and damns that faith with prac­ti­cal­ly every breath it draws.

Hester’s crowd-fund­ed film, which the Kurt Von­negut Muse­um and Library includ­ed as part of a COVID-19 cri­sis Vir­tu­al Von­negut Fun Pack—(“Have a box of Kleenex at the ready!”)—was shot in 2014.

Had pro­duc­tion been delayed by a few years, one won­ders if the film­mak­ers would have come under  intense pres­sure to frame Newt’s refusal to take Catherine’s rejec­tions at face val­ue, his insis­tence that she con­tin­ue the walk, and that unvet­ted kiss as some­thing per­ni­cious and inten­tion­al.

If so, we’re glad the film made it into the can when it did.

And we con­fess, we don’t real­ly share Vonnegut’s avowed dis­taste for the sto­ry, though New York Times crit­ic Mitchel Lev­i­tas did, in an oth­er­wise favor­able review of Wel­come to the Mon­key House:

This Von­negut is obvi­ous­ly a lov­able fel­low. More­over, he’s right about the sto­ry, which is indeed a sick­en­ing and slick lit­tle noth­ing about a sol­dier who goes A.W.O.L. in order—How to say it?—to sweep his girl from the steps of the altar into his strong and lov­ing arms.

Here’s to future adap­ta­tions of this Ladies Home Jour­nal-approved sto­ry by one of our favorite authors. May they cap­ture some­thing of his tart­ness, and for­go a sen­ti­men­tal sound­track in favor of a chick­adee whose cameo appear­ance after the School for the Blind’s bells pre­fig­ures Slaughterhouse-Five’s famous “Poo-tee-weet?”

“*chick-a-dee-dee-dee*,” went a chick­adee.

This adap­ta­tion of  Von­negut’s “Long Walk to For­ev­er” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

The Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Com­ing Out This Year

A New Kurt Von­negut Muse­um Opens in Indi­anapo­lis … Right in Time for Banned Books Week

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain is on COVID-19 hia­tus. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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