Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vividly Restored with Artificial Intelligence (May 1896)

in Film, History | March 10th, 2020

In May of 1896, Charles Mois­son and Fran­cis Dou­bli­er trav­eled to Moscow on behalf of the Lumière Broth­ers com­pa­ny, bear­ing with them the new­ly devel­oped Lumière Ciné­mato­gaphe cam­era. Their pur­pose: to doc­u­ment the coro­na­tion of Tsar Nicholas II—the last Emper­or of Rus­sia, though no one would have known that at the time. The coro­na­tion was an extra­or­di­nary event, soon to be over­shad­owed by even more extra­or­di­nary events in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary years to come. An enor­mous cel­e­bra­tion fol­lowed, with gifts, bread, sausage, pret­zels, beer, and a com­mem­o­ra­tive cup to rev­el­ers. The promise of these gifts led to what was lat­er called the Kho­dyn­ka Tragedy.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands descend­ed on the city. Rumors that food was run­ning short—and that the cups con­tained a gold coin—sent crowds rush­ing for the Kho­dyn­ka Field. Over­com­ing 1,800 police offi­cers, they caused a stam­pede that killed 1,389. That evening, Nicholas and the Empress Alexan­dra attend­ed a ball, then vis­it­ed wound­ed in the hos­pi­tal the fol­low­ing day. One of the Tsar’s valets, Alex­ei Volkov, who sur­vived the Rev­o­lu­tion and lived to write his mem­oirs, described walk­ing “along the Khondin­ka” and meet­ing “many groups of peo­ple com­ing back from that site and car­ry­ing the Tsar’s gifts. The strange thing, though, was that not one per­son men­tioned the cat­a­stro­phe, and I did not hear about it until the next morn­ing.”

The stam­pede seems a tes­ta­ment to the pover­ty and des­per­a­tion among ordi­nary Rus­sians at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry. That his­to­ry does not enter the frame in the minute of footage shot by Mois­son and Dou­bli­er, which you can see recre­at­ed above in stun­ning detail—with both col­or added and in orig­i­nal black and white—by Denis Shiryaev. The footage is sim­ply dat­ed May 1896 and might have been shot either before or after the coro­na­tion. As Peter Jack­son has done with footage from WWI in the fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary They Shall Not Grow Old, Shiryaev makes the grainy, blur­ry past come alive with the help of an “ensem­ble of neur­al net­works,” as he writes on the video’s YouTube page.

The enhance­ments to the video trans­fer of the orig­i­nal film include:

1) FPS boost­ing – to 60 frames per sec­ond

2) Image res­o­lu­tion boost­ed up a bit with ESRGAN (gen­er­al dataset)

3) Resort­ed video sharp­ness, removed blur, removed com­pres­sion “arte­facts”

4) Col­orized (option­al) – due to high request I have decid­ed to include both ver­sions of the processed video: col­orized and black and white.

Boost­ing the frame rate to 60 fps espe­cial­ly gives these bustling and/or saun­ter­ing Moscow denizens of Tver­skaya Street a life­like appear­ance. (See here for a com­par­i­son of var­i­ous frame rates). Whether you pre­fer col­or or black and white, it may be easy to imag­ine strolling down this cob­ble­stone avenue your­self, dodg­ing the dozens of horse drawn car­riages pass­ing by.

It may be hard­er to imag­ine that per­haps days or hours before or after this slice of Moscow city life, the last tsar of Rus­sia was crowned, and a crowd of some­where around half a mil­lion peo­ple rushed through the streets for a glass of beer and a free bite to eat. See more of Shiryaev’s AI-assist­ed film restora­tions at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

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

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Updating Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” to Cover Female Action Heroes–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #33

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 5th, 2020

This week’s guest Vi Burlew has arisen, a shin­ing fig­ure clad in mail, car­ry­ing aloft a shim­mer­ing broadsword to bring your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt this top­ic about the hero’s jour­ney.

This gen­er­al plot struc­ture dat­ing back to ancient myth was detailed by Joseph Camp­bell and famous­ly and delib­er­ate­ly plun­dered to cre­ate the plot of the orig­i­nal Star Wars. So how has this evolved with the increas­ing intro­duc­tion of female heroes in recent, large­ly Dis­ney-owned block­busters? We talk Won­der Woman and Cap­tain Mar­vel, antic­i­pate Black Wid­ow and the new Mulan, but also bring in Lord of the Rings, Har­ry Pot­ter, The Wiz­ard of Oz, Lit­tle Women, Jane Eyre, Work­ing Girl, and of course Road House.

What com­pli­cates this issue is that a dis­tinct “hero­ine’s jour­ney” had already been plot­ted in response to Camp­bell by fem­i­nist thinkers at least back to Mau­reen Mur­dock in 1990. The key dif­fer­ence is that while the hero achieves the goal and comes home in tri­umph, the hero­ine then real­izes that there was some­thing self-betray­ing about the tri­umph and requires an addi­tion­al step of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with her ori­gins. This is like if Luke real­ized after destroy­ing the Death Star that he was a mois­ture farmer all along and had to come to terms with that. (Maybe he could actu­al­ly grieve for his dead aunt and uncle and his best friend Big­gs!)

It’s been argued that Har­ry Pot­ter’s jour­ney more close­ly resem­bles that hero­ine’s jour­ney, where­as, say, Eowyn from Lord of the Rings (“I am no man!”) is a more tra­di­tion­al hero. Action films of today may fea­ture female heroes, but when this is done thought­ful­ly (not just by tak­ing an action hero and swap­ping the gen­der with­out fur­ther alter­ation), then film­mak­ers may tweak the struc­ture of the myth to include some gen­der-spe­cif­ic ele­ments and per­haps blend the two types of jour­ney. These new vari­ants that may or may not res­onate in the way that caused the orig­i­nal Star Wars/Campbell for­mu­la to become so pop­u­lar.

Two arti­cles we specif­i­cal­ly cite in our dis­cus­sion are:

For some basics about the jour­neys described by Joseph Camp­bell, Mau­reen Mur­dok, and a dif­fer­ent ver­sion by Vic­to­ria Lynn Schmidt, see the Wikipedia entries on Hero’s Jour­ney and Hero­ine’s Jour­ney.

In addi­tion, The Hero­ine Jour­neys Project web­site fea­tures numer­ous arti­cles about female heroes in media. We also looked at this red­dit thread, which among oth­er things pro­vides some oppos­ing views to those of our guests about the Star Wars fran­chise char­ac­ter Rey.

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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A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vintage Video of NYC Gets Colorized & Revived with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History | February 27th, 2020

Denis Shi­rayev is at it again! The man who only a few weeks ago put one of the most famous pieces of film his­to­ry–the Lumiere Bros. footage of a train arriv­ing at La Cio­tat sta­tion–through a neur­al net­work to bring it “to life,” so to speak, has turned to anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing slice of his­to­ry.

For his next install­ment, he has tak­en footage of New York City dai­ly life in 1911, eight min­utes of tram rides, horse-drawn wag­ons, the ele­vat­ed train, and the rush of crowd­ed streets, and applied the same deep learn­ing algo­rithms to make it all look like it was shot yes­ter­day. This time he had a bit of help from anoth­er YouTube historian/technician Guy Jones, who had already speed cor­rect­ed and tweaked the footage, as well as adding envi­ron­men­tal sounds. Shi­rayev has used AI to upscale the footage to 4K and to 60p.

The orig­i­nal footage was shot by Sven­s­ka Biografteatern, a Swedish news­reel com­pa­ny, and begins with a shot of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty as if seen through a spy­glass. The film con­tin­ues as trav­el­ogue and as an intro­duc­tion to the immi­grant expe­ri­ence, as the cam­era shows boats dock­ing, pas­sen­gers dis­em­bark­ing, and then the over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence of New York City.

The footage is clear enough to take in store­fronts and adver­tis­ing on trams and the sides of build­ings. But the atmos­phere is too clogged with dai­ly smoke to get a real clear vista of the sky­line from the Brook­lyn Bridge.

At the time, Man­hat­tan had a pop­u­la­tion about 2 mil­lion. Inter­est­ing­ly, that was its height. Over a hun­dred years lat­er, that has declined to 1.6 mil­lion, with a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty. This Observ­er arti­cle ascribes that to gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, and a change of res­i­den­tial areas to com­mer­cial ones.

And let’s repeat what we said about Shirayev’s pre­vi­ous 4K footage: this is not a “remas­ter”. This is not a “restora­tion.” This is using the pow­er of com­put­ing to inter­pret frames of film and cre­ate in between frames, as well as cre­ate detail from blur­ry footage. (I’m not too sure about the colorization–it doesn’t real­ly work as well as all the oth­er software…yet).

Now we know that Shi­rayev is mak­ing this a thing, please note his pinned mes­sage in the YouTube com­ments: he’s tak­ing requests.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Bernie Sanders Time as an Educational Filmmaker: Watch His Documentary on Socialist Activist Eugene V. Debs (1979)

in Film, History, Politics | February 27th, 2020

If you grew up in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, you’ll remem­ber the name Eugene V. Debs from his­to­ry class. And if you grew up dur­ing a cer­tain era in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, you might have learned about Debs from Bernie Sanders. Try to recall one of Debs’ speech­es; if you hear it in Sanders’ dis­tinc­tive Brook­lyn accent, you have at some point or anoth­er seen Eugene V. Debs: Trade Union­ist, Social­ist, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary. A film-strip slideshow with an accom­pa­ny­ing audio track, it came out in 1979 as a prod­uct of the Amer­i­can People’s His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, Sanders’ own pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny.

That ven­ture con­sti­tutes just one chap­ter of a sto­ried life and career, which includes peri­ods as a high-school track star, a folk singer, and the may­or of Burling­ton, Ver­mont. Now that Sanders, junior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor from Ver­mont since 2007, has pulled ahead in the race for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, peo­ple want to know what he’s all about — and he has long been giv­en, cer­tain­ly by the stan­dards of U.S. politi­cians, to clear and fre­quent expres­sion of what he’s all about. He has made no secret, for exam­ple, of his admi­ra­tion for Debs, a social­ist polit­i­cal activist who five times ran for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. You can see it come through in Eugene V. Debs: Trade Union­ist, Social­ist, Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, which Jacobin mag­a­zine has recon­struct­ed and made avail­able on Youtube.

Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Nathan Smith writes that the doc­u­men­tary frames Debs “as a lost prophet before explain­ing how he end­ed up where he did ide­o­log­i­cal­ly. It opens with Debs’s final pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, con­duct­ed in 1920 from prison. If a mil­lion peo­ple vot­ed for this man while he was behind bars, if more peo­ple went to hear him speak than Pres­i­dent Taft, then how could his­to­ry have for­got­ten him?” Sanders explains Debs’ social­ism “as a response to issues which still res­onate today: the exploita­tion of work­ing peo­ple, seg­re­ga­tion and vio­lent racism, vot­ing rights, and the sup­pres­sion of free speech and dis­sent dur­ing World War I.” More so than see Sanders’ admi­ra­tion for Debs — Jacobin hav­ing had to use visu­als oth­er than the ones on the film strip at the time — you can hear it: as in all the shoe­string pro­duc­tions of the Amer­i­can People’s His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety’s shoe­string pro­duc­tions, Sanders him­self plays the roles of the his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters involved.

In this case, that means we hear Sanders give Debs’ speech­es, and in cer­tain moments we view­ers of 2020 could eas­i­ly mis­take Debs’ indict­ments of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth, goods, and the means of pro­duc­tion in Amer­i­ca as Sanders’ own. A self-described social­ist, Sanders has in his polit­i­cal career placed him­self in Debs’ tra­di­tion, and hav­ing made a doc­u­men­tary like this more than 40 years ago shores up that image. The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Philip Bump points out that, before becom­ing a U.S. sen­a­tor, Sanders did a cou­ple more act­ing jobs in fea­ture films, once as a man stingy with Hal­loween can­dy and once as a Dodgers-obsessed rab­bi. As much as those roles might have suit­ed his demeanor, it’s safe to say he played Eugene V. Debs with more con­vic­tion.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bernie Sanders: I Will Be an Arts Pres­i­dent

Spike Lee Inter­views Bernie Sanders: Two Guys from Brook­lyn Talk About Edu­ca­tion, Inequal­i­ty & More

Bernie Sanders Sings “This Land is Your Land” on the Endear­ing­ly Bad Spo­ken Word Album, We Shall Over­come

Allen Ginsberg’s Hand­writ­ten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burling­ton Snow” (1986)

Albert Ein­stein Writes the 1949 Essay “Why Social­ism?” and Attempts to Find a Solu­tion to the “Grave Evils of Cap­i­tal­ism”

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 or on Face­book.

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A Tribute to NASA’s Katherine Johnson (RIP): Learn About the Extraordinary Mathematician Who Broke Through America’s Race & Gender Barriers

in Film, History, Science | February 25th, 2020

We don’t call it a tragedy when a renowned per­son dies after the cen­tu­ry mark, espe­cial­ly if that per­son is bril­liant NASA math­e­mati­cian Kather­ine John­son, who passed away yes­ter­day at the ven­er­a­ble age of 101. Her death is a great his­tor­i­cal loss, but by almost any mea­sure we would con­sid­er reach­ing such a fin­ish line a tri­umphant end to an already hero­ic life.

A prodi­gy and pio­neer, John­son joined the all-black “human com­put­ing” sec­tion at NASA’s pre­de­ces­sor, the Nation­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee for Aero­nau­tics, in 1953. She would go on to cal­cu­late the launch win­dows and return tra­jec­to­ries for Alan Shepard’s first space­flight, John Glenn’s first trip into orbit, and the Apol­lo Lunar Module’s first return from the Moon.

All this with­out the ben­e­fit of any machine com­put­ing pow­er to speak of and—as Hid­den Fig­ures dra­ma­tizes through the pow­er­ful per­for­mance of Tara­ji P. Hen­son as Johnson—while fac­ing the dual bar­ri­ers of racism and sex­ism her white male boss­es and co-work­ers blithe­ly ignored or delib­er­ate­ly upheld.

John­son and her fel­low “com­put­ers,” with­out whom none of these major mile­stones would have been pos­si­ble, had to fight not only for recog­ni­tion and a seat at the table, but for the basic accom­mo­da­tions we take for grant­ed in every work­place.

Her con­tri­bu­tions didn’t end when the space race was over—her work was crit­i­cal to the Space Shut­tle pro­gram and she even worked on a mis­sion to Mars. But John­son her­self kept things in per­spec­tive, telling Peo­ple mag­a­zine in the inter­view above from 2016, “I’m 98. My great­est accom­plish­ment is stay­ing alive.” Still, she lived to see her­self turned into the hero of that year’s crit­i­cal­ly laud­ed film based on the best­selling book of the same name by Mar­got Lee Shetterly—decades after she com­plet­ed her most ground­break­ing work.

Shetterly’s book, writes his­to­ri­an of tech­nol­o­gy Marie Hicks, casts John­son and her fel­low black women math­e­mati­cians “as pro­tag­o­nists in the grand dra­ma of Amer­i­can tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry rather than mere details.” By its very nature, a Hol­ly­wood film adap­ta­tion will leave out impor­tant details and take lib­er­ties with the facts for dra­mat­ic effect and mass appeal. The fea­ture treat­ment moves audi­ences, but it also soothes them with feel-good moments that “keep racism at arm’s length from a nar­ra­tive that, with­out it, would nev­er have exist­ed.”

The point is not that John­son and her col­leagues decid­ed to make racism and sex­ism cen­tral to their sto­ries; they sim­ply want­ed to be rec­og­nized for their con­tri­bu­tions and be giv­en the same access and oppor­tu­ni­ties as their white male col­leagues. But to suc­ceed, they had to work togeth­er instead of com­pet­ing with each oth­er. Despite its sim­pli­fi­ca­tions and gloss­es over Cold War his­to­ry and the depth of prej­u­dice in Amer­i­can soci­ety, Hid­den Fig­ures does some­thing very dif­fer­ent from most biopics, as Atlantic edi­tor Leni­ka Cruz writes, telling “a sto­ry of bril­liance, but not of ego. It’s a sto­ry of strug­gle and willpow­er, but not of indi­vid­ual glo­ry… it looks close­ly at the remark­able per­son in the con­text of a com­mu­ni­ty.”

Kather­ine John­son lived her life as a tremen­dous exam­ple for young women of col­or who excel at math and sci­ence but feel exclud­ed from the estab­lish­ment. On her 98th birth­day, she “want­ed to share a mes­sage to the young women of the world,” says the nar­ra­tor of the 20th Cen­tu­ry Stu­dios video above: “Now it’s your turn.” And, she might have added, “you don’t have to do it alone.” Hear Hid­den Fig­ures author Shet­ter­ly dis­cuss the crit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions of Kather­ine and her extra­or­di­nary “human com­put­er” col­leagues in the inter­view below, and learn more about John­son’s life and lega­cy in the fea­turette at the top and at her NASA biog­ra­phy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Women Sci­en­tists Launch a Data­base Fea­tur­ing the Work of 9,000 Women Work­ing in the Sci­ences

“The Matil­da Effect”: How Pio­neer­ing Women Sci­en­tists Have Been Denied Recog­ni­tion and Writ­ten Out of Sci­ence His­to­ry

Women’s Hid­den Con­tri­bu­tions to Mod­ern Genet­ics Get Revealed by New Study: No Longer Will They Be Buried in the Foot­notes

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

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Conquer Your Vertigo and Watch this Dazzling Footage of Construction Workers Atop the Chrysler Building in 1929

in Architecture, Film, History | February 24th, 2020

Paris has the gar­goyles of Notre Dame.

New York City has eight art-deco eagles pro­trud­ing from the Chrysler Build­ing’s 61st floor.

These mighty stain­less steel guardians seem impres­sive­ly sol­id until you watch con­struc­tion work­ers muscling them into place on April 3, 1930 in the Fox Movi­etone news­reel footage above.

For­get being stur­dy enough to serve as a time trav­el div­ing board for a very freaked out Will Smith in Men in Black III…

It now seems a mir­a­cle that no unsus­pect­ing pedes­tri­ans have been crushed by an art-deco eagle head crash­ing uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly down to Lex­ing­ton Avenue in the mid­dle of rush hour.

Also that no work­ers died on the job, giv­en how quick­ly the build­ing went up and the rel­a­tive lack of safe­ty equip­ment on dis­play… no word on ampu­tat­ed fin­gers, but it’s not hard to imag­ine giv­en that only one of the guys help­ing out with the eagle appears to be wear­ing gloves.

In fact, as author Vin­cent Cur­cio describes in Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Auto­mo­tive Genius, the job site boast­ed a num­ber of inno­v­a­tive safe­ty mea­sures, such as scaf­folds with guardrails, tar­pau­lin-cov­ered plank roofs, wire net­ting between the toe boards, a hos­pi­tal on-loca­tion, and a bul­letin board for safe­ty-relat­ed updates. Founder Wal­ter Chrysler was as proud of this work­place con­sci­en­tious­ness as he was of the 4‑floors per week speed with which his build­ing was erect­ed:

In an arti­cle called “Is Safe­ty on Your Pay­roll?” He spoke of star­ing up at work­ers on the scaf­fold­ing with a friend on the street below. “‘My, that’s a risky job,’ my com­pan­ion remarked. ‘A man just about takes his life in his hands work­ing on a build­ing like this.’”

“‘I sup­pose it does seem that way,’ I replied, ‘But it’s no so dan­ger­ous as you think. If you knew the pre­cau­tions we have tak­en to pro­tect those work­ers, you might change your mind… not a sin­gle life has been lost in con­struct­ing the steel frame­work of that build­ing.’” To give an idea of how much of an achieve­ment this was, it should be not­ed that the rule of thumb at that time was one death for every floor above fif­teen in the con­struc­tion of a build­ing; by this mea­sure the Chrysler Build­ing should have been respon­si­ble for six­ty-two deaths.

By con­trast, the guys Fox Movi­etone filmed seem hap­py to play up the ver­tig­i­nous nature of their work for the cam­era, edg­ing out onto gird­ers and con­vers­ing casu­al­ly atop pipes, as if seat­ed astride a 1000-foot tall jun­gle gym:

“Gosh, that’s a long way to the street, boys.”

“How’d ya like to fall down there?”

“Whad­daya think, I’m an angel?

“Well, you’re liable to be an angel any minute.”

“You’ll break the alti­tude record going down-“

“Ha ha, yeah, maybe!”

While our appetite for this vin­tage blus­ter is bot­tom­less, it’s worth not­ing that Movi­etone usu­al­ly issued those appear­ing in pri­ma­ry posi­tions a cou­ple of lines of script­ed dia­logue.

What would those work­ers think of OSHA’s cur­rent safe­ty stan­dards for the con­struc­tion indus­try?

Fall pro­tec­tion is still the most com­mon­ly cit­ed stan­dard dur­ing con­struc­tion site inspec­tions.

Falls claimed the lives of 338 Amer­i­can con­struc­tion work­ers in 2018, the same year a con­struc­tion work­er in Kuala Lumpur used his cell phone to film a cowork­er in shorts and sneak­ers erect­ing scaf­fold­ing sans safe­ty equip­ment, whilst bal­anc­ing on unse­cured pipes some 700 feet in the air.

Watch it below, if you dare.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Brook­lyn Bridge Was Built: The Sto­ry of One of the Great­est Engi­neer­ing Feats in His­to­ry

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Commercials: A Playlist of 8 Short Andersonian Works

in Film | February 24th, 2020

You may have noticed cer­tain brands, over the past decade or so, going for a “Wes Ander­son aes­thet­ic” in their adver­tise­ments. But as all the younger film­mak­ers Ander­son inspires inevitably find out, repli­cat­ing the direc­tor’s sig­na­ture mise-en-scène — the dis­tinc­tive col­or palettes, the rig­or­ous geom­e­try, the care­ful­ly curat­ed objects — is no easy task. To achieve the cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Ander­son­ian, it seems you real­ly need Ander­son him­self. For­tu­nate­ly for cer­tain mar­ket­ing depart­ments, the auteur of Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and oth­er pic­tures (includ­ing the upcom­ing The French Dis­patch) has occa­sion­al­ly made him­self avail­able for com­mer­cial work.

But as any­one who has seen one or two of Ander­son­’s movies might expect, the man appears to have lit­tle inter­est in mak­ing straight­for­ward com­mer­cials. Even when direct­ing short spots for the likes of Amer­i­can Express or Stel­la Artois, Ander­son brings us into his very own aes­thet­ic and cul­tur­al realm: in the for­mer he sat­i­rizes a cer­tain idea of his own process on set, and in the lat­ter he cre­ates com­e­dy from his pen­chant for (and mas­tery of) ear­ly-1960s Euro­pean design. In oth­er instances he’s tak­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to indulge his cinephil­ia more direct­ly than usu­al, as in his Jacques Tati-inspired com­mer­cial for Japan­ese cell­phone ser­vice provider Soft­Bank. You can see all these and more on our Youtube playlist of eight of Ander­son­’s short films.

Com­mer­cial direc­tors often dis­cuss their projects in the same terms they would use to dis­cuss short films. But it seems that every time Ander­son makes a com­mer­cial, he real­ly does make a short film. Some­times he makes both: after he direct­ed a 44-sec­ond ad for Pra­da, he went on with the fash­ion house­’s spon­sor­ship to direct the sev­en-minute Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti. But ever since mak­ing the thir­teen-minute black-and-white short that would become his debut fea­ture Bot­tle Rock­et, Ander­son has also used short films in ser­vice of his long ones. Cousin Ben’s Troop Screen­ing makes for a fun intro­duc­tion to Moon­rise King­dom; Hotel Cheva­lier is prac­ti­cal­ly required view­ing before The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed. Both remind us that, how­ev­er sol­id the work a brand can get out of him, Wes Ander­son pro­motes noth­ing quite as delight­ful­ly as he pro­motes Wes Ander­son. Watch the playlist of 8 com­mer­cials and short films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

Wes Ander­son Explains How He Writes and Directs Movies, and What Goes Into His Dis­tinc­tive Film­mak­ing Style

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Com­mer­cials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Cam­era (1992)

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 or on Face­book.

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

in Archives, Film | February 18th, 2020

Even if you don’t know much about Korea, or indeed about film, it’s safe to say that you know at least one Kore­an film: Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, which has cir­cled the world gath­er­ing acclaim and awards since its release last spring. First it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, becom­ing the first Kore­an pro­duc­tion to do so; more recent­ly, it made film his­to­ry even more dra­mat­i­cal­ly at the Acad­e­my Awards. There it won Oscars not just for Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Film, Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, and Best Direc­tor, but also Best Pic­ture, becom­ing the first non-Eng­lish-lan­guage film to do so. For many view­ers, Par­a­site and its direc­tor seem to have come out of nowhere, but lovers of Kore­an cin­e­ma know full well that they come out of a rich tra­di­tion — and a robust indus­try.

Maybe you thrilled to Bong’s sus­pense­ful, fun­ny, and vio­lent tale of class war­fare as much as the Acad­e­my did. Maybe you’ve even seen the work of Bong’s con­tem­po­raries: Park Chan-wook, he of the con­tro­ver­sial hit Old­boy; the even more trans­gres­sive Kim Ki-duk; the pro­lif­ic Hong Sang­soo, with his Woody Allen-meets-Éric Rohmer sen­si­bil­i­ty.

But do you know their son­saeng­n­im, the gen­er­a­tions of Kore­an film­mak­ers who went before them? Now you can, no mat­ter where in the world you are, on the Kore­an Film Archive’s Youtube chan­nel. There, at no charge, you can expe­ri­ence decades of Kore­an cin­e­ma and hun­dreds of works of Kore­an cin­e­mat­ic art, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to those of mid-20th-cen­tu­ry mas­ters like Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, and my per­son­al favorite Kim Soo-yong, direc­tor of haunt­ing, even brazen pic­tures of the 1960s and 70s like Mist and Night Jour­ney.

I actu­al­ly met the then-octo­ge­nar­i­an Kim Soo-yong a few years ago, when he called me over to his table out of curios­i­ty about what a for­eign­er was doing at a screen­ing of Mist. It hap­pened at the Kore­an Film Archive’s cin­e­math­eque (known as Cin­e­math­eque KOFA) here in Seoul, where I’ve lived for the past few years. Dur­ing that time I’ve also been writ­ing a Korea Blog for the Los Ange­les Review of Books, which occa­sion­al­ly fea­tures essays on the clas­sic Kore­an films made avail­able online by the Kore­an Film Archive. I began the series with Night Jour­ney, and more recent­ly have writ­ten up pic­tures like the 1960s neo­re­al­ist cry of agony Aim­less Bul­let, the 1970s col­lege-under-dic­ta­tor­ship com­e­dy The March of Fools, the 1980s West­ern­iza­tion com­e­dy Chil-su and Man-su, the 1990s food-sex-hor­ror satir­i­cal mix­ture 301, 302, and oth­ers.

If you need more sug­ges­tions as to where to start with the KOFA’s more than 400 free films online, pay a vis­it to the Kore­an Movie Data­base (KMDb), where KOFA reg­u­lar­ly post selec­tions from their cat­a­log. This mon­th’s picks are “spy thriller films from the 1950s to 1970s infused with the anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy dur­ing the time.” Pre­vi­ous months have round­ed up “melo­dra­mas that are filled with women’s desire and crav­ing for love,” films about “indi­vid­ual or fam­i­ly tragedies lead­ing to his­tor­i­cal tragedies,” and “heart-warm­ing clas­si­cal movies all the fam­i­ly mem­bers can enjoy togeth­er.” You can watch all these films either on the KMDb (which requires free reg­is­tra­tion) or on KOFA’s ever-grow­ing Youtube chan­nel. Either way, as we say here in Korea, 재미있게 보세요.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret of the “Per­fect Mon­tage” at the Heart of Par­a­site, the Kore­an Film Now Sweep­ing World Cin­e­ma

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

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 or on Face­book.

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