A quick fyi: IndieWire has made avail­able on its YouTube chan­nel “Heav­en Is a Traf­fic Jam on The 405,” a 40-minute doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by Frank Stiefel. A por­trait of a bril­liant 56 year old artist, the film won the Oscar for Best Doc­u­men­tary (Short Sub­ject) at the recent Acad­e­my Awards. Here’s the gist of what it’s about:

Mindy Alper is a tor­tured and bril­liant 56 year old artist who is rep­re­sent­ed by one of Los Ange­les’ top gal­leries. Acute anx­i­ety, men­tal dis­or­der and dev­as­tat­ing depres­sion have caused her to be com­mit­ted to men­tal insti­tu­tions under­go elec­tro shock ther­a­py and sur­vive a 10 year peri­od with­out the abil­i­ty to speak. Her hyper self aware­ness has allowed her to pro­duce a life­long body of work that express­es her emo­tion­al state with pow­er­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal pre­ci­sion. Through inter­views, reen­act­ments, the build­ing of an eight and a half foot papi­er-mache’ bust of her beloved psy­chi­a­trist, and exam­in­ing draw­ings made from the time she was a child, we learn how she has emerged from dark­ness and iso­la­tion to a life that includes love, trust and sup­port.

You can watch the com­plete film online. It will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book and BlueSky.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

Watch Edith+Eddie, an Intense, Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film About America’s Old­est Inter­ra­cial New­ly­weds

“C’mon you f#ck! C’mon death! Die! Axe mur­der­er! Kill!!”

That’s my best tran­scrip­tion of Jack Nicholson’s loopy warm up dia­log seen in the above clip, tak­en from “Mak­ing The Shin­ing.” Direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick let his then 17-year-old daugh­ter Vivian wan­der the set dur­ing the mak­ing of this clas­sic film, and cap­tures a lot of the mag­ic that went on. This scene of Nichol­son warm­ing up, Method-style, is a brief high­light.

I’m tick­led that Nichol­son is in his own mad lit­tle world, while the crew at Elstree Stu­dios (where most of the film was shot), go about their busi­ness, occa­sion­al­ly swerv­ing aside–careful with that axe, Eugene! I mean, Jack!

This is, of course, a warm up for the now icon­ic scene where Jack Tor­rance chops his way into the bath­room where his wife Wendy is hid­ing. And has there been a bet­ter axe in the door scene since? Can any film do so now with­out ref­er­enc­ing Kubrick? I would say no.

If that piqued your inter­est, there’s even more behind the scenes footage kick­ing around YouTube, includ­ing Kubrick typ­ing away, Nichol­son schmooz­ing it up, Shel­ley Duvall point­ing out her hair is com­ing out from the stress of film­ing, Kubrick’s mom vis­it­ing the set, the ear­ly use of Steadicam and video assist, Kubrick being kind of a dick to Duvall, and much more, includ­ing this obser­va­tion from Nichol­son: “The aver­age celebri­ty meets in one year ten times the amount of peo­ple that the aver­age per­son meets in their entire life.”

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Stan­ley Kubrick Became Stan­ley Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed by the Film­mak­er

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

93 Films Stan­ley Kubrick Real­ly Liked

Go Inside the First 30 Min­utes of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing with This 360º Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Video

Jack Nichol­son Puts His Star Pow­er Behind “Green” Cars, 1978

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.

It says a great deal about the accep­tance of inter­ra­cial mar­riage in Amer­i­ca that you don’t much hear the phrase “inter­ra­cial mar­riage” itself any­more: in much of the coun­try, such unions have become so com­mon as not to mer­it their own intel­lec­tu­al cat­e­go­ry. But what about elder­ly inter­ra­cial new­ly­weds? That much more demo­graph­i­cal­ly unusu­al phe­nom­e­non — or rather, the actu­al nona­ge­nar­i­an, recent­ly mar­ried inter­ra­cial cou­ple of Edith Hill and Eddie Har­ri­son — pro­vides the sub­ject for Lau­ra Check­oway’s short doc­u­men­tary Edith+Eddie, which you can watch free on Topic.com.

“Hill was 96 and Har­ri­son 95 years old when they were mar­ried, and the film bills the two as ‘Amer­i­ca’s old­est inter­ra­cial new­ly­weds’ at the time of their union in 2014,” writes the Hol­ly­wood Reporter’s Chris Gard­ner in an arti­cle on the film’s hav­ing been pro­duced by Cher.

But “what could’ve been a heart-warm­ing love sto­ry turned into some­thing trag­ic as the two were sep­a­rat­ed by Hill’s fam­i­ly in a bit­ter fam­i­ly feud,” a source of much of the con­sid­er­able dra­ma in the movie’s 30 min­utes. “The cou­ple had been shar­ing Hill’s Vir­ginia home until one of her daugh­ters forcibly moved her to Flori­da, sep­a­rat­ing the cou­ple.”

Alas, Har­ri­son died dur­ing a bout of influen­za just three months lat­er. “He lived for her, and she lived for him. It’s the love sto­ry of the cen­tu­ry,” said Hill’s daugh­ter, quot­ed in a Guardian arti­cle that describes how “their mar­riage was prob­lem­at­ic because Hill has been declared legal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed for sev­er­al years.” Anoth­er daugh­ter “con­test­ed the mar­riage, say­ing it would com­pli­cate the even­tu­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of Hill’s estate. But Hill and Har­ri­son said they want­ed to stay togeth­er.” And giv­en all they’d lived through — “the two long­time Vir­gini­ans would not have been allowed to mar­ry if they had met in their 20s, 30s or 40s under state law at the time” — one eas­i­ly under­stands why.

Stream Edith+Eddie for free on Topic.com.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 103-Year-Old Harlem Renais­sance Dancer Sees Her­self on Film for the First Time & Becomes an Inter­net Star

Charles Dar­win Cre­ates a Hand­writ­ten List of Argu­ments for and Against Mar­riage (1838)

Chris Rock Reads James Baldwin’s Still Time­ly Let­ter on Race in Amer­i­ca: “We Can Make What Amer­i­ca Must Become”

Richard Feynman’s Let­ter to His Depart­ed Wife: “You, Dead, Are So Much Bet­ter Than Any­one Else Alive” (1946)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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.