Aftermath of the Tsunami in Japan

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | March 18th, 2011

It was one week ago that a pow­er­ful 9.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake struck off the coast of north­ern Japan. The tsuna­mi that fol­lowed, with waves reach­ing as high as ten meters, swept as far as ten miles inward. In this video shot for The Guardian, we see the haunt­ing dev­as­ta­tion in Shin­tona, a small town in the Miya­gi pre­fec­ture (one of the areas worst affect­ed by the tsuna­mi). Amidst the wreck­age on the streets, it is quite stir­ring to peer inside some of the washed-out hous­es, where we observe bro­ken chi­na and dam­aged pho­tographs, remind­ing us how life can be so pro­found­ly and per­son­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by nature’s fury.

The Guardian arti­cle accom­pa­ny­ing this video can be read here. For more videos and resources relat­ed to the earth­quake in Japan, includ­ing ways you can help, see this post.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Fukushima Reactor Explained & Tsunami 101

in Current Affairs, Science, Video - Politics/Society | March 15th, 2011

We have two quick primers for you. First, this CNN video breaks down the prob­lems afflict­ing the Fukushi­ma Nuclear Pow­er Plant in Japan. Give the video three min­utes of your time, and you will get a fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive overview of what’s going wrong.

And though it amaz­ing­ly feels like old news now, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic pro­vides a quick tuto­r­i­al on tsunamis. Please note that the video includes some dis­turb­ing footage.

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Ahead of Time: The Life & Times of Ruth Gruber

in Film, History, Video - Politics/Society | March 7th, 2011

Ahead of Time, a new doc­u­men­tary, tells the remark­able true sto­ry of Ruth Gru­ber. Born in Brook­lyn in 1911, Gru­ber became the youngest per­son in the world (let alone woman) to earn a Ph.D degree; she did so at the age of 20 from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne, where she majored in Ger­man Phi­los­o­phy, Mod­ern Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, and Art His­to­ry.

While in Ger­many, Gru­ber wit­nessed Nazi ral­lies and lat­er returned to Amer­i­ca with an acute aware­ness of the dan­gers posed by Nazism. Begin­ning her career in jour­nal­ism, she returned to Ger­many on a secret mis­sion for the FDR admin­is­tra­tion and pho­tographed Holo­caust refugees. (You can see the pho­tos Gru­ber cap­tured in this post, and absolute­ly don’t miss the video inter­view with the 99-year-old Ruth at the bot­tom of that page). After the war, Gru­ber con­tin­ued work­ing as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent and pho­to­jour­nal­ist – a career that has spanned sev­en decades.

The short clip above offers a pre­view of Ahead of Time, which airs on Show­time tonight (Mon­day, March 7) at 5:30PM ET/PT, tomor­row (Tues­day, March 8) at 8PM ET/PT, and Fri­day, March 11 at 4PM ET/PT. For a com­plete list of Ahead of Time show­ings, see here. Ahead of Time promis­es to explain the long and incred­i­bly inspir­ing career of Ruth Gru­ber as a jour­nal­ist, lec­tur­er, author, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and human­i­tar­i­an. Don’t miss it!

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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Great Cultural Icons Talk Civil Rights: James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte & Sidney Poitier (1963)

in History, Video - Politics/Society | March 4th, 2011

On the day of the his­toric “March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs and Free­dom” (August 28, 1963), known today as The Great March on Wash­ing­ton (watch it on YouTube in three parts), CBS aired a 30-minute round­table dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing James Bald­win, Mar­lon Bran­do, Har­ry Bela­fonte, Charl­ton Hes­ton, Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Sid­ney Poiti­er.

The whole seg­ment is fas­ci­nat­ing, even and per­haps espe­cial­ly because the speak­ers pur­sue their some­times diver­gent agen­das (Hes­ton speaks opti­misti­cal­ly about peace­ful dis­sent, Bran­do hopes the Civ­il Rights move­ment may lead to repa­ra­tions for Native Amer­i­cans, while Bela­fonte warns omi­nous­ly that the Unit­ed States has now reached a “point of no return”). But it may be Joseph Mankiewicz, the sharp-wit­ted writer/director of All About Eve, who pro­vides one of the dis­cus­sion’s pithi­est lines: “Free­dom, true free­dom,” he says, “is not giv­en by gov­ern­ments; it is tak­en by the peo­ple.”

For a very dif­fer­ent take on the events of the day, you can lis­ten to audio of the famous speech Mal­colm X deliv­ered a few months lat­er, “A Mes­sage to the Grass Roots,” in which he calls the march a “cir­cus,” and its black lead­ers “[Uncle] Toms.”

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A Journey Back in Time: Vintage Travelogues

in History, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | January 4th, 2011

The Trav­el Film Archive lets you “see the world the way it was.” Fea­tur­ing dozens of videos shot between 1900 and 1970, these short trav­el­ogues take you across the globe, to farflung places that many Amer­i­cans con­sid­ered “exot­ic” at the time. Above, we have a 1940s clip that revis­its the glo­ries of Ancient Greece, tak­ing you through the ruins of Athens. But you will also find count­less oth­er des­ti­na­tions — Asia (aka The Far East), India, Hawaii and the South Seas, the Mid­dle East, South Amer­i­ca, and Egypt and North Africa. Paris, Venice, and a sam­pling of Euro­pean loca­tions get cov­er­age too, as do the ear­ly days of com­mer­cial air trav­el. You can dig through the full list right here. Thanks @KirstinButler

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The Gettysburg Address Animated

in History, Politics, Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | November 4th, 2010

On Novem­ber 19, 1863, Abra­ham Lin­coln deliv­ered one of the best-known speech­es in his­to­ry: The Get­tys­burg Address. To pay homage to it, design­er Adam Gault and illus­tra­tor Ste­fanie Augus­tine have ren­dered the immor­tal words in beau­ti­ful black-and-white typo­graph­ic ani­ma­tion that visu­al­ly cap­tures the essence of Lin­col­n’s words as they are spo­ken.

For more on The Get­tys­burg Address, the Library of Con­gress has a fas­ci­nat­ing exhi­bi­tion of mate­ri­als relat­ed to the address, includ­ing the ear­li­est known draft and a short video on how the speech came to be. And for anoth­er visu­al treat, we rec­om­mend Jack Lev­in’s Abra­ham Lin­col­n’s Get­tys­burg Address Illus­trat­ed — a poignant and pow­er­ful selec­tion of images which, cou­pled with Lin­col­n’s equal­ly poignant and pow­er­ful words, are bound to put a lump in your throat.

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Louis CK Recite The Get­tys­burg Address, With Some Help from Jer­ry Sein­feld

Hear John­ny Cash Deliv­er Lincoln’s Get­tys­burg Address

Behold Charles Laughton Deliv­er­ing the Get­tys­burg Address in its Entire­ty in Rug­gles of Red Gap

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

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Nelson Mandela’s First-Ever TV Interview (1961)

in History, Politics, Television, Video - Politics/Society | July 28th, 2010

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured on our site in 2010. In light of the news that Nel­son Man­dela has passed away at age 95, we’re bring­ing this vin­tage clip back to the fore. Here you can see a young Man­dela mak­ing his­to­ry, and with­out per­haps real­iz­ing it, build­ing the remark­able lega­cy that remains with us today.

In 1962, Nel­son Man­dela was arrest­ed on alle­ga­tions of sab­o­tage and oth­er charges and sen­tenced to life in prison, where he spent 27 years before becom­ing South Africa’s first pres­i­dent elect­ed in a ful­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. His sto­ry, among mod­ern his­to­ry’s most pro­found­ly inspi­ra­tional, is beau­ti­ful­ly and poet­i­cal­ly cap­tured in Clint East­wood’s 2009 gem, Invic­tus. But what East­wood’s account leaves out are the events that pre­ced­ed and led to Man­de­la’s arrest.

In May of 1961, a 42-year-old Man­dela gave his first-ever inter­view to ITN reporter Bri­an Wid­lake as part of a longer ITN Rov­ing Report pro­gram about Apartheid. At that point, the police are already hunt­ing for Man­dela, but Wid­lake pulls some strings and arranges to meet him in his hide­out. When the reporter asks Man­dela what Africans want, he prompt­ly responds:

“The Africans require, want the fran­chise, the basis of One Man One Vote – they want polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence.”

But per­haps more inter­est­ing is the dia­logue towards the end of the inter­view, where Man­dela explores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between peace and vio­lence as protest and nego­ti­a­tion tac­tics. We’re left won­der­ing whether his seem­ing­ly sud­den shift from a com­plete­ly peace­ful cam­paign strat­e­gy up to that point towards con­sid­er­ing vio­lence as a pos­si­bil­i­ty may be the prod­uct of South African police going after him with full force that week. Vio­lence, it seems, does breed vio­lence even in the best and noblest of us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nel­son Man­dela Archive Goes Online (With Help From Google)

The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive Goes Online

U2 Releas­es a Nel­son Man­dela-Inspired Song, “Ordi­nary Love”

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine, Big­Think and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

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Fora.TV Goes Mobile

in Video - Arts & Culture, Video - Politics/Society | October 2nd, 2009

Yes­ter­day, YouTube EDU went inter­na­tion­al, and FORA.TV went mobile. FORA is an excel­lent resource for smart video (you’ll find it in our col­lec­tion of Top Intel­li­gent Video Sites), and now it has launched its new mobile web site. Just point your mobile brows­er to m.fora.tv, and you can start watch­ing smart video on the move. The mobile site works well on the iPhone, and hope­ful­ly that holds true for oth­er smart phones. For more intel­li­gent mobile con­tent, please check out our Free iPhone app, and send it along to a friend. To access the app, you can always use the short­ened link: https://bit.ly/opencultureapp

Fol­low us on Face­book and also Twit­ter, where we tweet and re-tweet extra cul­tur­al good­ies that nev­er make it to the blog.

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