IMAGINE Billie Holiday! Louis Armstrong! Woody Herman in a 40's film set in New Orleans !!!!!!!
Monday, April 5, 2021
New Orleans (1947) Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Woody Herman Musical...
IMAGINE BILLIE HOLIDAY! LOUIS ARMSTRONG! WOODY HERMAN ALL IN ONE 40'S MOVIE. Set in New Orleans ...
Sunday, February 14, 2021
What I was doing when Trump was acquitted .. Please watch and read
MEANWHILE: Why have I put this clip from Louis Malle’s first film (1958), “Elevator from the Gallows” Because I identify with the feeling Jeanne Moreau silently seems to express. Miles Davis’s improvised score resonates deeply and grounds me.
Why? Please read:
Let’s step back for a moment. Please realize that the continual use of the words "riot" and "rioters" denies what actually happened. It was, in fact, a mob with a purpose. They were intent on stopping the count of the electoral ballots. If completed, it would confirm the election of Biden/Harris. Suppose they had succeeded (which they came very close to doing!) would have left Trump and his administration in control. What had not been clearly stated by the Democratic managers is: Sometime in April, it became clear to the Trump inner circle that COVID was not going to disappear. They looked realistically at its impact on the election and realized it could derail the election of Trump. While plan A was already in action: mobilize the base through campaign rallies to win. If Trump lost, it would be because of VOTER FRAUD! For months this rhetoric was turned up in volume as the clock ticked! It culminated in November with STOP THE COUNT and STOP THE STEAL. Trump and his supporters began to organize starting last Spring. This is not a secret. Both media and digital tech amplified it. The coverage of Black Lives Matter’s reaction to the continual police killing of unarmed black men, some black women, and the persistence of the public response was foregrounded. It was providing the cover for the fear-based white supremacy response. QAnon (who really started it and why?.) “Pizza Gate” was my first knowledge of Q’Anon when it seduced a close friend.
The defense lawyers have hammered home the message that Trump had nothing to do with the insurgent mob violence despite the open genuflecting at the Capital by the mob to Trump and his STOP THE STEAL call to arms. His rally on Nov 6th was a call to arms of the diverse Trump militia. “Heil Trump” seemed to be the rallying point of unity.
So here I am today feeling much like the Jeanne Moreau character in this Louis Malle 1957 film with Miles Davis soundtrack resonating my feelings.
Yes, I want Trump convicted. I want him never again to be able to excite the public with his irrationally lies —the of his actual actions both in his personal and his Presidential life.
As good as it looks with the first 100 days of actions, the Biden administration does not reflect the things most important to me today. I want Medicare for All. I want the Green New Deal. I want FAIR TAXES where every worker and every corporation pays a Fair Tax. I want private Colleges and Universities to pay taxes. I want free public education for all qualified citizens; I want enforced Separation of Church and State as defined in the Constitution. I want Churches taxed. I want the end of sexism and misogyny. I want the air I breathe to be clean and healthy. I want the food I eat to be nutritious.s
I am at an age where I want to make sure a better worldis possible for all people, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, class, race, age, and physical capability. These changes are especially important to me for the generations that follow.
I want what I have fought for all my life to be on the table.
To be openly discussed and put into action.
A living wage, control of one’s own body, accessible education, gun control,
police as peacekeepers need no more debate. I want the death penalty to be abolished. The end of nuclear energy to fuel the war machine. End Income equality Until we white folks detox ourselves the internalized racism embedded by culture and education of the internalized racism Act now.
NOTE: As I was about to post this message, Trump was acquitted.
A return to a reality check of how serious this moment is. Let me say one more time: I stand with the expanding SQUAD, Not the Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or Obama centrist Democratic Party. They gave us Biden. Yes, to stop Trump, But it is clear that we have a lot of work to do……. together!
I believe a better world is possible. We must continue to refuse fascism and corporate welfare. Dangerous Times indeed. Stay safe, and remember love, not anger, must lubricate our resistance. What we have in common MUST be put above where we disagree at this critical moment. Capitalism and its promotors want to tear us apart. Don’t be fooled. Remember, GREED is infectious
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
SUNDANCE 2021: I Just finished watching "Judas and the Black Massiah" premiere at Sundance. I can not express how deeply this profound, narrative film about Fred Hampton, the FBI, The Black Panther Party and the role of informers and Cointelpro triggered memories of my life and politics. It takes me back to a very exciting and sometimes painful period of my life
and the virtual Q&A that follows.
I cannot link you to the film it is not available. But will be streaming starting Feb 12 on HBOMax.
I will post my ReelDealMovies review when finished thinking and writing. Here is the trailer which I suggest you watch first
I also must tell you it is seeing a film like this is the reason I have gone to Sundance for over 20 years.I am glad that this year Sundance arrived virtually but nothing is like sitting in a theater at Sundance and communally watching a film together and then participating in the Q&A Or sitting on the film shuttle bus talking to people you know or don't know about what you have seen and want to recommend ..or not recommend and listening to what they recommend
Thursday, January 7, 2021
Saturday, May 9, 2020
MUST SEE AT HOME : SPACESHIP EARTH directed by MATT WOLF
Tonight; SATURDAY, May 9th and Sun May 2020
SPACESHIP EARTH directed by MATT WOLF
SUNDANCE 2020: The SHAWL
Please read this interview with the co-Director Sara Kiener by Stephen Saito.. the samples of the illustrations that were animated are simply,,,,, fantastic
Did you have the directing bug for a while?
I had just arrived where I was to stay. A return visit (lucky me) to Robert and Ruth's Moutain Chalet and Art Studio in Park City, UT for Sundance2020, and this greeted me when I opened my computer. OMQ, it's Dusty, and Shane, local NYC "Art Fags Delux" (FYI a compliment.) stars of the short, the SHAWL, had arrived in Park City and were holding court everywhere it seemed.
THE SHAWL is a short film made by Sara Kiener and Brianne Farley. It had been given a much-coveted Sundance shorts spotlight placement: THE SHAWL was to play in front of one of the much-anticipated documentaries "MUCHO MUCHO AMOUR."
"MUCHO MUCHO AMOUR." Directed by Cristina Costantini, Kareem Tabsch is a public and private look at Latin icon Walter Mercado. the famed television astrologer For 30 years each day more than 130, 000, 000 Spanish speaking people worldwide, across generations, tuned in to hear and yes, see, what Walter would be wearing. Who some of you may ask is Walter Mercado? let the Cristina tell you,
I know that both Shane and Dusty are bigger-than-life artists. Their cultural work is fused with intelligent, outrageous wit and provocative "dare-to-be-different" cultural politics. These two are embraced by the NYC radical faeries community as outsider fashion divas deluxe. Their collective style goal is to make glamour a personal, homemade statement. Their aesthetic is a mix of COCKETTES thrift shop finds accented with a leather hippie's imaginative simplicity. Plus the duo's pure "devil may care" artistry. A vision that gives to everybody the possibility to be "fabulous".
Dusty and Shane's theatrical telling of how they met at a Stevie Nicks concert ignited Sara and Brianne's imagination. Brianne, an illustrator, began drawing as they hilariously told their story. Those illustrations became the basis for Maya Edelman's animation,
Shane and Dusty are fabulous storytellers, Just looking at this image made me trust Sarah and Brianne have captured their "gay gestalt." Oh, sorry, should I have said, QUEER?
Oh, yes they both have day jobs. Shane O'Neill is at the NYTimes with digital multi-media and Dusty Lynn Childers is a Special Ed teacher and works as a playwright and director often with Justin Elizabeth Sayre. Both LOVE to cook together!
Sorry, try as I might, I could not get anyone to give me a link to share with you.
But I here is their Kickstarter video where you can meet the live subjects.
" height="266" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="320" style="background-color: rgb(178, 178, 178); background-image: url("/video-thumbnail.g?contentId=c7e400cd86f51f97");">
I can't wait for these New York-based artists and the straight filmmakers to have a very loud, queer buzz for a best animated short for Oscar 2020 nomination. And kudos for the Sundance short programmers for premiering The Shawl at Sundance 2020.
I suspect that candles, rituals, and circles are being held in Williamsburg and Brooklyn NY including the home of Machine Dazzle vibrating that all goes well for Dusty and Shane in Park City
Sundance 2020 Interview: Sara Kiener on the Warm Embrace of “The Shawl”
On the jubilant tale of two lovers recognizing just how much magic they have together during a Stevie Nicks concert.
bySTEPHEN SAITO
When Sara Kiener sought out a collaboration with her college classmate Brianne Farley, a children’s book illustrator, it was natural that they would be making an animated film together, and there was no more animated person in their lives than another Macalester alum Shane O’Neill, so much so that they didn’t even bother looking for an idea for the story before putting O’Neill in a recording booth and letting him and his partner Dusty Childers tell stories until they figured out the best one to turn into a move
 |
Now a completed short, there will be no more joyful seven minutes at all of Sundance than “The Shawl,” which can be seen preceding screenings of “Mucho Mucho Amor” later this week at the festival and has O’Neill and Childers relating the unforgettable tale of the day that cemented their bond to each other during their first summer of courtship. Since a high-frame-rate camera was likely out of the question, Kiener wisely turns to the only format that could properly capture the quick wit of her friends in all of their glory, drawing on Farley’s wily, expressive illustrations to serve as the foundation for Maya Edelman’s exuberant animation that puts one squarely at a Stevie Nicks concert where there’s magic in the air and, as Childers says, “so many miniature top hats you could die.”
Although the Fleetwood Mac singer clearly has top billing at the show, O’Neill, who playfully describes himself as “art teacher woman with a beard,” and Childers, who is admirably trying to make “linen chic” happen with a wardrobe comprised of bedsheets gowns, obviously stars in their own right and “The Shawl” lets them shine at their very brightest, celebrating their unique personalities while beautifully allowing their infectious enthusiasm to envelop an audience and show that their love knows no bounds. On the eve of the film’s premiere in Park City, Kiener spoke about making the transition from being a tireless advocate for indie filmmakers over the years as a distribution expert to taking a turn behind the camera herself, doing justice to the cadence of O’Neill and Childers’ wicked repartee cinematically and making a film set at a Stevie Nicks concert that couldn’t include any of her actual music.
Did you have the directing bug for a while?
It all started three-and-a-half years ago, and it happened in fits and starts, as it goes sometimes. I have a full-time day job at a company called Cinereach and I work in distribution, so I help filmmakers crack their stories in terms of marketing and how to position their films. I realized over time there’s a lot of creative input that I was giving to that process that I thought, “Okay, maybe I have a knack for this.” Even putting a trailer together, I’m like, this is a work of art in my opinion, so that was part of [my interest] and then the other part was sheer curiosity. I’m married to a filmmaker who’s always encouraging me to explore my creative side more. I saw this one short from Sundance, “Doc Ellis and the LSD No-No” about four years ago, and I remember being completely blown away, thinking this is amazing in its simplicity and its storytelling and I want to take a crack at this. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and was like I’m going to be a director, but a few things clicked into place and this piece came out of it.
Did you actually know Shane and Dusty’s story for some time?
I did not know the story going in. We went into a recording studio with Shane and Dusty and we just said, “Tell us your favorite stories. Tell us vibrant, colorful, animated stories and we’ll find it.” We were really, really lucky to have access to the “This American Life” recording studio from another friend from college, Seth Lind, and he helped us find the story. It actually came down to this one about Stevie Nicks and another one about how they met, but it was just a little too X-rated. [laughs] So we decided to animate the Stevie Nicks one instead and it was perfect for me because I’m literally like a Stevie Nicks stan. I have every Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks album on vinyl, and from the beginning, the thing I was always most excited about animating was Dusty’s voice coming out of Stevie’s mouth.
Was animation always the idea?
Yeah, because Brianne was an illustrator and I really wanted to collaborate with her. She had hand-drawn a few things for me, so [when] I showed her the Dock Ellis short, I said, “What would you love to animate more than anything else?” And she said, “Shane and Dusty.” She ended up being able to only complete the storyboards for us, which was amazing, but then we brought on a different animator to finish it, and Maya Edelman, who ended up animating the whole thing, [actually] never met Dusty and Shane until after she animated the whole thing, but it’s mind boggling because she really captured them. It’s amazing. We shared photos with her, but she never met them until after she was done.
I love how the foreground and background interact with each other. What was it like finding the style of animation for the film and how this film would move?
I have to credit Maya and we talked a lot about the textures and the patterns and the interplay between using the pattern of a linen sheet as a background. We also looked at some of the backgrounds of Fleetwood Mac sets and took inspiration from those for the concert scenes. But a lot of it was creative liberty that Maya brought to life as she was moving through it. I always had in mind that there would be some segments that would be very, very simple and some segments that would be much more full and rich, and [Maya] struck the perfect balance of finding that in the end. One of the backgrounds I was most excited about was when Dusty talks about being raised by witches — I always pictured just him surrounded by a coven —Maya really nailed it.
And [Shane and Dusty’s] banter is just intoxicating. I could listen to them talk for hours, so it was about finding an organic story where they were interrupting each other just enough, but not too much so you couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. There’s a little bit of fine-tuning and finessing that went into that, but Seth found it basically what he edited almost three years ago is almost exactly what you see in the animation completely, so it was really about finding it in the audio first and then bringing that to life.
It’s mentioned in the Kickstarter campaign that you were once thinking of live-action inserts at one time. Did this just make more sense to be fully animated?
There was one point where I was thinking about taking photos of Dusty and Shane and animating those but in the end, because the photos are so amazing and I wanted people to see how they look in real life, what we ended up doing was put those photos in the [end] credit sequence and what I really love about that is that you get to meet these people and you get to fall in love with them without any judgments or preconceived notions of who they are or what they might be like. Then at the end of this whole journey of falling in love with them, you get to see what they look like and it invites the audience to maybe think twice the next time they see a larger than life person out in the street wearing linen for a dress [because] I bet that person loves Stevie Nicks just like me, and not come to the table with certain judgments or who they might be or what they’re about.
Was it difficult to create a score that would evoke Fleetwood Mac but not copy them?
Yeah, that is the sheer brilliance of luck that came to be. I randomly met Teddy Ottaviano from a band called the Book of Love and I told him about this piece I was making…I think it was the day I submitted to Sundance, and he said, “I remixed ‘Landslide’ with Stevie Nicks in 1997.” And I said, “Holy shit, I’m sending you my short” [because] I thought maybe he’ll like it. We didn’t even know where it was going to premiere at this point and he e-mailed me back [saying], “I love it. How can we work together?” So it was just like sheer luck, but the music that he made is an homage to Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks without being like a complete knockoff that we’re going to get sued for. It just elevates the whole thing, so I’m so happy to have found him and collaborated with him on this piece.
At the end of a long process like this, what was it like seeing it all come together?
With animation, you get to see it evolve and come to life over a long period of time and you see little bits animated and then more and more and more, and when you think about something for so long, you picture it in your mind and then it starts to take form and then it took my breath away. And now it’s absolutely surreal to think the first thing I made is premiering at Sundance. I know how rare and lucky that is, and I can’t even imagine that this is going to be screening in front of a room full of hundreds of people. That’s a whole other unspeakable moment that I’m not prepared for. But I just became a mom five weeks ago and I just became a filmmaker at the same time, and it’s like I said to my wife [recently], “I’m becoming two things I’ve never been before at the same time. It’s really crazy. It’s wild.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
THE SHAWL: How two plus-size “Art Fags " (a complement) fall in love at a Stevie Nicks concert was the subject of the most buzzed about short in Sundance Festival 2020,
SUNDANCE 2020: The SHAWL
Please read this interview with the co-Director Sara Kiener by Stephen Saito.. the samples of the illustrations that were animated are simply,,,,, fantastic
Did you have the directing bug for a while?
I had just arrived where I was to stay. A return visit (lucky me) to Robert and Ruth's Moutain Chalet and Art Studio in Park City, UT for Sundance2020, and this greeted me when I opened my computer. OMQ it's Dusty, and Shane, local NYC "Art Fags Delux" (FYI a compliment.) stars of the short, the SHAWL, had arrived in Park City and were holding court everywhere it seemed.
THE SHAWL is a short film made by Sara Kiener and Brianne Farley. It had been given a much-coveted Sundance shorts spotlight placement: THE SHAWL was to play in front of one of the much-anticipated documentaries "MUCHO MUCHO AMOUR."
"MUCHO MUCHO AMOUR." Directed by Cristina Costantini, Kareem Tabsch is a public and private look at Latin icon Walter Mercado. the famed television astrologer For 30 years each day more than 130, 000, 000 Spanish speaking people worldwide, across generations, tuned in to hear and yes, see, what Walter would be wearing. Who some of you may ask is Walter Mercado? let the Cristina tell you,
I know that both Shane and Dusty are bigger-than-life artists. Their cultural work is fused with intelligent, outrageous wit and provocative "dare-to-be-different" cultural politics. These two are embraced by the NYC radical faeries community as outsider fashion divas deluxe. Their collective style goal is to make glamour a personal, homemade statement. Their aesthetic is a mix of COCKETTES thrift shop finds accented with a leather hippie's imaginative simplicity. Plus the duo's pure "devil may care" artistry. A vision that gives to everybody the possibility to be "fabulous".
Dusty and Shane's theatrical telling of how they met at a Stevie Nicks concert ignited Sara and Brianne's imagination. Brianne, an illustrator, began drawing as they hilariously told their story. Those illustrations became the basis for Maya Edelman's animation,
Shane and Dusty are fabulous storytellers, Just looking at this image made me trust Sarah and Brianne have captured their "gay gestalt." Oh, sorry, should I have said, QUEER?
Oh, yes they both have day jobs. Shane O'Neill is at the NYTimes with digital multi-media and Dusty Lynn Childers is a Special Ed teacher and works as a playwright and director often with Justin Elizabeth Sayre. Both LOVE to cook together!
Sorry, try as I might, I could not get anyone to give me a link to share with you.
But I here is their Kickstarter video where you can meet the live subjects.
I can't wait for these New York-based artists and the straight filmmakers to have a very loud, queer buzz for a best animated short for Oscar 2020 nomination. And kudos for the Sundance short programmers for premiering The Shawl at Sundance 2020.
I suspect that candles, rituals, and circles are being held in Williamsburg and Brooklyn NY including the home of Machine Dazzle vibrating that all goes well for Dusty and Shane in Park City
Sundance 2020 Interview: Sara Kiener on the Warm Embrace of “The Shawl”
On the jubilant tale of two lovers recognizing just how much magic they have together during a Stevie Nicks concert.
bySTEPHEN SAITO
When Sara Kiener sought out a collaboration with her college classmate Brianne Farley, a children’s book illustrator, it was natural that they would be making an animated film together, and there was no more animated person in their lives than another Macalester alum Shane O’Neill, so much so that they didn’t even bother looking for an idea for the story before putting O’Neill in a recording booth and letting him and his partner Dusty Childers tell stories until they figured out the best one to turn into a move
 |
Now a completed short, there will be no more joyful seven minutes at all of Sundance than “The Shawl,” which can be seen preceding screenings of “Mucho Mucho Amor” later this week at the festival and has O’Neill and Childers relating the unforgettable tale of the day that cemented their bond to each other during their first summer of courtship. Since a high-frame-rate camera was likely out of the question, Kiener wisely turns to the only format that could properly capture the quick wit of her friends in all of their glory, drawing on Farley’s wily, expressive illustrations to serve as the foundation for Maya Edelman’s exuberant animation that puts one squarely at a Stevie Nicks concert where there’s magic in the air and, as Childers says, “so many miniature top hats you could die.”
Although the Fleetwood Mac singer clearly has top billing at the show, O’Neill, who playfully describes himself as “art teacher woman with a beard,” and Childers, who is admirably trying to make “linen chic” happen with a wardrobe comprised of bedsheets gowns, obviously stars in their own right and “The Shawl” lets them shine at their very brightest, celebrating their unique personalities while beautifully allowing their infectious enthusiasm to envelop an audience and show that their love knows no bounds. On the eve of the film’s premiere in Park City, Kiener spoke about making the transition from being a tireless advocate for indie filmmakers over the years as a distribution expert to taking a turn behind the camera herself, doing justice to the cadence of O’Neill and Childers’ wicked repartee cinematically and making a film set at a Stevie Nicks concert that couldn’t include any of her actual music.
Did you have the directing bug for a while?
It all started three-and-a-half years ago, and it happened in fits and starts, as it goes sometimes. I have a full-time day job at a company called Cinereach and I work in distribution, so I help filmmakers crack their stories in terms of marketing and how to position their films. I realized over time there’s a lot of creative input that I was giving to that process that I thought, “Okay, maybe I have a knack for this.” Even putting a trailer together, I’m like, this is a work of art in my opinion, so that was part of [my interest] and then the other part was sheer curiosity. I’m married to a filmmaker who’s always encouraging me to explore my creative side more. I saw this one short from Sundance, “Doc Ellis and the LSD No-No” about four years ago, and I remember being completely blown away, thinking this is amazing in its simplicity and its storytelling and I want to take a crack at this. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and was like I’m going to be a director, but a few things clicked into place and this piece came out of it.
Did you actually know Shane and Dusty’s story for some time?
I did not know the story going in. We went into a recording studio with Shane and Dusty and we just said, “Tell us your favorite stories. Tell us vibrant, colorful, animated stories and we’ll find it.” We were really, really lucky to have access to the “This American Life” recording studio from another friend from college, Seth Lind, and he helped us find the story. It actually came down to this one about Stevie Nicks and another one about how they met, but it was just a little too X-rated. [laughs] So we decided to animate the Stevie Nicks one instead and it was perfect for me because I’m literally like a Stevie Nicks stan. I have every Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks album on vinyl, and from the beginning, the thing I was always most excited about animating was Dusty’s voice coming out of Stevie’s mouth.
Was animation always the idea?
Yeah, because Brianne was an illustrator and I really wanted to collaborate with her. She had hand-drawn a few things for me, so [when] I showed her the Dock Ellis short, I said, “What would you love to animate more than anything else?” And she said, “Shane and Dusty.” She ended up being able to only complete the storyboards for us, which was amazing, but then we brought on a different animator to finish it, and Maya Edelman, who ended up animating the whole thing, [actually] never met Dusty and Shane until after she animated the whole thing, but it’s mind boggling because she really captured them. It’s amazing. We shared photos with her, but she never met them until after she was done.
I love how the foreground and background interact with each other. What was it like finding the style of animation for the film and how this film would move?
I have to credit Maya and we talked a lot about the textures and the patterns and the interplay between using the pattern of a linen sheet as a background. We also looked at some of the backgrounds of Fleetwood Mac sets and took inspiration from those for the concert scenes. But a lot of it was creative liberty that Maya brought to life as she was moving through it. I always had in mind that there would be some segments that would be very, very simple and some segments that would be much more full and rich, and [Maya] struck the perfect balance of finding that in the end. One of the backgrounds I was most excited about was when Dusty talks about being raised by witches — I always pictured just him surrounded by a coven —Maya really nailed it.
And [Shane and Dusty’s] banter is just intoxicating. I could listen to them talk for hours, so it was about finding an organic story where they were interrupting each other just enough, but not too much so you couldn’t make sense of what they were saying. There’s a little bit of fine-tuning and finessing that went into that, but Seth found it basically what he edited almost three years ago is almost exactly what you see in the animation completely, so it was really about finding it in the audio first and then bringing that to life.
It’s mentioned in the Kickstarter campaign that you were once thinking of live-action inserts at one time. Did this just make more sense to be fully animated?
There was one point where I was thinking about taking photos of Dusty and Shane and animating those but in the end, because the photos are so amazing and I wanted people to see how they look in real life, what we ended up doing was put those photos in the [end] credit sequence and what I really love about that is that you get to meet these people and you get to fall in love with them without any judgments or preconceived notions of who they are or what they might be like. Then at the end of this whole journey of falling in love with them, you get to see what they look like and it invites the audience to maybe think twice the next time they see a larger than life person out in the street wearing linen for a dress [because] I bet that person loves Stevie Nicks just like me, and not come to the table with certain judgments or who they might be or what they’re about.
Was it difficult to create a score that would evoke Fleetwood Mac but not copy them?
Yeah, that is the sheer brilliance of luck that came to be. I randomly met Teddy Ottaviano from a band called the Book of Love and I told him about this piece I was making…I think it was the day I submitted to Sundance, and he said, “I remixed ‘Landslide’ with Stevie Nicks in 1997.” And I said, “Holy shit, I’m sending you my short” [because] I thought maybe he’ll like it. We didn’t even know where it was going to premiere at this point and he e-mailed me back [saying], “I love it. How can we work together?” So it was just like sheer luck, but the music that he made is an homage to Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks without being like a complete knockoff that we’re going to get sued for. It just elevates the whole thing, so I’m so happy to have found him and collaborated with him on this piece.
At the end of a long process like this, what was it like seeing it all come together?
With animation, you get to see it evolve and come to life over a long period of time and you see little bits animated and then more and more and more, and when you think about something for so long, you picture it in your mind and then it starts to take form and then it took my breath away. And now it’s absolutely surreal to think the first thing I made is premiering at Sundance. I know how rare and lucky that is, and I can’t even imagine that this is going to be screening in front of a room full of hundreds of people. That’s a whole other unspeakable moment that I’m not prepared for. But I just became a mom five weeks ago and I just became a filmmaker at the same time, and it’s like I said to my wife [recently], “I’m becoming two things I’ve never been before at the same time. It’s really crazy. It’s wild.
Friday, December 28, 2018
THE LAST RESORT, WHAT WHAT HAPPEN TO MIAMI BEACH: How Old jews lost "paradise:to "Cocaine Cowboys"
Change is happening so fast that even here in the 21's century, we have seen the loss of vibrant 20th century, culturally developed, communities. The "dig" today is not just the ancient past, but the very recent past.
Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe's The Last Resort looks at a community birthed and then erased in less than 60 years.
The Lost Resort explore the Jewish, senior community that made Miami Beach its own little social turf and built community. Featuring interviews with Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Buchanan, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, Jewish Museum of Florida Executive Director Susan Gladstone, and photographer Gary Monroe,
Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe's The Last Resort looks at a community birthed and then erased in less than 60 years.
The Lost Resort explore the Jewish, senior community that made Miami Beach its own little social turf and built community. Featuring interviews with Pulitzer Prize winner Edna Buchanan, filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, Jewish Museum of Florida Executive Director Susan Gladstone, and photographer Gary Monroe,
Where else could one find bewigged and covered in cancer-defying tans, 85-year-old women with wrinkled, sagging skin who still felt flirtatious in bikinis on the beautiful beaches that bordered their enclave? Then came the "cocaine cowboys", the fleeing Cuban middle class after the Castro revolution and a series of US supported and then disposed of South and Central America dictators and their entourage, Everything changed and quite quickly Miami beach became the crime capital of the US. As well as the favorite spot of Euro-trash models and the fashion industry, Clickers were everywhere, As well as"working girls and boys" embedded in a vibrant nightclub invasion with a BPM culture that left the old Jews homeless and unwanted.
The Last Resort captures when it was paradise on earth for Jewish retirees and other seniors. Affordable housing and cost of living allowed a culture to grow that kept both ageism and anti-Semitism outside, And the desire for pleasure was alive among the old folks in residence.
I remember attending the 1972 Democratic National Convention. I was credentialed as a member of the Unicorn Press collective. When not on the convention floor, I was outside and exploring Miami Beach for the first time. I discovered this senior community, They were feisty, opinionated, fun, political and with a sense of age entitlement that I had never seen before. It may be gone, but the LAST Resort captures it for their adult grandchildren,.
Similar to the lesbian and gay culture that dominated San Francisco for more than 40 years as liberation was unlocking the doors of oppression. Almost completely gone is this vibrant world of "Yes, I am! You have a problem with that, Darling? A defiant and creative community that for the most part has disappeared. Gentrification, assimilation and digital capital have either appropriated or erased this self-conscious safe zone of freedom of expression. That culture is captured in a celebration, rather than in eulogy, in LGBT SAN FRANCISCO: The Daniel NIcoletta Photographs (R/A/P Reel Art Press)
with permission (cc) Daniel NIcoletta
Thursday, December 27, 2018
For those stuck in OPIOID NATION hell or Christmas alienation: a little tale from Unicle Pill William S. Burroughs - The Junky's Christmas seduction [Produced by Francis Ford COPPLA ...
Or perhaps you choose to step into the light and celebrate Winter Solstice!
Remember drug addiction is a profitable enslavement tool that keeps people in place and destroys hope. Christmas is a capitalist tool to distract from the reality of the world we live in, OR PERHAPS YOU MIGHT WANT TO ASK, BELIEVER OR NOT,: WHAT WOULD JESUS DO
Remember the film Soylent Green,
Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVpN312hYgU
In a densely overpopulated, starving New York City of the future, NYPD detective Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) investigates the murder of an executive at rations manufacturer Soylent Corporation. With the help of elderly academic Solomon "Sol" Roth (Edward G. Robinson), Thorn begins to make real progress -- until the governor mysteriously pulls the plug. Obsessed with the mystery, Thorn steps out from behind the badge and launches his own investigation into the murder.
see full movie info
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