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Welcome to thecie dot org. We make poetic media with people of all ages from all over
the world for everyone. Please explore our website to learn more about our
videos and our art
work in the schools.
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Monday, May 05, 2008HAN SHAN? Over a thousand years ago, a man laughed up and down the slopes of a cold mountain in China. He wrote poems on trees and walls of caves and on leaves. He limped. He sported a birch-bark hat, big wooden clogs, a patched robe, a pigweed staff and a demeanor interpreted by others as craziness.
He was Han Shan, and he wrote poems for everyone, not just the educated elite.
A man free of spiritual conceit, it is unclear whether or not he was a monk, whether he was a Buddhist or a Taoist or both.
By great good luck, we flew to Japan and China to videotape a story about Han Shan, also known as Cold Mountain. We interviewed Burton Watson and Red Pine, two of his key translators. Then we recorded with Gary Snyder, whose Han Shan translations he published in his first book.
A film called COLD MOUNTAIN is in progress. Co-directed by Mike Hazard and Deb Wallwork, it will be released in the fall of 2008.
Here are four of Han Shan's 300 poems.
Born thirty years ago
I've traveled countless miles
along rivers where the green rushes swayed
to the frontier where the red dust swirled
I've made elixirs and tried to become immortal
I've read the classics and written odes
and now I've retired to Cold Mountain
to lie in a stream and wash out my ears
--translated by Red Pine
Here we languish, a bunch of poor scholars,
Battered by extremes of hunger and cold.
Out of work, our only joy is poetry:
Scribble, scribble we wear out our brains.
Who will read the works of such men?
On that point you can save your sighs.
We could inscribe our poems on biscuits
And homeless dogs wouldn't deign to nibble.
--translated by Burton Watson
I can't stand these bird songs
Now I'll go rest in my straw shack.
The cherry flowers are scarlet
The willow shoots up feathery.
Morning sun drives over blue peaks
Bright clouds wash green ponds.
Who knows that I'm out of the dusty world
Climbing the southern slope of Cold Mountain?
--translated by Gary Snyder
Dust, this life is lost in dust.
Like bugs, bugs in a bowl
we circle, daily, circle
unable to get out.
We're nothing like the gods, nothing.
Our sorrows never end, ever.
Years and months flow like water
when, all of a sudden, we're old.
--version by Mike HazardSaturday, May 03, 2008GEORGE C. STONEY, a veteran maker of over 50 documentaries and professor of film at New York University, is subject of a biographical documentary in progress.
Legendary in the field as a documentary filmmaker, community activist and video pioneer, Stoney is perhaps most famous as the "godfather of public access to cable television," a title he characteristically declines. Still, his advocacy for a citizen's right to use the new media for public expression helped create the federal legislation which now enables public access. Click to watch CABLE FABLE.
His students are everywhere: Paul Barnes (chief editor for Ken Burns), Judith Helfand (BLUE VINYL and UPRISING OF 34), Jim Brown (THE WEAVERS), John Whitehead (MAKE 'EM DANCE), and Mike Hazard (I'M SORRY I WAS RIGHT) to name only a few.
The nonagenarian Stoney teaches that "films should do, not just be."
For an exhaustive catalog of his works, click.
For a clip of George speaking, click.
You can also see two early films of Stoney's on line. Booked for Safekeeping (1960) was made to train police officers in the assistance and management of mentally ill and confused persons.
Palmour Street (1949) was Stoney's first film. One reviewer called it "a curious hybrid of soap opera, history lesson, race relation film, melodrama and Coronet instructional film about a poor family growing up in the South".
Stay tuned.Friday, April 25, 2008SOLO FLIGHT will fly at the St. Paul Art Crawl April 25-27, 2008 in the fifth floor atrium of Lowertown Lofts, 255 Kellogg Boulevard E, St. Paul.
SOLO FLIGHT is a collection of pictures and poems by Mike Hazard of people on quests.
Saturday, April 19, 2008MR. POSITIVE is a poetic video portrait of an amazing fellow named Carl Bentson.
Winner of Honorable Mention at the Fargo Film Festival, it plays soon here:
The Minneapolis International Film Festival at St. Anthony Main Theater on Sunday April 20, 2008 at 7:45pm. It is part of the Minnesota Shorts program.
Athens Video Festival on Saturday April 26, 2008 at 1:30pm.
Central Park/R. H. Stafford Library in Woodbury on Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 2pm.
To see a neat trailer, click.
This documentary by Mike Hazard and Emily Rumsey shows how Bentson lives a good life with a disability which is never actually defined. Like spokes of a wheel on his legendary bicycle, Carl is at the center of a network of support which makes our world go around.
One student at the school where Carl works says, "His favorite word is yeah." Yeah. Thursday, March 20, 2008JON HASSLER has died. Once upon a time, I wrote a one line poem portrait:
DEAR JON
Slightly stooped, he looked up to everyone.
Click to see a wonderful piece by Dave Wood with a video webcast.
And Peg Meier wrote.
Read Sarah T. Williams.
Mary Ann Grossman.
Funeral services will be at 2pm Thursday March 27, 2008 at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.
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