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Welcome to thecie dot org. We make poetic media with people of all ages from all over
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Sunday, November 16, 2008GEORGE C. STONEY, a veteran maker of documentaries, lifelong media activist and professor of film at New York University, is subject of a biographical documentary in progress.
Legendary in the field of nonfiction film, 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), Jim Brown (THE POWER OF SONG: PETE SEEGER), 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 a clip of George speaking, click.
We Shall Overcome (1988) is a film history of the song, produced by Stoney with the late Harold Leventhal and Jim Brown (a former student of Stoney’s who also directed).
Stoney made the documentary Uprising of ’34 (1995) with Judith Helfand and Susanne Rostock. It documents the textile strikes in the South in 1934. The texture of the piece is like a textile.
Stoney is working with David Bagnall on a major portrait of the late Brazilian educator and agitator, Paulo Freire. Freire taught culture is everything humans make, from a shoe to a song.
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".
For an exhaustive catalog of his works, click.
The Stoney Project is directed by Mike Hazard, who has just been awarded a Bush Foundation Fellowship to support this piece. Stay tuned.Saturday, November 15, 2008MR. POSITIVE is a poetic video portrait of an amazing fellow named Carl Bentson.
Winner of Honorable Mention at the Fargo Film Festival and Audience Favorite at Big Water, MR. POSITIVE will play in the 2008 MNTV series on Twin Cities Public Television.
Channel 2: Sunday, December 14, 10 pm (For those with cable in St. Paul, TPT 2 is on channel 23)
Channel 17: Saturday, December 20, 10 pm (For those with cable in St. Paul, TPT 17 is on channel 17)
If you have over the air digital, check local listings. MR. POSITIVE is the second show in the program.
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, November 06, 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 winter of 2009.
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 HazardSunday, November 02, 2008FOR 30 SHORTS uploaded by Media Mike with a host of great collaborators including Deb Wallwork, Laura Youngbird, Mary Megee, George Stoney, Ossian Or and more, zoom to YouTube.
You will see pieces on Robert Bly, George Stoney, Thomas McGrath, Paolo Freire, Esther Horne, star quilts, Peace House, Carol Bly, Everett Parker, Tiger Jack, Jim Northrup, Frederick Manfred, pre-emptive violence, David Bengtson, Marcel Duchamp, Pelican Rapids, Circle of Nations School, Jerome Liebling, the Ghost Dance and more.Saturday, November 01, 2008TWENTY-TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT VIDEO POETRY HOME TO ROOST/KAY RYAN
GENIUS/HAL SIROWITZ
BLINKING/MORTON MARCUS
NOW & THEN/BILLY COLLINS
PSALM 5/ERNESTO CARDENAL
FOOLING WITH WORDS/LUCILLE CLIFTON ET ALIA
FILM TRIP/ETAN THOMAS
SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED/e.e.cummings
SLIP OF THE TONGUE/KAREN LUM
WHAT A POEM IS NOT/JOHN HEGLEY
THE THREATENED ONE/JORGE LUIS BORGES
CULTIVATE/YOKO OKUMURA
IN THIS COUNTRY/ALEX W
POEZIE IS KINDERSPEL/RADIOBOY
POETRY READING/TED KOOSER
BEAUTIFUL GROUND/STEWDIO
AN UNCOMMON GHOST/SHAKESPEARE
VOWEL MOVEMENT
DEATH OF A NATURALIST/SEAMUS HEANEY
PYRAMUS & THISBE/THE BEATLES & THE BARD
RUMI & OTHERS/POEMS
THE COCKROACH POET/RAUL SALINAS
Click to read an article by David Bengtson on this theme.
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