Jim Northrup: With Reservations
Jim Northrup: With Reservations is a wild trip through Indian Country.
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THOMAS McGRATH
The Movie at the End of the World is a video vision quest. Click here to see more.
Welcome to thecie dot org. We make poetic media with people of all ages from all over
the world for everyone.
GEORGE 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.
His students are everywhere: Paul Barnes (chief editor for Ken Burns), Cheryl Furjanic (SYNC OR SWIM), 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."
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".
This video celebrates George's late companion, Betty Puleston.
365 FRIENDS is inspired by Ko Un who wrote poems for 10,000 friends, and William Stafford who tried to write a poem every day, and John Caddy who posts a poem photo daily, and Jim Denomie who painted a painting every day during 2005.
Stirred by these models, I have been posting pictures with stories to Facebook.
There are twoalbums, since Facebook limits an album to 200 pictures.
To begin every morning thinking good thoughts about a friend has been proving to be a luminous way to begin the day.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
COLD MOUNTAIN is a half hour film portrait of the Tang Dynasty Chinese poet Han Shan, a.k.a. Cold Mountain. Recorded on location in America, China and Japan, Burton Watson, Red Pine, Jim Lenfestey and the legendary Gary Snyder describe the poet's life and recite poems.
Co-directed by Mike Hazard and Deb Wallwork, the music is by the internationally renowned pipa player Gao Hong and animations are by John Akre. A project of The Center for International Education, the film has been supported by the Outagamie Foundation, the family of John W. Brower and the Bush Foundation.
Deb Wallwork writes, "Cold Mountain is a rollicking, tasty film filled with poetry, colorful characters, Zen wisdom and witty commentary. The film gives us glimpses of that mysterious--some say crazy, some say enlightened--figure, Han Shan, who left the dusty world to become a hermit and a poet, and in so doing wrote the intimate and inspired lines that speak to us today.”
Mike Hazard adds, "One way to look at the film is to see that literally everyone and everything in the film is channeling the spirit of Han Shan: the Mandarin of Jin Hua, the trickster animations of John Akre, the street singer, the rice thrashers, the Butterfly Woman, the four poetical guides, the monks in the temple kitchen, the bats in the cave, Gao Hong's pipa, even the cicadas compose a richly layered portrait of Cold Mountain."
Hazard and Wallwork are veteran documentary filmmakers with a dozen national releases on PBS between them. Their most recent collaboration, C. BECK, was Grand Prize winner of the Independent Lens Online Shorts Festival produced by ITVS.
