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The roots of OWS: Black power documentary captures the birth of a movement
12.19.2011
02:56 am
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The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 directed by Göran Hugo Olsson is a timely documentary on the birth of the Black Power Movement that combines recently discovered film footage and interviews from the the 1960s and early 70s with commentary from contemporary Black activists and musicians.

Shot in stunning 16mm black and white and color by a Swedish film crew at the height of civil unrest over Vietnam and racial inequality in America, BPM features compelling interviews with Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Huey Newton and other key activists of the period, interspersed with powerful scenes of ghetto life in Oakland and Harlem. Both poetic and potent, the film manages to stir the heart without resorting to hyperbole or cheap sentiment. The subject matter is powerful enough on its own. The images and words speak for themselves…and they speak eloquently.

The only sour moment in the film is when a reptilian Louis Farrakhan spews the Nation Of Islam company line, silver tongue wrapping itself around every vowel like a dung beetle rolling in it’s own excrement and eyes leering with the lascivious gleam of an encyclopedia salesman looking to slip his sweaty hands under the apron of an unsuspecting suburban housewife And Malcolm died for this fucker’s sins.

As scenes unfold on the screen, personal reflections on the era and its influence on their lives and thinking are shared by Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, ?uestlove, John Forté and Robin Kelley, among others. These were formative decades for a new generation of Black American activists, artists and teachers and the inspiration of the The Black Panthers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy endures.

I have my own memories of this pivotal period in American history. I recall one of my first acts of becoming politically engaged. I was 17 and living in Berkeley. It was 1968. I went to The Black Panther headquarters, an aging, two-story, clapboard house in Oakland, and asked them what I could do to help. After getting over their initial amusement of seeing a skinny, long-haired, white boy standing in their office, two Panthers engaged me in conversation, curious to know my motivations. I told them I’d just read Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul On Ice” and had been inspired by it, enough to do whatever I could to make the world a more just place. They handed me a stack of The Black Panther Newsletter and sent me out the door. I became a paperboy for the revolution.

While I watched BPM, the parallels between the civil rights and anti-war actions of the 1960s with the current Occupy Wall Street movement were quite obvious. We are still fighting the good fight…and it never seems to end. We make small inroads toward justice and then are slapped back down. But there is forward movement. Historically, popular uprisings that become the target of government suppression may falter but they always find a way to re-invent, resurrect and re-engage. We are seeing it play out at this very moment as the OWS survives against all efforts by the government and its police force to extinguish it. The success of the uprisings of the Sixties remind us that people DO have the power. Listening to and watching the speeches of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King (the night before he was assassinated) not only made me feel proud to have been in the crux of it all at the time, it emboldened me to continue the fight and also angered me in knowing that there is still a fight to be fought. 

The Black Power Mixtape is currently available for instant viewing on Netflix.

Unjustly imprisoned for being an accessory to the murder of a Judge, Angela Davis discusses violence and revolution in this jail cell interview from BPM. Not long after this interview, Davis was acquitted of all charges against her.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.19.2011
02:56 am
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‘Swords, Sandals and Sex’: International grooves vs. pagan dance clips
12.16.2011
06:01 pm
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Swords, Sandals And Sex mixes international grooves, punk and psyche with ultra-groovy dance sequences from vintage sword and sandal (pepblum) flicks.

01. “That’s Where It’s At” - Van Morrison and The Holmes Brothers
02. “Mabala” - Fathili and The Yahoos
03. “Saman Doye” - The Black Brothers
04. “Negre Africa Dub” - Sly and Robbie
05. “Daughter Whole Lotta Suger Down Deh” - Jah Berry
06. “She Moved Through The Fair” - Jam Nation
07. “Teen Tonic” - Pierre Henry and Michel Colombier
08. “World Destruction” - Afrika Babaata and John Lydon
09. “Fever” - Jingo
10. “El Pescador” - Toto La Momposina and Sus Tambores
11. “Swinger” - The Third Rail
12. “Venetian Glass” - Infinity
13. “Jocko Homo” - Devo
14. “Human Fly” - The Cramps
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.16.2011
06:01 pm
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Hip-hop film nostalgia: video for Lupe Fiasco’s ‘Double Burger With Cheese’
12.15.2011
11:40 pm
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”...and he said nobody cared…”: Ice Cube as Doughboy in Boyz N The Hood
 
What’s the best way to capture in video the spirit of a song like Lupe Fiasco’s late-20th-century-black-street-reality-cinema-surveying “Double Burger With Cheese” from his Friend of the People mixtape [download]?

Somebody figured it out over at beat cartel Dolobeats (and if it was proprietor/prolific beatmaker Dolo himself, I’m pretty fucking impressed): synch the song up to every goddamn movie clip that Lu casually references in the song.

This thing juxtaposes clips from such iconic films as Juice, Menace II Society, Boyz N The Hood, New Jersey Drive, Poetic Justice, Dead Presidents, South Central, Sugar Hill, New Jack City, Paid In Full and Colors.

“These are just a illustration / Of a few scenes that helped raise a generation…”
 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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12.15.2011
11:40 pm
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Cinefamily’s Fantastic Elastic 24-hour Fundraiser Telethon
12.13.2011
10:03 pm
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As a proud Los Angeleno, I like to brag about the great things the city has to offer, like Cinefamily. This weekend the heroic programmers have cooked up an insane 24-hour telethon for their year-end fundraiser, which you’ll be able to watch online live as it happens at their website (I’ll post it here also).

If you’re going to be in LA on the 17th and 18th, admission will be free, given out on a first-come, first-serve basis, but new audiences will be rotated into the theater every 4-5 hours (see schedule). You can always get right back in line, though, just like at Disneyland, (and also like Disneyland, donors/members get the “fast pass,” and get in first to these shows, i.e. the best way to get in is by donating or becoming a member).

Yes indeed, the idea is to sell as many Cinefamily memberships as possible, and there is a private event on Sunday that is only for new and renewing members that should sell several: Actor Michael Cera will be presenting a special selection of mind-blowing shorts, crazy commercials and other rarities from the early career of Jim Henson.

Cinefamily members will get priority admittance to the event. It’s free but donations will be gratefully accepted.

Opening: 12pm – 4:15pm (Saturday Dec. 17th)
- Spike Jonze live!: Spike takes us on a trip through his work from the very beginning to now!
- Jake Austen (Roctober Magazine) will present a special video show on Outsider Music, hosted by Neil Hamburger, and followed by live performances by Guy Chookoorian & Paul Zone (of The Fast)

Primetime: 4:15pm-9pm (Saturday Dec. 17th)
- Jonathan Gold (L.A. Weekly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic) will give a lecture on “Food and Film”!
- Shadoe Stevens presents an encore presentation of “The Best of Fred Rated & The Commercials of The Federated Group”!
- Surprise guest Q&A!
- Benicio del Toro presents Kaneto Shindo’s masterpiece The Naked Island!

Midnight Madness: 9pm (Saturday Dec. 17th) – 1am (Sunday, Dec. 18th)
- Doug Benson and surprise guests will do a specially-constructed multi-movie Movie Interruption
- Everything is Terrible! takes over
- Cinefamily’s Mondo Christmas Special!

The Nite Owl: 1am – 6am (Sunday, Dec. 18th)
- No Age & Friends (including Lance Bangs, Doug Aitken, and Patrick O’Dell) will play, and curate a show at 1AM.
- Thu Tran (Food Party) will show a new short film about her experiments in black-light food, and will set up a special black-lit restaurant on our backyard patio!
- Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields will host a program at 3AM that we’re calling “Films You Can’t Go To Sleep To”, with original ditties on the uke to intro each short film!
- “We Program In Public”: Cinefamily’s call-in talk show w/ guests!

Good Morning Cinefamily: 6am – 11am (Sunday, Dec. 18th)
- Dawn Salon: a meditative morning of rituals & visuals, with live sitar, soundbath and other musical accompaniment! (Performers include Paul Livingstone (sitar) & Homnath Upadhyaya (tabla master from Katmandu, Nepal), DJ Carlos Nino, Build An Ark, JR Robinson, and members of The Melvins, Pit er Pat and The David Grisman Quintet!)
- A sneak peak at the new documentary on The Source Family by Process Media’s Jodi Wille, who will also conduct an authentic Source mind-expanding ritual and exercise
- Cinefamily, Jr: hosted by DJ Lance Rock from “Yo Gabba Gabba” and featuring Saturday morning cartoons, kiddie commercials and other Sunday funnies!

Finale: 11am – 2:30pm (Sunday, Dec. 18th)
- A Conversation With Elliott Gould
- NEW-&-RENEWING MEMBERS-ONLY EVENT: Michael Cera presents “Jim Henson: Commercials & Experiments” + Members-Only Donor Lunch (provided by The Foundry on Melrose!)
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.13.2011
10:03 pm
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Vincent Price: An interview with French TV, from 1986
12.12.2011
07:29 pm
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O, Vincent Price - wasn’t he fab? He had this terrific ability to sound both menacing and amused at the same time. It was part of the reason why his performances were always so enjoyable to watch, he brought a dark humor to the most chilling of horror, as seen in Theater of Blood, Tales of Terror, or House on Haunted Hill. No matter how gruesome the thrill (pet dogs fed to their owner, a puppet skeleton scaring a victim into an acid bath), one instinctively knew that at heart Price was fun, guaranteed to always be good company. As can be seen from this short interview from French TV in 1986, where Mr Price talked about working with Roger Corman, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, James Whale, reminiscing about past successes and unmitigated failures.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Vincent Price: An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe


 
Part deux of Monsieur Price, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.12.2011
07:29 pm
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Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, from 1927
12.12.2011
01:06 pm
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Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City is a beautiful portrait of a day-in-the-life of the German capital. Made in 1927, the film is perhaps too beautiful, its carefully composed images present a story of the city’s aesthetics, rather a biography of its inhabitants.

Based on an idea by Carl Meyer, who withdrew from the production after disagreements with Ruttmann’s “superficial” stylized approach to depicting life in the city. Ruttmann saw the project as a “symphonic film [made] out of the millions of energies that comprise the life of a big city”.

It took over a year to film, with cinematographers Relmar Kuntze, Robert Baberske and Laszlo Shaffer, hiding their cameras in suitcases and vans to achieve an incredibly naturalistic effect. The camera is passive, like Isherwood’s Herr Issyvoo, observing with little comment, creating any sense of drama through use of editing and montage, a style inspired by Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov.

Eighty-four years on from its release, Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City is still a beautiful and compelling film, which captured Berlin in its last days before the horrors of Nazism.

Unfortunately, the original score to accompany the film has been lost, so choose your own soundtrack to create your own mini-cinematic experience.
 

 
With thanks to Stefan Arngrim
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.12.2011
01:06 pm
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Dennis Hopper as Napoleon & Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton
12.11.2011
08:18 pm
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Two short clips from Irwin Allen’s The Story of Mankind (1957), a bizarre movie loosely based on the non-fiction book by Hendrik Willem van Loon.

The film tells of the trial of mankind by a council elders form outer space, who must decide whether humankind should be allowed to continue or be vaporized. For the defense, the dapper Ronald Colman as The Spirit of Man. For the prosecution, the camp Vincent Price as The Devil. The pair deliberate on the evidence, which is taken from key moments in human history, from Julius Ceaser to Christopher Columbus, Elizabeth I to Napoleon. You get the picture.

The cast was a Hollywood producer’s wet dream, which included Virginia Mayo as Cleopatra, Peter Lorre as Nero, Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc, Agnes Moorehead as Queen Elizabeth I, Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton and even Groucho Marx.

In the first clip, two very different acting styles come together, as Dennis Hopper presents his Method Napoleon, against Marie Windsor’s Hollywood Josephine. The two styles don’t quite gel, but Hopper’s speech about a “United States of Europe” is highly topical, considering French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s current ambitions.
 

 
The second clip has Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton discovering gravity and sliced apples with his harp.
 

 
With thanks to Richard Metzger
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.11.2011
08:18 pm
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Peter Cushing Likes Reading and Playing
12.09.2011
12:27 pm
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Peter Cushing liked to read - as can be seen from this rather strange sequence from The Skull (1965).
 

 
When the Gentleman of Horror wasn’t reading, Peter liked to play with his toy soldiers at his home in Kensington, London, as this British Pathe News reel footage from 1956 shows. This was Mr Cushing before his career defining performances as Baron Victor in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), and as Coctor Van Helsing in Dracula (1958).
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Peter Cushing’s death wish


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.09.2011
12:27 pm
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Jesus
12.08.2011
11:22 am
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Nobody fucks with the Jesus!
 
(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.08.2011
11:22 am
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‘Pulp Fiction’ reconstructed in chronological order
12.08.2011
01:33 am
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I’ve always thought of Quentin Tarantino’s loopy masterpiece as a case of the parts being better than the sum of the whole. So I don’t see this reconstruction as sacrilege. It’s an interesting experiment that illustrates how editing can alter the dynamic of a film. Tarantino’s use of flashbacks and flash forwards in PF gave the movie a kind of metaphysical spin that ultimately proved to be hollow. A mind game not a mind expander. But it did inspire a lot of directors to attempt to replicate Tarantino’s time folding in on itself approach to editing.

Pulp Fiction begins in the middle, goes backwards and forwards further and further in time, before returning and ending in the middle.

Here’s what happens when the movie gets all linear on your ass.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.08.2011
01:33 am
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