Here’s a wonderful glimpse into the animation techniques that were pioneering at the time of Disney’s first feature-length animation, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ You get to see some shots of Snow White being drawn and photographed, sound effects being recorded, and people arriving at the premiere. You also get a good dose of the Disney sexism in which all women who work on a film are referred to as ‘pretty girls.’ It’s basically an advertisement for the film, but it’s a good one.

Filmmakers Fred L’Epee and Dimitra Pouliopoulou deal with the emotions of video. Their short films are visual poems in the most real sense. I like the way they flirt with the techniques of celluloid while remaining firmly anchored in video. The two things, rather than cancelling each other, work together to offer a filmmaker more tools for opening eyes and insisting that people fully observe. This kind of film dances between reality and abstraction. The ships are placed so that they traverse a line between light and dark, high and low, space and time.

Mature Content and War Footage:

This is a film by Tim Hetherington, the photojournalist who was killed yesterday in Libya. This film is his personal statement on being immersed in violence and trying to make some sense of it through the lens of journalism.

Rachel Tejada shot and edited this film about independent and underground film in China. It was produced by dGenerate Films.  It’s in six short parts and covers the basics of independent film festivals and efforts to make films that will somehow survive the oversight of the repressive government.  I post this out of a measured interest, but I cannot overlook the depressingly passive sadness of everyone who so much as glances into the camera.  They consistently refer to themselves as independent filmmakers or underground filmmakers.  Underground they may be out of necessity, but they are most certainly not independent.  They are comfortably passive and have an absolute zero level of confrontation or rebellion in them.

I cannot muster significant respect for billions of people who want to express themselves and flourish but do not ever make the decision to pick up their totalitarian government leaders and drown them in the sea.  You can talk to me until you are blue in the face about your independent cinema, but until your cameras shoot something I’m not listening.

Parts 2 – 6 after the jump

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

I once suggested on this web site picking up a camera and spending the day on a street corner making a film. Moulin Rouge is a film that does that with spectacular and sublime results. Filmmaker Luciana Botelho wanders the world with her camera and makes films that take my breath away.  Standing in front of the Paris landmark, she makes a film that celebrates movement more effectively than anything going on inside the actual Moulin Rouge.  Her film is also a very simple and charming celebration of the act of photographing or filmmaking. Botelho’s films are beautiful and subtle and extremely emotional.  She fits image to music perfectly.  I’m ready to go and buy all the songs after watching these!

With the great pile of film and video available on the web, one must maintain some sensitivity to the gentle – the delicate. Botelho is a gentle filmmaker. She impresses me because she seems to me to be an artist of the glance. Her art seems based on immediate vision and impressions made almost in passing. She makes films about travel that capture the essence of a place, but primarily focus on the behavior of people, turning the overlooked into something captivating. The films hold an enormous grace and convey very powerfully the impression of an artist whose every turn of the head can lead to a film.

I like the fluctuating frame rate of these films. It focuses you in on the interesting physical movements caught by the camera in everyday situations. And yet the films flow smoothly in overall effect.  The small camera in hand that follows the eye is modern cinema.  In the film, Tokyo Slices – People, when the camera swings to catch the girl in the scarf on the subway platform you are seeing most of what you need to know about modern cinema.

I look forward to Luciana Botelho’s Los Angeles film.

I often think of myself as this Cosmic Man.

He reminds me a little of Keith Richards. He’s made some of the most beautiful films you may ever see with director Wong Kar Wai in Hong Kong. He seems to like wandering the colorful streets. Always talking about the light and color. Last night I took my new camera out along Ventura Boulevard very late. I was making a film by moving very slowly from window to window, shooting in an odd off-kilter way with closeups through glass and lights moving in and out of focus. It took me several hours to move three blocks up the boulevard. I haven’t seen the footage yet but the night was loaded with possibilities. Do you have any idea how many things you can come up with when you look inside a store’s display window? You can break it down almost infinitely and create images that have very little to do with the store. I find it a natural and obvious way to make a film. The sets are all there waiting for me to show up with my camera. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know what the film will be. It exists already and will make itself apparent when I start staring at my footage.

You’re going to love this!

I found this film by Sue De Beer over at the Aksionsart film collection on MUBI.com. I like the light and the colors of the film. The girl in the room creates a space of color that becomes a whole world.