Cysfilm

The Mark of Cain: Feature Doc on Youtube

The Mark of Cain is a feature length doc about Russian prison tattoos that’s now on Youtube in its entirety (73 min, below). The tattoos are the filmmaker’s in to examine the Russian prison system, which is truly terrifying. Once I hit play, I couldn’t stop watching this film -

The fictional cousin to The Mark of Cain is Eastern Promises directed by David Cronenberg, which is about a British midwife’s interactions with the Russian Mafia in London. I love this movie. Cronenberg has a unique skill when it comes to depicting violence to the human body, which has to come from all his years in horror. I think many people of my generation think of Tarantino as the handy man of entertaining on-screen violence (based on the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs alone) but I think Cronenberg’s eerie mix of bluntness and understatement trumps Tarantino’s pop sensibilities by a long shot. Not that I don’t like a little pop.

Sawdust City at Los Angeles Film Festival

Sawdust City, the first feature by my old CalArts classmate David Nordstrom will be screening next month at the Los Angeles Film Festival. A big congratulations to Dave N. and everyone who worked on the film – it’s very good and I wish them great success.

Dave just launched a Kickstarter project this week to get the film in good shape for the start of it’s public life.

From Dave:

The slightly less good news is that we need a final push to get us over the hill to where we need to be. Thanks to the increasing quality of affordable equipment, our own hard-won no-budget filmmaking, and your own inestimable help, we’ve managed to craft a great little film.  However, it’s going up on big screens, on big systems, alongside bigger films and we need to look and sound our best.

Let’s give this man and his film a Kickstart cause filmmaking is just too damn hard to do alone.

EERT: Because Today is Arbor Day!

I got this seed in Malawi in 2005 at a farm store in Lilongwe and rediscovered it last year wrapped in a yellow plastic bag in a box in my closet. A little water and it took off like a rocket. This is three weeks of growth.

Shot on a 7d

Camera Obscura

Light travels in straight lines – the backyard reflected off my closet doors. For the self portrait I put the camera on the ten second timer and ran like hell.

ISO 6400, exposed for 30 seconds, f2.8

File Today: Tax Day Ad Man

This is the best sidewalk ad guy I’ve ever seen.

Indentured to screen at San Sebastian Human Rights Film Fest

INDENTURED has been selected to show at the San Sebastian Human Rights Film Festival in Spain late next month.

Manda Bala: doc film now on Netflix

Manda Bala means “send a bullet” in Portuguese. It’s available via DVD on Netflix and is really worth a watch. For the die hard doc fans you’ll notice director Jason Kohn’s thank you in the credits to Errol Morris who he used to work for as a researcher. This also helped answer the question I kept asking myself over and over, which was, ” how the hell did he make this?” His techniques are not the standard fair. It makes way more sense knowing he’s been breathing the same air as Morris. Freakazoids. Who shoots anamorphic 16mm for s doc film anyway? Awesome.

New Peace Corps Poster

The Peace Corps just turned fifty years old this month and they (we) got a new poster designed by Shepard Fairey. Love it.

A Fourth Generation Camera: Kodak Brownie

My aunt gave me my Grandmother’s Kodak Brownie camera last November. It turns out it was actually my Great Grandmother’s camera and she photographed my Grandmother as a little girl with it. It’s absolutely incredible to me. I feel this connection that goes back almost a century through this little box camera. Here’s a picture of my Grandmother when she was a young woman taken with a Brownie:

Here’s what I’ve learned via the internet:

The first Brownie went on sale in 1900 for $1.00 and was designed to be as simple and easy to use as possible. The birth of the Brownie = the birth of the snap shot. Kodak sold a quarter million the first year.

Snap shot was a term borrowed from hunting that described an unplanned shot from the hip.

Kodak thought the Brownie would appeal to children so he named it after a popular children’s character, which was often featured in the Kodak print ads.

In 1930 Kodak gave away a special edition of the Brownie camera free to any child who turned 12 that year. (see the ad here)

The really exciting thing about this camera though is that it still works. It uses 120 film, which is readily available. Below are a few test shots I took with it. I love the aspect ratio and I learned that subjects have to be pretty far back to get sharp focus. There are no controls, only a lever to flip a spring loaded shutter. I can’t believe I’m taking photos with my Great Grandmother’s camera! It’s at least eighty years old probably closer to 90.

New Photos: Michigan

Here are a few photos from Christmas in Michigan with my parents: