Malawi: Widespread Protests
July 22, 2011Malawians took to the streets en masse this week to protest poor governance, I’m following Dr. Kim Yi Dionne’s blog HERE for updates.
Bush League DVD design
July 11, 2011
I think this is the final design for the Bush League DVD cover. I think.
INDENTURED is now on-line
June 28, 2011I was prompted to go ahead and put INDENTURED online after reading Sarah Stillman‘s piece The Invisible Army in the New Yorker magazine. From the article (June 6, 2011 edition):
The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls [...] A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.
It’s an important article that I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read.
Below is the film that I made on the same subject and sent to my representation over eighteen months ago (Rep Davis, Senators Feinstein and Boxer). I’m still waiting for a reply – any reply – from all three offices. Might be time to write some more letters.
If you or anyone you know has any suggestions on who to send this film to, either as a link or a DVD please write to me at cysfilm@gmail.com. The on-line version is linkable and embeddable – please don’t hesitate to share it, blog it or email it to your representation in D.C.
The film (10 min):
Bush League wins Best Doc Feature at 2011 NJIFF
June 24, 2011Thanks to everyone who made it out to the NJIFF in New Brunswick last week. What a great trip. The screening went great, and the movie won. How bout that!
Lads discuss cinema after the screening.
A New Yorker hugs the filmmaker. The filmmaker wears a hat.
A community screening at Mrs Riley’s Public House in Califon NJ, first time anyone has eaten pop corn and watched a movie I made.
Irish Car Bombs were ordered after the screening. Followed by darts, slander and pork rolls.
We visited Jake’s (guy in the movie) 4th grade class in Camden. Hans gave a lesson on the ocean.
And Paul taught them to play the guitar.
That was a fun one.
Bush League will screen next at the Columbia Gorge Film Fest in Vancouver, Washington in mid August. More news to come.
Bush League at the New Jersey Int Film Fest
June 4, 2011
I’m happy to report that Bush League has been selected for this years New Jersey International Film Fest at Rutgers campus in New Brunswick. The movie starts at 7pm on June 17th. Come and see it! Click here for more info on the films, times and directions to the NJIFF 2011.
The Mark of Cain: Feature Doc on Youtube
May 25, 2011The 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
May 24, 2011Sawdust 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!
April 29, 2011I 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
April 27, 2011
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
