Marcel Duchamp In His Own Words

I found a film about Duchamp. I've always liked his playfulness that never overpowers his keen eye for beautiful forms. He created art objects that he called 'ready-mades.' Films are sort of 'ready-mades,' aren't they? Watching people like Duchamp gets the brain working in a different way. Suddenly the lamp on your desk becomes more interested and full of unique possibilities. What if I lit the lamp and balanced a leg on top of it? Or a pair of eyeglasses glued onto a gun as a sighting mechanism?

That's the kind of thing Duchamp does to me. He plays with notions of art. But he plays seriously.

I am ready to post my new film. It's called 'Christmas Black.' Then, after that, I think I'm going to make a very nasty, blunt film that will combine real world photography with some video game footage. Like machinima, a technique I've used before. The story will be simple: an off-duty police officer stands in his apartment. He leaves. He walks several blocks and approaches a passerby from behind. He shoots the passerby dead and is suddenly standing in his apartment again. He leaves. Walks. Shoots another person. And so on and on... It will be two things - an interesting point of view on what video games do best and a loaded cinematic gun aimed directly at the cop who killed the subway rider on January 1, 2009. It's my little way of helping to metaphorically get rid of him. Art is anger, baby. Put it in someone's face and pull the trigger. Then just hope for the best.

Here's the Duchamp film. Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:

Oakland Erupts in Violent Protest Over Filmed Police Killing

This is what you get when a police officer is filmed shooting a helpless individual in the back:


Oakland protests turned violent last night over the killing of an unarmed man who was lying face-down on a subway platform by a uniformed BART officer. The killing was performed in front of onlookers with cameras rolling.

And still we must all ask: Why has the cop not been arrested on suspicion of murder?

The photos above say plenty. But here is an iReport from CNN with Oakland youths explaining why they are so angry. One of them calls the killing 'a modern day lynching.'

BART Police Officer in Oakland Filmed While Killing Helpless Man

Subway riders in Oakland, California shot videos on their cellphone cameras of a group of police officers handcuffing several young men on a subway platform. A couple of the officers throw a man face-first onto the ground, sit on him with their knees and then one shoots him to death.

There's lots of video of this horrific killing.

Here's one angle on the homicide. The killing happens at the 1 minute 15 second point in the video. Watch the officer in the back pull his gun, aim it and fire it into the man's back.



Here's another angle from which you can clearly see the officer drawing his weapon and aiming it down at the victim:



This alleged police officer shoots a totally helpless man in front of dozens of onlookers while being filmed!

The alleged officer's name has been released. He is apparently Johannes Mehserle of the BART Police Department in Oakland, California. So, there are news reports that this man is being moved from place to place in order to protect him from harm because he has received death threats.

People with cameras filmed this police action starting well before the seeming execution. Why would they do that? Possibly because they knew there was something suspect in the police activity. Watch the video of the moments just after the killing. Look at the other police officers. They're just standing there. A man has been shot in the back and these other jackasses are standing around as if someone's received a parking ticket. Do these officers have Nazi regalia in their homes? Are they skinheads? Are they Ku Klux Klan?

Cities burn for stuff like this. Rodney King. Remember? The cops only beat that guy with sticks and Los Angeles went up in riots and flames. This man was shot to death in public in Oakland. Looks like murder.

Protests are forming.

BART officials have made statements urging calm until the facts are known. BART can put the facts up its ass. The facts are on video.

Questions:

Why wasn't the killing officer arrested immediately on suspicion of murder?
Why do the other cops stand around looking bored after the killing?
Why are the bystanders already filming from so many angles well before the killing?

2008 Holiday Animation

Here's a holiday animation I did for CandlelightStories.com. All the backgrounds and scenic elements were painted in a cheap software package called 'ArtRage.' The character and animation were done in Flash CS3.

You can watch a high-definition version on the home page at CandlelightStories.com.

Have a very happy holiday and an excellent 2009!

Hero Journalist Throws Shoes at Bush

This is the first person in nearly eight years to react rationally and intelligently to the presence of George W. Bush in the same room. During a surprise visit today in Iraq by Bush, an Arab journalist took off his shoes and threw them directly at the supreme asshole of the Western World. I cannot think of a better thing to do than to throw shoes at this son-of-a-bitch. In the Arab world, showing someone the sole of your shoe is a terrible insult. To actually throw your shoe at a person is to call that person filth.



In the history of the United States there has not been a president who has conducted such a brutally violent assault on freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of the press, freedom from illegal detainment, freedom from torture, freedom from illegal wiretapping, and freedom from fear itself. This prick and his friends have been torturing and killing thousands upon thousands of people. They have prevented journalists from even taking the photographs that they should be taking during a war. They have lied in order to conduct the invasion of a sovereign nation. Journalists in the U.S. are too frightened to even write critically of this creep or to adequately investigate his acts. Much less to throw their shoes at him. Several weeks ago, as Bush ascended a podium holding many of the world's leaders at the G20 Summit, they all refused to shake his hand. It was the first behavior from world leaders toward Bush that seemed suited to him.




I suspect that the Iraqis will go easy on this man because they all secretly agree with what he did. It was not any kind of life-threatening act. I think anyone who understands what this awful man has been up to for the past decade would agree with throwing shoes at him. I have not seen a more beautiful expression of the world's hatred for this man than this magnificent shoe-throwing display.

Once the worst president in U.S. history has left office, those who are too afraid to speak out about what he has been doing will begin to talk and then this shoe throwing episode will be remembered for what it really is: a great big 'Fuck You' from the journalists of the world. This Arab shoe-throwing journalist is a true camouflage lens.

Perhaps with all the stress associated with being so hated and reviled by all the world's leaders, Bush will get cancer. Then he will wither. And finally go to hell.

The shoes. The lovely shoes.

Bad Lit: Digging Underground Film

Bad Lit - The Journal of Underground Film (Badlit.com) is a good film blog. There are a lot of crappy ones around, but Bad Lit just keeps putting real stuff up there and I keep finding things I want to read about. For instance, a couple weeks ago I came across this post about filmmaker Kenneth Anger and I got curious about this artist who knew the Rolling Stones and a Manson killer. So I read the article written by Bad Lit's founder and owner, Mike Everleth. I watched Anger films called 'Lucifer Rising' and 'Invocation of My Demon Brother.'


I thought this was some total rocking scary good stuff that was trying to turn my insides out. My point is that what Everleth writes about gets me interested and gets me searching for more. His site posts film clips, reviews, underground film news and events, biographical information about filmmakers, a listing of films called The Underground Film Guide, and film festival news.

It's a good film site because the guy writes like he loves underground film. He doesn't sound like he's trying to get a part time job at Columbia University. I'm amazed at how little I know about underground or avant-garde film. I'm trying to make some of my own while learning about the great filmmakers at the same time. So I go out browsing around for web sites and blogs about film and I end up ready to shoot myself in the head. It's almost impossible to find a site that simply discusses films and actually posts things you can watch. YouTube is just a giant hard drive. It doesn't count unless you're talking about their Screening Room which works well, though they tend to focus on middle of the road short film stuff that you'd expect to see at your local Academy Awards ceremony. I don't know if most of these bloggers are students or what but I gotta say 99 of 100 film sites just bore the living shit out of me. Then there's a site like Bad Lit and I just start searching around in there and find all sorts of treasures. Here's a very recent post about some guys who have made a short horror movie promo that's modeled on 70s slashers. That's cool. It's some people with a camera and some initiative going out and making something. Very nice. That's why video cameras exist. Here's another post about a filmmaker in New York who walks around with a video camera and makes documentaries that get put out on DVD. Fantastic. Perfect. Everleth writes about the guy's films with obvious enthusiasm for both the films, their technique, and for the city itself.

I browse around on Bad Lit a little bit more and I find this filmmaker:



Very well done that little piece there. So I wish there were more good film sites. There are not. But Bad Lit is one.

New Cinegram: Venture Forth Wicked Beauty

My new cinegram is about a woman and a rose, ashes, projections, a bottle, a walk through the night. I won't be much clearer than that. A cinegram should not announce its intentions. It should bury them and allow them to drift up through the ground.





It took more time to make this one because it uses a more layered soundtrack than my other pieces. Also, the rose and flame scenes were very difficult to film because I wanted the light of the projections to flicker across the scene properly. Moving the camera in such close up conditions made everything an effort.

I am really enjoying YouTube's new high quality video settings. They've gone to widescreen format with normal and high-quality settings. Though their high-quality video isn't as high-definition as other sites like Vimeo, the motion is much smoother than either Vimeo or BlipTV. I find the inability of those sites to encode hi-def video without frame stutter to be inexcusable. YouTube has figured out the problem and maintains the smooth motion as it was originally shot. The image quality is good enough. So YouTube wins. Smooth motion is much more important than sharpness of image.

Argine: An Animation With Creativity On Its Mind

Julia Simeon has made a film called 'Argine.' It is a series of still images rendered in a 3D program and edited together. It's simple and beautiful. But what is it about? Watch first.


It is a film about the origins of creativity. It shows how originality is not the prime mover behind creative endeavor. Imitation is. The innocent drive to imitate that which inspires and excites is the primary force behind all art. That does not mean that one never does anything original. But the impulse to 'do something just like that!' should always be there throughout the creative life. To this day, I open a book or magazine, see a picture and think, 'Oh man! I want to take pictures just like those. Then I will change them to make something new!' I firmly believe in what this little film has to say. It is dead on the mark. Its creator has seen, admired, copied and created something of her own. That is the entire scope of all learning and education. It is honorable theft. The code of thieves and artists. Steal and learn.

I found this on No fat clips!!!

London: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Here's a stop motion film made byDavid Hubert who is a Dreamworks animator. It was made by taking several thousand still images around the city of London and then editing them together with Adobe Premier and After Effects into a film. I like it's timing and the rush of action combined with the slow camera pans. I think it's more difficult to do than it would seem. However, if you take away the still images and replace them with a video camera shooting normal speed, what do you have? Why does the rush of activity and motion-streaked car lights make the film more interesting? Is it animation? No, probably not. I think to animate one must make something inanimate move. In fact, this is the opposite of animation. The motion of the objects has been reduced to a minimum.

The Basement Horror: A Very Short Film

How about some horror? I always love a good horror film. That's why every Halloween I have my friends over for Horrorfest. We argue for days about what films will constitute our pile of DVDs. Then we stay up very late eating pizza and watching one horror film after another. This year, I made my own little horror film to run as a loop in my DVD player while everyone was just eating and talking. It's a very silly little horror film. I heartily recommend that everyone make their own little horror film. It's more fun than just about anything. And - get this - I think that the horror genre is the last great unexplored genre for serious artistic expression. I mean it. Watch carefully.

A Video for Barack Obama

My new cinegram is for Barack Obama. I am disgusted by the McCain/Palin campaign of race-baiting stupidity. Obama stands for unity, intelligent politics, and compassion for people who don't earn millions of dollars. He is an extraordinary candidate who has already achieved something historic. I sincerely hope that this country experiences an election blowout that leaves a whole hell of a lot of dumb Bush/McCain/Palin supporters in the woods without a map, right where they belong.

The big message here is that everyone who want to get this guy into the White House needs to get up on November 4th and go do it. Do it. Don't stop for anyone. Don't listen to someone who says there might be a little problem with casting your vote. Just go do the thing. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Here's my first political advertisement.




Here's a group called Video the Vote that signs people up all over the country as video volunteers to go out and film problems at polling stations. There are lots of places in this country where Republican operatives try to scare poor voters away from the polls. There are tricks they play with mailing addresses to try to challenge voters' right to vote. Video the Vote wants to compile a video library of trouble spots at voting locations all over the nation. Check it out and if you have a camera maybe you'll want to lend a hand.

Just Asking: A Cinegram

This is my latest 'cinegram.' It's about the kind of communication one sometimes wants to read too much into. We live with email and we type our thoughts quickly and sometimes, accidentally, we make something with meaning. Sometimes, by not putting things too specifically or too carefully, we say a little more than might have been intended. That's what this little film is about. There's no sound. Just the image.


Just Asking from Alessandro Cima on Vimeo.

This one was hard for me to get right. I felt that I was being too subtle and that there was a danger of the piece simply being a series of boring office shots. But I think I caught the feeling pretty well in the end. It's a mixture of attraction, anticipation, nervousness, doubt about the validity of one's own feelings, worries about offending someone, and an overriding need to write messages that are acceptable in an office environment. The modern American office is quite demonstrably a place where people work exceedingly hard at pretending love does not exist.

This cinegram is also about how difficult it is to speak plainly. It can also be interpreted as an entirely different kind of communication than I have described.

Lull: An Animated Short That's Too Short

I'm normally extremely wary of posting about a film or filmmaker associated with a school or university. In my humble opinion, if you're in film school, you are quite possibly wasting your time and someone's money. I think filmmakers should hide those associations if they exist. But if they're going to boast about them, I'm going to jump all over it. Don't worry, I'll get to the animated short in a minute. The next Jean Luc Godard will not come from a school, he or she will come from YouTube. Not kidding. Buy a video camera, microphone, computer, drawing tablet, digital editor, Adobe Flash, and perhaps 5 books. That's all you need to learn filmmaking. Approximate cost: $4,000. New York University film school: over $35,000 a year just for tuition. Figure it out. Schools of art mainly exist for social networking purposes. They do not actually teach anything resembling the production of art. Go look at the theater scene. Everything is being 'workshopped.' This is something people learn in a school somewhere. As if you can 'workshop' a play and come out with something worth an ounce of spit. And these people are charging $15 - $25 dollars for you to sit and watch them rehearse. I wonder what all these writers and actors and directors are trying to figure out. It's a mystery. If you don't like what I'm saying here, man, you really don't want to hear what I have to say about film festivals. It all starts with two sinister words: Submission Fee. More about that some other time when I'm feeling really mean. But honestly, if you really need to meet people, go to a bar. It's cheaper.

Anyone can write a poem. Anyone can make a film.

That being said, here's a short animation that is adapted from a longer work by Lisa Barcy who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Film. Hmmm... well, ok... but her film is pretty cool. I love the roughly drawn cutout puppet technique. This kind of animation can be much more emotional than carefully drawn, well-timed animation. Very rarely does the Disney style of animation convey anything close to a human emotion. This kind of animation does. I have an affinity for work like this. It makes me want to draw and I start thinking about how to convey things with a simple stroke of a pen.

The film is very lonely. There's a guy walking around on a pier with a bucket of lobsters. There's a squid that seems to attract him. He floats around and generally rejects the society of men. Sort of an oceanic recluse, I suppose.

I just wish that the full version of Ms. Barcy's film was available. Here's more of what I'm talking about with schools. Go check the filmmaker's page at the School of the blah blah at Chicago. See what I mean. Every link to her work gives a 404 not found error. You can't run a school of film and 'new media' and pull crap like that. And how much for tuition again? What a nifty scam.



I found this little gem via a site called 'BadLit.' I'll work up a little post with more on that film site later. But the short of it is that you can find lots of cool stuff there and the guy writes as if he really enjoys writing. That's unusual for some reason.

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Why is this so interesting?

I-Witness Video Battles Police State Tactics

I am falling in love with this group. I-Witness Video uses video to protect civil liberties. They probe police actions at First Amendment events like peaceful protests by videotaping what the police are up to at these events. They build a library of these videos, some of which are submitted by amateur videographers, in order to use them as evidence at trials to overturn bogus charges. Often it would seem that these charges are a blatant attempt by police to eliminate protests at events like political conventions.

Their work has largely involved the New York City Police Department which would seem to be making every possible effort to become an exceedingly dangerous fascist organization bent on squashing any form of dissent in New York City. I used to live there and I know there were some serious problems with abuses by the police. But over the past ten years, boy it has just become a sad joke of a department. It's shocking. It makes Los Angeles look like a bastion of free expression.

I-Witness Video has had huge success in turning its video against the police in order to get hundreds of charges dropped. It has exposed conspiracies within the NYPD to lie and make false charges. The group appears to have been involved in the shocking and illegal police raids in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area aimed at squashing any peaceful protests around the Republican National Convention. It is obvious that the St. Paul police do not want these people getting evidence that can be used aganst the department. These people at I-Witness are simply using video like nobody's business. They've got it right and their work is hugely important.

Here is something I found printed in one of the entries on their blog:

The rights of photographers under the Constitution are expressed in sparklingly clear language in a legal memorandum on the "Rights of Journalists on Public Streets" which is available on the website of the National Press Photographers Association. I will now quote liberally from this very helpful document.

In general, the right to take photographs on the street is the same for members of the public as it is for journalists. So, if you're a member of the public, rather than a journalist, most of this applies to you too.

Although not unlimited, the media [and the public] enjoys a broad right of access under the First Amendment to photograph in public places such as streets and sidewalks. These rights are rooted in the First Amendment's strong protection of speech within "public forums." A "public forum" refers to a public place historically associated with free expression. The most commonly recognized examples include streets, sidewalks and parks. Within these areas, the government's ability to limit the public's speech is extremely limited.

This is very useful information for anyone with a camera. Go I-Witness Video! You people kick serious ass.