"Please Vote For Me" (2007) dir. Weijun Chen

perhaps a microcosm of people's perception of democracy and the voting process through the eyes of a group of Chinese third-graders.

by the way, I found this via a Wholphin dvd set, just as a personal note to myself and any other interested people to check out the rest of those jawns.

Melancholia

this looks kind of interesting. it is written and directed by Lars von Trier, who also did Dancer in the Dark with Bjork.

a return to sunday thoughts, due to popular demand

nights and weekends (watch)

saudade (read)




these explain everything.

It's that time of year again..

sun is shining, flowers in bloom, love in the air, and CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OF "OTHERS" seem to be some kind of contagion, particularly in warm weather. It is of great interest to me how brands like Free People and Anthropologie keep bringing back that "Indian Summer" theme every year (both Native American and from India). The most recent Anthropologie catalogue is set in India.




For most fashion catalogues of this variety, the models get to travel to different countries to model the brand's clothes. In every image, they seem to use the background of native people as props [appropriation] to further emphasize the tallness and whiteness of the main model. It is a bit unsettling to me. What exactly do these clothes have to do with India? Furthermore, the company and its advertisements seem to promote a kind of well-rounded and conscious lifestyle (the Anthropologie woman can look chic even while travelling in a third world country!), but there is never any semblance of interaction with the native people, so what exactly is the point of having them in the photo?

I'm not saying that fashion has to be a political thing or that you can't wear clothes that don't "belong" to your culture. It's iffy territory, I think because clothing as something that you can change in and out of so easily is not necessarily considered a very vital part of cultural identity, outside the realm of religious or ritual regalia (even this is not altogether recognized, as evidenced by the number of hipster heads adorned by Native American headdresses at summer music festivals). Personally, I think it is really dumb when white people wear dreads, for instance, or when they wear a bindi on their forehead or something like that. It's great that you are interested in other people's cultures but for something that has more cultural and historical significance, you better have a better reason than "it looks cool." I know that in the case of garments like the keffiyeh, harem pants, and even fabric that have used batik dyeing, people have appropriated it so much to the point that we don't even think about its origin, but that is the very root of the issue.

I might have posted about this before, but Yellow Apparel: When the Coolie Becomes Cool is an excellent film about this very topic. Look, I'll even embed it for you.

yellow apparel: when the coolie becomes cool from Yellow Apparel on Vimeo.

ナイスの森

Funky Forest: The First Contact

A: show me your dance moves.
B: show me your feelings!
A: what feelings?

Between the Folds

I watched this today in my fibers class with eyed peeled, mouth open (granted, I saw a life-size origami Hachiko at the cherry blossom festival this weekend and thought that was pretty neat). I thought it was cool that many of the artists featured had or had had careers in the science and mathematical fields. Anyway, it's available on Netflix instant play.

One of the people in the video (I forget his name but he apparently started university at age 12, got his phd at 20, and was the youngest professor at MIT) talked about how the act of folding paper changes the memory of that piece of paper. I really like this idea, of a fiber's memory, which is something I started thinking about when I was researching shibori dyeing for my last project. I used a book called Memory on Cloth: Shibori Now by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada as my primary source and found this quote to be especially useful:

Shibori recognizes and explores the pliancy of the textile and its potential for creating a multitude of shaped-and-resisted designs. When the cloth is returned to its 2D form, the design that emerges is the result of the 3D shape, the type of resist, and the amount of pressure extended by the thread or clamp that secured the shape during the cloth's exposure to the dye. The cloth sensitively records both the shape and the pressure; it is the "memory" of the shape that remains imprinted in the cloth. This is the essence of shibori.

Yohji Yamamoto

via mermaidhair

must see this!

Sentenced Home

this past weekend, I went to an event at Asian Arts Initiative about the deportation of Cambodian refugees from America. they screened a very pertinent and moving documentary film, Sentenced Home, which you can watch here. the tagline: "Raised as Americans in inner-city projects near Seattle, three young Cambodian American men are deported back to a country they barely remember, caught between a tragic past and an uncertain future by a system that doesn't offer any second chances."

it's not necessarily an issue that receives much attention in the media, at least not so much outside of the sphere of Mexico, so the film offers some very personal positions on the issue as well as provides information about US immigration legislation and how this has changed since 9/11.

sci-fi

2046 (2004) dir. by Wong Kar-Wai

I'm a Cyborg But That's OK (2006) dir. by Chan-Wook Park

some films I'd like to see. 2046 is supposed to be sci-fi but Cyborg is a romantic comedy I think.

Nikola Tesla

Earth is a conductor of accoustical resonance..

Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil in 'Coffee and Cigarettes'

just snatched this movie up from a closing video shop, along with The Brown Bunny, The Life Aquatic, Alphaville, and Under the Tuscan Sun (score). As with much of Jim Jarmusch's work, this one does not really follow a script, there's no story. It's probably the worst acting I've ever seen from Steve Buscemi, whom I love unconditionally, but Bill Murray with RZA and GZA was a treat, as was Cate Blanchett vs herself. If I had netflix, I would rewatch Permanent Vacation..

Wool 100%

I have probably posted about this movie before but I am particularly fond of fibers and the color red recently.







sometimes I feel like that weird girl in the red dress, 24/7.

The Jungle

In 1967, a group of African-American teenagers in Philadelphia made a hybrid documentary/dramatization of their lives in the 12th and Oxford Street gang. In 1968, The Jungle, one of the first films in the US directed by youth detailing the inner workings of their own gang, went on to win the Documentary Film Award at the Festival de Popoli, Italy. (1967, 22 min)

-retumbled from Jon Bon

La jetée

"This is the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood. The violent scene which upsets him and whose meaning he was only to grasp years later happened on the main pier at Orly, Paris Airport sometime before the outbreak of World War III."

"Nothing tells memories from ordinary moments. Only afterwards do they claim remembrance, on account of their scars."

Chris Marker - La jetée (1962). images from here.

The story is set in Paris post-WWIII and follows the time travel experiments performed on one of its survivors in an attempt to "call past and future to the rescue of the present." The film utilizes voiceover narration layered on top of photographic stills (shot by a Pentax Spotmatic). The gaps between these images is reminiscent of the comic book form in which the audience must imagine the connection/transition between the frames.

Perhaps it may seem like a step backward to utilize what is essentially a slideshow during the time of the proliferation of the medium of film, but I think Marker (who also did Sans Soleil) very effectively and beautifully followed the dictum of letting the message dictate the medium. What this short film accomplishes in 28 minutes is amazingamazingamazing!

If you have netflix, it is currently available on instant play. Watch it!

And while I'm handing out prescriptions on what you should be watching/reading, but on a completely unrelated note, head on over to Style Rookie and read her post on teenage body image as projected by mainstream media. This girl is sharp.

Norwegian Wood

sEEP! Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood has been adapted into a film, to be released in Dec 2010 in Japan. I haven't seen a trailer, but here are some screenshots. Rinko Kikuchi, I just want to put you in my pocket.. you too, Matsuyama san!






Aha! and Johnny Greenwood (of Radiohead) is doing the soundtrack!

Vivre sa vie

One of my favorite scenes of all time.

Here today, gone tomorrow, so don't get attached to things.

Hal Ashby - Harold and Maude (1971)
screenshots from here