Author: greg

Don’t tell the Whitney Biennial folks. That trademarked slogan comes from a series of video loops designed for your giant flatscreen TV that are “100% narrative free with strong visual aesthetics” called Souvenirs from the earth [Ahem. A series called Souvenir? I hope you kept the number of that trademark lawyer…]
You can buy their DVD for $50 from Dynomighty, on east 10th st, or, like Alain Ducasse did for Mix, you can commission a custom version. They’re also planning “complete never seen night programmes to TV stations, financed by sponsors from the luxury industry.”
Goodlooking execution? Yes. Growth market? Definitely. But new idea? Not at all. The duo’s dsytopian main mission sounds familiar: “Our main mission is to collect pictures of life on earth today, in case humans would need them later…” It’s the glass-half-full, luxury industry-chasing version of “Life out of balance,” the subtitle/translation of Godfrey Reggio’s 100% narrative free classic Koyaanisqatsi.
[Coincidentally, the last time I saw Koyaanisqatsi, it was wall candy on a flatscreen for a party in a bigtime art collector’s Central Park West apartment. It had a bigger audience than anything else, and at $25, it was easily the cheapest work there, by a factor of several thousand.]

And on the custom corporate front, I’m reminded of the wraparound montage for the LED facade of 745 Seventh Avenue, produced in 2001 by branding consultancy The Mint Group for Morgan Stanley. This Times Square video “took brand-building…to the next level,” and communicated Morgan Stanley’s unique ability in the financial services industry to “connect investors, ideas and capital.” Of course, in one weekend after Sept. 11, before ever occupying it, MS sold the building to Lehman Brothers, who stepped right into this unique, branded video skin without batting an eye.
Another wall candy video option: “Want to throw a great party? Put this on!”FunviewTV‘s 20-scene DVD includes a fish tank, a fireplace, falling snow, falling leaves, disco lights, and a microwaving pizza.
And just to loop the Whitney back in: there’s new-to-you Biennial star Eve Sussman’s debut video show in 1997. The artist labored for nearly a month to construct a 3-story scaffold/ramp in an airshaft, and then trained video cameras on the pigeon nests hidden within. Wall sized projections of oblivious pigeons filled the gallery. Congratulations, Eve, on your overnight success.

Chadian filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun talks to David Kehr about Abouna, his second feature and only the third film to be made in his native country. There is no commercial cinema in Chad, yet films–and particularly US films–have a powerful influence on the imaginations of young people living in impoverished isolation.
An ardent admirer and student of foreign directors like Abbas Kiarostami, Hou-Hsiao Hsien, Kitano Takeshi, and Clint Eastwood, Haroun is an uncommon internationalist in the nascent African filmmaking industry. He’s undaunted by such bright lights, however: “Our films are a little like candles, no? They illuminate only a small space, small groups of particular people. But those people can be everywhere, all over the planet.”
In an interview with Neil Young at the Edinburgh Festival, Haroun spoke at more length about his process and working with non-professional actors. When asked about autobiographical influences on his film, Haroun readily agreed, “Creation sometimes is just a question of memory.”
Abouna screened last year in New Directors/New Films, and will be on Sundance Channel starting Sunday night as part of the Voices from Africa program. One African film, Apolline Traore’s Koundani, from Burkina Faso is in this year’s New Directors/New Films.

When I first saw the trailer for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, I was fascinated, then confused. It looked like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, but it had… Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow? It’s some weird studio stunt, I figured. But I was wrong.
Turns out Sky Captain is the culmination of one man’s nearly impossible-to-believe vision. Kerry Conran worked for four years, alone, to produce the six minutes of seamlessly melded CG and live action footage that ultimately led to his making a $70 million independent film:

Conran walked into [producer Jon] Avnet’s office in a plain black T-shirt, looking a little apprehensive. He had agreed to watch the original six-minute short with me and Avnet, and it was clear he wasn’t looking forward to it.
It opens with a black-and-white version of the film’s signature shot, a zeppelin docking at the Empire State. I had seen this sequence in one form or another perhaps a dozen times in the last three days. I can’t begin to guess how many times Conran has seen it: airship and skyscraper, two antique promises of progress meeting to announce our final liberation from earthly concerns. The short was rudimentary compared with what I’d seen, to be sure. And Conran grimaced throughout. But I was stunned when I considered the painstaking labor with no promise of reward, or even end, in sight. And I thought of all the computers in just this building, each one thousands of times as powerful as a Mac IIci, in the hands of eager, young, lettuce-munching dreamers, and I wondered what worlds they were constructing in their spare time between snowflakes. On the screen, Sky Captain flies to the rescue. I happen to know from Kevin that it’s Kerry himself behind the goggles. Naturally, he’s masked.
The short ended. Conran blinked a little and smiled. ”Wow,” he said. ”That was embarrassing.”