Tuesday — Special Event at KLRU Studios

Rather than our usual 5 p.m. screening,  Chithra will be available for individual or team editing meetings from 5 – 6:30.

Class will meet b/w 6:30 and 6:45 in KLRU Studios for special community screening of POWER PATHS, followed by a panel discussion.  KLRU Studios are on 6th Floor of CMB, 2 flights above us.

 

 

Atomic Cafe

Greetings Class,

I noticed that no one has posted yet on Atomic Cafe so I am going to post a New York Times review that contextualizes the film and offers up a good critique:

Movie Review

The Atomic Cafe (1982)

March 17, 1982

DOCUMENTARY ON VIEWS ABOUT ATOM BOMB

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: March 17, 1982

”ONE of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man” is the way one enthusiastic United States Army chaplain describes the detonation of an atomic bomb, an event about to be witnessed for the first time by his men in the Nevada desert.

Burt the Turtle, a cheerful cartoon character in a training film for children, demonstrates how he ducks and safely covers himself inside his shell whenever a firecracker explodes nearby – in this way to train children to crawl under their desks and hide their eyes as soon as they see the bright light of an A-blast.

In another training film Mr. Average Man goes to a doctor who diagnoses the patient’s illness as ”nuclearosis,” the symptoms of which are undue worry about nuclear war. After all, the doctor points out, using appropriate charts, it is absurd that 85 percent of the population should be so fearful when only 15 percent would be killed in an all-out nuclear war.

On the soundtrack we hear ”Atomic Power” by the Buchanan Brothers, ”Uranium” by the Commodores, ”Atomic Love” by Little Caesar, plus other rock-and-roll, blues, country and gospel numbers that were the way this nation’s music industry responded to the dawn of the atomic era in the late 1940′s and 50′s.

These are some of the components of ”The Atomic Cafe,” a devastating collage-film that examines official and unofficial United States attitudes toward the atomic age in the years immediately after World War II. The film, which opens today at the Film Forum and deserves national attention, begins with the first successful A-test at Alamogordo, N.M., and goes on to include President Harry S Truman’s triumphant announcement of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, when he pledges that the weapon will be used ”in His ways and to His purposes.”

After two radio comedians make jokes about Hiroshima – ”It looked like Ebbetts Field after a doubleheader with the Giants” – we see newsreels of Hiroshima survivors. United States public figures are confident that God gave the bomb to Americans because Americans love democracy, until the Soviet Union detonates its own bomb. A Southern California shopping-center owner sponsors a nuclear defense drill because ”shopping centers are an expression of the free world.”

We witness the United States Navy relocating ”the friendly natives” of Bikini atoll in preparation for further bomb-testing, hear a Congressman call for the use of the bomb during the Korean War, and watch – again in a Government training film – the members of a happy, middle-class American family repairing to their bomb shelter fitted with a periscope.

Two plump school girls proudly if self-consciously display the bomb-shelter provisions they made in their home-economics class: a dozen one-quart Mason jars filled with dehydrated potatoes, deyhdrated milk, vegetables and dried fruit.

One gets the impression from all of these propaganda films that we should anticipate nuclear war as inconvenient but fun, like being snowed in on the farm for a weekend.

Or, to paraphrase the philosophy expressed in song in a Walt Disney film, ”Nothing is so awful that wishing won’t make it seem not so bad.”

It is clear that Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty, who spent five years gathering material for this film, believe that even if the detonation of an A-bomb is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man it may also be man’s last sight of anything.

”The Atomic Cafe” focuses on the late 40′s and early 50′s, but it could not be more timely. It provides some of the background for what appears to be a continuation of what might be called nuclear-war optimism today – the unprovable assumption that nuclear wars can be fought on a limited scale without making the planet uninhabitable.

The film, remarkably well edited by Miss Loader and Kevin Rafferty, touches a lot of bases, including the cold war, Washington’s efforts to root Communists out of Government in the 50′s, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, as well as a brief clip in which the late Bob Considine describes Mrs. Rosenberg’s electrocution in graphic detail, with his own patriotic sentiments added.

One of the few public figures who seems to take the peril seriously in ”The Atomic Cafe” is President Dwight D. Eisenhower, shown in a clip of a speech in which he stresses that science has ”outrun” our social, political and intellectual institutions. It is the feeling of the film makers that Ike, who is not often credited with foresight, is even more right today than he was then.

Not so incidentally, perhaps, Edward Zuckerman, a writer for Esquire magazine, reported in an interview show on WOR radio Monday that the United States Postal Service had plans to issue emergency change-of-address cards in case of an all-out nuclear attack.

Outside Event Oct. 22: JOAN JONAS

JOAN JONAS
Recent Work
Thursday, October 22
4:00 pm, ART 1.102

Joan Jonas is a pioneer of video/performance art. Her experiments and productions in the late 1960s and early 1970s were essential to the formulation of the genre. Her influence was crucial to the development of contemporary art in many genres, from performance and video to conceptual art and theater. She continues to be internationally known for her performances and video art, mixing objects and mediated images together in natural and industrial environments. Using video as a mirroring device, Jonas herself appears as a figure in her work, often performing densely collaged narrative texts. During the past decade, Jonas has collaborated with composers such as Alvin Lucier and Jason Moran to develop collaborative video-performance works,  Her most recent work continues to explore the relationship of new digital media to performance. Her awards include recognition from the American Film Institute, The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art.

Yet another GREAT outside doc event

Even though the filmmaker will not be present, this will count as an outside event:

CRUDE at The Dobie, Opens Friday!

Oct 9 – Oct 15
7:45pm & 10:15pm Shows

Special AFS Member Discount

SCREENING INFO Oct 9 – Oct 15 7:45pm & 10:15pm Shows The Dobie (2021 Guadalupe St) Cost: $6 for AFS Members (must present their card) throughout the week run Get Tickets >> Official CRUDE Website

Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (BROTHER’S KEEPER, PARADISE LOST, METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. CRUDE: THE REAL PRICE OF OIL is the inside story of the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, a real-life high stakes legal drama set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

“Gripping…cinematic. The most urgent film I’ve seen at Sundance this year.”
–Scott Foundas, LA Weekly

“A Herculean work of investigative journalism.”
–Ed Gonzales, Village Voice

Outside Event Wed. Oct. 14: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

HI All,

The monthly Doc Tour event at the Alamo Ritz Downtown is coming up.  I highly recommend the film and the filmmaker, who will be present.  Tickets are only $4 for students but I will reimburse you if you bring your ticket stub to class (that’s how much I want you to see this film and be there for the Q&A!).

I suggest you buy tickets online because they might sell out, or get there early.

HARVARD BEATS YALE 29 – 29 with Kevin Rafferty!

It’s time for our October Doc Tour so join us at the Ritz next Wednesday, Oct 14th for HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29.

The film documents the intense football rivalry between The Ivy League schools of Yale and Harvard, which dates back to 1875.

To date the teams have met on the gridiron over 125 times, most notably in 1968, when the Harvard Crimson newspaper made that puzzling declaration “Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29.” Enter Kevin Rafferty (THE ATOMIC CAFÉ, BLOOD IN THE FACE) whose documentary of the same name explains it all, using exciting footage of the actual game interspersed with interviews by players from both teams, including actor Tommy Lee Jones. There will be a Q&A with the filmmaker after the screening, buy tickets in advance on the Austin Film Society website.

Trailer:

Outside Event: WE LIVE IN PUBLIC: Fri. Oct. 9

ONE NIGHT ONLY OUTSIDE EVENT:  Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner WE LIVE IN PUBLIC will be screening, with Director Ondi Timoner present, at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar at 7 p.m.  It will probably sell out, so buy your tickets early at the Drafthouse website.

Greetings from Vancouver

Hello Advanced Doccers,

I am at the Vancouver Int’l Film Festival Film and Television Forum where much of the talk is about the radical changes taking place in independent film distribution. Mostly it’s bad news but there is a silver lining and a filmmaker named Jon Reiss  has just published a book called THINK OUTSIDE about the silver lining (which I will bring to class on Tuesday to share with you.)  He has posted an article about a new film, THE AGE OF STUPID, and its radical distribution approach, which you should all read here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-reiss/ithe-age-of-stupidi-is-th_b_293361.html
See You Tuesday!

Ellen

Something to Think About . . .

“I was surprised to find that many people automatically assumed that any documentary film would inevitably be objective. Perhaps the term is unsatisfactory, but for me the distinction between the words document and documentary is quite clear. Do we demand objectivity in the evidence presented at a trial? No, the only demand is that each piece of evidence be as full a subjective, truthful, honest presentation of the witness’s attitude as an oath on the Bible can produce from him.”

—Joris Ivens, from The Camera and I

Docs are happening !

Hello All,

I’m glad to read all the fiery responses to Waltz with Bashir and Road to Guantanamo.  I’m glad you all feel free to say what’s on your mind and disagree (in a friendly way) with each other. So far, so good.

Next week we will screen a funny personal doc, and something much lighter than the last two, with lots of opportunites to laugh out loud.  Y’all have earned it!

There are many docs NOW in theatres (and opening soon) that are ALL well worth seeing, whether or not you agree with the politics, or lack thereof.  There are also some great new additions to the Spiro Library. Here’s my short round-up of the films in theatres.  Check out the websites for info on the films and also to see how theatrical docs are promoted on the internet via very strong websites.  Each of these films has a big budget website.  Do you have clever ideas how to do that on the cheap?  It’s an essential component, probably THE most essential component, in promotion and distribution these days.

The September Issue by RJ Cutler

It Might Get Loud by Davis Guggenheim

Horse Boy by Michel Scott

Capitalism: A Love Story by Michael Moore