Freegans: Creative Living Outside of Capitalism

I have no idea who these Trash Lab guys are but I love this little spot about freegans. This taps into the reason why I love video. It gives people an opportunity to spend time with something they wouldn't otherwise consider. And best of all, its an experience that you are able to craft for them. You paint something together with light and sound. Freeganism is something that crosses political boundaries. Typically associated with socialist tenancies and the far left, freeganism is about identifying that something is wrong with the world as it is presented to us. I think freeganism is fascinating because its about creating a world for yourself that excludes that part of society that might be sick. It cuts off the cancerous part with absolute conviction. I like that idea.

Stopped And Frisked

Cops and corruption. I snagged this short from The Nation. Great story. Simple message. Whose job is it to police the police?

Film by Ross Tuttle and Erin Schneider.

Capturing The Story

John Gooding came knocking on my door around 7am.  I had crawled out of bed around 5am to film the morning train come into the station but I had gone back to bed so I was lying half awake, half in my sleeping bag.

"You guys want to go out in the boat today?" John asked.

"Lets do it," I told him.

"I'll be back in 20 minutes after I put gas in the tank."

So I lingered for another 10 minutes, drank some water and got my camera gear ready to go.

The three of us - Ben, John and I - were out in the water within half an hour.  Ben is the associate producer acting as sound engineer.  I'm the cinematographer.  John is our subject.  He was a hero during the response to Katrina and today, he continues to shine a light on the environmental fall out following the deepwater horizon oil spill.

It was a bit crowded on the little outboard whaler boat and water was splashing in over the hull.  I locked my camera gear away in the Pelican case and lamented all the moments I could not capture on video.

"If you want, we can go up river," John offered.  "We don't have to go out to Cat Island today."

I pulled the camera back out when we got to Cat Island.  Birds were diving into the water and eating fish.  Even 50 feet out, we had to be careful about beaching the boat so we couldn't get in very close.  The kit lens on my NEX-VG10 goes out to 200mm but the constant tilt and roll of the boat limited my ability to capture the story unfolding in front of me.

Temperature of 85 degrees.  Mild humidity.  We couldn't have picked a better day to go out to the island.

I put the polarizer and UV filters on and did my best to keep up.  As we pulled the boat on shore, John jumped out to look for tar logs.  He'd run out ahead of us pretty far and I wore myself out trying to stay ahead of him.

In response to the oil spill, BP dumped millions of gallons of neurotic dispersant to mitigate the disaster.  According to BP, the problem is all fixed.  According to others, like John Gooding, the oil is still out there and continues to wash ashore in the form of tar logs.  Little globs of tar and sand - roughly the size of a 40oz can of malt liquor.

John was picking everything up and smelling it.  Little black logs.  Most of the time it was charred organic material like burned logs.  Sometimes it was a tar log.  We also found a hunk of brown sticky rubbery god-knows-what.

Right as we were getting ready to leave for home, we saw storm clouds brewing on the horizon.  Specifically, storm clouds blocking our path back to the mainland.  We decided it was better to wait out the storm on land than to meet it in open water so we stayed put.

We watched as waterspouts dip down from the sky.  Fortunately, the lightening broke or we would have been more anxious about sitting in the path of the storm.  And as it approached, we could see the storm front as physical as a locomotive, barreling down on us.  I filmed for as long as I felt comfortable and then I put the camera back into the case.

Birds went crazy.  Bugs went nuts.  Our sunny day was quickly obscured by the clouds rolling in.  The wind picked up and tossed pellets of rain and saltwater into our eyes.  And I didn't get any of it on film.

After the storm passed we noticed the tide was beginning to change and that our boat was now high in the sand.  So there was that to deal with.  Racing against time, we got to pushing the boat back to the water.  We were soaked up through the soles of our shoes and as the sun came back out the wind dried our shirts and left chunks of sand on our skin and in our hair.

It pains me as a documentary filmmaker to sit back and let these experiences happen to me - especially the emotionally intense moments  - but perhaps it is important to let some of these moments go.  With my eyes free from the frames of the picture, I am able to see the bigger story.

That is, how people meet the challenges life presents to them if that be literal storms or the metaphorical storms of the human condition.

The next day, as John worked on his boat engines, the story manifested itself to me again.  He was trouble shooting an engine that wouldn't start.  He said when engines sit for a long time, the gasoline turns to varnish and blocks the fuel from igniting properly.  The puzzle was in finding the buildup and flushing it out.

With him today, John brought his daughter and his Slavic son-in-law to hand him screws and generally learn everything he knows about boat maintenance.

"Its useless.  This engine is not going to start," John's son-in-law declared.
Well, five minutes later he had it started.  And I captured the moment.  Where other people are quick to give up, John Gooding stays with his problems until he sees that they are fixed.  Its an admirable trait.  And its an incredible feeling, as a cinematographer, to find that trait that really defines a person and to capture it in pictures.  Its incredibly rewarding.

Lulu in Berlin by Richard Leacock

This is pretty dry for a documentary about sex and murder. Louise Brooks was one of the most beautiful women in motion pictures but this documentary doesn't really pull me in. According to her story, Richard Leacock was not to first to intellectualize the vivacious actress. The most interesting part of the doc is when Louise tells us about how Pabst was most happy with her when she was playing the part of Lulu on camera and must furious with her when she continues to be Lulu off set. Comical, the inability to recognize Louise and Lulu as the same girl. But I feel this film doesn't show me anything I couldn't read in a well written article. Its falls flat.

Dear Zachary

Dear Zachary is exactly the kind of documentary I want to make. And I feel compelled to watch everything by filmmaker Kurt Kuenne. Its a deeply personal account of human tragedy. More than a record of events, it's an experience. Events unravel before you as they happen and the filmmaker puts you into the moment to experience the pain along with the subject as its happening.



I love the texture of the film. It feels like a home movie because it was intended to be a home movie about the filmmaker's close friend. Beginning with the death of his friend, the film develops as the friends and family of the deceased learn more about the situation. The plot thickens with ex-lovers, murder and a pregnancy. That's where Zachary comes in. He's the dead guy's son. You have to see it.

Not everybody appreciates the editing. Kuanne is not afraid to squeeze a passing clip in the background only to bring it back later in its full context with new meaning. A simple sigh or a foreboding comment can mean different things at different points int he story.

Kuanne's film captures grief as it belongs in time and space. It forces you to reflect back on those unintentional premonitions and moments of foreboding but its also an experience in itself which can be so painful as to be surreal, torn between letting go of the past and accepting the present.

You remember all those promises and dreams that will never come to fruition because an important piece of the puzzle has been lost. In situations of great loss, it borders on a psychedelic experience. Not so much hallucinating a thing that isn't there but in refusing to accept the thing that is not.

The impact of the tragedy comes from narrator's habit to obliquely lead into the bad news. It starts with an expression of hope in the past tense before it slams you with the tragedy. For example, I always thought we'd go skiing together but then you moved away. Or I baked you a cake! But then you couldn't make it to dinner.

Death is a human tragedy. Death as an interrupter of dreams is a personal tragedy. And it leaves you wanting to go back in time to prevent it.

Fantastic film. You can see it on Netflix.

Storm Surge

I met Stacy of Moontown Foundation late last summer immediately after his return from the Gulf Coast where he collected personal testimonials of Katrina and oil spill survivors. He contacted me, the journalist filmmaker, because he wants to go back to the Gulf Coast, to capture their stories and produce a documentary film.

That film project is Storm Surge.

Our goal is to push through the immediacy of tragic events as fragmented news stubs and look at the bigger picture. We want to shake up everything you think you know about The South, their relationship with big oil, their feelings about the environment and their plans to rebuild. Most of all, Storm Surge is a testament to the importance of individual action in one of the greatest social, economic and environmental tragedies of our time.



Stacy's plan is to bring a multidisciplinary team of college students from the science and engineering schools to evaluate the environmental capital and socio-economic feasibility of launching sustainable business opportunities. Natural resources have been destroyed, homes were lost and several core industries may not ever recover from the oil spill. Not within our lifetime. So the question we are asking is, what comes next?

Meet the people behind Noble Rot

As a local Northwest film maker, I would like to see more videos like this. I love the idea of small businesses encouraging community through video. Also, I like to see larger companies who care to distribute this hyper local media.

Seed to Plate: A Garden Story from Riley Hooper on Vimeo.

Noble Rot is a great place in Portland to hang out. Its close to the Doug Fir and Juniper Inn. Its a great area for music shows and eating great food.

The Epic Beard Man Documentary

Did you see that video? The one where the bearded white guy beats up the black guy on the bus? I think the time is past for being amazed by the power of viral video. Also, the rabbit-like breeding nature of viral video is somewhat boring. Media begot media begot media I get it.

This is the documentary about the guy who punched the guy who cried for the ambalamps. Its about Thomas Alexander Bruso, also known as Tom Slick, also known as Epic Beard Man.

The documentary grabbed me right away because of the meme hype but kept me sucked in because it quickly transformed into a real story about a real person. Thomas is not the only one out there. It seems that absolute chance has gained him some internet fame but I quickly get the impression that Thomas is part of a trend and not such a wild beast as the Epic Beard Man title might suggest. He's actually quite sad.



We get the idea pretty quickly, that Thomas is playing a role. He's the epic anti-hero of the non-working class. One moment, he is setting himself as the villain, relaying to us how he went to a baseball game after consuming a smorgasbord of alcohol and narcotics. The next moment, he is a victim of police brutality. The story doesn't have to make sense because he is no longer trying to make sense of it. Every moment can be cooked down to a an iconic single-serving story. Time is fragmented. Cause and effect are not related and he's lost out there in the soup.



All of this is section 8, he tells us. He's referring to his house but also his self and his being. He is identifying with the labels society has suggested to him and he expresses contentment with it.

Racism is a recurring theme in his dialogue. I think he identifies with blacks, or his perception of what it means to be black. He expresses a solitude with the feelings of alienation and oppression. There might be some parallels in how the draft essentially abducted young boys and hauled them off across the sea to die. Unable to relay his thoughts in a way that is socially acceptable, he turns to violence.

This documentary made me rethink the archetype of the Vietnam vet. I wonder how many people like Thomas are out there and I wonder how many of them are leading equally epic lives.

Zoo, documentary about "Mr. Hands"

This is not an easy documentary to share with people. Its about a group of men who have sex with a horse. They get much unwanted attention from the law and the media when one of them is mortally injured and bleeds to death.

This is not a gross-out documentary although the subject might be difficult to stomach. This is not a tear-jerking sympathy story although the subject might be tragic. Most of all, this is not a documentary that tells you how to feel.

The story is told through the voices of the people actually involved. The filmmakers collected the most vivid and humanizing interviews with the men who call themselves 'zoo' and edited it together with the most moody cinematography of rural Washington. What is most striking about the narration is how the men talk about their intent for the animals.

Immediately, the viewer begins to wonder if the animals were at all harmed by the sexual encounters. By the intents of the men, these horses were very well taken care of. Jokes aside, these were some happy horses. Once the presence of a victim becomes less and less clear, so does the legal discussion of animal rights.

I understand that most people will not want to see this movie and would not appreciate it. The distinction between personal ethics and social morality is a mute point and they are incapable of dialogue. This group of people is not limited to vegans. I find that most people have actually made up their mind on the issue. The issues of liberty are lost on them. They have decided that the animals are in danger and no amount of contrary evidence is going to sway them. The men are in-condonable.

I found this movie because I am a fan of Stranger writer Charles Mudede. He is credited as a writer on Zoo, so I rented it from Scarecrow Video. You can also rent the movie from Netflix. If none of those options appeal to you, you can watch the entire film on YouTube:



There is something very American about these sorts of discussion. They seem to resonate with our value for the pursuit of happiness. Also, they bring to mind the cultural attitude that, although I find your behavior abominable, I defend your right to do it. Your sins are irreproachable.

Donut Shop

This is a short documentary about what happens in a donut shop. Simple idea. I love it. One of the best ways to get people to talk is to ask them about what they love. And generally, what they have to say is pretty interesting. So go find people who love weird things and talk to them. Such as, people who live at Starbucks!

Sparrow Songs - Episode 5 - The Donut Shop from Sparrow Songs on Vimeo.

If you like that, you might check out the other films. Its a project by director Alex Jablonski (Blue Boy) and his goal is to make a new documentary short every month for one year. The products are manic little testaments to the joy of film making. The narration is often a bit overt and sometimes uneven but I like it. Its raw.

Streetwise (1984)

This is the out of print short feature documentary about homeless youth in Seattle, filmed in 1983 by Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark. The husband and wife team came to Seattle to expose rampant homelessness and desperation, thriving even in America's most livable city.



The pacing of this film is brilliant. It does not feel like a documentary. It feels more like a fictional piece, how we get such a moving and intimate look into the lives of these young people.

The film is book-ended by Tommy Dean's mentor and music local Seattle street performer Baby Gramps.

goodnight unknown

i am in love with this small documentary. its truly a personal little statement. i would love to spend so much time with an artist as they are making a record like this.

Lou Barlow - Goodnight Unknown Documentary from Merge Records on Vimeo.

documentary film is sharing a second hand experience. the trick is finding that experience that is worth sharing.

and finding a documentary you want to watch is kind of like shopping at garage sales. i suppose it goes without saying that i might see new life in old trinkets that no longer interest you.

its up to the documentary film maker to arrange the odds & ends and fragmented moments into a meaningful collage. a total product you might find more interesting than the sum of its parts.

the films of sean dunne

sean dunne is a filmmaker in new york. i found him through the little films blog. i like sean dunne's attention to detail. he is not afraid to get the camera in close and show us the texture of someone's life.

Man In Van from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

man in a van makes me think of what i wanted to do for random. i can think of a million excuses for why i never made that film and none of them are suffice. maybe i ought to revisit the idea and take some notes from sean.

Buckles from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

buckles moves a bit slow here and there but it retains gravity because of its historical value. someday even this will be a piece of history.

no age performs at triple door

now this is a novel idea. a quirky punk band plays live along to a screening of a buried children's classic nature film. it looks pretty psychedelic and wacky.



showtimes are friday night 7pm then again at 930pm. at the triple door.

the homeless world cup

i met semi tareen in a film making class. i helped him make this movie. i learned so much about leadership watching him.

the other day, he recommended kicking it on his facebook so i decided to give it a look. it is about the homeless world cup and some narration is provided by colin farrel. it moves a bit slow but there are some interesting parts so take a look at it here on hulu:



this documentary is about homeless people first. the football tournament is merely a mechanism within the plot structure that transforms the characters from one thing into another. the success of the film depends on the likability of the characters.

the american guy is the most compelling to me. he says he hates it when people ask him, how could be homeless in a place like america? the problem is, he never answers that question. he is angry and he is righteous.

one strategy for this movie would have been to follow the american team through the world cup, discussing the personality of homelessness in america. but this film is very ambitious. it wants to discuss homelessness as a world issue. it is a profile by comparison.

the kenyans for example, are so grateful for the nominal accommodations provided by the tournament. the team sleep together in a big empty room in sleeping bags on camping mattresses. we are living like a professional team, one says to the camera.

the afghanistan boys are just so happy to see girls! and you better watch out because there is a small love story involving one of these refugees.

i love the scene where the us team is invited to visit a town in south africa where the non-whites were forced to live during apartheid.

and of course, no homeless video would be complete without a u2 song. you'll hear that during the irish guy's arch. go figure.

there is something sad and beautiful about how all these men come together and put so much of themselves into something as silly as a football game. i grew up in the suburbs and i never had much respect for sports but as i grow up and see more of the world, i see how sports are a metaphor for life. so is it sad, that they put so much of their hopes and dreams into the object itself, or is it beautiful how they are able to transcend with the aid of the more existential implications of sport?