On 15, May 2013 | No Comments | In Video | By ami
Nakba by Remi Kanazi from 4N PICTURES on Vimeo.
Featured on The Electronic Intifada
Nakba Day is on May 15th and commemorates the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Palestine War.
On 11, May 2013 | No Comments | In Video | By ami
Badge# P95081 from 4N PICTURES on Vimeo.
Winner Best Documentary Colorado Film School Student Show '13
Nominated Best Picture Colorado Film School Student Show '13
After being racially profiled and harassed by a Denver cop, Eric struggles for justice while trying to remain a hero for his kids.
Director – Alex Meade
Aerial Footage – Rich Lerner
Sound Design – Ryan Longenecker
Music – The Randall Family
Special Thanks
Laura Peniche
Lindsay Taubman
Dick Alweis
The Randall Family
“In the Shadow of the Sun” tells the story of two inspirational men, Josephat and Vedastus—born in different generations but both albino—trapped in intense struggle amid a community of conflicting beliefs between witchcraft and science in Tanzania. They face a daily reality of sticks, stones and verbal abuse, often described as “white ghosts” and treated as though they’re the devil incarnate.
Prisoners can teach us a lot about small space living. A group of inmates at a high-security facility in Italy helped create the Freedom Room, a room the size of the average prison cell, into a modular, multi-functional living area…
Freedom Room: Prisoners Help Design a Better Small Space Good | Apartment Therapy.
On 16, Apr 2013 | In Interesting People | By ami
On the 30 September, in front of a sell-out theatre at the BFI in London, Charlie Kaufman delivered the final lecture in BAFTA’s 2011 Screenwriters’ Lecture Series.
‘We do not talk, we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.’ That was actually written in 1945 by Henry Miller and I think it’s timely. I think what it says is that the world has been on its present course for a long time. People all over the world spend countless hours of their lives every week being fed entertainment in the form of movies, TV shows, newspapers, YouTube videos and the internet. And it’s ludicrous to believe that this stuff doesn’t alter our brains. It’s also equally ludicrous to believe that – at the very least – this mass distraction and manipulation is not convenient for the people who are in charge. People are starving. They may not know it because they’re being fed mass produced garbage. The packaging is colourful and loud, but it’s produced in the same factories that make Pop Tarts and iPads, by people sitting around thinking, ‘What can we do to get people to buy more of these?’ And they’re very good at their jobs. But that’s what it is you’re getting, because that’s what they’re making. They’re selling you something. And the world is built on this now. Politics and government are built on this, corporations are built on this. Interpersonal relationships are built on this. And we’re starving, all of us, and we’re killing each other, and we’re hating each other, and we’re calling each other liars and evil because it’s all become marketing and we want to win because we’re lonely and empty and scared and we’re led to believe winning will change all that. But there is no winning.
Our culture is marketing. What is marketing? Trying to get people to do what you want them to. It’s what drives our consumer culture. It’s what drives our politics; it’s what drives our art. Music, movies, books, fine arts, it’s part of every research grant proposal. I don’t want to participate. I don’t want to tell you how to sell a screenplay or tell you how to write a hit, or tell you how to fit into the existing system. I want to tell you that I have a hope that there’s another way to be in this world, and that I believe with courage, vulnerability and honesty that the stuff we put into the world can serve a better purpose.
The way movies work now, and I’m talking about mainstream industry, the only goal is to get you to buy a product. The only goal. The only goal. The only goal. The only goal. And this intention creates the movies that we sit through, and the movies that we sit through create us. In government we’ve been reduced to the same game. Through trickery, obfuscation, bullying and fear mongering, the goal of marketing a candidate is achieved. I don’t understand many things, I don’t know as much as I’d like about anything, but I’m a human being and I won’t be in competition for the right to be treated decently. I won’t play that game. Nor should anybody have to. In turn, I will try not to use whatever access I have to the public’s fear to sell things, including myself.
The world is very scary now. It always has been. But something grotesque and specific to our time is blanketing us. We need to see that it is not reality; it is a choice we are making or allowing other people to make for us.
My sneaker company tells me that I can, and that it’s up to me. It is a sign of great weakness if I don’t ‘Just Do It’. And these are the priests of our culture, the therapists, the Dad with a firm hand but your best interests at heart. A sneaker company that runs sweatshops in Third World countries. This is our Dad. And I don’t know about you but I can be moved to tears by these commercials that these people put out. And I think it’s despicable.
On 12, Mar 2013 | In Awareness, Current Affairs | By ami
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
References:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2…
http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealt…
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011…
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/…
