Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss psychiatrist did landmark work with the terminally ill patient in the 1960's which resulted in the establishment of a "cycle" that she found each patient went through upon learning of their imminent death.
* Shock
* Denial
* Anger
* Bargaining
* Acceptance
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a Child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others." Marianne Williamson
Monday, September 01, 2008
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2002)
Director: Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain
Duration: 74 min
Language: English
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (a.k.a. Chavez: Inside the Coup) is a 2002 documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. A television crew from Ireland's Radio Telifís Éireann happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002. Shifting focus, they followed the events as they occurred. During their filming, the crew recorded images of the events that they say contradict explanations given by Chávez's opposition, the private media, the US State Department, and then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. The documentary says that the coup was the result of a conspiracy between various old guard and anti-Chávez factions within Venezuela and the United States.
Duration: 74 min
Language: English
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (a.k.a. Chavez: Inside the Coup) is a 2002 documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. A television crew from Ireland's Radio Telifís Éireann happened to be recording a documentary about Chávez during the events of April 11, 2002. Shifting focus, they followed the events as they occurred. During their filming, the crew recorded images of the events that they say contradict explanations given by Chávez's opposition, the private media, the US State Department, and then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. The documentary says that the coup was the result of a conspiracy between various old guard and anti-Chávez factions within Venezuela and the United States.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000)
Director: Agnès Varda
Duration: 82 min
Language: French
The film tracks a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, and personal connection. Varda travels French countryside and city to find and film not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners. The film spends time capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive. One such person is the teacher named Alain, an urban gleaner with a master's degree who teaches French to immigrants. Varda's other subjects include artists who incorporate recycled materials into their work, symbols she discovers during her filming (including a clock without hands and a heart-shaped potato), and the French law regarding gleaning. Varda also spends time with Louis Pons, who explains how junk is a "cluster of possibilities".
Duration: 82 min
Language: French
The film tracks a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, and personal connection. Varda travels French countryside and city to find and film not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners. The film spends time capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive. One such person is the teacher named Alain, an urban gleaner with a master's degree who teaches French to immigrants. Varda's other subjects include artists who incorporate recycled materials into their work, symbols she discovers during her filming (including a clock without hands and a heart-shaped potato), and the French law regarding gleaning. Varda also spends time with Louis Pons, who explains how junk is a "cluster of possibilities".
Friday, August 22, 2008
The Society of the Spectacle (1973)
Director: Guy Debord
Duration: 88 min
Language: French
This film by Guy E. Debord is based on his 1967 book of the same title both of which convey ideas about the consumer capitalism's mode of production and the effects on everyday life. Though both sources use a different means of communication they both powerfully convey the ideas of the situationists. I wont rant on about the ideas contain within this film which are quite profound and have influenced heavily on the Anti-Capitalist movement and post-structuralism through thinkers like Jean Baudrillard. The structure of the film itself is a series of shots from Hollywood films to soviet 'collective hero' film experiments to soft-core porn(nothing past topless) to archival footage of historical events(e.g. May 68 revolt in France) and representations of everyday life. The way in which the scenes are manipulated work well with the voice over commentary reinforcing the ideas while hitting emotional notes. The Music also contributes well to the emotional sentiment which the director wants to be associated with different ideas and issues. The technique used reminds me of Wagner, how he used the structure of music to convey hopelessness and the philosophy of Schopenhauer in "The Ring" covering over the once socialists allegory for the contradiction of modernity. Debord and the situationists used their music to convey of the feeling of hope and the spirit negation (the negation of capitalism and the creation of a new 'totality' of 'situations'). Debord during this film highlights the influences of the 'situationits' in the agitation for May 68 (the largest general strike in history). Henri Lefebvre criticized Debord on this point expressing the view that the situationists greatly exaggerate their influence on events. Other then the self-pampering which is small fraction of the film it is a well done piece of radical documentary both in form and content (style and ideas, though this dichotomy is to come degree false) which is quite interesting just for those uninterested or hostile towards Revolutionary Anti-Capitalism.
Duration: 88 min
Language: French
This film by Guy E. Debord is based on his 1967 book of the same title both of which convey ideas about the consumer capitalism's mode of production and the effects on everyday life. Though both sources use a different means of communication they both powerfully convey the ideas of the situationists. I wont rant on about the ideas contain within this film which are quite profound and have influenced heavily on the Anti-Capitalist movement and post-structuralism through thinkers like Jean Baudrillard. The structure of the film itself is a series of shots from Hollywood films to soviet 'collective hero' film experiments to soft-core porn(nothing past topless) to archival footage of historical events(e.g. May 68 revolt in France) and representations of everyday life. The way in which the scenes are manipulated work well with the voice over commentary reinforcing the ideas while hitting emotional notes. The Music also contributes well to the emotional sentiment which the director wants to be associated with different ideas and issues. The technique used reminds me of Wagner, how he used the structure of music to convey hopelessness and the philosophy of Schopenhauer in "The Ring" covering over the once socialists allegory for the contradiction of modernity. Debord and the situationists used their music to convey of the feeling of hope and the spirit negation (the negation of capitalism and the creation of a new 'totality' of 'situations'). Debord during this film highlights the influences of the 'situationits' in the agitation for May 68 (the largest general strike in history). Henri Lefebvre criticized Debord on this point expressing the view that the situationists greatly exaggerate their influence on events. Other then the self-pampering which is small fraction of the film it is a well done piece of radical documentary both in form and content (style and ideas, though this dichotomy is to come degree false) which is quite interesting just for those uninterested or hostile towards Revolutionary Anti-Capitalism.
The Future Is Not What It Used to Be (2002)
Director: Mika Taanila
Duration: 52 min
Future is Not What It Used To Be is the latest documentary by Mika Taanila, the director of Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow (1998). It features never-before-seen archival material from the early years of electronic art, including excerpts from Kurenniemi’s unfinished experimental short films. The documentary entwines the past with the present, i.e. with the protagonist’s manic archival project, in which Kurenniemi records his thoughts, everyday observations, images and objects, constantly and obsessively. All this in an effort to combine man and machine – to reconstruct the soul of man.
Duration: 52 min
Future is Not What It Used To Be is the latest documentary by Mika Taanila, the director of Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow (1998). It features never-before-seen archival material from the early years of electronic art, including excerpts from Kurenniemi’s unfinished experimental short films. The documentary entwines the past with the present, i.e. with the protagonist’s manic archival project, in which Kurenniemi records his thoughts, everyday observations, images and objects, constantly and obsessively. All this in an effort to combine man and machine – to reconstruct the soul of man.
Decasia (2002)
Director: Bill Morrison
Duration: 70 min
Language: English
"Bill Morrison's Decasia is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal... The film is a fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude." - J.Hoberman, Village Voice, 3/25/03
Duration: 70 min
Language: English
"Bill Morrison's Decasia is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal... The film is a fierce dance of destruction. Its flame-like, roiling black-and-white inspires trembling and gratitude." - J.Hoberman, Village Voice, 3/25/03 "I popped Morrison's video into my VCR and within a few further minutes, I found myself completely absorbed, transfixed, dumbstruck, a pillow of air lodged in my stilled open mouth, which I don't think I thereupon managed to close for the next seventy minutes." - Lawrence Weschler, New York Times Magazine, 12/22/02
"A pure poetry of deliquescence. The images are at once haunting, mysterious and incredibly beautiful. A definitive work of art. And a new kind of documentary. A documentary documenting the decay of itself." - Errol Morris, filmmaker
"This radical, experimental masterwork feels like the first film, and feels like the last film." - Andrew Lewis Conn, Time Out New York, 3/27/03
"Bill Morrison's extraordinarily mesmerizing 'Decasia' is a stunningly beautiful... ode to creation and decay." - Shari Frilot, catalog notes for the Sundance Film Festival
"A hallucinatory canvas of images... succeeds as a pure exercise in visual stimulus, its narcotic effect much amplified by Michael Gordon's thunderous, dissonant orchestral score." - Dennis Harvey, Variety
"Compelling and disturbing! Swimming symphonies of baroque beauty emerge from corrosive nitrate disintegration as rockets of annihilation demolish cathedrals of reality." - Kenneth Anger, filmmaker
"Unbearably beautiful. It's a work of suggestive genius." - Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine
"The majestic Decasia... stunning work... an ecstatic gesture." - Steven Seid, Pacific Film Archives curator, from the catalog notes for the 45th San Francisco International Film Festival
"A work of nihilistic energy and harsh, uncompromising beauty, capable of sustaining multiple readings and interpretations. It is, in short, a work of real art. There are precedents for this sort of thing but nothing remotely of this scale, much less power. The final coup is a genuinely transformative and unforgettable experience." - Shane Danielsen, 56th Edinburgh International Film Festival
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