Category Archives: education

Betty Martins – I Wasn’t always Dressed Like This

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I Wasn’t always Dressed Like This [Trailer] (2013, 120MB, 1:42 min)

If the substantive piece (which I gather is about 33 minutes in length) is
anything like as good as this trailer promises it will be stunning.

This has all the hallmarks of the previous piece by Betty Martins – When the Souls Arrive – we posted here : beautifully made, scrupulously attentive to those being observed/interviewed but with its own quite particular gentle and steely authorial stamp.
(I usually hate anthropomorphising art – you know the thing, ‘this piece investigates’ &c. – except here
I am sorely tempted to say that Martin’s work ‘knows how to listen’. Of course what I mean is Martins knows how to listen, carefully and empathetically, and then to re-configure parts of that listening and looking and understanding too as moving image soaked with detail and feeling.)
In addition the subject matter could not be more timely: a broadside of delicate
beauty in the face of bigotry.

Locusts

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Emergence – Locusts (2008, 233.8MB, 11:19)

From celebrated MC Invincible, a docu-music-video
about the history of gentrification and capitalism’s
destruction of communities in Detroit.
Video features several local activists, including
Grace Lee Boggs and (full disclosure) my good friend
Ron Scott.
This intense collaboration gives me chills every
time I watch it.
I’ll let the rest speak for itself.

Sam Easterton – Animal Vegetable Video

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ardvark
Ardvark (2001, 1.6MB, 15 sec.)

scorpion
Scorpion (2001, 1.1MB, 10 sec.)

tumble1
Tumbleweeds (2001, 1.2MB, 10 sec.)

wolf
Wolf (2001, 1.1MB, 10 sec.)

Since 1988, Sam Easterton has been using tiny
‘helmet mounted’ cameras to create an archive of videos filmed
from the perspective of plants and animals.

By Mica

Kino Da!

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kino
Kino Da! (1981, 5.6 MB,1:42 min )

Kino Da! , a wonderful portrait of the poet and communist Jack Hirschman
by the American experimental filmmaker Henry Hills is just one of the Hills films
that can be viewed at . More about Hills and his work see – henryhills.com

PS There is a marvellous DVD of Hill’s work now available. I have a copy and I
unreservedly recommend it. I come back to it time and time again.

Richard Jochum – Cell Portraits

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Cell Portraits
Cell Portraits (2005-7, 28.7MB, 4:18 min)

Beautifully assured piece of documentary film making from Richard Jochum in 2007,
a portrait of the scientist Jan Schmoranzer preparing microscopic images
of cells (& and eating lunch, drinking coffee &c.)
I particularly like the lighness of touch shown here, the gentle wit.
Jochum’s openness to the humanity, the quirkiness and individuality of the
participants ( the..um..dance), raises the level of the piece from
an interesting educational short to something much richer.
To be slightly controversial, it’s dully predictable someone left
a comment on Jochum’s site along the lines of ‘I’d like to get some of those
images for my wall’ The final slide images, laden with scientific interest as I’m
sure they are, are in my view the bit of the piece with the least artistic
interest (or at least such interest as they have derives from their place
in the process and the film’s account of it rather than their pretty-pattern-ness).

Dr Hairy – Mentoring

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Floating Green Leaves
Mentoring (2012, 255MB, 16:01 min)

Final one in the present series of Edward Picot’s Dr Hairy videos.
Great stuff, which we’ve enjoyed a great deal.
We eagerly anticipate series #2, perhaps we could suggest The Return of Dr Hairy,
Dr Hairy’s Repeat Prescription or The Beard is Back.
Glad to see he’ll be putting in an artworld appearance at
the new Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park, London.
Not to be missed if you’re in the area during the run of the show (not only
because Dr H is great but also because Furtherfield haven’t put together
a remotely dull show yet).