5 posts tagged “film”

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky 

"....Chomsky and Herman demonstrate that while we pride ourselves on a "free press," in truth we have a press that is actually quite self-censoring, and thus hardly free at all.

Most of the media, they explain, are big corporations subject to the same pressures of competition as other corporations, a hard economic fact that fatally undermines their ability either to report the news honestly or to comment on it fairly. Instead of aiming to tell the truth to the American people -- so that responsible democratic decisions can be made -- the big media are in business to sell audiences to advertisers and are far more concerned with pleasing their shareholders than with letting anything be said that may disrupt that process.

Although the First Amendment is on the books (and sadly, today it functions chiefly to be exploited by tabloid media), Chomsky, Herman, and many of the voices with dissenting views are never invited to appear on our TV screens, unless they can dance -- or swap wives. As a result, despite the sanctimonious and self-satisfied chest-thumping of pundits and politicians about the "free press," our press remains narrowly restricted.

You will not agree with either of them all the time (I don't), but even when you disagree, you will find both men challenging your preconceptions, making you think, and generally leaving you smarter and more compassionate than when you found them."

The classic Canadian documentary film based on the Noam Chomsky/Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent. Explores the the propaganda model of the media.

URL: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5631882395226827730

かわいい>_<!

a film about life, friendship, family, death, sex, drugs, and all other things that "invade" our lives.

Alain Lussier: There were, what, 3000 dead? Historically, that's insignificant. As a U.S. example, 50,000 died at the Battle of Gettysburg. What is significant, as my old profs said, is they struck at the heart of the Empire. In previous conflicts -- Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War -- the Empire managed to keep the barbarians outside its gates, its borders. In that sense, people may look back on 9/11, and I stress may, as the beginning of the great barbarian invasions.

Remy: Contrary to belief, the 20th Century wasn't that bloody. It's agreed that wars caused 100 million deaths. Add 10 million for the Russian gulags. The Chinese camps, we'll never know, but say 20 million. So 130, 135 million dead. Not all that impressive. In the 16th Century, the Spanish and Portuguese managed, without gas chambers or bombs, to slaughter 150 million Indians in Latin America. With axes! That's a lot of work, Sister. Even if they had Church support, it was an achievement. So much so that the Dutch, English, French and later Americans followed their lead and butchered another 50 million. 200 million dead in all! The greatest massacre in history took place right here. And not in the tiniest Holocaust museum. The history of mankind is a history of horrors!...Pius XII sitting on his ass in his gilded Vatican, while Primo Levi was taken to Auschwitz... That's not sad! It's despicable! Hideous!

Sister: If what you say is true, and history is a series of abominable crimes, then someone has to exist who can forgive us. That's my belief.

Kim Ki-Duk Restrospective
April 23–May 8, 2008

The Department of Film presents the first complete U.S. retrospective of writer-director Kim Ki-Duk (b. 1960, Bonghwa), a self-taught maverick Korean filmmaker whose work has enriched international cinema with its luminous intensity. This fourteen-film exhibition includes several features never before seen in the U.S., giving audiences a rare chance to chart the development of the director's sensuous, sensational imagery and wild and haunting narratives.

Kim Ki-Duk was a factory worker, soldier, priest-in-training, and, between 1992 and 1995, a street artist in France, where he discovered cinema through films like Leos Carax's Les amants de Pont-Neuf and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (both 1991). After winning a screenwriting competition in Korea, Kim was able to make, without any formal training, his first feature, Crocodile (1996). Kim's debut film, long out of circulation, heralded the arrival of a furious young self-taught talent with a vision that, brutal though it is, is grounded in redemption. Over the next eleven years, thirteen more films followed, including three of his best-known films in the United States, the libidinous The Isle (2000), the Buddhist-inflected Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003), and an elliptical treatise on invisibility, 3-Iron (2004).

Kim's films cohere into a vivid and compelling body of work characterized by sweeping camera movements and long, richly composed shots. They are populated by characters, uneasy in their social situations, who adopt silence as a protection and whose reactions tend to be brutal; what distinguishes these narratives is what follows this savagery. His films take place in a world sometimes circumscribed by water, but always situated in a cinematic space a couple of degrees sharper than reality. All films are directed by Kim, from South Korea, and in Korean with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.

MoMA Exhibition "Kim Ki-Duk":
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=8164

Related Screenings:
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=8164#screenings

''Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring'' review by NY Times:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E6DA1639F932A05750C0A9629C8B63

Working on disposable digital video let's you be a bit more lax because retakes cost you nothing but time, but also tend to sacrifice a sense and need for focus and foresight about what needs to be done.

Otto Buj.

디지털 시대 속 우리가 가장 헤프게 소비하는 것은 시간.