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Green Patriot Posters: Your Chance to Promote Climate Change Awareness Through Art

Posted by Eric Brightwell, August 28, 2011 01:42pm | Post a Comment

Silver Lake-based filmmaker and social activist Susannah Tantemsapya is the founder and executive director of Creative Migration, an inspiring non-profit organization that produces documentaries that promote various art projects which relate to social activism and change.

Right now Susannah is raising funds for her latest project, Green Patriot Posters, a documentary about… Green Patriot Posters - an art project that employs progressive poster art to raise environmental awareness. It you live in San Francisco or visited it in the winter of 2010, you may've noticed these striking posters adorning bus shelters around town. They've also graced billboards, museums and appeared in various media.

The project was initiated by Edward Morris, co-founder of the Canary Project and Green Patriot Posters, and Dmitri Siegel, director of marketing for Urban Outfitters. They partnered with Loudsauce, the first crowd-funded media buying platform that allows art and social causes to take their messages to the streets, replacing the normal slew of soul-crushing advertising with something both interesting and societally beneficial.

The film includes interviews with Shepard Fairey in Los Angeles, DJ Spooky and Michael Bierut in New York City, Mathilde Fallot in Paris, as well as people who encounter the posters on the streets. Green Patriot Posters is the only American film that's been invited to participate in Project Green, held in Stockholm, Sweden in October 2011. Help do us proud by contributing to this inspiring project. The deadline is is 11pm PST on Monday, August 29th. (Click here to contribute).

All kinds of cool rewards including film credits, cool stickers, posters, copies of the Green Patriot Poster book, autographed copies of the book, signed prints from Shepard Fairey and more! Seriously, as a human being, protecting the environment is the MOST patriotic action you can take.

*****

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(In which Job introduces the character Ryan.)

Posted by Job O Brother, February 21, 2010 06:56pm | Post a Comment

Ryan "Mouth-hole" Cassano

This weekend I played host to a friend of mine, Ryan “Mouth-hole” Cassano, who was visiting from my beloved home town of Nevada City, California. He had come to investigate 1980’s video arcade games and literature concerning it for some future enterprise that I’m not at liberty to divulge but involves alcohol, supermodels, and rooms of plastic balls.

He met me after my hard but spiritually fulfilling shift at Amoeba Music Hollywood, waiting out the last few minutes of my shift by browsing the clearance section of soundtracks, where he found two items that made him squeal like a flame-covered, 500 pound, chocolate gorilla who sounded like a happy little girl: the soundtrack to the film Kill the Moonlight (which features some very early work by Beck), and to the documentary King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters.

The latter was serendipitous, as it was related to his arcade quest. In fact, he was traveling with a copy of that very film and insisted I watch it with him. I told him he wasn’t the boss of me and I can do whatever I want and I hate I hate him I hate him, then we drove back to my place for a home-cooked dinner of gimlets.

Just like Ma used to make!

I introduced him to the refined art of Tom of Finland, who’s work is so lovingly collected in my Taschen art book. He found it deeply educational and oftentimes frightening. Imagine my embarrassment when, half way through flipping through the book, I realized it was a souvenir photo album of my trip to the Anne Frank House! A common mistake, sure, but no less silly.

Puzzler: Can you tell which one is which?

After half an hour of explaining to him the difference between gay sex and the methodical genocide of six million people, we decided to go to bed.

Hispanic Heritage Month - Documentaries covering Latino & Hispanic experiences in the United States

Posted by Eric Brightwell, October 2, 2009 04:00pm | Comments (2)

For Hispanic Heritage Month, if you want to get an interesting and informed look at Latino issues, you could probably do worse than checking out a documentary... Most cover a handful of issues and often from different perspectives. Check the Latino/Spanish Special Interest section at Amoeba for availability.

War - There are several documentaries that focus on Latino and Hispanic issues in American wars. From Juan Ponce de León and Hernan de Soto sniffing around the modern day US in search of eternal youth and gold, through aggression between the US, Mexico and Spain, to the disproportionate reliance on Latinos to fight our modern wars, these DVDs cover a lot of territory.

American Experience: Remember the Alamo

Crucible of Empire - The Spanish American War

Let's Make it a Movie Night: Part II

Posted by Smiles Davis, July 1, 2009 02:22pm | Post a Comment

I’ve been sick in bed with worst pathogen known to man for the past – feels like years – week and half. I haven’t had the energy to do more than fluff my pillow and change my position every hour or so to prevent from getting bed sores. Well, it’s not that serious, but telling myself that helps me feel better about putting my significant other through brutal torture – you’d swear with the extra load I’ve put on him, he was training for a maid marathon at the Holiday Inn. With all this down time on my hands, the only thing to do to occupy my time and prevent insanity from fully setting in is watch movies. And boy, do I have plenty. Yesterday alone I think I watched some 12 flicks. Most of them were documentaries; some were hit, some were miss.

When it comes to movies, a person can tell whether a flick is going to be of interest to them or not within the first couple of minutes or so. On several occasions, I pressed the eject button before I got past the opening credits. Then, on the flip side, some of the flicks were worth another watch, a tour through the special features, and a word with the director and/or cast members. Well, I’ve made a list of the ones that were most entertaining to watch and that forced me to take a second look. So, here (in no particular order) are my top 5 documentaries, for now:

Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser
Directed by Charlotte Zwerin
One reason to love this film other than Thelonious Monk is the exceptional footage quality.

The Kid Stays in the Picture
Directed by Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen
I don't know how much of this story is actually true, but Robert Evans is one heck of a story teller.

Russia to pull out of Chechnya

Posted by Eric Brightwell, April 16, 2009 04:57pm | Post a Comment

Cessation of operations
Russia has announced the end of its ten year “counter-terrorism” campaign in The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (aka Noxçiyn Respublika Noxçiyçö and Нохчийн Республика Нохчийчоь). Although Chechnya has been fairly peaceful for some time now, many allege that it is due to the ironfisted rule of Russian-approved-and-installed Chechen leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who along with his private militia, Kadyrovtsy, faces widespread suspicion of kidnapping, torturing and murdering advocates of self rule.

Eliza Betirova

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, having vowed to make rule of law the cornerstone of his government, may in fact be attempting to distance itself from the monster many say Moscow created by installing and giving free-rein to a scandal-plagued former rebel who some have compared to a cult leader who has described Chechnya as a “zoo filled with animals” and bragged, “I will be killing as long as I live."

Ali Dimayev

Russia’s involvement with Chechnya
Chechnya declared its independence in 1991, alongside many of its fellow Soviet republics. In what’s become an almost comically transparent double standard, Russia recognized the independence of former Soviet republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (since they’re within Georgia), and Georgia, which denied recognition to its breakaway republics, was one of two nations to recognize Chechnya’s independence (although the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is a member of the Unrecognized Nations and Peoples Organization), the other being Afghanistan.

Timur Mucuraev

Yeltsin, then president, was upfront about Russia’s unwillingness to let Chechnya secede, due, in large part, to its considerable oil reserves. Russia first invaded the newly-independent republic in 1994, sending in 40,000 troops. The war ended in the humiliating defeat of the Russians two years later.

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