The Great Escape

From Great Escape to great cake. My job comes with some nice perks.

(Upper-Intermediate TED) Growth and Development

The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years — and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. 

Watch:

Global population growth, box by box

(Advanced) Coffeee and Cigarettes

This 11-vignette film focuses on the human interactions that happen while partaking in the everyday indulgence of coffee and cigarettes. Featuring well-known actors and other artists as themselves or some version thereof, the film highlights the nuances and subtle hostilities that can be a part of seemingly normal conversations. 

Watch a scene:

Coffee and Cigarettes

Bowling

We went bowling. But first we had a coffee. Then we waited for almost an hour. Then we went bowling. I had fun.

(Mid Level) Seeing is Believing

 The McGurk effect is a compelling demonstration of how we all use visual speech information. The effect shows that we can't help but integrate visual speech into what we 'hear'.

Watch:

The McGurk Effect

Movement, rythmn and form and cinema

Film 1.

Film is Rhythm (1921) by Hans Richter

 "Richter focused instead on the "temporality" of the cinematic viewing experience by emphasizing movement and the shifting relationship of form elements in time. His major creative breakthrough was the discovery of cinematic rhythm, which he then used as the title of his first film, Film ist Rhythmus: Rhythmus ’21 (Film is Rhythm: Rhythm 21, 1921). For Richter, rhythm was “the essence of emotional expression”: "Rhythm expresses something different from thought.... Rhythm cannot be explained completely by thought nor can thought be put in terms of rhythm... both find their connection and identity in... the life principle, from which they spring and upon which they can build...'

In Rhythmus ’21, generally considered to be the first completely abstract film, Richter used these principles to create a work of remarkable structural cohesion. Completed by using stop motion and forward and backward printing in addition to an animation table, the film consists of a continuous flow of rectangular and square shapes that “move” forward, backward, vertically, and horizontally across the screen. Syncopated by an uneven rhythm, forms grow, break apart and are fused together in a variety of configurations for just over three minutes (at silent speed). The constantly shifting forms render the spatial situation of the film ambivalent, an idea that is reinforced when Richter reverses the figure-background relationship by switching, on two occasions, from positive to negative film.

In so doing, Richter draws attention to the flat rectangular surface of the screen, destroying the perspectival spatial illusion assumed to be integral to film’s photographic base, and emphasizing instead the kinetic play of contrasts of position, proportion and light distribution. By restricting himself to the use of square shapes and thus simplifying his compositions, Richter was able to concentrate on the arrangement of the essential elements of cinema: movement, time and light.

Disavowing the beauty of “form” for its own sake, Rhythmus ’21 instead expresses emotional content through the mutual interaction of forms moving in contrast and relation to one another. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final “crescendo” of the film, in which all of the disparate shapes of the film briefly coalesce into a Mondrian-like spatial grid before decomposing into a field of pure light."

Adapted from a text by Richard Suchenski, Hans Richter, sensesofcinema.com/2009/great-directors/hans-richter/


 Watch

Hans Richter - Film Ist Rhythm (1921)


 Film 2.

Free Radicals (1958-1979) by Len Lye

Free Radicals is a black-and-white animated short by artist Len Lye. Lye made the film by directly scratching the film stock. The resulting "figures of motion" are set to music by the Bagirmi tribe of Africa.

"I made Free Radicals from 16mm black film leader. I took a graver, various kinds of needles. (My range included arrowheads for romanticism.) You stick down the sides with scotch tape and you get to work with scratching the stuff out. … … You hold your hand at the right height and act is if you were making your signature. It goes on forever. You can carry a pictographic design in your head and make a little design. You can't see what you're doing because your hand is in the way. That's why those things have that kind of spastic look."

- Len Lye

Watch

Free Radicals (excerpt)

(Mid Level) The Lounge Bar

The Song

There's a man at the bar staring into space

Why is he drinking all by himself

What could have happened to his face?

What's that thing on his head?

Must have had quite a fall

he's listening to the song that's playing

He's hardly moving at all

And the song sounds like The Girl from Ipanema

And the song sounds like Ten Guitars

And the song sounds like The Girl from Ipanema goes walking

And walking

There's a woman she comes in out of the rain

She waits for a while then she says

"The service is pretty slow around here"

But the man doesn't hear her, he's still listening to the song

And the song sounds like la la la

She looks around the bar she hasn't seen for so long

Nothing is changed, the jukebox playing the same old song

But just then a chord-change

Makes the blood change direction in her veins

And her heart sings dance, dance, dance to my Ten Guitars

The man at the bar has lost his memory

The man at the bar could be anybody

The bottle helps some people forget

But can the bottle help him remember

Will he ever remember who he was?

And the song sounds like The Girl from Ipanema

And the song sounds like Ten Guitars

And the song sounds like The Girl from Ipanema goes walking

And walking

What does “Scuse me a sec” mean?

Who is Ngaire?

Who is Mike?

Who is Mr. Hadleigh?

Why do people say “I’ll get you another”?

“Hope you don’t _____ me asking, but…”

“There’s a few things I wouldn’t mid forgetting” - What do you think the woman wishes she could forget?

What makes the blood change direction in the woman’s veins?

“You’re pretty spunky?” What does this mean?

Why does the man have to wear the head brace?

“It’s all a blank” what does it mean?

“The bottle” What does it mean?

“I’ve got eyes”

“Live a little”

“I think you fractured his ______”

“We’ll chuck him off the wharf!” why is this significant?

What do you think will happen now?

Link:

The Lounge Bar