The Sacred Family is a jarring, sometimes hard-to-take movie with a great payoff. Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Campos has made a study of a family’s descent into hell, a path that proves to be rutted and pitted with moral degradation and graphic sexual humiliation.
A family — Marco (Sergio Hernández), his wife, Soledad (Coca Guazzini), and their son Marco (Néstor Cantillana) — celebrates Easter weekend by gathering in their home on the cliffs somewhere along the Chilean coast. As Catholics, the group is a continuum, from the mother’s smart, somewhat secularized but fiercely pure faith to the son’s violent doubt.
Marco hijo, newly sophisticated by his studies in architecture, brings home his new girlfriend, Sofia, played by Patricia López. Lopez’s performance is edgy and sharp, sometimes to the point of hamminess, but it helps drive an ensemble performance caught cinema verité-style with handheld cameras in natural light. (Indeed, the verité style of the film, no doubt with a little help from some truth-bending PR types, has some viewer-commentators exclaiming “no script!” and “it’s all real!” but don’t believe the hype: the multiple takes from various camera angles prove that this is a carefully set-up and scripted picture, albeit with room for improvisation.) Continue Reading »
“Of course, there were a lot of baboons in my stomach… to become a king!” King Mswati says at the beginning of this beautiful and fascinating film about the world’s last absolute monarchy. His country is at “a boiling point” as he becomes king. That was in 1986; it’s still just shy of boiling when Without the King picks up some 20 years later.
At the beginning of Without the King, King Mswati III of Swaziland has 12 wives and 22 children (his father had 110 wives and 250 children). By the end of the film, King Mswati has 13 wives and his daughter, Princess Sikhanyiso Dlamini, is bemoaning her fate. A new member of the family to adjust to! A new favorite to reckon with (“and she’s younger than me,” says the 18-year-old princess) while her own mother, the first wife, is on the outs.
Although Without the King is an indictment of the monarchy, Princess Sikhanyiso is the star of the film. She carries the film’s narrative: her changes are constructed to at least hint at hope for change in Swaziland. Princess Sikhanyiso is amusing and compelling and repulsively naïve of the situation of her father’s people. Her speech is a fascinating blend of Valley Girl (“My dad, he’s the king, right?”), Black English (she flows at rap early on but drops the beat in a pile of giggles), posh London, and something very close to South African. The latter is straight forward, as Swaziland is nestled up to South Africa; the rest come from MP3s, no doubt, as well as being educated in England and the U.S. Continue Reading »
USA Hemp Museum presents great pictures of live cannabis plants over Willie and Amy Nelson’s song, “A Peaceful Solution,” performed by Amy Nelson and Rattlesnake Annie. The bill was introduced by Cong. Barney Frank. H.R. 5842 is the 2008 version of the medical marijuana bill. Support the congresspeople who support cannabis.
Related: The Lotus Eco Elise uses a host of sustainable materials to make up the body and trim, including hemp, “eco wool,” sisal and a new high-tech, water-based paint that can be applied by hand. It’s fitted with a set of flexible solar panels on the hard top to help power the electrical systems, reducing the drain on the engine and improving efficiency. There is a new green shift light on the instrument panel that assists drivers in maximizing fuel efficiency.
All of these elements reduce the Eco Elise’s footprint throughout its lifecycle, limit the amount of energy used during production. Lotus looked to reduce the car’s environmental impact by focusing on how it is made as well as how it performs. Link.
My colleague Jolie Kaytes is a professor of landscape architecture at Washington State University and is interested in sense of place, how place makes us who we are, both as individuals and as communities, and how creative and analytical thinking can be used in solving problems. Recently, she created The GridShiter, a souvenir origami kit for a gallery show in San Francisco. (The show is, or was, at City | Space in Noe Valley.) I was intrigued by the analogy of folding paper and faulting crust and asked her if we could create a video that would showcase not only her art project, but some of her ideas about sense of place, as well. The result was this five-minute video. We shot all the photographs, interviews and sound-over narration in one 90-minute session; Jolie is an amazingly fun and efficient person to work with. This was my first time doing stop-motion photography, so the still camera work is pretty rough. But I like it; it gives the folding demonstrations a nice earthquakey feel.
Unpacking Place
About a year ago, I used a bunch of still photos taken by Jolie and did a video reinterpretation of “Unpacking Place,” an installation in the Cougarland Motel in downtown Pullman. Along with 10 other artworks, “Unpacking Place” was available to the public for one day, March 2, 2007. The collection of installations was curated by Samantha DiRosa, assistant professor of digital media, and titled “In(n) and Out of Nowhere.”
“Back to basics!” cry the Lumieres. Here’re some snips from the Lumiere Manifesto:
Lumiere video arises from the tradition of the French Lumiere brothers. Credited with some of the first footage captured, in 1895, the Lumieres are also recognized for holding the first public film screening, showing ten shorts that lasted only twenty minutes total. At the time, Louis Lumiere stated, “The cinema is an invention without a future,” believing that everyday photography and video [or film, as the case was] was ultimately nonsensical. Yet, we stand firm that Lumiere principles are essential to our existence as artists, media producers, visual creatures, and world citizens. Continue Reading »
Another in our series of educational science videos, this time we visit the Bonneville Fish Hatchery to dive into the mysterious lives of sturgeon. Dr. Sullivan informs us that these ancient creatures, which can live as long as two hundred million years, are in no way related to science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon.
The Sacred Family
“Of course, there were a lot of baboons in my stomach… to become a king!” King Mswati says at the beginning of this beautiful and fascinating film about the world’s last absolute monarchy. His country is at “a boiling point” as he becomes king. That was in 1986; it’s still just shy of boiling when 
“Back to basics!” cry the Lumieres. Here’re some snips from the 