tagged w/ documentary short films
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“Pass The Bucket: Stephen Murray” is a heart-wrenching, but also very inspiring 5-minute documentary short film directed by Eliot Rausch, whose previous documentary “Last Minutes with Oden” was named Best Documentary and Best Video at the 2010 Vimeo Awards.
June 22, 2007 marked a day that the Action Sports world will remember for a lifetime, a day that forever changed the life of professional BMX rider and three-time U.S. Gold Medalist, Stephen Murray. During competition in the BMX Dirt Finals at the Dew Actions Sports Tour in Baltimore (MD), while in the midst of doing a double back flip, Murray had what has been described as one of the worst crashes ever seen in BMX competition. In that catastrophic tragedy, the incredibly talented 27 year-old athlete suffered career ending injuries to his spinal cord, which left him paralyzed below the shoulders.
Almost four years later, Murray’s life has changed drastically. Fully paralyzed, Stephen now lives a different reality, but he has come to view it as a platform to help others. He continues to embrace each day and in his own words, “stay strong.” In the documentary, Murray describes the accident he endured, the changes to his life as a result of it and what enables him to continue fighting. And in true Stephen Murray fashion, his strength and perseverance continues to inspire. Stay strong.
Through his Stay Strong Foundation and courageous determination, Stephen surprisingly has found a powerful way to pass the bucket.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, as well as the remarkable documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/stephen-murray-a-story-of-incredible-suffering-and-courageous-determination/“Pass The Bucket: Stephen Murray” is a heart-wrenching, but also very... more
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Long before strippers started twirling on shiny brass poles in G-strings, men would get goofy watching women twirl their pasties at the old-timey burlesque shows. America’s big cities often had dozens of burlesque theaters that featured bodacious babes in barely-there costumes, at least until prudish city officials started banning the shows. But with the neo-burlesque movement coming back into vogue, and with Christina Aguilera and Cher co-starring in the new movie, “Burlesque”, here’s a fond look back at the heyday of burlesque.
This piece includes a number of high resolution vintage black-and-white photographs, a slide show and two musical documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/classic-bump-n-grind-the-old-time-burlesque/Long before strippers started twirling on shiny brass poles in G-strings, men would... more
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“This Kingdom” is a heart-wrenching documentary short film by Eliot Rausch, whose previous documentary “Last Minutes with Oden” was just named Best Documentary and Best Video at the 2010 Vimeo Awards. “This Kingdom” captures a short moment in the life of Brian Wolke, his wife, his young child and their current obstacle in life. Living in Compton, California, Brian has got no work and is forced to move out of the family’s home, shifting all of their belongings into storage.
This is such a terribly heartbreaking film; you have to feel for these people and what they are going through right now. In our present times, many people are finding themselves in the same position as that of Brian and his family, so interest this film should be very high.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, as well as the very emotionally engaging short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/this-kingdom-for-the-broken-the-helpless-and-the-outcast/“This Kingdom” is a heart-wrenching documentary short film by Eliot... more
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“Last Minutes with Oden” is a deeply engaging, extremely heart-wrenching 6-minute documentary short film directed by Eliot Rausch. The film tells a story about an ex-convict who is saying a final farewell to his best friend, the man’s last minutes with his dog before he has to have it euthanized for health reasons. The documentary is a beautiful elegy that calls attention to certain heartbreaking moments most of us experience, and which is an incredibly powerful reminder of the importance of family and friendships in all our lives.
“Last Minutes with Oden” was just named Best Documentary and Best Video at the 2010 Vimeo Awards, chosen from over 6500 film and video submissions.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, as well as the award-winning documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/last-minutes-with-odenthe-experience-of-loss-and-grief/“Last Minutes with Oden” is a deeply engaging, extremely heart-wrenching... more
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Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee (1899-1968), was the son of an Austrian rabbi, who came with his family from Europe to New York City. Independent-minded, for a time he aimlessly drifted around, did odd jobs and lived in the city’s flophouses. Finally, he discovered photography, a revelation that transformed him into a man with an obsessive mission. From the 1930′s through the mid-1940′s, Weegee was a freelance crime and street photographer for New York City tabloids, ceaselessly prowling inner-city streets during the graveyard shift. He loved the darkest hours, because then he had the photographic turf all to himself, but also owing to the fact that the most evil of crimes are carried out at night, under the cover of darkness.
Always prepared, Weegee stalked the streets in a car equipped with a police radio, a typewriter, developing equipment, a supply of cigars and a change of underwear. He was a one-man photo factory: he drove to a crime scene, took the pictures, developed the film in his car trunk and delivered finished the prints himself. Weegee was well aware of social problems in the city, documenting the struggles of people living through the Depression, the sufferings of people who experienced segregation and violent racial bias attacks, and the hardships of indigent immigrants packed into already poverty-stricken, desolate and crime-ridden neighborhoods of the city, especially the Lower East Side.
Eventually, the glamor of Hollywood beckoned, and Weegee moved there in 1946, where he worked in the film industry as an actor, consultant and photographer. He socialized with big-name Hollywood stars and got small acting parts in films, but he never really felt like he fit into what he called “The Land of the Zombies” and moved back to Manhattan in 1951, where he lived until his death in 1968.
This piece includes a number of vintage black&white photographs, a slide show and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/weegee-remembering-the-american-photographer-who-first-made-night-noir/Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee (1899-1968), was the son of an Austrian rabbi,... more
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“Exposed” is a photographic collection presently on exhibition at London’s Tate Modern Gallery, which offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the pictures present a shocking, illuminating and sometimes witty perspective on iconic and taboo subjects. “Exposed” presents 250 works by celebrated artists and photographers, including Weegee, Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Harry Callahan, Lee Miller, Helmut Newton and Man Ray.
The United Kingdom is now the most surveyed country in the world, fostering an obsession with voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance, images captured and relayed on camera phones, YouTube or reality TV. Much of “Exposed” focuses on surveillance, and the issues raised are particularly relevant in the current climate, with debates raging around the rights and desires of individuals, terrorism and the increasing availability and use of surveillance. “Exposed” confronts these issues and their implications head-on.
This piece include a number of high-resolution photographs from the exhibition, a slide show and two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/exposed-voyeurism-surveillance-and-the-camera/“Exposed” is a photographic collection presently on exhibition at... more
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“The Projectionist” is a wonderful series of photographs and a documentary short film by Kendall Messick, the story of Gordon Brinckle who created The Shalimar, a fully operational tribute to cinema’s great movie palaces constructed entirely in his basement. The reality of Gordon’s “theatre of renown,” as he lovingly called it, was beyond anything you could have imagined. His movie palace in the basement was a complete environment, containing all of the elements one would expect in an actual movie theater: a marquee, box office, auditorium, stage, screen, organ and a projection booth complete with projectors. There were intricate details in the design and decoration everywhere that spoke to Gordon’s passion and obsession.
Gordon Bickle’s miniature theatre was available for private showings, but he would also come and sit there to achieve a sense of calm. It’s a matter of living the dream and finding comfort in it, sustaining your own vision against the odds. The photographer Kendall Messick celebrates neglected lives, often of the elderly, and in Gordon Brinckle he discovered a real charmer. The documentary finds a lively human spirit in Brinckle’s obsessions, bringing to light the work of an artist who worked with a giant heart.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a slide show and two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/the-projectionist-a-magical-miniature-movie-palace/“The Projectionist” is a wonderful series of photographs and a documentary... more
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“575 Castro St.” is an extremely moving documentary short film by Jenni Olson, set in the Castro Camera Store where Harvey Milk lived and worked during the late 1970s. The sensibility of “575 Castro St.” hearkens back to the style of the dozens of Super-8 gay short films of the 1970s that passed through Harvey Milk’s hands to be processed and developed at the Castro Camera Store. The film is especially poignant in light of the recent suicide of Tyler Clementi, as well as the suicides of other young people. This film was shot with audio of Harvey Milk from a 1977 recording, outlining Harvey’s wishes in the event of his assassination.
“575 Castro St.” reveals the play of light and shadow upon the walls of the Castro Camera Store set for Gus Van Sant’s film “Milk.” The mundane shots are almost bereft of movement and sound. So quiet, so still. All the better to showcase the range of emotions evoked by Harvey Milk’s words on the soundtrack. He concludes his comments by telling listeners that the gay movement, or his efforts as a part of that movement, is mainly about giving young people hope. And that message remains an ever so important one today: “You gotta’ give them hope.”
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, the documentary and another short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/10/03/575-castro-street-its-about-giving-young-people-hope/“575 Castro St.” is an extremely moving documentary short film by Jenni... more
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Coney Island is nearing its final days, swirling ever-more deeply into a dismal state of disrepair. Soon the bulldozers will be back again, pushing over the last weathered links to the past, spelling the demise, once and for all, of the city’s most iconic neighborhood. Coney Island was always a place where you could drink beer, “shoot a freak,” see a geek, see a burlesque show, see fish, catch fish, eat fish, ride the Cyclone, ride the waves, win a kewpie doll, play Skee-Ball, go to a ballgame, see a band and lie on the sand. It was the last stand of the morally doubtful, the last place where one could feel the openness and energy of New York City in the 1970s, but stripped of the accompanying dread of crime and decay.
Now the city administration and wealthy developers have set into motion their master plans to rescue everyone from all of that, constructing at least four luxury hotels as high as 30 stories tall and as many as 26 residential towers to house wealthy residents paying top dollar for their condos. The real tragedy of Coney Island’s destruction is one that carries a much broader social message, it symbolizes the devastation of what had been since the mid-1800s a haven for waves of immigrant peoples, for the poor and for those who have been forced to exist on the outer-margins of society. And that is the real catastrophe.
This piece includes a number of remarkable vintage photographs, a memorable slide show, two documentary short films and two music videos.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/coney-islands-grand-past-a-requiem-for-an-american-icon/Coney Island is nearing its final days, swirling ever-more deeply into a dismal state... more
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For some people, our economy may be turning around, but millions of families are at risk of going hungry, in one of the richest nations on earth. The poorest people in America are those who were the first to feel the downturn, and will be the last to feel the country’s financial recovery. The hardworking poor in America’s heartland, with their long and deep traditions in mining, manufacturing and military service, are increasingly seen in food pantry lines, feeling ashamed and angry. Their stories and images push beyond stereotypes and reveal a hidden America of families living in poverty, which is both surprising and haunting.
This piece includes a number of emotionally moving photographs, a memorable slide show, three documentary short films about poverty in America and the Kris Kristofferson music video, “This Old Road.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/the-poor-in-america-friends-and-neighbors-in-the-heartland/For some people, our economy may be turning around, but millions of families are at... more
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Monday, June 28, is the 41st anniversary of the famous Stonewall riot, an event that changed history. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the gay community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities. The riots have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.
Christopher Street Liberation Day on June 28, 1970 marked the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots with an assembly on Christopher Street and the first Gay Pride March in U.S. History. The March traveled up 51 blocks to Central Park, beginning with a relatively small group that grew into a massive crowd of 15,000 people as it made its way up from Greenwich Village. Similar marches were organized in other cities. Today, Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots.
This commemorative piece is composed of a number of vintage photographs, as well as three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/be-proud-the-moment-the-closet-door-finally-opened/Monday, June 28, is the 41st anniversary of the famous Stonewall riot, an event that... more
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It is neither self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism, nor intoxicating romanticism that compels us to turn with a renewed passionate interest in learning about and appreciating the origins of the New Journalism. Our present world of public discourse has taken rigidly hostile polarized constructs of traditional Main-Stream Media versus the contemporary incarnation of New Media. However, while the former has long been understood to focus largely upon the accumulation of power and wealth, the same has come to be the goal of new media organizations. In fact, present-day new media organizations are made even more repugnant by their petty, envy-based sarcastic commentaries and idolatry of faux-celebrity life. Further, whatever their seeming differences, both forms of media share in the adherence to vicious levels of social and political ideology, which strongly bias and distort the communications and news presented to the public.
The origins of New Journalism are examined here through a review of the pioneering contributions of the inner-circle of The Beat Generation writers, who included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso. The commentary is further expanded and enriched by stunning vintage photographs, a remarkable slide show of additional vintage images and six documentary films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/the-lonely-beat-generation-dawn-of-the-new-journalism/It is neither self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism, nor intoxicating... more
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