Category Archives: Film

“Women Are Heroes”: documentary film by JR (France)

Women Are Heroes is the first movie of the French young photographer JR who lives in Paris and has become a hero to many people around the world. He doesn’t use his real name, because most of the work he does is illegal. It has its premier showing today in Paris.

This documentary film takes place around the world and particularly in Brazil, India, Kenya and Cambodia. It begins in the favelas of Brazil, where we recognize the huge posters of JR and the reactions they provoke in women. Then in India, where we discover women caught between traditional customs and modern day. Then Kenya, where, again, women must live in a more chaotic and unstable that. Finally, in Cambodia, we will face the violence of the ultra violent expropriation against households headed by a matriarchal system that attempts to resist the face of real estate giants … Each woman in the film amazes us with her courage and faith. It took three years for JR to make this movie. More in JR’s website.

JR audio interview with the photographer by Jim Casper.

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DVD release of the documentary film: 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s

 Text from website and edited by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Five Day Weekend and Traffic Entertainment are proud to announce the DVD release of 80 Blocks From Tiffany’s, director Gary Weis‘ 1979 documentary about the South Bronx and its gang culture. The previously unavailable film finally got released which is accompanied by a handful of exciting bonus features.

Director Gary Weis was still working as a short film creator for Saturday Night Live when he came up with the idea for80 Blocks after reading a Jon Bradshaw article, “Savage Skulls.” Published in a 1977 issue of Esquire Magazine, the piece centered on two gangs based in the South Bronx at the time — the Savage Nomads and the Savage Skulls. Weis became infatuated with the story and, soon after striking up a dialogue with Bradshaw, he convinced SNL producer Lorne Michaels to help him produce the film. Just two years later, in 1979, Weis and Bradshaw brought a camera crew to speak with members of both gangs, along with police officers, community activists, and civilians.

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Film documentary: “Freaks In Love”: A Quarter Century in Underground Rock with Alice Donut!!!

Text by Martin Bisi (producer of Alice Donut’s Pure Acid Park)

Martin Bisi intrviewed in Brooklyn (photo by Shirle Hale)

Alice Donut is a band that always brings together people who enjoyed a common, punk do-it-yourself outsider ethic – with a big emphasis on “freak” and “weird” psychology – people who enjoy a humorous take on an anti-corporate and anti-mainstream attitude, almost turning the tables – that the really funny freaks are corporate and mainstream. Alice Donut shows always seem like a celebration of this shared secret knowledge. And of course Alice Donut (notice the phonetic wordplay on L-S-D ) is a hard driving band – hard driving groves. Some of the best energy in Indie rock history.

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BYTE HISTORY: Louis Grenier’s 32 Videos

Courtesy of Zora Art Space

Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010
Time: 7pm
Venue: Zora Art Space (315 4th Avenue between 3rd and 2nd Streets in Park Slope, Brooklyn)
Ticket: t.b.a.

Louis Grenier, filmmaker, and Emmy® Award winner, has created a striking series of videos. Comical, bold, profoundly peculiar, and rigorously powerful. They consist of visual chronicles and psychiatric explorations with wide-ranging philosophical investigations. His work has been shown extensively in the US, Canada, and Europe, at venues including museums, galleries, universities, festivals, night clubs, and television. Exhibitions include: Corcoran Gallery of Art, Wash. DC; New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center; Anthology Film Archives; The New Museum; The Knitting Factory; The Mudd Club; Dixon Place; CBS Cable TV; The Kitchen; P.S. 1, Long Island City, NY; Manhattan Neighborhood Network; World’s Fair 1984, New Orleans (traveled). For ABC, INC. he wrote, produced, and directed Meredith Vieira of “The Today Show” in “The Scholastic Video.” Awards include: Newsweek-Bolex FILM CONTEST, recognition of cinema skills in National Affairs category, judge Albert Maysles; New York State Council on the Arts CAPS grant in video; Emmy® Award for Editing, ABC 2000 “Millennium Special.”

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