http://kino-eye.com "Everybody who cares for his art, seeks the essence of his own technique." -- Dziga Vertov (1922) Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:49:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Right now the U.S. Congress is considering legislation (SOPA and PIPA) that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, Wikipedia is blacking out their English language edition beginning at midnight January 18, Eastern Time. I join Wikipedia in encouraging you to share your ... http://kino-eye.com/2012/01/18/imagine-a-world-without-free-knowledge/ I had the pleasure of seeing When the Drum is Beating at the New Hampshire Film Festival (NHFF) recently. The documentary, directed by Whitney Dow, weaves together the history of Haiti with the story of Orchestre Septentrional, Haiti's most popular band with a long history. They perform a unique and ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/11/30/when-the-drum-is-beating/ Chris Paine, best known as the director of Who Killed the Electric Car?, followed the rise and fall of General Motors EV-1, of which he was a passionate owner. He recently completed a new film, Revenge of the Electric Car, now going into theatrical release. It opens on Friday, November ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/11/03/chris-paine-revenge-of-the-electric-car/ While I was preparing my presentation, "Seven Macro Trends," I reached out to people I thought might have some ideas and/or examples I should weave into my presentation. I'm indebted to their wonderful and generous contributions. What follows are the highlights of their responses to my query, "what do ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/10/15/researching-macro-trends/ I promised during my keynote presentation on Monday, October 10, 2011 at RioSeminars 2011 that I would post my slides and some notes before Sunday at midnight, so here it is: 7 Macro Trends, RioSeminars 2011 (5 MB, PDF), and below are some notes that go with the slides. One ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/10/15/seven-macro-trends/ There's been a lot of excitement in the air about Final Cut Pro X since the SuperMeet at NAB in Las Vegas many weeks ago. It's been like a friend telling you about someone they want to set you up with on a date, and they tell you all sorts ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/06/23/final-cut-pro-x-my-first-impressions/ I've been contemplating the evolution of the documentary this summer and I was delighted to see that The MediaGuardian's recent Sheffield Doc/Fest 2011 coverage includes ten articles providing a refreshing perspective on how documentary makers are finding new ways to reach their audience. These articles provide a view into a ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/06/18/ten-glimpses/ Making Media Now 2011 is taking place at Bentley College on Friday, May 6, 2011. If you are an independent filmmaker working in the New England area and have not yet registered for this conference, you should seriously consider it. Even at the higher "late late" registration rate (effective until ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/05/02/making-media-now-2/ This summer MassArt is once again offering its popular four-week summer documentary mini-film school. Session runs June 6, 2011 through July 1, 2011. This is an excellent opportunity to learn in a hands-on, intensive, focused environment from working independent documentary filmmakers. You can take all four classes, or a ... http://kino-eye.com/2011/04/26/2011-summer-documentary-film-school/ I'm going to be taking an intensive two-week course over the winter-intersession at MassArt called Installation: Reflective Space. I'm wondering if there are other media makers in the Boston area that would be interested in taking this class with me? Contact me if you're thinking about it. It would be ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/12/17/installation-reflective-space/ Among my favorite books is Gene Youngblood's Expanded Cinema, in spite of originally being published in 1970, it still offers a fresh perspective on the possibilities of new media art. Imagine a collection of essays that takes Youngblood's book as a starting point. Well, here you have it! ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/12/15/fluid-screens-expanded-cinema/ I love St. Mark’s Bookshop, every time I go to New York I make it a point to make the trek to Third Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets and spend time browsing there, especially through the new book section, where I came across Cartographies of Time: A History of ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/12/04/cartographies-of-time/ Daniel Downes suggests in Interactive Realism: The Poetics Of Cyberspace (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005) that it is people who construct social reality through their interactions, critiquing the “transformative turn” in media studies. Distinguishing clearly between the Internet (a communication system) and cyberspace (a socially constructed environment for human exchange), Downes ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/12/01/interactive-realism/ In their book, Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture (MIT Press, 2007) Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter remind us that we experience spaces not only through visual perception but also through our auditory perception. They explore auditory spatial awareness (experiencing space by attentive listening) from a variety of ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/11/29/spaces-speak/ In 1948 Alexandre Astruc, a filmmaker and theorist, suggested the notion of caméra-stylo (camera pen) in his essay, “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo,” which appears in the book, The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks (Edited by Ginette Vincendeau and Peter Graham, British Film Institute, 2009). This essay ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/11/22/alexandre-astruc-camera-stylo/ You are cordially invited to attend provocative.objects: the extradition, a cybersurreal exhibition + event on Friday, November 12th at MassArt in the Patricia Doran Gallery. The event is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. and end around 10 p.m., after which we'll gather at a local watering hole. provocative.objects: the extradition ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/11/09/provocative-objects/ Distribution U. looks like a wonderful event for independent filmmakers who are trying to figure out the best way to take advantage of the changing distribution landscape. This will be a one-day crash course on the New Rules of Crowd Funding, Audience Building & Distribution and is being held Saturday, ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/10/30/distribution-u/ Important Update: Making Media Now has been rescheduled to the Spring of 2011. Filmmakers Collaborative felt that in order to make it the best conference possible, and to meet the expectations from attendees, speakers, sponsors, and trade show participants, that everyone would be better served with new date in the ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/10/14/making-media-now-2010/ Scholars have long discussed the ambiguity and subjectivity inherent in photographic representation with its seductive verisimilitude. Bill Mitchell's The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (The MIT Press, 1992), the first book-length critical analysis of the digital imaging revolution, can easily be read with the addition of ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/08/20/documentary-ontological-crisis/ A few months ago I pulled Gene Youngblood's classic Expanded Cinema (E.P. Dutton & Company, 1970, available online) off the shelf and read it again. The pages in my well worn softcover edition were falling out, the glue having dried over the two decades I've owned the book. The first ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/08/17/expanded-cinema/ The transformation from media as a form of cultural production to media as entertainment has lead us into a crisis as we enter the fifth phase of history. Marshall McLuhan (1962, 2005) divided history in four phases: 1. culture of oral communication, 2. manuscript culture, 3. the Gutenberg galaxy, and 4. the electronic age. The ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/08/11/memory-and-the-end-of-reality/ If you live in the Boston area, here's an idea for what to do this weekend: The 2010 Bumpkin Island Art Encampment! Consider making a day of it and come out and visit on one of the public visitation days, Saturday, July 31st or Sunday, August 1st. Seven artists groups ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/07/27/bumpkin-2010/ With the rising tide of small cameras shooting spectacular HD video suitable for documentary work, along with D-SLRs like the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 7D whose images rival much more expensive (and heavy) cameras, I've observed a spectacular rise in gorgeous video, but good sound is not ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/06/18/four-audio-recorders-fordouble-system/ Summer is upon us and I would like to remind you there is still time to register for most of the Summer Film School classes at MassArt. If you don't live in the Boston area, MassArt is offering an affordable residential option in the dorms! Check out the course descriptions ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/06/10/summer-film-school-2010/ If your web site has video on it, I believe the time has come to take into consideration viewers using mobile devices if you've not done it already. The desktop is no longer the only platform for viewing video, and Flash, long dominant as the web video standard (at least ... http://kino-eye.com/2010/06/03/video-and-html5/