Dogme

The following is another manifesto.  A manifesto for honest film making.  A style known as Dogme founded by a few northern European socialists.  The following is copied from their website Dogme95

Dogme 95

.. is a collective of film directors founded in Copenhagen in spring 1995.

DOGME 95 has the expressed goal of countering “certain tendencies” in the cinema today.

DOGME 95 is a rescue action!

In 1960 enough was enough! The movie was dead and called for resurrection. The goal was correct but the means were not! The new wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and turned to muck.
Slogans of individualism and freedom created works for a while, but no changes. The wave was up for grabs, like the directors themselves. The wave was never stronger than the men behind it. The anti-bourgeois cinema itself became bourgeois, because the foundations upon which its theories were based was the bourgeois perception of art. The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby ... false! 
To DOGME 95 cinema is not individual!

Today a technological storm is raging, the result of which will be the ultimate democratisation of the cinema. For the first time, anyone can make movies. But the more accessible the media becomes, the more important the avant-garde, It is no accident that the phrase “avant-garde” has military connotations. Discipline is the answer ... we must put our films into uniform, because the individual film will be decadent by definition! 

DOGME 95 counters the individual film by the principle of presenting an indisputable set of rules known as The Vow of Chastity.

Now not only is the following a beautiful song... 

Beirut are the best indie kids out there.  A bunch of folks from Albuquerque, at least one I think from Taos “eeee”, lead by Zach Condon.  They perform each of the songs from their album The Flying Cup Club captured on the streets of New York by the La Blogoteque Dogme theory of film.  Natural lighting, hand-held cameras, no sound dubbing.  Beautiful idea and exactly the essence that gives you the feeling of amazement that only comes from an intimate live show.  Lars Von Trier missed the mark with all his films except Dancer in the Dark, why?  Because that style of filming works best with the naked performance of music and choreography.  The second rule of Dogme is the most important and the most honest.

The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa (music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

So check this out from the Take Away Shows and Beirut.  I am inspired. 

-ASC

BEIRUT - Forks and Knives (La fête)
by flyingclubcup

T.K. And The Manifestos

On a related subject to the previous posting I would like to turn attention to another Manifesto of sorts.  One that was written in blood, insanity and a manual typewriter.  I wonder what TK thinks about text messaging?

-ASC

All, I just finished reading Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. I am now ready to live in the wilderness and commune with nature as it was intended for us in the beginning. Ted's thoughts on the perpetuation of technology and how it robs us of important natural goals such as sustaining life and replaces them with "surrogate activities" is interesting. He feels that we need to destroy the techno-industrial juggernaut and revert to living in small tribe-like communities. In addition, the only technology allowed to exist would be "small technology" things like hand tools, wells, and waterwheels.

I now want to create my own manifesto. The problem is that I am not impassioned enough about anything to pen such a doctrine. Maybe I will write a manifesto about apathy. An apathesto if you will. I will quit halfway through and try to hang myself with my own underwear. I wont have the energy or enthusiasm to kill myself though so I will end up loafing around my house with my underwear around my neck.

Captain

Let Them Eat Plants

Evolution has caused Homo sapiens sapiens the undue burden of desire.  Namely, that is the instinctual craving for sex and food.  Our large brains have led us on a doomed journey with the sole purpose of sating those desires.  Other animals are limited with what nature and primal social structures can provide.  However, we seem to be driven to add wondrous and ultimately soul and body torturing complexities to our lives. 

I won’t even get into the sex portion of this equation because it is way more painful and ultimately the endgame of sex is the over indulgence of things taken internally.  By that I mean food, booze and emotional trauma.  Nonetheless, if that be a corned beef sandwich, quart of whiskey or self absorbed guilt it all leads to the same thing, poor health.

The ability of our modern skulls to hold 1400 cc worth of brain matter has led to some horrible consequences.  Humans have evolved with an overwhelming desire for sugar.  A product that was very rare in nature.  That was until our big brains told us that we could make our own sugar from corn.  Now that sugar is in everything humans eat, especially American humans.  Corn is in water, and bread, and meat.  Sugar is so innately desirable to us that we will fool our brains.  We will disguise sugar to look like real food.  Products masquerading as the food with which humans need to thrive.  We go through all that effort to trick ourselves just so we can eat sugar instead of…  oh, say broccoli.  Homo sapiens sapiens americanesis eats so much of what he desires that he is killing himself rather masochistically.  Like love and sex we don't think about consequences until it is too late. 

Those consequences happen to be cancer, heat disease and diabetes.  American's have developed mythologies propagating this lifestyle.  Take Santa Claus the cookie eating sugar junkie who secretly had an insulin pump installed in his belly.  Don’t tell the kids, and don’t worry it still shakes when he laughs.

But more so like a bowl full of fruit flavored high fructose corn syrup. 

So while we all die of Western diet diseases, large corporations sell us medicine to keep us alive so we can continue to eat sugar and poison infused fake food.

So instead of popping another hot pocket into the microwave read Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

The book does tend to be speaking more to the upper income folk who can afford to eat well.  Everyone should eat out of their gardens (I guess, if you own enough property for a garden), or stay out of discount grocer (another financial issue), but all said, there are good rules to live by in this book.  In fact I synthesized the rules into this nice long list.  If you want more exposition on these check out the book.

1. Eat food mostly plants
   
2. Avoid food that makes health claims
   
3. Don’t eat anything your Neolithic ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (such as Go-Gurt)
   
4. Don’t eat anything incapable of rotting
   
5. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) Unpronounceable, C) More than 5 in number, or that include D) High-fructose corn syrup
   
6. Bread should be flour, yeast, water and a pinch of salt
   
7. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle
   
8. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible
   
9. Food doesn’t seem like the smartest place to economize
   
10. Eat mostly plants especially leaves
    
11.  You are what what you eat eats too
    
12. If you have the space buy a freezer (for storing your grass fed cow and/or your bulk farmers market produce)
    
13. Eat like an omnivore (as in lots of different things)
    
14.  Eat well-grown food from healthy soils
    
15. Eat wild foods when you can
    
16. Be the kind of person who takes supplements and then save your money (This one is kind of lost on me)
    
17. Eat more like the French.  Or the Italians.  Or the Japanese.  Or the Indians.  Or the Greeks
    
18. Regard non-traditional foods with skepticism
    
19. Don’t look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet
    
20. Have a glass of wine with dinner
    
21. Pay more.  Eat less
    
22. Eat meals (no snacks)
    
23. Do all your eating at a table
    
24. Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
    
25. Try not to eat alone
    
26. Consult your gut (eat till you are 80% full)
    
27. Eat slowly
    
28. Cook, and if you can, plant a garden
    

-ASC