Category: Film

Kbaumlier quoted in the U.K. Guardian – Miranda July’s movie the Future

Kbaumlier quoted in the U.K. Guardian – Miranda July’s movie the Future

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Last week I was interviewed about Miranda July’s film The Future, which opened in the U.K. this weekend.

The movie focuses on the relationship of a couple have been together for several years but their lives are starting to drift into an odd malaise.  The couple decides to adopt Paw-Paw, a shelter cat, in a month after he’s healed up, and they see that as the beginning of the end for any dreams they may have had.  The story features quirky elements such as time-stopping conversations with the moon, a shirt that can move on its own, and the film is narrated by the cat waiting to be adopted.

The film premiered at the Sundance festival this summer, and is now playing in the U.K. and the rest of the world.

You can read the article which was printed today here on the guardian /The Observer at :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/30/miranda-july-chic-or-indulgence

Links:

The Future – movie website

A clip of Miranda July at the Sundance Premiere

After Coal: Film project focuses on the transition from coal in Appalachia and Wales

After Coal: Film project focuses on the transition from coal in Appalachia and Wales

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Tom Hansell, an artist and filmmaker I worked with as part of the artist group Fossil Fools has started a new film project called After Coal: Welsh and Appalachian Mining Communities. 

This documentary film explores how two mining cultures face the challenge of their dependence on fossil fuels.  Currently the Appalachian coalfields are struggling with chronic unemployment and environmental degradation, while Wales has experimented with strategies to rebuild their communities after the mines closed.  As the Appalachian coalfields enter their last generation of mining, this documentary project will help map directions to a sustainable future after coal.

Tom is currently raising money in order to bring a video crew from the Appalachian Mountains to the historic coalfields of South Wales.  Here they will revisit sites documented by Welsh Cinematographer Richard Greatrex and sociologists Helen Lewis and John Gaventa from 1974-1976.  During the last decade of full scale mining in Wales, this team made over 150 videotapes of daily life — including rare footage of Welsh miners choirs performing with Appalachian musicians such as Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard.

The interviews, images, and, sounds gathered will be combined with this archival footage, creating a feature length documentary that compares the coalfields of Wales and Appalachia. 

After Coal will consider what the Welsh experience after coal means for the last generation of Appalachian miners and their community. How do resource rich regions transition from their historic dependence on fossil fuels, while sustaining the community those fuels helped build? And, how can lessons from these areas speak to other resource dependent regions throughout the globe?

As of today – Tom has raised $2945 of the $5000 project goal.

The Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University is currently raising money to cover the costs of bringing a film crew to Wales in the spring of 2012.

To support this project, visit the website and click on the support button.

View the promo clip of the film

 

Image credit: Tom Hansell

 

“The only thing you can’t buy used is food.” Film Screening: Urban Roots

“The only thing you can’t buy used is food.” Film Screening: Urban Roots

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Tonight I went to see a screening of Urban Roots, a film which focused on urban farming in Detroit.

The film started by reviewing the history of Detroit and the current state of the city, and then focused on urban farmers who are farming in the middle of neighborhoods, in vacant lots, and in their yards.

There were some interesting things said in the interviews of the urban farmers and commmunity members including this quote, “The only thing you can’t buy used is food.”

“By forming urban farms, locals in Detroit have begun turning abandoned city lots into small-scale gardens that give sense of hope and community ….”

The event was Sponsored by Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice, Community Greenhouse Partners, Cityfresh & Clefnb and endorsed by the Save Our Communities forum in Cleveland.

From the Producer – Leila Conners’s statement of the film
“Well, enter urban farming, a way in which individuals can take control over something so critical as food that in the very act of growing it, they not only feed themselves, they also become healthier, more self-reliant and in some cases they become entrepreneurs. And most remarkable, they create a new approach to community, the economy and life overall.”
Links:
Community Greenhouse Partners

Urban Roots – the movie site

Image credit: Urban Roots Film