The Definitive Doc Textbook!
October 28, 2015
I am happy to announce that Documentary Voice & Vision, a new documentary text book by Kelly Anderson and myself, with Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, is due out Spring 2016, all 25 chapters! If you are interested in getting a review copy, Focal has it up on their website. Despite the header, there is no such thing as a definitive text, as documentary is a quickly moving target these days, but we certainly put a lot into it, and consulted with a lot of great people.
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Regional Discontent at the Ft Hamilton Parkway Stop
May 20, 2015
Regionalism at certain points in history has seemed like a liberatory notion. For Ken Frampton, author of Modern Architecture: A Critical History, for instance, a “critical regionalism” offered a way of resisting the international style and (boring) corporate culture it represented. But based on my most recent trip to the Ft. Hamilton Parkway stop on the F line in Brooklyn, I couldn’t help but feel that the notion of the regional is under threat. A series of posters all seem to both invoke local identity and suggest the ways that it destabilized. As far as I can tell the dis-ease has dual aspects. On the one hand, local legend of disaster can re-emerge or be re-evoked for the thrill. On the other hand, current conditions of globalization offer a kind of nostalgia for the regional that is something that can be exploited. The sad part is that the local ends up getting exploited coming and going, while real localities find themselves under a double threat, one from the global capital which mines profit, and the other from the media which play a game of exploiting the name recognition of the local as a place under threat, but stay well away from making links to the perpetrators of the crime.
Lets start on the West Coast…
This film is billed as an “action-adventure disaster” pic. It offers a modern riff on the 1906 earthquake disaster. The plot features a couple going to a quake-destroyed SF to rescue their daughter. Naturally, most of it is shot in Brisbane, the one in Australia.
Next we move slightly south… Here the comedy plays out: Four white guys and one south asian get rich by playing it stupid. Their job is reassuring us that the glaring inequalities (the lack of women, blacks, latinos and everyone else in the picture is not an accident) that come along with the new technologies coming out of Cupertino are just a joke.
The third poster on the wall I came across was from the East Coast. The Whitney is moving. These days the neurotic angst of midcentury alienation can be revisited as something cute. For us, we wish we had problems so small, and an art so resistant to the savage destruction of human compassion. Instead we get a museum that can turn its collection into pastiche in the interests of boosting land values along the High Line.
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Where are the Masses When we need them?
May 05, 2015
I am pleased to note that Interference Archive has put up a piece I wrote about the Film and Photo League documentary collective from the 1930s. The piece emerged from a presentation of the FPL at the Archive (with live music!) in 2013 that was part of the “Strike Anywhere” Exhibition.
Check it out at: http://interferencearchive.org/the-film-and-photo-league-by-martin-lucas/
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Tighten Your Belts Comes Back to Billyburg
January 15, 2015
I am happy to say that the Sunview Luncheonette is hosting a screening of Tighten Your Belts, Bite the Bullet.
This was my first documentary, and the title comes from a line in the film spoken by Adam Veneski, the founder of the People’s Firehouse, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, not far from where the film will be shown.
For more, see http://thesunview.org/tighten-belts-bite-bullet-screening/
PLACE: Sunview Luncheonette
221 Nassau Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11222
TIME: Saturday, January 17th at 7PM
The screening is co-presented by Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), Interference Archive, and the Sunview.
http://interferencearchive.org/
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CODES & MODES PIX
November 16, 2014
Brian Winston opens Codes and Modes with a veritable tsunami of a keynote.
The Codes and Modes Conference held at Hunter College last weekend ended up being a great event. Natalie Conn‘s elegant photos are now up on the C&M site. See: http://ima-mfa.hunter.cuny.edu/codesandmodes/photo-gallery/
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CODES & MODES Documentary Conference
October 25, 2014
I am happy to announce that I am organizing a conference with Jason Fox on the meta-culture of documentary that is happening in early November. A lot of great people will be presenting, so please check it out:
CODES and MODES: The Character of Documentary Culture
A Conference at Hunter College
Dates: November 7, 8 and 9, 2014
For more please go to the website: http://ima-mfa.hunter.cuny.edu/codesandmodes/
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Big Bomb on Campus
September 23, 2014
If you think they’re investing in public education, think again. This “campus” is part of a trillion dollar effort to revamp America’s nuclear weapons industry. That’s right, new bombers, missiles, subs, a complete national relapse to the depths of Cold War madness.
Apparently it is clear to US politicians that recent threats like the situations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East will respond well to the threat of global obliteration which is still, very clearly, the heart of security policy.
The photo is from a New York Times article from Sept 22, 2014, “US Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms” by William Broad and David Sanger.
This push on the weapons side is accompanied by an exciting new initiative on the nuclear energy front. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has declared that it simply won’t be necessary to bury any nuclear waste in the US. The decision, announced on August 27th, 2014 (See: http://nrc.einnews.com/article/220571519/rzEpj67MSFKa6uMr basically means that nuclear waste can be stored as long as plant operators want on site. This basically means that the NRC is acknowledging that it has given up on any plans for secure storage of nuclear waste in the foreseeable future. Burying nuclear waste was never a great option. The fact is, no place in the country wants to take it. Now, we can bury our heads in the sand instead!
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JAPAN SYNDROME
November 30, 2013
It’s hard to believe, but the Japanese government finally has a solution for the ongoing mess at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant… It’s called denial. Prime Minister Abe’s government is pushing through an official secrets act that offer draconian penalties for revealing government information. The lower house of Japan’s Diet has approved the bill and the upper house has until December 6 to debate the bill.
The Japan Times story gives a good sense of the direct link between the new secrecy laws and the Fukushima disaster.
See also the New York Times coverage which makes the link to Fukushima clear.
There is a movie here, but I don’t think it will be made. The quote is from Prime Minister Abe dismissing concerns about Fukushima to the Olympic Committee in Argentina.
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Cold Shutdown @ Two Moon
April 04, 2013
At the second anniversary of the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, the de-nuclearizing movement in Japan is continuing to grow both in size and in international significance.
I am having a screening of Cold Shutdown: Fukushima One Year After, and a discussion of the situation in Japan (and here too!) at Two Moon Art House & Cafe on Sunday April 7 as part of the series
MADE IN BROOKLYN – 4 Films by 4 Brooklyn Filmmakers.
The event is hosted by Tami Gold.
Please let folks know, and, of course, please come!
Thanks,
Marty Lucas
WHERE: Two Moon Art House and Cafe • 315 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Between 2nd and 3rd St in Park Slope • twomoonbklyn.com
WHEN: Sunday, April 7, 2013 at 3PM
Here’s the flyer!
Two Moon Film Flyer Final