worth watching

Reely and Truly is a short documentary about contemporary photography and what it means to be a photographer from filmmaker Tyrone Lebon

Filmed on a whole mess of formats (16mm, 8mm, super 8 etc.) and using a free form narrative and audio structure the film plays out like some kind of guided trip. 

If you have 30 minutes get coffee and headphones and sit down with this. If you don’t have 30 minutes do it anyway. 

Trailer for a documentary  called “In No Great Hurry” on photographer Saul Leiter.

I had never heard of him but apparently he was a pioneer of color photography who began work in the 1950s. He was mostly under the radar save for a show at MoMa in 1953.  

These words speak to my soul:

“I see no reason for being in a rush. When you consider many of the things that people treat very seriously, than you realize that they don’t deserve to be treated that seriously, and many of the things that people worry about are not really worth worrying about. If I didn’t do anything more than my little book wouldn’t that be enough?”

A 9-year-old boy from East L.A. takes the excess cardboard from his dad’s auto shop and builds his own arcade. What happens next is sort of magical. 

This video is so great. The power of social media and Internet giant Reddit put to a great cause. Well shot, well executed, great content. Someone even made a song about Caine that they used in the doc!

The folks who put the film together are trying to raise money for Caine to go to college. You can read more about his project and donate to that here.

Thanks for being so awesome Caine!

If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front

One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”
- Gerald Seymour 

I watched this documentary last night and it started an interesting conversation between my friends and I. For me it was really inspiring to see a group of people so passionate about something that they were willing to go to such extremes for it. I don’t know if their methods are right but after seeing the police action taken against them in the film it’s hard not to sympathize with the E.L.F. 

That being said activism is a confusing and challenging subject for me and I don’t really know how to properly articulate my thoughts on it so I think I’ll leave it alone. But I think this documentary is worth watching. It’s up for an Oscar this year. It’s streaming on Netflix. Check it out. It’s worth an hour and a half of your time.