Too Many Heros

This is a touching, sad, song for our times. The sounds quality is not perfect on this video but the writing is superb. Maybe you can find a clearer version if you like it.

Crash This Train

This song is a prayer to stop the mad ride we are on; 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan.......

Watch how you use the word NAZI

The term Nazi is thrown around like a pink play thing these days; "Soup Nazi", "Obama-Nazi." As time passes we are forgetting the real meaning of that term. This documentary, Night and Fog, is a wide-eyed reminder of what Nazi really means. It is also a provocation that warns of the half sleeping monster that lies in wait among us all.

I have not been to the Holocaust Museum in DC. Much of this information was new to me. Shame be onto the Holocaust deniers.

WARNING: THIS DOCUMENTARY PULLS NO PUNCHES.

Latest "Playing for Change" video

If you have not picked up the new Playing for Change CD and DVD, then you have to see and hear this video. The audio version is great but combined with the imagery it is awesome and inspiring.

(Click on the above video box if your view of the video is clipped on the right.)

Homeless In Gaza

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7926780.stm

This is a powerful slideshow with audio that shows the lingering effects of war. The Gaza War seems old news to us, we have moved to Swine Flu and so forth, but for this family with their children and grandparents, the war still looks them in the face every morning when the rise, and it sleeps with them at night. I respect the job the BBC News staff did in compiling this slideshow, you can hear the flames popping the wood as the photo comes into view of the father starting the fire. They also give everyone a voice, providing subtitles when needed. Heather Sharp, Hamada Abuqammar, and Paul Kerley have put together one of the best presentations of this kind I have seen. Touching. Disturbing.

Women Are Heros

TRAILER " WOMEN ARE HEROES"
by JR

WARNING: Mature images and content. Grow up and watch it.

Student Participants Needed for Project on Cluster Bombs

"Landmine" by Bill Fick


THE CLUSTER PROJECT is an online collaborative art exhibition that surveys the social, historical, financial, and technological underpinnings of cluster bombs. The web exhibition will display some 22 installations (or rooms or bomblets) made by a variety of artists using animation, illustration, photography, video and other techniques.

For one of the works called WHAT THE PEOPLE KNOW, we invite teachers to help us involve student artists and journalists from around the country in interviewing citizens in their communities.
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While the United States has traditionally manufactured, sold and used the great bulk of cluster bombs around the world, it’s citizenry knows virtually nothing of the weapons, nor does it want to know. It is this combination of complicity and ignorance that The Cluster Project seeks to confront.

One of the works in the project, What the People Know, involves student media-makers questioning people in their communities. These will be simple man-in-the-street interviews in which subjects are
asked, “What is a cluster bomb?” They are then invited to discuss whatever they know about cluster munitions. The resulting material will then be sent to The Cluster Project where it will be collected and brought together in an exhibition installation.

Our goal is to gather responses from all fifty states.
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For university teachers of video production and related subjects, this assignment can take as little as a single class period. We will help provide information for the classroom context that explains both the nature of cluster munitions and the aims of this project. We will also include a brief protocol for the production shoot including the required questions and issues regarding location and approach.

Students from any discipline can participate, but they must have access to video and audio equipment and have a basic knowledge of field production.

All collaborators and institutions involved in the project will be credited.

Students participating in What the People Know should benefit from their collaboration in a national art project, their practical
experience in the documentary tradition and a greater awareness of their nation’s role in the use, sale and development of dangerous weapons.

Contact either Erich Woodrum or Bob Paris below:

Erich Woodrum, producer of What The People Know, thinkhuman@riseup.net

Bob Paris, director of The Cluster Project (and Assistant Professor in Kinetic Imaging at VCU’s School of the Arts in Richmond, VA), parisikov@theclusterproject.com

Making Art, Not War, in Afghanistan

German artist Luis Berrios Negron traveled to Afghanistan in 2006 to hold a workshop with young artists and conduct an architectural performance in a notorious location, a Russian built, but never used, swimming pool and accompanying billboard. The location was used by the Taliban for executions including pushing victims to their death off the high diving boards. Check out this interview on Pigmag.jp to see what he and the students pulled off.

James Carroll's Constantine's Sword

You may have heard about this documentary like I did, on NPR today. If not, take a moment to listen to this trailer and visit the Web site. Carroll's book by the same name has been made into a documentary by Oren Jacoby that traces the roots of religious violence to Christians' hatred of the Jews. I had been a Lutheran for many years before I learned of Martin Luther's rantings against the Jews. A truth never mentioned in my congregational church until I brought it up. I look forward to seeing this documentary- if it comes to my community. Right now you have to be in New York or LA. The rest of use can catch the DVD if nothing else.

An Open Window into Lives of Women in Iraq

Open Shutters Iraq is a photo project that provides a window into the lives of ordinary women suffering under the effects of the war in Iraq. In photos and narratives we can experience just a bit of the pressure and fear that invades their daily lives. These images and their narratives are moving. If you are in London you can see the exhibit now. Hope it comes to the US.