Sundance - Adobe Youth Luncheon

Sundance was awsome, the hardest of core. Wednesday morning there was a luncheon held by Adobe at the New Frontier club/gallery where all youth programs/classes were welcome to come and eat really good food--i was expecting pastries and coffee, but it was a full on eggs-fruit-oatmeal-juice-coffee-otherstuff yumminess.
Then everyone gathered to watch shorts from the programs that were representing Adobe, such as Reel Works in NY, Spyhop, Real Ideas Studio, us, and some other programs. There were a couple short documentaries, one was about a kid struggling to grow up partly homeless, and another was about two friends who struggled to maintain their friendship in NY because one was Jewish and the other was Muslim. There was a spoken word piece that was kinda experamental, and they also screened Disorder. At the end, all the filmmakers went up in front of the audience to sit in these really freaky folding director chairs (their alot scarier to sit in than they look) and talk about our films. We were asked questions about how we came up with our ideas, what did we struggle with, and what future films might we be planning. It sounded like alot of the other filmmakers struggle with the same thing we do--patience, editing, etc. But Disorder was the only piece that had animation which made us cool. fa' sho'. I told them about the vampire doc we're making, and they all thought that was interesting, i got some good reactions from the audience.

Afterward, it was major mingle time. I met some students from some university in Dallas that really liked Disorder, and the cool cats from NY. Ballard High wasnt there though (suckuuuuus!).

There was alot of computers and software set up for people to try out, i ended up talking to one of the Avid editing software representatives, we had a really long conversation about the difference between mac and pc, FCP and avid, college programs, and hollywood vs indie. Well i guess he thought i knew what i was talking about, he told me to fill out a sign up sheet for something but wouldnt tell be what it was for. I was alittle suspicious, but i thought it would just be more info and stuff about avid. after filling it all out, he told me i was one out of five youth he was supposed to find that stood out, and he sent me the avid editing software for free in mail. It can be downloaded on to a pc or a mac. ooooober coolness.


--kubo, over and out

RG on the RADIO!!!

Guess what girlies??

Stacy, Malory and are going to be on the radio talking about Reel Grrls this Thursday.

Thursday the 20th. 1150 AM KKNW 8:30am. Listen. Or else.

With my love,
m

WOW.

This 20-minute video called "The Story of Stuff" is F-ing amazing! I never realized that the American system of over-consumption was consciously PLANNED in the 1950s!! Here is the scariest quote I have EVER heard:

"Our enormously productive economy... demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption... We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
-Victor Lebow, 1955

Creepy Washington & NAMAC Youth MAFIA

Hellooooowwwww. How was everybody's four day weekend? I went to Idaho, and on the way i found some super awsome locations for shooting a spooky horror movie, or an eatheral dream sequence. It looked like literally the middle of no where, it was just endless mild hills completely covered in a smooth layer of snow, and fog everywhere so it looked like there was no end to it, no civilization, very creepy. it was near WSU, very eastern washington.

ANYway, the videos that were made at the Austin NAMAC youth MAFIA (Make A Film In A (day)) event are posted on youtube, so check them out. Me, a kid from austin, a kid from baltimore, and another kool kat from i-dont-know-where made the short Sebastian & His Picture:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ooRRFybSjOw

Each group was picked at random, and given a prop and movie genre also at random. Each group was required to utilize the prop as much as possible and stick to the movie genre. We all had 24 hours to do it all. It was fun. mostly. i fell asleep at the computer. but totally worth it.


over and out,

kubo

Tell Me about YOU!

Happy Thanksgiving all!

This is a call for your HELP. I am writing big papers for both my Philosophy and CHID classes about Reel Grrls. This is because we are awesome, of course. For my Philosophy class I am writing about the continual struggle and movement of, and need for women's rights. For my CHID class I'll be bring in various ideas from the Englightenment and the desire for information etc.

I would like your input to use as quotes for my paper. Tell me anything, really ANYTHING! I would like to hear from anyone and everyone. The grrls, mentors and staff. Post here. Email me. Call me.

Tell me about:

1. Why RG is important to you? Why is media literacy important?
2. What have you learned? Why do you study media and film?
3. What is it like for you to be a female in today's society?
4. What have you learned about yourself at RG? Talents, Identity, Questions, Ideas etc.?
5. How has working with other women mentors and grrls your age affected you? How do you observe multi-generational collaboration at RG? How does RG work to reverse hierarchy within our program?

Thanks for your input.

Soon,
m

Assia Djebar

Assia Djebar is the pen-name of Fatima-Zohra Imalayen (born June 30, 1936), an Algerian novelist, translator and filmmaker. Most of her works deal with the obstacles faced by women, and she is noted for her feminist stance. Djebar is considered to be one of North Africa's most famous and influential writers, and was elected to the Académie française on June 16, 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb to achieve such recognition.

She was the first Algerian woman to be accepted at the École Normale Supérieure, an elite college in Paris.

In 1957, she published her first novel, La Soif (The Thirst). (Fearing her father's disapproval, she had it published under the pen name Assia Djebar.) Another, Les Impatients, followed the next year

In 1996 she won the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Contribution to World Literature, and the next year, the Yourcenar Prize.

Cinema
1. La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua, 1977
This film combines narrative with documentary to tell the varying stories of different women in Algeria. “Returning to her native region 15 years after the end of the Algerian war, Lila is obsessed by memories of the war for independence that defined her childhood. In dialogue with other Algerian women, she reflects on the differences between her life and theirs.”
2. La Zerda ou les chants de l'oubli, 1979

some, not all.

Raúl Ruiz 1941 -

sentences about him:
From Chile and one of the most prolific filmmakers of the last 50 years.

trained as a painter. spent some years at the U of Santa Fe, Argentina's cinema school.

something of an outsider among the politically oriented filmmakers of his generation his work being far more ironic, surrealistic, and experimental.

Married to filmmaker and editor Valeria Sarmiento.

Also writes stage plays.

film advisor to the Socialist Party in Allende's coalition (1971-1972) - forced into exile in 1973 following Pinochet's coup - settled in France.

incomplete filmography:

• Palomita Blanca (1973)
• La Vocation suspendue [The Suspended Vocation] (1977)
• L'Hypothèse du tableau volé [The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting] (1979)
• The Golden Boat (1990)
• Généalogies d'un crime [Genealogies of a Crime] (1997)
• Le Temps retrouvé [Time Regained] (1999)
• Comédie de l'innocence [Comedy of Innocence] (2000)
• Klimt (2006)

The Latest:
(1990) After spending $1000 on sets, Ruiz attracted Manhattan performance artists from the Wooster Group, author and lesbian anti-hero Kathy Acker, porn fave Annie Sprinkle and fellow directors Jim Jarmusch & Barbet Schroeder for this paean to the Mexican soap opera, crossed with "The Untouchables." Vicious philosophers, selectively deaf TV stars, and a mysterious trail of boots lead into the unknown...

After several years producing and directing low-budget telefilms, he began working with larger budgets and "name" stars in 1996 with Three Lives and Only One Death, Marcello Mastroianni's penultimate film. The following year he directed Genealogies of a Crime, starring Catherine Deneuve.

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican filmmaker, producer, director, writer, editor and film score composer. He is most well known for his recent films Babel, 21 Grams and Amores Perros. He also directed several short films and worked as a TV producer, radio DJ and TV commercial cameraman before breaking into the movie business. Iñárritu studied filmmaking in the United States and his last two films were made in Hollywood. He has been nominated for two Oscars (he was the first Mexican to ever receive an Oscar nomination for best Director!) and his work has won numerous awards outside the US.

One cool thing that I learned when researching Alejandro González Iñárritu is that his first feature-length film, Amores Perros, which is also the only one of his that I've seen so far, was originally conceived of as 11 short films. After 3 years and 36 drafts of the scripts, he and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga decided to narrow down the 11 shorts and expand them into three interlocking narratives for the feature-length film, which eventually earned him enough acclaim that he was able to launch his career internationally.

Trinh Minh-ha

Trinh Minh-ha:

Trinh Minh-ha is a filmmaker, author, composer, and professor of Women's Studies and Rhetoric at UCBerkley.
She has made 7 films and written 10 books.
Her most famous film is Reassemblage, but she has won awards, such as the blue ribbon at the AF&V festival for her other work.

Filmography:

Night Passage (2004)
Fourth Dimension (2001)
A Tale of Love (1995)
Shoot for the Contents (1991)
Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989)
Naked Spaces - Living is Round (1985)
Reassemblage (1982)


*Please note that there is not too much info on her on the internet so this is a little sparse. Many apologies.

Reel Grrls rocked the FCC hearing!!

I am so proud of all of you Reel Grrls, thanks for coming out and being a part of the people's voice demanding a stop to media consolidation!

Check out our coolness:

Sami Kubo's testimony is at about 4:23 in this clip


Lila's testimony is at about 5:37 in this one (I love how you can see the RG crew in the background giving me a standing ovation afterwards, thanks guys!)


Camille, testifying as Sami Muilenburg (or maybe not), can be found rockin the house at about 5:05 in the 8th audio file (3rd from the bottom) on this page.

Monica, dressed as a Media Consolidation zombie, was quoted in The Seattle Times AND King 5 News (hmmm... both the exact same quote... more evidence of media consolidation or not?)

You can also see some fabulous zombie footage (and lots more video footage from the FCC hearing) on the homepage of SCAN. The media cheer video is called "FCC 2007 Protest 1" and the zombie video is "FCC 2007 Protest 2." Note that I threw these clips together really quickly for folks to grab footage from, they're not fully edited pieces, but you can also download the full resolution video files if you'd like to use them yourself here.

And if all that's not enough FCC hearing coverage and you STILL want more, then as always check out the Reclaim the Media website.

Phew! That oughta keep you busy for awhile. Thanks again, RG, for caring so much about media justice, and for making your media activisty instructor so damn proud!