George Washington: The Loss of All Things

George Washington is David Gordon Green’s acclaimed impressionistic Southern Gothic debut film, which one reviewer described as “within a heart-shot of William Faulkner.”  Green won the Best First Film prize from the New York Film Critics, the Discovery Award at Toronto and the Best Director Prize at The Newport film Festival.

David Gordon Green’s feature debut is a seamless blend of subjectivity, pseudo-documentary, evocation of childhood and mythopoeia.  In an impoverished small town in North Carolina, various misfit and poor children converse.  “Look at this place,” one boy says to another. “It looks like two tornadoes came through here.”  The town is dilapidated; one of the “tornadoes” may have been the Great Depression.  Shots of railroad tracks suggest dreams of getting out.  But during the course of the film, death hovers: a boy dies; as a result, another boy feels that God’s judgment is close; another boy almost dies; a boy’s dog dies.  The underlying theme of George Washington is clearly “the loss of all things.”

The videos presented here include the hypnotic opening sequence of David Gordon Green’s auspicious debut film George Washington, another video from the film described as an influential scene in modern cinema and an interview with Charlie Rose, where Green talks about his film George Washington.

George Washington: The Loss of All Things

George Washington: An Influential Scene in Modern Cinema

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Charlie Rose: David Gordon Green Talks About “George Washington”

(Charlie Rose Interview: March 8, 2001)

A detailed review of George Washington can be read in The New York Times here.

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A Beautiful Mind: Stephen Wiltshire Draws New York City from Memory

Steven Wiltshire (born 1974) is an accomplished architectural artist who has been diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder.  Wiltshire’s work has been the subject of many television documentaries; neurologist Oliver Sacks praised his artistic work in the chapter Prodigies in his book An Anthropologist on Mars.  Stephen Wiltshire’s many published art books have included Cities (1989), Floating Cities (1991) and Stephen Wiltshire’s American Dream (1993).

Wiltshire is presently working to complete his last drawing in a series of city panoramas, this time of his spiritual home, New York City.  Wiltshire’s collection of  already completed works depicting some of the world’s most iconic cities already includes London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome, Madrid, Frankfurt, Dubai, and Jerusalem.  A 20-minute fly-over Manhattan this past weekend provided the memory for a 20-foot panorama of the city that he’s drawing throughout this week at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute.  Viewers can watch his progress on a live web cam or visit the Institute while he works from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday, Oct. 26 to Friday, Oct. 30, 2009.

A Beautiful Mind: Stephen Wiltshire Draws New York City from Memory

Slide Show: A Beautiful Mind/Stephen Wiltshire Draws New York City from Memory

(Please Click on Image to View Slide Show)

Viewers can watch his progress on a live web cam while he works from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday, Oct. 26 to Friday, Oct. 30, here.

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We Were Once A Fairytale: The Artist’s Coup de Grâce

We Were Once A Fairytale is a new short film directed by Spike Jonze, in collaboration with singer-rapper Kanye West.  The film is set in a hip-hop nightclub, which is overflowing with drinks and beautiful ladies.  From the very beginning of the film, the action is fragmented, the background music is tweaked to a level of disturbing distortion and the lighting conjures up delusional effects.  Jonze’s filmmaking cinematography and sound design skills authentically render the feeling of being extremely bewildered in a disorienting hot-spot nightclub.

The short film attempts to lampoon Kanye West’s well-known arrogance by evincing more self-conceit and self-deprecation, with a bizarre, hallucinatory ending that features a small demon-like furry rodent and a form of Samurai seppuku/hari-kari.  At the beginning of the film, Kanye drunkenly staggers around the club while one of his songs plays in the background, asking everyone if they like the tune and inappropriately trying to hit on various women in the club.  Later the scene changes, and Kanye thinks that he’s ended up  in a VIP room for a sexual tryst with a beautiful young woman, only to wake up startled and dejected when he discovers that she was really only the couch.  At that point, the movie spirals out of control, as Kanye rushes downstairs to the bathroom, vomits torrents of red paper rose petals and curls up on the bathroom floor.

At the very end of the film, what can only be described as a demonic monkey pops up to torment the Heartless hit-maker.  The heavily symbolic birth/ death scene at the conclusion of the film is quite disorienting, but one that is to be expected from the envelope-pushing Spike Jonze, who always shies away from the more obvious imagery.  In lampooning West’s self-indulgent public behaviors and image, Jonze transforms Kanye West into a more sympathetic character, at least on film, helping the singer to rid himself of whatever demons reside within him in a cathartic, moving and powerful final scene.

In summary, We Were Once A Fairytale is certainly not a children’s fairytale movie, but rather a fairly disturbing, possibly awesome, but unquestionably super-bizarre work of art from director Spike Jonze.

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We Were Once A Fairytale: The Artist’s Coup de Grâce

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Articles of Faith: The Sacred Personalities of Chicago’s African-American Storefront Churches

Photography by:  Dave Jordano

The Storefront Churches of Chicago is an exquisite photographic documentary by photographer Dave Jordano, which is contained in his recently published book, Articles of Faith.  His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Northwestern University, among others.  Jordano’s powerful and reverent images in this work capture the small details that make the church spaces unique, familiar and alive; Jordano shows us it’s not only how, but where congregations pray that defines their faith.  Describing this work, Jordano observes that, “There is a long history of small storefront churches in urban areas throughout America.  The great migration of African-Americans to the north during the last century has definitely contributed to this.  Even after Blacks moved north, they still encountered much racial tension and segregation, creating isolation and economic hardship within their communities.  Because of this, many groups couldn’t afford to build a large church, so the idea of reusing small empty storefronts in depressed areas where rents were low became the catalyst for their reuse.  It’s a cultural phenomenon that still resonates today and has become a vital component within the cultural fabric of poor Black urban communities.”

Jordano photographed the churches mostly empty in order to capture interior images that revealed the unique personality of each sacred space.  In this way, the manner in which each pastor adorns and decorates a space is a reflection of their religious ideology, their concept of what is appealing and attractive to others, and of how that space can make others feel comfortable and leave them with feelings of importance and hope.  Perhaps more significantly, he documented these spaces in order to illuminate their positive influences as pillars of community stability and support within poor Black neighborhoods, especially where crime, prostitution and drugs are often right outside the front door.

When these elegantly refined photographs of the sacred rooms are viewed as “portraits,” they resonate with their creators’ personalities.  Seemingly insignificant items such as the ripped and folded-up paper song sheet that a young girl is holding so delicately between her fingers become important documents that signify identity. The hand-written titles are someone’s favorite songs to sing.  It may be only a piece of paper, but its history is profound.  Many of these little churches displayed portraits of the churches’ founders, to pay tribute or memorialize them.  Some of them were photographs, some were paintings on the walls; all of them were signs of respect and testaments to the importance of the here and now, tributes to the day-to-day guiding moral principles of the leader of the church.

Music: Mahalia Jackson/Amazing Grace

Slide Show: Articles of Faith/The Sacred Personalities of Chicago’s African-American Storefront Churches

(Click Image to View Slide Show)

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