CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via BFI.

"The best films of the year – the overground, the underground, the widely released and the still emerging, from oldtimers and first-timers – as chosen by 112 of our international contributors and colleagues." Read full list in the BFI website. E.T.P. 6'

Photo via Film Reference.

Open Culture has compiled in its platform 8 Free Films by Dziga Vertov. "We offer a roundup of all the Dziga Vertov movies currently viewable free online, a collection that allows you to watch and judge for yourself whether he and his collaborators succeeded in making a dent in what he called “the film drama, the Opium of the people.” Despite the thoroughly low-tech nature of these pictures, even by documentary standards, you may find yourself moved after having watched them — not necessarily by the Soviet causes he sometimes extolled, but by his cinematic rallying cry: “Down with bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios. Long live life as it is!” Have a look at a couple of films and access the links in Open Culture. E.T.P. something between 10' and 9 hours.

Photo via NPR.

Nice review of Venezuelan director Mariana Rondón's latest film Pelo Malo in NPR. "Pelo Malo" means "bad hair" in Spanish. It's a term that is commonly used in Latin America, and it's also the title of a new Venezuelan film that tackles racism and homophobia . . . Pelo Malo is a rare look into identity politics among Latin Americans, where racism is often a taboo topic. Despite the taboo, director Mariana Rondón says, the term "pelo malo" is common currency. "The origin of the term is very offensive. It's very racist. But it's also true that in Venezuela, we are so mixed, that in every single family there is someone with ... 'bad hair.' We joke that the second most profitable industry, after oil, is hair straightening. Because everyone here wants to have straight hair." Read or listen to the full article in NPR. E.T.P. 4'

Photo via The Conversation.

Russia has seen a surge in such performance art actions while individual liberties have been rapidly diminishing. Performance art has often been used in ways that resemble protest and so it’s unsurprising that it is often perceived as hooliganism. But these very dramatic and public forms of art are actually connected to a long line of performance traditions in Russia that date back to the revolutionary era. Read Chopped earlobes and the long history of political shock art in Russia by Amy Gryzbel, lecturer in History of Art at University of Aberdeen in The Conversation. E.T.P. 5'

Whilst Oxford's dictionary word of the year was vape, which is new okay, but is very much meh, Dictionary.com's one was exposure, which I though it was more interesting. This is why: "In 2014, the Ebola virus, widespread theft of personal information, and shocking acts of violence and brutality dominated the news. Vulnerability and visibility were at the core of the year’s most notable headlines. Encapsulating those themes, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2014 is exposure." Read full article in Dictionary's Blog. E.T.P. 5'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Dazed Magazine.

Dazed Magazine has a summer project called States of Independence  where they have invited their "favourite 30 American curators, magazines, creatives and institutions to takeover Dazed for a day." One of them is Kenneth Goldsmith, author of one of the books that helped shape my thesis, my thoughts around writing in the digital era, and justifies somehow the appropriation and re-contextualization used in the Procrastinator as a way of generating new content: "Uncreative Writing." According to Dazed, he is on a mission to tell us why we should care about poetry while featuring the diet poems of Mira González, as well as some Microsoft Word poems and found poems.  In Dazed words: "artists are flocking to poetry these days precisely because it's an orphaned and evacuated space, ready to be repurposed with poetry that looks nothing like the kind of poetry you see (but don't read) drizzled across the pages of The New Yorker. Instead of sonnets, we see apps, image macros, hacked photoshopped images, found language, hardcore programming, and YouTube videos posing as poetry. Suddenly, poetry looks interesting again." Read full article and all the poems in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. 12'

Photo: Chronicle of a summer. Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, France 1961

The BFI polled 340 critics, programmers and filmmakers in the search for authoritative answers to the question: What are the greatest documentaries of all time? Nick James believes that one of the most remarkable things about the Top 50 documentaries list is that it feels so fresh. "One in five of the films chosen were made since the millennium, and to have a silent film from 1929 at the top of the list is an absolute joy. That allusive essay films feature so strongly throughout demonstrates that nonfiction cinema is not a narrow discipline but a wide open country full of explorers." Some of the documentaries are classics like Chronicle of a summer, The Thin Blue Line, Sans Soleil and, of course, Nanook of the North. On my side, I still have a lot of documentaries to see, which is of course, great news. Read the list with comments from the curators and prepare for a well documented summer here. E.T.P. Days (months?).

Images: stills from Emoji Among Us via Laughingsquid.

"Emoji Among Us” is a nature documentary parody by stock footage company Dissolve that explores the role of emoji in the world. The parody was inspired by the work of Sir David Attenborough, and features stock footage from Dissolve’s library. E.T.P. 2' http://laughingsquid.com/emoji-among-us-a-nature-documentary-parody-exploring-the-role-of-emoji-in-the-world/

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo Henri Cartier-Bresson via rendezvousenfrance.com

In case you needed an excuse to visit Paris soon, this is the one! Sean O'Hagan writes in The Guardian: "The subtitle of the Pompidou Centre's retrospective of the 20th century's best-known photographer could be: Almost Everything You Know About Henri Cartier-Bresson is Wrong. Or, at least, Long Overdue a Rethink. Its curator, Clement Cheroux, has risen to the unspoken challenge that any Cartier-Bresson exhibition now presents: how to shed new light on the life and work of an artist who so defined the medium that yet another celebration of his genius might seem superfluous." Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. 8'

Photo: Belle de Jour still via BFI.

Since th BFI's movie lists are always great, specially when it comes to meaningful procrastination, this week we are sharing one that will definitely catch your attention: 10 Great Films About Sex. "As Lars von Trier’s Nymph()maniac arrives in cinemas and on the BFI Player, we survey sex on film with a list of some of cinema’s naughtiest classics. Warning: this feature contains explicit imagery!" Read the list in the BFI website. E.T.P. 12'

HER still via happynicetimepeople.com

Emily Ruscoe makes a really interesting comparison in the blog Mediander between Spike Jonze's Her and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.  "Her, Spike Jonze’s new movie about love and tech, may not be too substantive, but it’s very pretty to look at. The action takes place in a futuristic yet familiar Los Angeles filled with jewel-like, colossal buildings and smoggy skies, which has drawn comparisons to another sci-fi flick set in L.A.—Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner." Read full article in Mediander. E.T.P. 3'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo House of Cards via The Atlantic.

And one of the most awaited shows on this new sort of TV that is not aired on TV, House of Cards just started last Friday on Netflix. Spencer Hornhaber in The Atlantic is watching and reviewing all episodes. At the moment of writing this he's already in episode 08. Have a look at his reflexions in The Atlantic. E.T.P. unknown as the article is still being updated. Christopher Hooton also talks about HoC "ferocious return" and its "malignant first episode" in The Independent. E.T.P. 4' (Major spoilers in both articles, of course).

Photo: Ellen Page via The Guardian.

Lovely Ellen Page, has announced that she is gay. "Speaking in Las Vegas on Friday, at a Human Rights Campaign-organised Time to Thrive conference of counsellors who work with teenagers who identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual or queer, she said: “I’m here today because I’m gay, and because maybe I can make a difference.” Read full article in The Guardian. E.T.P. (with video) 12'

Stranger by the Lake still via BFI.

10 great French gay films. As acclaimed thriller Stranger by the Lake is released in cinemas nationwide and on the BFI Player, we look back at the best of French gay cinema. See the list in the BFI website. E.T.P. 6'

TO DO (OR NOT TO DO) LIST

The 57th BFI London Film Festival starts this Wednesday. Have you booked your tickets yet? Click here to see the films in Official Competition, and here to see the full schedule and events info. If you watch a movie at the LFF and want to send us a mini post about it, please do so!

Image: Namasté via Lomography Spain.

If you are in Madrid this next Thursday 10th of October, you shouldn't miss the opening of our lomographers friends Susielomovitz y Mr. Eich's Namasté. This exhibition is the result of mixing their two passions: analogue photography and Bikram yoga. Have a look in Lomography Argensola Madrid.

Image via Hendricks.

From the 11th to 13th of October, HENDRICK'S CARNIVAL of KNOWLEDGE opens its doors to the curious citizens of London as part of the city's Cocktail Week. From the chemistry of cocktails or an anthology of gin, to some very interesting insights about how to die properly in a London way or some nonsense poetry, this carnival looks like the place to be next weekend. Wisdom of the most eye-opening variety will be provided by luminaries, visionaries and deviants such as The Idler Academy, Antique Beat & The Enlightenment Café; and for the stimulation of the taste-buds as well as the mind, HENDRICK's Parlour Bar will be open to the all from Noon till 10pm each day. Check the details in Hendrick's website.

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

American (Wet) Dream. Pornhub recently published a rundown of the three most popular (erotic) search terms per state, and FlowingData’s Nathan Yau converted them into a series of stark maps. Fast Company points out that apparently Americans taste in pornography is definitely Geo-located. MILFs for instance are popular almost everywhere, except out West, and Wyoming, ever the cowboy state, has a thing for “smoking.” Read full article in Fast Company.

Photo: Far from Heaven (2002) via BFI.

To help us cope with the fact that Summer is over, Samuel Wigley shares with us in the BFI website a list of 10 great films set during the Autumn, the season when for a brief, resplendent moment, colour is everywhere, but then the leaves fall, the nights darken, and a mantle of melancholy settles over the earth in anticipation of the descent into winter. Read his list in the BFI website.

 Photo: Woody Allen via Esquire.

"Marshall McLuhan predicted books would become art objects at some point. He was right." This is just one of the interesting things that Woody Allen said in his Esquire interview in the September number. Read more about Woody's thoughts on marriage, the Acropolis, showers, sandwiches and other random but cool topics in Esquire. Also Blue Jasmine is already on the UK cinemas, have you seen it yet?

 Photo: Pelo Malo via TIFF.

Venezuela’s “Pelo Malo” (Bad Hair) has won the top prize at the San Sebastian film festival in northern Spain. The director Mariana Rondón collected the 61st Golden Shell for her project. Read full San Sebastián's article in Screen Daily, a review of 'Pelo Malo' in Variety or an interesting article in Spanish in El País.