indefatigablog

[in-dih-FAT-ih-guh-blog] :: tireless | unrelenting | not yielding to fatigue

IFP : Spotlight on Documentaries0

Posted by c in documentary, energy, evolution, thinfilms (Monday June 2, 2008 at 3:34 pm)

IFP

I submitted Tag to IFP for their Spotlight on Documentaries competition right before we left for Juneau - literally just in time to meet their deadline [special thanks to Z].

I’m hoping to be one of 75 films selected for admission to their Lab in order to develop it into a truly great film with a potential $10,000 in funding for post-production.

Send any spare good juju my way will ya?

: )

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c

Needs vs. Desires2

Posted by c in anthropology, documentary, education, history, influence, lunacy, sight and sound (Monday April 28, 2008 at 2:42 am)

Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) is considered one of the fathers of the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the psychology of the subconscious.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the ‘herd instinct’ that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis’s award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations.

He was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.

Uh…ok…so this guy is saluted for creating consumerism as we know it today?

When you have some time and interest, watch this [part 1 of 4] and decide how you feel about this for yourself :

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c

survival0

Posted by c in biology, documentary, sight and sound (Thursday April 24, 2008 at 8:16 am)

And here i thought eagles were just big rats with wings who only scavenged. Perhaps Alaskan eagles are more lazy? These golden eagles are rather ambitious - warning to some - this footage is rather graphic so watch at your own risk :

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c

StoryCorps : Listening is an Act of Love0

Posted by c in anthropology, documentary, genius, healthy, history, innovation (Sunday December 30, 2007 at 12:23 pm)

StoryCorps

Some cultures rely heavily on their oral traditions.

Native Alaskan cultures, for example, rely solely on the spoken word to pass stories and lessons down through the generations. They do this because they had no alphabets or formal methods to write them down until the immigration of white culture into Alaska.

There are certainly pros and cons to this. The cons are obvious : when someone dies, their stories die with them. The pros, however, are rich and are what gives our country today its many flavors, such as in this article about the diversity of modern-day Anchorage by Father Michael Oleksa.

Thinking about it, some of the greatest thinkers in history never wrote anything down. For example, Socrates and Jesus, among others. So I have to wonder : why wouldn’t they?

Because when you write something down it WILL be misinterpreted and possibly manipulated into something it wasn’t intended to be.

That’s what so cool about StoryCorps - regular people like you and me recording our conversations and stories for future generations to hear. Way less room for misinterpretation there.

What a great gift for a family member or good friend.

I love listening to people’s stories - they are some of the most authentic forms of entertainment on the globe at present. Perhaps the reason they’re so enjoyable is because it’s already familiar to us, embedded in some kind of collective memory - to listen just like back in the days of sitting by the fires that were built to keep predators at bay and then on to books that were read by fireside or bedside before children went to sleep and next the age of radio when people could still use imaginations to meet the storytellers halfway, filling in the images with their own minds as the tales unfolded.

Comparatively, television, the web and film don’t leave us much room to exercise what is arguably the most important muscle of them all : our imagination.

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c

Rules : Love and Hate0

Posted by c in anthropology, biology, documentary, sight and sound, thinfilms (Saturday December 29, 2007 at 1:46 am)

Taken from wikipedia’s definition of the game:

The rules of tag are very flexible. Rules such as the following can be either decided upon before the game, or added as the game progresses to make play more fair.

At the beginning of the game, one player is designated “it”. After “it” is chosen, the other players scatter. “It” must chase them down and tag them, usually by tapping them somewhere on the body. A tagged player becomes “it”, and the former “it” joins the others in trying to avoid being tagged. This process repeats until the game ends.

In a typical game of tag, no score is kept, nor is a winner selected. Those who can avoid being tagged or who can stay “it” for the least amount of time are generally regarded as the best players. There is usually no time limit; the end of the game is chosen arbitrarily, perhaps when the players tire of the game, when recess ends, or when players get called home for dinner.

An anomalous property of tag is that although being “it” gives a player the most influence upon the game and thus could be considered the best role to play, the position is stigmatized and avoided. While most agree that the temporary stigma associated with being “it” is harmless, some have criticized tag because, they allege, a player who is often pursued to be made “it” or who is physically slow can be singled out and embarrassed. Because of this, tag has been banned in some US schools. In some variations, if the number of people exceeds five, then you may not quit until you are tagged first.

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c

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