En Tus Brazos is a short animation about the Tango king and his partner. I will not tell you about it as anything I shall say would give away part of the story. The film is brilliantly done and the story is well chosen. The dance of life indeed!
The film is moody and intriguing. It was released in 2006 and created by Fx Goby, Mattheiu Landour and Edouard Jouret.
Creative Commons’ UK film competition “Mix & Mash” in association with Google UK invites short video submissions mixing and mashing digital content under the theme: Britannia Rules / Britannia Sucks .
Remixing digital content is the basis for this competition. Digital pictures, sound or films licensed through Creative Commons and Public Domain material need to be used. Entrants can use their creativity to remix the work of others with their own. The result will be a collage of original and re-used material.
Films will be made available online under a Creative Commons Noncommercial license. For terms and conditions, and more details go to:www.MixandMash.cc
Via Boing Boing I came across to Oscartorrents.com which is a new game from the people at The Pirate Bay. Basically its a search engine for films from this year’s Oscar nominees. But my favourite part is a piece of colorful, but well written propaganda filed under the heading ‘Legal’ Notice
To all intellectual property landlords: we are aware that OscarTorrents might annoy you — but contain your righteous indignation for a while, and think: we’re only linking to torrents that already exist. Face it: your membrane has burst, and it wasn’t us who burst it. Your precious bodily fluids are escaping.
You haven’t beaten us, so why not join us? Think of a new business model that doesn’t involve overpriced pieces of plastic and skanky cinemas hawking cheap carbohydrates while relying on $6/hr projectionists who can’t keep a film in focus — not to mention insulting your audiences by (to pick a few examples) surveilling us with nightvision glasses, searching bags, 30 minutes of commercials and bombarding us with ridiculous anti-piracy propaganda. Take a look at yourselves. Is it really any wonder we’re winning?
You got to hand it to them, they sure know how to annoy the people they dislike. They also know how to hit the right buttons.
Umeå Center for Interaction Technology (UCIT) have moved beyond the boring ads for education. Not content with advertising in the local paper the UCIT have created movies and posted them on YouTube. This is so much more fun than ordinary advertising done by universities.
One movie is a play on the great film “The Usual Suspects” and is called “The Usual Systemvetare” (bonus points for the No Rights Reserved sign at the end) and the second is a parody of the MTV show Cribs called “DMP Cribs“.
This is so much more fun than reading a formal ad in the local paper. Definitely a university that knows its own subject matter.
Ever wondered who gets to be portrayed as a brave resistance fighter and why? The role of the media in bringing â??the storyâ?? to the attention of the public is crucial. Unfortunately the public (thatâ??s us) is too occupied to carry out real investigations so we generally tend to accept anything the media tells us. Naturally with varying degrees of skepticism.
The skepticism depends to a large degree on several factors: the trustworthiness of the source, the importance of what is being said, the personal impact on our lives, our beliefs and cultures. But mostly we (the public) tend to accept what is being presented before us. Sad, but true.
The first main barrier is the choice to tell the story or not. Certain stories get a great deal of press attention while others get little or none. The next barrier is the presentation of the story. Will those resisting be described as the white or the black hats? Will resistance be legitimized or criminalized? The third barrier is the reconstruction after the fact. What will the victor say of the vanquished? What will be the persistent historic truth once the conflict is over?
Julius Caesar vanquished all of Gaul. After the task he wrote his account of the wars. Generations of children have since then learned their basic Latin language by reading exciting excerpts from his book. Even if we no longer learn Latin Caesars version of the truth remains the dominant story. He was â??forcedâ?? to attack the Gaul in order to protect the Gallic friends of Rome. The fact that he achieved personal fame, an enormous fortune and eventually sole power of Rome was beside the point.
The ability to resist does not build upon the ability to control the dominant truth â?? but no resistance (from a local protest to outright war) can afford to ignore it.
An exciting example of this is the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers from wikipedia:
The film depicts an episode in the war of independence in the then French Algeria, in the capital city of Algiers. It is loosely based on the account of one of the military commanders of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), Saadi Yacef, in his memoir Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger. The book, written by Yacef while a prisoner of the French, was meant as propaganda to boost morale among FLN militants. After independence, Yacef was released and became a part of the new government. The Algerian government gave its backing to have a film of his memoirs made and he approached the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project. The two dismissed Yacef’s initial treatment as biased toward the Algerian side. While sympathetic with the cause of Algerian nationalism, they insisted on dealing with the events from a distanced point-of-view.
Starbucks and the government of Ethiopia have been discussing the trademark rights to some of the finest coffee in the world. The root of the conflict is that Starbucks has not recognised Ethiopia’s ownership of the Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe names. (BBC News 26 October & 30 November 2006).
Oxfam began a campaign against Starbucks in order to help the Ethiopian coffee farmers. The idea is that if Starbucks signs the agreement with the Ethiopian intellectual property office the Ethiopian farmers will have more control over their products and this will result in better prices.
The Oxfam campaign is a typical online/offline mix with physical demonstrations being augmented with an information website containing documentation, photographs etc, and an â??act nowâ?? part where individuals can get involved on their own. A textbook example of an information campaign.
Oxfam have also created a video shot from their â??The Starbucks Day of Actionâ?? on December 16. The most natural place to leave a video on the Internet today is on the site YouTube so naturally Oxfam posted their video on YouTube (Watch it here). The video features demonstrators explaining their views and the positive reactions of people they meet.
What is interesting is not that the Internet is being used in this way but rather the Starbucks response. Starbucks created their own video response on December 20th featuring the Head of Starbucks Coffee team answering questions. They too posted their video on YouTube (watch the Starbucks response on YouTube).
What is unique about the whole story is the way in which Starbucks as a corporation reacted to the unconventional protest use of YouTube. By responding in kind they showed that they understand the way in which information is created and consumed on the Internet.
Digital video cameras – and in particular mobile phone video cameras – have made the documentation of resistance a necessity. Websites such as YouTube and Google video have created an infrastructure for sharing of the results. By removing the need for camera crews, production teams and broadcast capabilities the creation and distribution of film has fallen into the hands of the creative amateur. The implications of this is that both the protesters and their corporate targets need to quickly master and use this medium of communication.
Whatever the outcome of the Oxfam campaign â?? this is the future of resistance information warfare.
On the train traveling back from Stockholm I spent the time watching the Da Vinci Code (extended version no less). I must stay this â?? what a load of bull. OK so I did not expect much but the film could have been much better. It was long and boring and contained silly representations of everything from bankers to technology, from monks to academics.
The one highlight in the film was the quote: I have to get to a library â?? fast.
This must be one of the sillier film quotes I have heard in a long time…
You must have seen the books or heard the complaints about the US trying to figure out why they are so disliked (not only in Iraq). The US believed that they were liberators and were surprised how quickly they lost their liberation status. The operation to win the heats and minds of the people of Iraq has not worked and many wonder why.
But reading about the abuses caused by the military makes it easy to understand why the situation is going so badly. OK, so itâ??s a few bad apples you might argue. But unfortunately the few bad apples theory is wrong.
In a recent video posted to YouTube (watch it here) you can watch a scene where soldiers on a truck make children run for a bottle of water. The scene is being filmed by one of the soldiers on the truck. Both the cameraman and the soldier holding the water are laughing and commenting on how far the children will run for water. Itâ??s a great joke for them.
The soldiers conduct, while not illegal was most definitely immoral and seemingly oblivious to the reality that these children actually live in, a reality that was largely caused by them.
It also yet another severe contradiction to our so called image as “liberators” of the middle east.
The mainstream media has yet to pick up on the story though the Pentagon is investigating the videos and the evidence is in the videos the soldiers posted themselves online that anyone can see, for the time being.
Not only did the soldiers involved behave in an unacceptable manner they thought their conduct was so acceptable and so humorous that they posted it online for the entire world to see.
OK so you still want to claim that it’s a few bad apples. No it is not. The soldiers thought the scene was so funny and that their prank would be appreciated by so many that they posted it on YouTube themselves. This is not a case of people doing something wrong and attempting to hide it.
The poison that is being spread in the minds of these children will not wash away easily. It makes you wonder what their feelings towards the west will be in thirty years from now.
As mentioned earlier we are going to build a Freedom Toaster for the Technical Museum in Stockholm. Naturally itâ??s on a short deadline â?? life would be boring otherwise!
As part of the Toaster we also want to include more stuff than simply an operating system. We want to have texts, images, music and film. We also want the material to be Creative Commons licensed (or similar) so that people can do more than simply be passive consumers (if they choose to be more).
In an instance of synchronicity Рtoday I aimlessly browsed into the blog of an excellent artist & cartoonist and was blown away (who says procrastination is all bad?). Not only this but he happens to live in G̦teborg (same city as me).
Naturally I emailed him about the project and he is interested in helping to provide some of his artwork for the project. What can I say? Sometimes Fortuna plays along. Check out the artwork on Mattias Adolssonâ??s blog.
This week is university week at the University of Göteborg. This means that we give lots of lectures to the public. It’s fun to do this since the general public is demands a different form of presentation than students.
So in about twenty minutes I shall be holding a short lecture 45 minutes on the technical and legal implications and developments in file sharing.
To ensure that I catch and keep everyones attention I have lots of pictures of playmobile figues, at least 8 different pictures of Mona Lisa and a film of Bush & Blair singing a duet.
It should be fun – and maybe the audience will enjoy themselves…