The Zombies - “Gotta Get A Hold Of Myself”
Live from the Hippodrome during the summer of 1966. The only color footage of the band known to exist from this era.
CITY PLANNING
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LINKS
“Private Views” by Barbara Crane 1980-1984
A series of intimate closeups taken in and around Chicago during the early 80’s using a Polaroid camera. Barbara Crane’s amazing “Private Views” captures small details that suggest something much larger. See them all here.
COLD WATER directed by Oliver Assayas (1994)
Oliver Assayas’s contribution to the anthology “Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge”, which I referenced a few years ago in a post regarding Claire Denis’s U.S GO HOME.
This clip contains the epic and legendary party scene at the center of the film, which stands alone, and is easily one of my favorite filmmaking sequences of all-time.
“I Guess That Don’t Make A Loser”
The Brothers of Soul
The Brothers scored a minor hit with this 1968 Boo Records release. They also served as songwriting team, most notably for Ruby Andrews, penning most of the tracks she cut for the Chicago based Zodiac Records. Including “You Made A Believer (Out of Me), sampled by Q-Tip on “Won’t Trade”in 2008.
“The Fire Last Time: LIFE in Watts, 1966” - by Bill Ray
“The August 1965 Watts Riots (or Watts Rebellion, depending on one’s perspective and politics), were among the bloodiest, costliest and — in the five decades since they erupted — most analyzed uprisings of the notoriously unsettled mid-1960s. Ostensibly sparked by an aggressive traffic stop of a black motorist by white cops — but, in fact, the combustive result of decades of institutional racism and profound neglect on the part of the city’s power brokers — the six-day upheaval resulted in 34 deaths, more than 3,400 arrests and tens of millions of dollars in property damage (back when a million bucks still meant something). A year after the flames were put out and the smoke cleared from the southern California sky, LIFE revisited the scene of the devastation for a “special section” in its July 15, 1966, issue that the magazine called “Watts: Still Seething.” A good part of that special section featured a series of remarkable color photos made by Bill Ray on the streets of Watts: pictures of stylish, even dapper, young men making and hurling Molotov cocktails; of children at play in back yards and in rubble-strewn lots; of wary police and warier residents; of a community struggling to save itself from drugs, gangs, guns, idleness and decades of despair.”
For the rest of the series click HERE.
AUDITION directed by Miloš Forman (1963)
Miloš Forman’s debut, generally credited with launching the Czech New Wave, is comprised of two short films, Audition and If There Were No Music. Both interweave footage of performance—brass band rehearsal and talent shows auditions—with a loose narrative. Like his work later in the decade both are playful, heartbreaking, and very funny as they chronicle youthful rebellion and the desire to escape the dreariness of every day life.
“On the East Side”
Brian Hyland
In 1970 the former teen pop star—best known for novelty songs like “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”—was twenty-seven and struggling to establish himself as a serious artist. He’d released Stay and Love Me All Summer the prior year and while it was still sunshine pop there was an unmistakeable melancholy and maturity not present in his early work. He hoped to continue his evolution and turned to Del Shannon to produce Brian Hyland, his self-titled effort on which “On the East Side” appeared. Shannon added a touch of psychedelica, pairing it with a power pop sensibility and sweeping string arrangements. The resulting album, which contained both covers and original material, sounded not unlike Shannon’s own records from the era. ‘On the East Side’, a collaboration between the two, would have seemed a cinch to become a huge pop hit. But the only track from the record to find any popular success was a cover of “Gypsy Woman” and so Hyland was dropped by his label and spent the rest of decade without a record deal.
The New World directed by Terrence Malick (2005)
I remember when I first saw The New World in a Brooklyn theater circa 2005 it struck that this final sequence, underscored by Wagner’s Das Rheingold, felt like something of a visual equivalent to the final passage of The Great Gatsby. Perhaps it was simply the literal reference by Fitzgerald to the ‘new world’, but more than that both evoke a promise and endless possibility that remains forever just out of reach, that we fail to grasp and squander because of our own failings and frailties.
“Eventually I shook free of my self-absorption and came to grasp what she was saying, aided by how slowly she was speaking. That summer her brother died—she was referring to his death as if we’d discussed it before—and she was looking through his stuff, records and books, deciding what to take with her when the family moved, she had found a notebook, a notebook from school, what grade she wasn’t sure, and it had numbers written all over its pages: 1066, 312, 1936, 1492, 800, 1776, etc. At first she didn’t know what these were, didn’t recognize them as years, significant years he probably had to memorize for a history test, and so had written the numbers again and again, filling an entire notebook with them, and she convinced herself that it was an elaborate coded message, a message to her. She must have known, she was sixteen, that this was impossible, but she had let herself be convinced, and the notebook became her treasured possession. She never attempted to decipher the code, the point was not to read the message; the point was that there was an ongoing conversation between her and her brother, an unconcluded correspondence.”
— Ben Lerner “Leaving the Atocha Station”
A Short Dictionary Of Misunderstood Words
Cemetery
“Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colourful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkleswith tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children’s ball. Yes, a children’s ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler’s time, in Stalin’s time, through all the occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.
For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.”
— Milan Kundera “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”
“May, 1979” by Vivian Maier
By now Vivian Maier’s story has been told many times. A nanny in Chicago during the 50’s and 60’s, she was a prolific photographer, taking 100,000 + photos over the course of her life. But, intensely private she showed her work to no one.
It was only by chance that John Maloof stumbled across 30,000 of her prints and negatives at an auction in 2007, where he purchased them all for a mere $380. His discovery lead to international attention, shows acround the world, the publication of a book, and now a new documentary.
“Witchi Tai To”
Harpers Bizarre
This track from Harpers Bizarre, known mostly for sunshine pop and Simon & Garfunkel covers, is a wistful little masterpiece. A perfect ephemeral moment.
ÊTRE ET AVOIR directed by Nicolas Philibert (2002)
What makes this documentary particularly wonderful is that it captures learning in action. Here in George Lopez’s one room school house in rural France we actually witness the children wrestling with new ideas. We see the sort of gentle dedication and patience that is required to teach, a long process of understanding and guiding and building relationships that goes well beyond a series of lessons or tests.
