For you Iron Man fans, this is a great new short above – from Patrick Boivin – that’s currently making the rounds. It’s charming (in a loud, Hollywood way) and features some high-end FX. We hope you enjoy it.
If you’re looking for an edgier form of Hollywood satire, you can also try out the Flora and Fawna web series from Crunch Entertainment.
Marc Aramian, Veronica DiPippo and their team have put together a funny and salty series there.
“Flora and Fawna” features strong language and adult situations so viewer discretion is advised …
By Govindini Murty. Israel has had tremendous problems in recent years getting any fair treatment in the Western media or in Western popular culture. As we have already well documented here at Libertas Film Magazine, the Western cinema – in particular Hollywood – is going out of its way to portray Islamic radicalism in a positive light (just look at the pro-Islamist messages in recent films like the remake of Clash of the Titans, Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven, and even Avatar). These films all portray Islamic radicals to varying degrees as noble freedom fighters, oppressed minorities, and virtuous warriors against the hegemonic forces of the West. What is so sad is that there is a democracy in the Middle East, Israel, that is truly made up of an oppressed, persecuted minority – the Jewish people – who receive no such favorable treatment from the Western cultural establishment.
This is all the more tragically clear in the media’s biased coverage of the current crisis off the coast of Israel. Since LFM is not a political site but a film and culture site, I wanted to let our readers know about some good documentaries that will shed some light on the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The barrage of lies about Israel by the Western media and cultural establishment is so great that even the most well-reasoned books and columns by pro-Israel commentators have little chance of getting through to the public. That’s why supporters of Israel need to pursue artistic and cultural means to communicate why Israel is worth defending.
Here are seven documentaries you should see in order to understand what is actually going on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We’re proud to have shown a number of these films at the Liberty Film Festival, and you can buy most of them in our LFM Store above. Note, these films are listed in the order that people should ideally see them, starting with the earlier documentaries and proceeding then to the later ones: Continue reading 7 Films about Israel & The Background to the Current Gaza Crisis
By Jason Apuzzo.Prince of Persia is opening this weekend, a Jerry Bruckheimer film based on a video game and starring an American guy of Swedish descent in the lead. If that’s your type of cinema, feel free to knock yourself out this weekend – but I thought that for the heck of it I would briefly review a marvelous film that’s still out in theaters right now and that was made by (and about) actual Persians. It’s a little indie gem called No One Knows About Persian Cats, which won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Persian Cats is about two young Iranian rock musicians – a naive young guy and his cute, shrewd girlfriend – who are planning an indie rock gig for themselves in London just after having been released from prison. The film takes place in the underground rock scene of Tehran, where such imprisonments are apparently common. Hoping to snag fake passports and visas for themselves, the two young people spend much of the film meandering through the underground rock scene of Tehran – much of which is literally underground – trying to convince other musicians to join them in their attempt to get out of the country.
What makes Persian Cats so compelling – even somewhat shocking – is how utterly Westernized the young kids and their musical compatriots are. There was a period of my life when I spent a lot of time around musicians, and Persian Cats almost feels like a documentary about struggling young musicians in New York or LA – except in this case, these young kids are literally struggling to launch their careers under a death threat. As tragic as the circumstances are, though, the film makes it abundantly clear that American culture – and the freedom it embodies – is seeping through the pores of Iranian society to a degree far beyond what the regime there can control.
Persian Cats is directed by Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq), and this is the second film of Ghobadi’s to deal with Iranian restrictions against women singing. [In Iran, it’s illegal for women to perform even traditional Persian music in public, so don’t expect Lady Gaga to appear there any time soon.] Ghobadi’s Marooned in Iraq dealt with a Kurdish man helping his ex-wife flee Iran subsequent to the ban on women performing. Persian Cats thematically picks up where that film left off, although this film is considerably more dynamic – and, indeed, more musical than its predecessor.
The film’s two leads are played by Negar Shaghaghi and Ashkan Koshanejad, both real-life figures of Iran’s alt-rock scene. In their mission to re-assemble their band (Take It Easy Hospital) and purchase forged passports and visas to exit the country, they encounter a variety of colorful figures – the most amusing being Nader (played by Hamed Behdad), a fast-talking agent-fixer. Behdad gives what is to me the stand-out performance of the film, particularly when at one point he grovels his way out of being lashed by the authorities.
Acting performances really are secondary, though, to the music and cinematography of the film. Cinematographer Turaj Mansuri draws deeply saturated colors out of the Tehranian night, and the indie-alt soundtrack features some nice numbers that are still swimming around in my head. The film is otherwise shot and edited very much like a documentary – and whereas the ‘documentary-realist’ style comes across in most films as an affectation, here it works perfectly. Persian Cats has a mellow, bouncy, improvised feeling to it – there’s not a moment that’s forced or contrived. And the acting itself feels improvised, although that may be because the cast members were apparently playing thinly veiled versions of themselves.
Persian Cats was co-written and executive produced by Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who was imprisoned in Iran last year on trumped-up ‘espionage’ charges. And there is, ultimately, an aura of the ex-patriot about the whole production. Persian Cats feels like a film made by – and for – a younger generation who have mentally and emotionally checked-out of contemporary Iran, even when they’re still living there. That’s both encouraging and disheartening. Persian Cats is ultimately a film about young kids living free lives … for as long as they can keep the cage door open. That cage door is always there, though, as certain events late in the film make poignantly clear.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this film for making such a light, sweet and stylish feature about what is otherwise an ongoing tragedy. Persian Cats is not going to bring down the regime in Tehran – but perhaps someday when the mullahs are gone, it will remind people that not even that horrible regime could stop young people from rocking.
No One Knows About Persian Catsis still playing in select theaters (see here), and the DVD will be available on July 26th. You can also catch it right now on video-on-demand on a variety of cable networks (I caught it recently in gorgeous high-definition on Cox cable).
[Editor’s note: the trailer above contains strong language and scenes of battlefield violence. Viewer discretion advised.]
By Jason Apuzzo. The trailer above is for a forthcoming on-line documentary series by independent filmmaker Danfung Dennis called Battle for Hearts and Minds. On July 2nd, 2009, four thousand US Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade launched a major helicopter assault into a Taliban stronghold in the Helmand River Valley in southern Afghanistan in order to break a military stalemate reached with the Taliban. Dennis was embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Company, as they were dropped 18 km behind enemy lines.
The series focuses on the sometimes contradictory roles played by the Marines as both warriors and statesmen in their effort to ‘win the hearts and minds’ of the Afghan people.
Based on the trailer, the series looks like it will be intense and compelling – and we look forward to its debut. You can read an interview with Dennis about his experiences with Echo Company here. In the interview Dennis goes to great lengths to describe how the Marines do everything possible to distinguish between friend and foe in Afghanistan in order to avoid civilian casualties – often a very difficult task when the enemy hides among civilians.
We are, as most people are aware, sorely lacking in good war reporting these days – i.e., reporting that lacks a political agenda, but also that captures the complexity of the situation we’re facing. I’m hoping this series gets some attention. From a photographic standpoint the series certainly looks extraordinary. Dennis shot the footage with a custom built rig using a Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70 f/2.8 L lens, Sennheiser ME-66 and G2 wireless system, Singh-Ray variable ND filter, and Beachtek 2XAs mounted on a Glidecam 2000 HD with custom made aluminum ‘wings.’
You can find out more information about the series here. Feel free to also follow Danfung Dennis on Twitter, or visit the Facebook page for The Battle for Hearts and Minds.
[Editor’s Note: this film short contains some scenes of violence. Viewer discretion advised.]
By Jason Apuzzo. Continuing on some themes raised by Govindini in her post below “Happiness Runs, Avatar & The Reality Behind Utopian Nature Cults,” we’ve decided to bring you “Sustainable Fred.” This is a very amusing short by filmmaker Trevor Wild about a young man who’s having a little trouble changing the world through enlightened ‘green living.’ It’s too bad he doesn’t live in Pandora.
I’m not sure today’s environmentalists always realize what kind of impression they create in the midst of their ongoing efforts to dictate how the rest of us live our daily lives (one thinks here of the extremely creepy, unfunny, totalitarian-chic ‘Green Police’ ads run by Audi during the Super Bowl). These endlessly snotty, moralizing, insufferable do-gooders are essentially whom “Sustainable Fred” is satirizing … and without giving too much away, it’s delicious to see Fred get his comuppance late in this film.
[Editor’s Note: we were so taken last week by Tyler Ginter’s “Why We Fight” short that we decided to post another short video of his today. It’s a video entitled “What is Combat Camera,” and we asked LFM Contributor ‘Max Garuda’ to comment on it. ‘Max’ is a veteran of multiple UN-sponsored enforcement actions, and is an expert in the areas of new media and national security.]
“A well-focused Combat Cameraman can tip the scales in the battle for words, deeds and images. Combat Camera in most cases is the main effort.” -Maj. Matthew Yandura, 173rd ABCT Information Operations Officer
By Max Garuda. For a mini-doc/internal promotional piece, “What is Combat Camera” is great. Excellent production values, nicely edited, and showcasing some great photography. But since Ginter has distributed it via Vimeo to a wider viewership than its original, small, DOD (Department of Defense) – internal audience, it’s worth looking at for broader implications.
The most striking statement and image comes early in the piece. The narrator, Major Yandura, commends the combat cameraman, stating that “combat camera soldiers think differently, but more importantly they see the battlefield differently”. It’s this difference that makes them a force multiplier for unit commanders and grants them the basic toolkit to become effective strategic communicators.
The most striking image in the entire 4 minute video punctuates Yandura’s compliment: a soldier in digital cammies rests on one knee in foreground, his back to the camera, facing a housing compound that fills the entire background of the photo. The contrast of the grey-clad soldier and the monochromatic tan compound is striking, and highlights how out-of-place the soldier seems. At the same time, this image shows a different battlefield than that which CNN or Al-Jazeera is likely to show. No menacing bearded and robe-clad Al-Qaeda fighters training with automatic weapons and RPGs; no running, shooting and chaos. Simplicity, calm and domesticity prevail, reminding us that there are everyday people trying to live their lives amidst the raging conflict around them. Continue reading Shaping the War Narrative: Tyler Ginter’s “What is Combat Camera?”
If you’re looking for an edgier form of Hollywood satire, you can also try out the Flora and Fawna web series from Crunch Entertainment.
