In One Eye, Out The Other

50 Documentaries of the Decade

Last week Paste declared their 25 Documentaries of the Decade. To be honest it was a bit of a disappointingly obvious list, in terms of safely including most of the biggest docs of the decade. Every film on their list is a great documentary but there were also a great amount of other films that possibly should have seen a mention. I tried to limit to 25 but it's just impossible. This isn't necessarily in any order, I hate the idea of saying one is better than the other, especially when you're talking 10 years of filmmaking and also the sheer ...

Research Process: Clip – Encounters at the End of the World

My friend, and filmmaking partner, Jemma has set me the task of showing her documentaries she hasn't seen so that we can look at visuals and filming techniques for a documentary we are currently in the research stage for. Jemma has largely always focused on current affairs TV docs, as that is her main area of interest, and has little knowledge when it comes to feature documentaries. I don't see this as a bad thing and it means I get a chance to re-watch a lot of films I love, so I've begun trying to think of particular films or ...

Remembering Dennis Stock

Magnum Photographer Dennis Stock sadly died today. Stock started his career as an apprentice to Life magazine photographer Gjon Mili and joined Magnum in 1951. Although best known for his intimate portraits of James Dean he was also a prolific Jazz photographer taking some of the most iconic Jazz portraits in history for his book Jazz Street. in 1968 he founded the production company Visual Objectives and shot several documentaries but returned to Magnum to serve as president of Magnum's film and new media division in 1969 and 1970. Stock generated a book or an exhibition almost every year since the ...

May 23 1 comments

Uncategorized

The Kings of Convenience – Soirée de Poche #11

Kings of Convenience

Seeing Kings of Convenience at the Barbican was one of my favourite moments of last year. They completely blew me away and I was in complete awe of how impressive a show can be when there are only two men and two guitars on stage. This video is the next best thing to experiencing that in person and finding this after one of the most tiring weekends of my life was absolute bliss.

It’s worth every second of its 26 minute duration, a definite must-see if you’re a KoC fan or an Erlend Oye fan in general (how you couldn’t be, especially the latter, does not compute with my brain).

Enjoy!

oh and if you are a lover of all things Erlend and haven’t visited his website of late, do it just to rollover France – website

(from headunderwater via rawkblog)

Mar 17 0 comments

Photography

Photo-a-Day 17th March

So it’s the second day and I’m already slightly cheating. I’m in the process of attempting to sort through my things before I move house in a few weeks and I keep finding unprocessed rolls of film (and more dvds of documentaries than I ever thought possible to own, not complaining). I got two rolls developed today, one turned out not to be mine and the other contained the photos below, which I took about a year ago just after I got back from the Hurricane Ike filming debacle. The first two are my grandparents, and in life’s peculiar way they are very timely as my grandfather was in hospital this week for two fairly scary operations and today he came home, so it was wonderful timing to see these. The third photo is from a shoot I did for a friend’s documentary. Not very interesting out of context but it reminded me how much I like photos that are slightly out of focus. I will never see my photography as something to consider professionally, mainly because I will never be good enough, but also because I like flaws too much and this was an example of that.

I have no excuses tomorrow so we’ll see what happens.

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Mar 17 0 comments

Photography

Crazy Photo-a-Day attempt

I need to take more photos. It’s something that has slipped of late and I really have no excuse for it. So I’m setting myself the impossible challenge of taking at least one photo a day. I’m sure I’ll struggle at this but it’s worth a go and as it’s just for practise if nothing else it’ll be good to just keep improving (hopefully).

As I’m fairly unwell and haven’t really left the house today (other than to get chips, but that doesn’t count) it’s been Henry who’s unfortunately been the focus. There is also the fact that I only have two weeks left with him before he has to go and live with my parents so I’m a little soppy towards him at the moment. But this is my photo for today. I’m going to be uploading them all to this set and see how I get on.

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Jan 13 1 comments

Documentary, Film, Photography

Remembering Dennis Stock

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Magnum Photographer Dennis Stock sadly died today.

Stock started his career as an apprentice to Life magazine photographer Gjon Mili and joined Magnum in 1951. Although best known for his intimate portraits of James Dean he was also a prolific Jazz photographer taking some of the most iconic Jazz portraits in history for his book Jazz Street. in 1968 he founded the production company Visual Objectives and shot several documentaries but returned to Magnum to serve as president of Magnum’s film and new media division in 1969 and 1970. Stock generated a book or an exhibition almost every year since the 1950s.

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“Art is a well-articulated manifestation of an aspect of life. I have been privileged to view much of life through my cameras, making the journey an enlightened experience. My emphasis has mainly been on affirmative reactions to human behavior and a strong attraction to the beauty in nature.”

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Tags: Dennis Stock, Magnum

Dec 31 1 comments

Documentary, Film

Top 15 Documentaries of 2009

1. Antoine

(Laura Bari, Canada, 2009) – website – trailer

As usual I couldn’t stick to convention and pick 10 or 20, but this is the list that just appeared when I began writing down the documentaries I’ve loved most this year. I know there are some big films missing but there are a few that I haven’t had a chance to see (Collapse, Objectified and Best Worst Movie being three in particular that I’m itching to get hold of.)

As with the decade list this isn’t in any order, I still can’t bring myself to do that. All of these films I absolutely adore and have championed to anyone who’ll listen. I really think it’s been a great year for documentary, there have been more feature docs than ever coming out of the UK, which is great as we tend to be broadcast oriented, and there have been a lot of great international co-productions that have really pushed some films that might not otherwise have been made. Also check out The Documentary Blog’s year end list here.

As with the decade list I’d love to know what you think I’m missing, I watched some great documentaries I might not have found off the back of all your suggestions so please feel free.