Mama

From Russia, by Yelena and Nikolay Renard with Ludmila Alyohina and Sergey Nazaro.

Ludmila Alyohina

With the film Mama, Russian husband-and-wife directing team Yelena and Nikolay Renard have achieved something quite remarkable: they have crafted an emotionally resonant and deeply insightful film out of the completely unremarkable lives of the two main characters, all without the use of dialogue. The story revolves around the complex co-dependent relationship between a mother and her morbidly obese 40-year-old son.

This spare film uses the camera to achieve an almost painterly quality in each shot. The static camera frames a scene and then waits patiently as the actors come and go, often leaving the scene devoid of characters, but never empty. In keeping the camera firmly rooted in one position and letting it dwell on the scene, the Renards achieve a smoldering intensity of feeling that many flashier films would die for. Exquisitely long takes, few edits and a complete lack of dialogue (although wonderful use of sound) allow the viewer to become engrossed in the lives of the two main characters and afford an almost extra-sensory glimpse into their thoughts and feelings. [...] (J. Scott Braid)

—from the Film Festival Guide

Mama was one of the most intimate and beautiful movies I have seen in a while. I’m eternally grateful the filmmakers allowed me the time to rest in these long scenes, and take in the images, details, mood and unspoken expressions.

Sometimes I discover a movie or a series of pictures that manages to bring back childhood memories, and I don’t mean vague or foggy memories, but very strong and vivid memories that include a sensation for all senses…memories of touch and smell, sounds or silence, facial expressions or movements that have become a person’s signature after many decades of daily routines.

Two examples — one movie that brought such memories back a few years ago was The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. This movie had nothing in common with Mama, but it activated a childhood memory of my granduncle’s apartment in this 5 or 6-family house. When I saw the stairway and some of the interior I was thrown back in time. Something similar happened when I discovered Helga Paris’ work. About two years ago I wrote a bit about her photographs which brought some memories back as well. If Helga Paris made a movie, I can only hope she would do it like Yelena and Nikolay Renard with Mama.

Mama by Yelena and Nikolay Renard

And Mama was even more astonishing as it brought my grandmother and her kitchen as I remember it back to life with an unbelievable number of similarities. From what she was wearing, the way she cooked instant coffee or tea, the way she prepared breakfast, the ritual before going to sleep, and the amount of movement and care, the routine of housekeeping, her facial expressions, even her hair, the kitchen interior with the old table and the vinyl table cloth. Of course my grandmother talked more, but the silence in Mama I think added to the magic of familiarity. A voice might have destroyed the illusion. There were so many little details that seemed so very familiar to me. I was absolutely amazed.

What are the odds to watch a recently produced movie and recognize so many details I grew up with 20-30 years ago?! What a coincidence that there were not only similarities in the environment, but also an astounding familiarity with actress Ludmila Alyohina’s appearance?

Ludmila Alyohina

It’s possible that I might tend to look for such similarities in movies and pictures. If I compare the now and here with then and there I find so many differences… It’s hard to imagine that somebody would be able to bring back something that I believed was just a personal memory and not a global trend or fashion phenomenon of a decade like the 60s, 70s or 80s. This here wasn’t about clothes, hairstyles, furniture or design of a past era… the carefully composed pictures in Mama are timeless and subtle, transcending the short-lived waves of changes that came and went in all these years.

I have to admit that these and other personal impressions occupied me a little during the movie, but I was still able to appreciate what I didn’t feel familiar with before. The sound, images and pace, everything was realistic, natural, organic and masterful. When Scott Braid introduced this film he said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that this film will reward your patience. I didn’t feel like I had to be patient, but Mama was an absolutely rewarding experience from beginning to end. Another of my top-favorites at the film festival this year.

Faces

I mentioned in other reviews I wrote in the past couple of years how much I liked movies like Frownland, Yeast, Baghead, Medicine for Melancholy or this year’s Daddy Longlegs. But I didn’t know a lot of movies–if any–before this young generation of filmmakers defined their new genre [to avoid overusing m-word again :)]. I’m ashamed that I wasn’t familiar with John Cassavetes before. Well, I have seen him perform as an actor before, but I didn’t know of his work as director with movies like Faces or Husbands which I have seen shortly after the film festival.

John Marley

Nominated for three Academy Awards, Faces tells the story of middle-aged husband Richard Forst (John Marley) and wife Maria (Lynn Carlin) trying to escape the wreckage of their disintegrating marriage by seeking comfort in the arms of others. The film focuses on the night in which their mutual dissatisfaction comes to a head. Richard spends his evening cavorting with a young prostitute named Jeannie (Gena Rowlands), while Maria and friends pick up an eager-to-please young beatnik (Seymour Cassel) at a club. As the night wears on, it becomes clear that a passionate fling cannot reverse the tides of years of unhappiness.

John Cassavetes is one of the most important cinematic figures of the latter half of the Twentieth Century. A pioneer of American independent film, he remains one of its most recognizable names. Using the money he made acting in Hollywood studio projects, Cassavetes financed his own largely improvised films — films which to this day are some of the most poignant and devastating ever committed to celluloid. Faces is a prime example.

Faces has been selected by guest-host Bill Callahan, who will introduce the film and discuss it afterwards, joined during the Q+A by Faces cinematographer Al Ruban. (J. Scott Braid)

—from the Film Festival Guide

I wasn’t familiar with Bill Callahan before either. But he piqued my curiosity when he gave an incredibly peculiar introduction after Scott Braid raved so much about him and his long musical career. I just wondered “Who is this guy, and how does he relate to this movie?” When I looked up more about him and his work I found especially interesting that “critics have generally characterized his music as depressing and intensely introverted [...] view into an insular world of alienation” [wikipedia]. He is also described with a tendency to black humor. One day I have to listen to some of his music that gave him his reputation.

But back to Faces. The film guide above already gives a good summary of the film. First you join Richard in his nightly adventure with a prostitute, then you follow his wife on her night with her friends and Chet, until they are finally both back home. The film felt largely improvised, unscripted and spontaneous with raw and realistic dialogues. Cinematographer, editor, and associate producer Al Ruban explained during the Q&A, however, that they indeed had a script when they shot the movie. It wasn’t as unscripted as it may have seemed.

Faces by John Cassavetes

He also talked about his idea to shoot on different film stocks for different places and light conditions. He didn’t realize how much trouble all the different formats would give him in the editing stage. This may have been trouble but I’m sure they added a lot to the unique look & feel of this movie.

Made in 1968 I felt this movie was way ahead of its time, especially for American cinema at the time. I don’t remember having seen any other movie that would focus on individuals, emotions and realistic psychological relationships, presenting the way it is rather than the ideal way it should be or they want it to be. I have seen other movies of this era with a similar focus, but they were often set in a much more controlled environment with introverted, isolated subjects. What makes Faces especially unique and special is the seemingly uncontrolled environment, the interactive and a bit extroverted characters.

If the festival gave any awards, the award for the best teaching moment would have to go to Faces. It really filled a important gap in my movie and director knowledge. Shortly after the film festival I saw John Cassavetes’ Husbands which was at least equally as impressive as Faces. I have no doubt his work has influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. I can’t believe I haven’t known of him before.

And Everything Is Going Fine

Spalding Gray, a product of the seminal 1960s avant-garde theater troupe The Performance Group and co-founder of its successor, The Wooster Group, is best known for championing an extraordinarily simple and compelling form of live theater: storytelling. His stories were entirely personal, recounting his struggle with macular degeneration (Gray’s Anatomy), his experience acting in a big-budget movie on foreign soil (Swimming to Cambodia), or just a day in his life (Morning, Noon and Night). Anyone lucky enough to see him perform one of these monologues (and he performed twice at Centerstage) will never forget their dramatic power and insight.

These stories fascinated a number of top filmmakers; Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme filmed Swimming to Cambodia, legendary documentarian Nick Broomfield helmed Monster in a Box, and Steven Soderbergh brought us Gray’s Anatomy. Spalding Gray died in 2004, in the midst of working on a new monologue, an apparent suicide. Now Soderbergh returns to pay tribute to his friend and collaborator with this compilation of seldom-seen and never-before-seen footage. An exploration of Gray’s life and art that is at once thrilling and heartbreaking, Soderbergh has given us exactly the right tribute to a man who loved to uncover universal truths in the smallest details of daily life. (Jed Dietz)

—from the Film Festival Guide

I don’t remember exactly when I discovered Spalding Gray. I think it must have been sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s when I first visited Baltimore. I remember when I watched Soderbergh’s Gray’s Anatomy for the first time, maybe on television or a video rental. It was in English, so it must have been here in Baltimore. Anyhow, I was absolutely captivated and fascinated. It was such a simple format: a desk, a glass of water, a microphone, and Spalding Gray telling the story about his eye condition and the journey he undertook to find an alternative to surgery. I can’t even explain what exactly fascinated me so much about it.

Spalding Gray

Perhaps it could have been the unusual format of a monologue made into a movie. Before Gray’s Anatomy I would have never thought that a monologue about an eye condition had the potential to be so enthralling, although I knew ever since Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio that a focus on a single talking person can be incredibly intense. But that wasn’t it… It wasn’t the camera moving around Spalding Gray here, or the background imagery, no… it was Spalding Gray and his story that captivated me most.

After seeing Gray’s Anatomy I sought other projects he was involved in and watched Monster in a Box and his role in The Killing Fields which provided material for his Swimming to Cambodia. Then life became occupied with studies, work, move, this and that, and I wasn’t very up-to-date about Spalding Gray’s more recent projects until I read one day about his death — I think about a year after he died.

Spalding Gray’s view of the world and incredible gift of telling his stories is something I have never seen anywhere else before. It’s as much the person Spalding Gray as it was his monologue I fell in love with and I regret I have never seen him live. One day I have to catch up with his contributions I haven’t seen before.

When I read that a documentary about him was coming to the festival this year I didn’t hesitate a second. It was clear to me I had to see this film. And I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. Instead of talking about Spalding Gray, his life and work, Soderbergh let him talk for himself. The result was a fascinating collage of footage throughout the years and decades that concluded with the most heartbreakingly moving and beautiful closing scene shot in 2001 by Barbara Kopple accompanied with a coincidental “Chekhovian howling dog” in the background. I wish I had a video clip available to insert here, but Theresa Smalec recalls:

Shortly after his devastating 2001 car accident in Ireland, Gray returns to America, where he is interviewed by a longtime friend, Barbara Kopple. “What are you worried about?” Kopple asks the artist, who now looks gaunt and pale, and walks with a visible limp. “The next accident,” Gray replies solemnly. Since their interview is set in the Hamptons, they talk about life on Long Island. Gray confides that he thinks he drinks too much in the Hamptons: “When I drink, I feel like I’m coming closer to my mother.” In the background of this sad conversation, a dog starts to howl. The dog sounds heartbroken, utterly forlorn. “The dog is already howling for the late Spalding Gray,” Gray says, chuckling softly. As the dog continues to howl, Gray laughs until his eyes fill.”

When he paused to listen to the dog’s howl, this final moment and his face encapsulated everything I found and loved in him on first sight: a lifetime of brilliance, clarity and thoughtfulness. I would love to see this film again sooner than later.

Liverpool

The next screening was another special international treat during this year’s film festival. Liverpool. Unlike other international selections this one was presented by director Lisandro Alonso who traveled all the way from Argentina to host this screening.

A hard-drinking worker on a massive freighter, Farrel (Juan Fernandez) requests a shore leave as his vessel returns to Argentina. The leave granted, Farrel begins a long journey to the remote, bitterly cold region of Tierra Del Fuego off the southernmost tip of the continent. He hitches rides and sleeps and drinks wherever and whenever he can, his interactions with other humans scant as he heads for territories less and less populated, more and more remote. While the purpose of his journey has been stated, his pursuit of it becomes more and more dogged and mysterious as time passes.

Lisandro Alonso’s brilliant film offers a real challenge to open-minded viewers – and ample rewards to those who accept. Liverpool has unsettled and even angered some viewers; indeed, at times the film feels singularly transgressive. However, it accomplishes this not through graphic or offensive content (the film has next to none), but through unusual pacing and disarming narrative choices that violate outmoded storytelling conventions.

Liverpool by Lisandro Alonso

Liverpool’s use of (brilliantly natural) non-professional performers, long takes, and sparse dialogue may recall world-cinema heavyhitters such as Reygadas, Bresson and Antonioni, but the specifics of his characters, settings, and storytelling announce a major new voice. Alonso’s film is a triumph for those open to something new, and a slap in the face to those who feel the history of narrative film is a closed book, taking us to places we’ve never been before (places both literal and figurative). (Eric Allen Hatch)

—from the Film Festival Guide

After reading this synopsis I was a bit worried, but how could I not take the challenge?! :) First off, this movie was brilliant. Neither setting, pace, characters nor story made me lose interest for a second. Farrel’s journey was mesmerizing, fascinating beginning on board of the freighter, and ending with his short stay in his home in Tierra del Fuego before we walks off again.

I thought Liverpool had a few things in common with Mama I wrote about earlier. I didn’t find the degree of familiarity in Liverpool, but both movies worked with very long takes, resting and observing eyes on scenery and surroundings, long lasting moments of silence, meditations on the ordinary turning into something extraordinary and memorable, and both featured (unusually) introverted characters. I can only hope to see more of this kind of film making in the future. It’s such a contrast from the fast-paced entertainment industry that seems to dominate markets and society.

The movie felt very realistic and natural, almost as it was trying to achieve the objectivity of a documentary. Liverpool allows you to observe the main character Farrel, but you never get a point-of-view perspective that could allow you to identify with him or feel like being him for a moment. Instead you follow him as a subject until he disappears. The people in this movie all were real people and not professional actors, which without any doubt has contributed to the movie’s authenticity as well. The places and people, as Lisandro Alonso mentioned during the Q&A, were pretty much the same in real life as you saw in his film, as foreign as they all may have seemed to a big-city audience.

There were several scenes I still remember well (now a few weeks after we’ve watched this movie). It all started with the opening on the freighter. These scenes reminded me a little bit of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a 1995 film by Marion Hänsel about a radio operator of a merchant ship that arrived in Hong Kong. The character in this movie was as introverted, self-destructive, and locked in a state of ‘unfinished business’ as Farrel in Liverpool. One smoked opium, the other drank vodka all the time, one was sad, the other was numb. Perhaps Marion Hänsel’s character Nikos could have become Farrel one day if he hadn’t met the Chinese girl in this movie? Anyway, the many weeks and months on the open sea seems to create a special emotional state. When I once looked into freighter travel I read about some of the characteristics compared to a standard cruise. I’m sure I would love it, I only wish I had a month or more to spare.

Another scene (short and perhaps insignificant compared to the movie’s scope) took place in a room with a few people when Farrel was waiting to catch a ride on the back of a truck. A television in the background. Some guys waiting, eating, reading? Not sure anymore. I didn’t catch whether it was a gas station, rest stop, a place of business, too. But the scene felt very unusual but at the same time absolutely ordinary. Like the transportation I took in Turkey many years ago. To me it was absolutely unusual and adventurous, but for the people there it was as normal as taking a bus or a cab here. This just was a tiny moment but so believable it added a lot to the movie’s authenticity.

Lisandro Alonso

The scene in the canteen was similarly unusual yet ordinary as well. I’m used to the standard American dining formula now, but whenever I visit Germany again I have to adjust, and whenever I travel to other places I will find slightly different customs again. Things that seem unusual to me but are ordinary to others. And Liverpool took me on a journey to such a different place. Again, this is probably an insignificant moment in this movie, but one that somehow stuck with me. Perhaps it was thanks to the pace and authenticity, perhaps these were just some of the few moments with other people. Every interaction with another person gets a much higher significance when compared to the lack thereof in most of the movie.

Then of course there’s the key scene that gave this movie its name… but I think I already revealed enough spoilers. Overall it was a brilliant movie that left a lot of room for thought and your own interpretations. You might spot a brief hint of humor in it as well. It surprised me with a different point of view and doing something with the main character I didn’t expect. Really interesting was the degree of objectivity in this movie. Was Farrel likable? Was he not? It really was up to the audience to decide and project onto the character. I found that quite extraordinary.

Off to the next, and last one…

Until the Light Takes Us

Few music scenes or subcultures have caused as much controversy and generated as much sensational press as Norwegian black metal in the early 1990s – not least because several key musicians in the genre have been convicted of serious crimes, and one was himself murdered. Their beliefs are certainly baffling to the average person — not to mention the crimes they committed or inspired, which include multiple murders and a wave of church burnings. Yet behind the violence, posturing, media hype, and (in some cases) hateful rhetoric, these musicians possess deep intelligence, have challenging viewpoints regarding Christianity and consumerism, and have created complex, sometimes beautiful music that has thrilled and moved as many people as it has shocked.

To capture these larger-than-life figures as real people, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway, living with some of their documentary subjects. That proximity results in a documentary that’s intimate character study, cultural history, and true-crime thriller all at once [...]

—from the Film Festival Guide

Well. To be frank, this was the least favorite movie I watched this year. I struggled a bit to make a choice about how to conclude that Saturday. There was the Total Recall screening presented by Dan Deacon in one theater, and Until the Light Takes Us in the other. Total Recall is a classic and I have seen it so often before, and the summary of Until the Light Takes Us sounded promising and so I went with a new screening. A documentary.

I love documentaries, no matter what they are about. So often they added something to my knowledge about a topic I was already interested in, or managed to pique an interest in new topics I didn’t expect to be interesting at all. Until the Light Takes Us interested me as well. I thought this film might be challenging perhaps, but enlightening in the end. But it wasn’t. It just wasn’t good.

I have seen news footage of Vikernes’ arrest and trial on television many years ago. The media likes to take the same footage out of their box whenever they run a report about satanists, occultists or metal bands, alongside with pictures of Hendrik Möbus, or the Ruda couple that received a lot of press in Germany a few years ago. When I read about this documentary I thought it might shed some light and also provide a less tabloid but perhaps a more balanced view of the music scene.

I have to admit it did present a different point of view than the rest of the media usually does. But I felt it was just as subjective, biased and unbalanced as the average tabloid report. Only on the opposite side that isn’t any less ridiculous. Generally, it was good to let the documentary subjects talk and explain their point of views instead of presenting someone talking about them. But the film did nothing but focus on the sensations that make good headlines and took sides with them. The filmmakers seemed to be sympathetic to their subjects and support their actions and philosophy. They didn’t seem as neutral and balanced as I expected them to be. Perhaps they lived too long with them?

To be fair, the audience in the theater surely added their part to my impression of the movie and its intent. Several people cheered in excitement and appreciation about stories that included taking a photo of one of the band members after he committed suicide and using his corpse and blown out brain as an album cover, burning churches, or committing other violent crimes. Some of the audience clearly endorsed these actions and sympathize with a group of people who may be very intelligent but extremists on the wrong side of the political spectrum. But was it just the audience?

This documentary made this music scene look as if it is made up of nothing but a bunch of Nazis, feeding right into the image the media so often likes to portray. This reminds me of similar silly prejudices about the dark wave, goth, industrial scene back in the 80s and 90s.

The documentary subjects may have long hair and not dress up like skinheads, but they are Nazis nonetheless. In the film they explained how and why they want to rid their homeland of the bad influence from foreigners, capitalists, or the American influences, and destroy Christians as they robbed them of their pagan identity and inheritance. Same body of thought you will find in other extremist groups. But is this true for an entire music scene? Granted, this documentary was not just about a music genre but the “Norwegian Black Metal” scene in particular. But how many people would know how to draw a distinction between “Black Metal” and “Death Metal”, or “Doom Metal” etc?

Metal and other music listeners are not all the same, they are not all on the right extremist side of the political spectrum, they are not all Nazis, murderers, criminals, satanists, or suicide candidates. In my youth I have listened to a good share of metal myself. The majority of people I’ve met during that time– fans as well as musicians–were just as normal as most, or even nerds, who appreciate perhaps the entertainment, energetic sound, lyrics, riffs, instrumentation, etc, and they often had a much wider range of musical interests than just that single sub-genre. None of them were the loud mouth extremists, racists, ‘white trash’, political activists or far right-wing fanatics. Perhaps this may be different from country to country. As far as I understand, Brazil known for their huge metal-fan base is probably quite different from Norway, UK, Germany or fans in the US.

But I digress, I know this wasn’t a documentary about the different music genres, but I wish it provided at least a more balanced view if not a more critical one. It should have placed the Norwegian black metal incidents into perspective as a singular exception. I didn’t like the fanatics in the audience, they may have changed how I felt about this documentary. But I think the film was more propaganda than documentary.

This film, by the way, reminded me a lot of Radio Werewolf’s Charles Manson Superstar in which Nikolas Schreck conducted a feature-length interview with Charles Manson in jail. To some degree it was interesting to see Manson talk, but the intent and neutrality were as questionable as this documentary.

It’s difficult. How would you make a documentary about this topic and these people? I don’t have the answers, but I do think it’s possible to be more critical verbally as well as non-verbally. There are documentaries that manage to exercise criticism without a single spoken word. And just by adding some footage and views of the other side of the “argument” would have created more balance. This film didn’t present anything about the victims or the cultural and religious changes in Norway they were protesting so violently against. This wasn’t Charles Manson Superstar but Mayhem Superstars.

After the movie we had to run and didn’t sit through the Q&A although I wish I’d been there. I read that there was a heated discussion afterwards with the film makers becoming combative when some audience members questioned their appreciation of the musical genre leading into an argument about liberal people appreciating a culture created by extremists like those in their documentary. But I wasn’t there and I don’t know anything about the discussion and argument.

This film was uncomfortable to watch in a Charles Manson Superstar or Triumph of the Will kind of way. Perhaps all these films don’t need to be more critical because their subjects already speak for themselves and show how ridiculous they are. But just like Triumph of the Will still manages to fascinate quite a few people enough to be drawn to the Nazi ideology over half a century after WWII, there were quite a few people in the audience who found these Blackmetal heroes just awesome and cool. Free speech and expression all well and good, but I don’t think they should be presented in a non-critical and rather laudatory context.

…and this is the end of Maryland Film Festival Saturday, May 8, 2010 :)

Prokudin-Gorskii 1906

Last week I read an article about Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii who was responsible for those remarkable color-photographs taken a hundred years ago. He was a chemist born in Russia in 1863 who studied in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Paris.

He developed a process in which three black and white pictures were taken of an object in quick succession. One picture was taken with a red-filter, one with a blue, and another with a green filter. These three black and white pictures where arranged as a glass plate negative. With a projector he could later add these three components to a full color representation. He wasn’t able to make a paper print in color at the time, but he was the first to make use of a technology that has remained pretty much unchanged, and is still used today in digital cameras which capture and store light in RGB components, or computer screens that reproduce a color image by illuminating three R, G and B components to render a color pixel with LCD cells or phosphors of a classic tube monitor. The principle really hasn’t changed in more than 100 years.

It was first discovered by physicist James Clerk Maxwell who created the first permanent color photograph in 1861.

In 1909, Prokudin-Gorskii started to document the Russian empire in color, completing his project in 1915. The pictures were intended to be used in education to inform children about the history, past, present, and future of the Russian empire. In 1948 his color photographs were purchased by the Library of Congress. His pictures are some of the most important documents about Russia before World War I, and also a significant document of technological history.

Prokudin-Gorskii 1915

Tolstoy 1908

His subjects include medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, railroad tracks, factories of the then modern Russian industry, portraits of workers, important personalities as well as people from other areas of life. The Library of Congress has made the complete collection available to the public.

Glassplate Negative

I downloaded a scan of the photograph Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii took in 1909, a century ago, of 84-year-old Pinkhus Karlinskii, the supervisor of the Chernigov floodgate, and attempted to reconstruct the color photo myself. The Library of Congress reproduction number for this picture is LC-P87-5006 and can be found in the online catalog. The glass negative is available in three file versions: higher resolution JPEG version (78 KB), uncompressed archival TIFF version (70 MB) and the highest resolution TIFF version (70 MB).

The process is actually very simple. First, the three black and white frames of the glass negative need to be separated and aligned. I copied and pasted them on three layers. The first frame on top is the blue component, the middle frame is the green component, and red at the bottom. I stacked them on top of each other and aligned them with the help of the Difference layer mode.

In Photoshop it was very easy to transform the layers into red, green and blue slides that add up to a complete color picture. In Layer Style/Blending Options, section ‘Advanced Blending’ you can specify the R,G,B channels. If you don’t have these options you can also work with solid color layers and the appropriate layer modes. It’s a bit more work, but the result should be the same. I set the Blending channel to R for the red frame, G for the green, and B for the blue. Then I duplicated and flattened the image and was ready to fix some of the spots and scratches. The final result, a colored view of an era I only knew in black and white before:

RGB Components

Pinkhus Karlinskii Cropped

I still find it unbelievable that this photo is 100 years old. More amazing pictures can be found at the Library of Congress.

Links:

• Library of Congress – The Empire That Was Russia
• Library of Congress – Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
• William Wedler – Colorizing the Prokudin-Gorskii photo collection (Matlab)
• A Collection of Prokudin-Gorskii Images

So I entered a url like smb://username:password@ip-address/path/ which worked in other situations before, but Nautilus the file browser showed me a new dialog to enter a domain (Windows) and password. No matter what I entered there, it didn’t appear to work. And I’m not sure how to remove this dialog box.

One way to work around this behavior is to mount the Samba/CIFS share on the command line. (CIFS is the Common Internet File System and replaces sambafs.) First I had to make sure that a non-root user has the permissions to mount a file system. I created a new group ‘samba’ and added myself to it.

sudo groupadd samba
sudo adduser gerrit samba
sudo visudo

And added a new line in the “group” section:

## Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL
%samba   ALL=(ALL) /bin/mount,/bin/umount,/sbin/mount.cifs,/sbin/umount.cifs

All set, now I could create a folder for my Samba share mkdir ~/mnt and mount:

sudo mount -t cifs //ip-address/path ~/mnt -o username=gerrit,password=xxxxxx,noexec

More details can be found in the Ubuntu help on Setting up Samba.

By the way, we are celebrating our 5^th red carpet membership anniversary supporting the film festival as Friends of the Festival! Amazing how quickly all these years passed. I still remember our exciting first festival in 2002 before we became members as if it took place just a few months ago.

MICA Brown Center

This year’s festival opened at the Maryland Institute College of Art’s Brown Center with an introduction by festival director Jed Dietz, followed by a selection of eight short films to celebrate the art of filmmaking in its purest form. Bobcat Goldthwait was the host tonight and launched the presentation with his own Goldthwait Home Movies in which the “cast” of an old home movie reunites to record an audio commentary for the 40^th anniversary DVD. I enjoyed this little funny film.

Jed Dietz & Bobcat Goldthwait

Next was The Bellows March by Eric Dyer. He uses the old pre-cinema zoetrope technique he first explored in 2006 with Copenhagen Cycles. This time he added a third dimension to his zoetropes by using digitally printed three-dimensional sculptures.

3-dimensional metallic concertina-soldiers march, dance, and burrow; rain falls on the fallen ones, who are reborn as colorful plants blooming in mock-timelapse. They dance in grassy fields, intertwining with each other in a colorful kaleidoscope of motion, until joining in ordered rows and devolving into their militaristic marching form.

I liked the aesthetics, rhythm and visual effects, the patterns, images, and especially its technical background. While watching this film I thought to myself “This is very unique, there probably is no other way to produce this look.” Having said that, there was something missing for me however. I had a similar experience when I saw Copenhagen Cycles before. I fully recognize and appreciate its artistry, but I’m missing emotionality in its mechanics. I can picture it being used as a music video, or in a context with another elements adding emotionality to the ever-progressing and pulsating images. But as a short film alone, it didn’t manage to grab me as much as it could have.

Somewhat inspired by Eric Dyer’s film was Michael Langan who created “a moving portrait of the bustle and permanence of a city” with Dahlia [IMDB] by taking several photographs of an object or similar objects in focus with a changing background scene. He took, for example, pictures of different parking meters in different locations with the same viewing angle and used them as animation frames. This reminded me very much of the video animation Noah Kalina with the pictures he took of himself every day for six years. I liked this film and thought the music worked really well to the images. It added to the film what The Bellows March was missing for me.

Andy Cahill, Jed Dietz, (Pat Clark?), Jay Zimmerman, Matt Cornwell, Jim Jacob (please correct me if I got anybody wrong.)

Jay Zimmerman’s Done In One [IMDB] was a funny and genius little short film taken in in a single shot without any editing. Very clever, I loved it!

Andy Cahill created with Trepan Hole [IMDB] an animation of “squiggling, spastic, rail-thin creatures with clay souls and throbbing heads bounce off each other for six minutes.” It amused me to some degree, but I found myself scratching my head for most of the six minutes. :-D

Mildred Richards by Marc Kess (“KESS!”) looked and sounded fascinatingly 1940s in every aspect. The sound actually recorded in the 1940 for a radio play. The film was newly created to match the old recording. I thought the Radio Film Picture was very well made. The new visuals looked very convincing and authentic, and you couldn’t really tell what has been done, except occasionally the lips didn’t sync 100%. I thought the story was fun, too.

Julia Kim Smith’s Grand Teton [IMDB] was my least favorite film this evening, quite a disappointment to be honest. It was a video portrait of a first generation Korean-American family who comes together for a group photo at the same spot after 35 years. The pictures showed a range of mixed impressions from silliness, happiness, gratitude, perhaps melancholy and sadness as well, but they were overshadowed by a distracting, ugly, overpowering and awfully disturbing soundtrack. Did she try to illustrate the degree of identity loss people experience in the attempt to assimilate? In that case this film would have been disturbing but successful. But I’m not sure if that really was intended.

The opening night concluded with About Film Festivals by Jim Jacob. That was very funny, I loved it! Let’s let him speak for himself: