Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: 'Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine’ (2015)

Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine (2015). First part: Bread and Roses. I first caught this on Free Speech TV. It provides a good sampling, focusing in good part on the Robber Baron period and the impact of the First World War.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) devoted much of his energy on consciousness raising, building up an appreciation of the history of people and clashes and changes often forgotten or -- like the eight hour work day -- taken for granted. His work is influential; and he was a sweet person.   

"Between 1900 and 1920, like Howard Zinn’s parents, more than 14 million immigrants arrived in the United States. They came fleeing poverty or war, racism or religious persecution. They dreamed of a promised land, of wealth, or simply of a better life. The New World opened its arms wide to the poor and huddled masses of the Old: its unwanted, its fugitives, and even a few utopians . . . After all, the rapidly expanding industries of the time required cheap labor, and immigrant workers - men, women and children - were easy to exploit. But the same period also saw the birth of organized labor, with its strikes and conflicts, and the appearance of great figures like Emma Goldman, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs and the Wobblies."  (Source here). 

Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine (2015). Zinn's A People's History of the United States was originally published in 1980.

Zinn Education Project: link here.

Les mutins de Pangée est une coopérative audiovisuelle et cinématographique de production, d’édition et de distribution (en salles, DVD, VOD). Here is a a link.

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

Xan Cassavetes: 'Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession' (2004)

Xan Cassavetes: Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004). 

This is an alluring documentary that dives back into the 1970s and 1980s, beginning as an origin story and ending with the collapse of Los Angeles-based Z Channel (1974-1989), after a murder-suicide perpetrated by its talented, mentally ill main programmer, Jerry Harvey (1949-1988).

Subscription TV (now streaming, too) began in earnest with the likes of Home Box Office (HBO) in 1972, The Green Channel in 1973 -- which morphed into The Movie Channel (TMC) in 1979 -- and Z Channel. The latter included an influential sampling of international movies with subtitles, director's cuts, B movies and independent films. 

Z Channel had a profound impact on its market, especially among directors, writers, and other "creatives." Xan Cassavetes gives us a taste of representatives from this class, ranging from Penelope Spheeris to Jim Jarmusch. 

When a cool movie or director was featured on Z Channel, this was an event that could be shared in "real time," not just recorded for later, or plucked out of the ethersphere at will, or binge-watched down the pike.  

We may well wonder about delivery and recording systems now vs. then, and now vs. in the future. In those years, battle was also joined globally in the videotaping field between Sony's Betamax (Beta) and JVC's Video Home System (VHS) tapes, with Beta starting in 1975, VHS in 1976, and both lines ceasing production only in 2016.

Digital services now available dwarf what was around in the 1970s. All you need is money, access and time!

In 1975, the global human population was about 4.079 billion, 38% of it urbanized. As of 2018, it has already jumped to 7.633 billion, with 55% urbanized. What do you suppose those numbers will be in 2060?  Imagine the delivery systems forty-two years from now, when handheld devices, streaming services, driverless cars and delivery drones are old hat?  

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Werner Herzog: 'Into the Inferno' (Netflix, 2016)

Werner Herzog's Into the Inferno (2016), a Netflix documentary, takes us to various places around the globe with its primary focus ever in mind: volcanoes and people. Among Herzog's cerebral meditations and the reliable help of Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, there are startling shots of breathtaking ecology, lava flows, explosions, and people's responses over time to the mysteries of volcanic activity.

As one might expect from Herzog (for those who are familiar with his earlier work), there are some weird, offbeat meanderings into associated mysteries. It's all a bit ramshackle at times, but well-worth the effort. 

Where does the film go? Points of focus include Endu (Endu Pahakol) on the island of Ambrym in the Vanuatu Archipelago, featuring the bemused Chief Mael Moses; Mount Erebus, Antarctica, where Herzog met Oppenheimer; La Soufrire
de Guadeloupe (footage from the 1970s); Katia and Maurice Krafft, who filmed volcanic activity and were "instantly killed by a pyroclastic flow in Japan, together with 41 other people" in 1991; Mount Sinabung, Sumatra, Indonesia; Mount Merapi (Fire Mountain), Java, Indonesia; Mount Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland; Mount St. Helens (Lawetlat'la), Washington; the Danakil Depression, Afar Region, Ethiopia, "300 feet below sea level;" the Erta Ale, "one of the three [volcanoes] in the world where magma is directly exposed;" back to Iceland; on to North Korea and Mount Paektu and mass social formations featuring thin, underfed people; and back to Vanuatu, to the John Frum cargo cult village, and Mount Yasur on Tanna Island.

To the Ends of the Earth and Back Again with Werner Herzog (born 1942)!  A salute also to Peter Zeitlinger (born 1960), Czech cinematographer and filmmaker who shot most of the newer footage for and with Herzog.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Bryan Fogel: 'Icarus' (2017)

Bryan Fogel's Academy Award-winning documentary film Icarus (Netflix, 2017) spotlights underground performance-enhancing drugs -- doping -- in sports. While doping itself is hardly surprising at this juncture (see Lance Armstrong), the international scale of usage, with the extensive backing of governments (such as Russia's) remains shocking and pernicious. 

Fogel's own willingness to stick needles into himself in order to improve his amateur bicycle ranking is also shocking, but the kicker is his burgeoning relationship with Grigory Rodchenkov, a Russian VIP in the world of doping -- a man who eventually turns on his overlords and is now in witness protection, no doubt with Vladimir Putin's enforcers even at this moment trying to hunt him down "with extreme prejudice." 

Icarus is riveting, considerably more so than, say, a film about Edward Snowden. 

Bottom line: all kinds of sports are compromised by such activities. Follow the money -- and the egos of competitors.  

Today's Rune: Harvest. Painting of Icarus: Jacob Peter Gowy, La caída de Ícaro (circa 1636). Museo del Prado, Madrid. 

'Wild Wild Country" (2018): One Wild Nutty Ride

Wild Wild Country (2018): "A Netflix Original Documentary Series" in six parts (so far). Set mostly in the 1980s and the nearer past, it's a dazzling, freaky kaleidoscope swirling with the cult of personality, tipped elections, conspiracy, challenges to the separation of church and state, surveillance, immigration themes, homeless people, cuisine, religion, G-men and semi-automatic weapons. What a show -- and how pertinent to our current Trump show!  Imagine the Branch Davidians and Jonestown on a large, international scale, making it successfully. Are you ready? Think Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the 700 Club and the PTL -- Praise the Lord aka "Pass the Loot" -- Club, armed to the teeth and ready to rumble.     

Wild Wild Country: the Eyes of Texas are Upon You. Or more accurately, the Eyes of Oregon and India are Upon Each Other. "You can't make this shite up."

For all these years I've had this snapshot of a restaurant sign in Copenhagen, Denmark, loving its name: "Zorba the Buddha."  Not until I saw Wild Wild Country did I realize that this was part of the Rajneesh movement -- even though it clearly reads just below the name: "RAJNEESH RESTAURANT." Location in 1983: Strøget, Frederiksberggade 15, København 1459. Suggesting once again that everything is connected to everything else in the grand scheme of things.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Joris Ivens: 'The Spanish Earth' (1937)

The film footage alone makes The Spanish Earth (1937), Joris Ivens' 52 minute film shot during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a priceless work. Ivens (1898-1989) was assisted by film editor Helen van Dongen (1909-2006); both were Dutch.

The intent of this charged documentary was to garner American support for the Spanish Republic, then under violent assault by Nazi (Hitler and German) and fascist (Mussolini and Italian) forces fighting alongside Francisco Franco's Spanish rebels.

Several prominent American writers assisted with writing, narration and distribution. These included: Archibald Macleish (who became the Librarian of Congress in 1939), Lillian Hellman, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles.

There are multiple versions of The Spanish Earth, each with a different narrator. I've only seen the one narrated by Orson Welles. Because Welles' voice was considered "too cultured" for the average American, Hemingway did another, gruffer version. In French, Jean Renoir delivered yet another variation. 

The script for the narration is so-so, and the music intrusive and horrid about 80% of the time, but overall the film is wild and absorbing.

The defenses of Madrid. Doors from blasted buildings are put to use as support for trenches and earthworks.

Battle for Madrid. Fierce fighting right inside the city. Similarly stark imagery will reappear in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) as "the Anthill" and Huế.

In 1937, the majority of the people of Barcelona and Madrid fought on the same side against fascism. It's sad to see, eighty years later and more than forty years after Franco's death, Catalonia and Madrid at loggerheads. But such is life.  

Today's Rune: Gateway. 

James Baldwin and Raoul Peck: 'I Am Not Your Negro' (2016)

James Baldwin's words, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, directed by Raoul Peck and intermixed with intense archival footage, underscore the importance and relevance of I Am Not Your Negro (2016) in the 21st century. 

Very little has been resolved since Baldwin (1924-1987) drafted Remember This House (just published in 2017) in the decade prior to his death. 

Through consideration of the outstanding lives and violent deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., Baldwin expounds upon race and identity in the United States to great effect.

A couple of snippets, as narrated by Jackson:  "In the years in Paris, I had never been homesick for anything American. Neither . . . hot dogs, baseball, majorettes, [Hollywood] movies, nor the Empire State Building, nor Coney Island, nor the Statue of Liberty, nor the daily news, nor Times Square. All of these things had passed out of me. They might never have existed, and it made absolutely no difference to me if I never saw them again. But I missed my brothers and sisters, and my mother. They made a difference. I wanted to be able to see them, and to see their children."

"To look around the United States today is enough to make prophets and angels weep. This is not the land of the free. It is only very unwillingly and sporadically the home of the brave."

The cadences of Baldwin's sentences stick with me. He is still right: the USA will not be anywhere near true to its ideals until a critical and diverse mass of its people can be honest about race and history. 

It's easy to see in other countries -- such as when the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge -- and outright assaults -- anyone who even suggests that previous Turkish governments directed genocide against Turkey's Armenians (1914-1923); while any neutral observer would also see that frank acknowledgement is a surer way forward toward conciliation than denial. Yet as long as a significant subset of white America refuses to accept a fuller history of the United States, screeching the same kind of belligerent denials as come from the Turkish government; and, perhaps, also out of an ugly stubbornness; so long as this contra attitude persists, we shall remain stuck in limbo.   

Today's Rune: Protection. 

'Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary' (2016)

Made a pilgrimage to the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff to see John Scheinfeld's Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary (2016). I wanted to see and hear Coltrane on the big screen. Well worth the extra effort.

The film is partly about the man and the musician, whose 1965 album A Love Supreme usually makes it into the top five jazz recordings of all time (that is, since electronic recordings began in earnest around the time of World War I). The film is also about Coltrane's impact on various people and their evolving ways of perceiving the world, plus more specifically his influence on musicians of various genres.

From the first time I listened to a John Coltrane recording, in my mid-teens, I've been hooked. Even now, I've got a framed album cover of Giant Steps in my work office and a framed cover of Blue Train at home. I've got three copies of A Love Supreme. I also dig Alice Coltrane, who continued down his mystical path after John's death in 1967 at the age of forty.

The most interesting surprise to me about Chasing Trane is a side trip to Japan, during Coltrane's last extended tour, and his visit to the Nagasaki atomic bombing memorial, and the enthusiastic Japanese response. 

The Texas Theatre is where Lee Harvey Oswald was nabbed on November 22, 1963, shortly after 1:40 p.m. A strange feeling to be seeing a John Coltrane documentary in this place on John Fitzgerald Kennedy's 100th birthday. But fitting, because Trane's music provides a portal to places far beyond our typical experience of space and time. 

Today's Music: Flow.  

Jim Jarmusch: 'Gimme Danger' (2016)

I remember being at a mid-1990s house party for teachers and artists in Newport News, Virginia. It was during my first full-time gig as a librarian and I was serving informally as dj. With the idea of livening things up a little, I put on a vinyl copy of The Stooges’ Funhouse and cued up “Loose” and “TV Eye,” turning up the volume.

In the middle of this grand sonic gesture, a history instructor -- who was deaf in one ear -- turned his working ear into the nearest blasting speaker. Within the first minute, he was jumping back with amazement: “Oh my God! That’s the greatest thing I EVER heard in my WHOLE LIFE!!!!!” He was floored.

Though not everyone would have agreed at the time, this was a perfect response. 

And now, after the induction of The Stooges into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, after the deaths of several of the members of the band, out comes Gimme Danger (2016), “a film by Jim Jarmusch,” “story of the stooges,” Gimme Danger: La historia de The Stooges, Gimme Danger. История Игги и The Stooges, a highly entertaining documentary featuring Iggy Pop, the various (then-)surviving band members, and Michigan.

Some notes are in order. “There goes Iggy into the crowd.” 

Outside of Ann Arbor, he was living in a trailer with his parents (his father was a high school English teacher).

With parental support, he practiced on his drum kit for hours on end. “I was so lucky to live close to my parents.”

He picked up performance ideas from The Howdy Doody Show, Clarabell the Clown (played at one time by Captain Kangaroo), and Soupy Sales (who often had highly influential musicians perform live – including Billie Holiday and Miles Davis).

Soupy would invite fans to write letters, but asked that they keep them to twenty-five words or less each. This impressed Iggy (“real” name Jim Osterberg, Jr. -- born April 21, 1947). When he wrote or co-wrote Stooges songs, he kept them to twenty-five words or less. “I didn’t feel I was Bob Dylan.”

He was also impressed by the industrial sounds at Ford’s River Rouge plant, which he first visited on a school field trip. “I liked the mega-clang.” 

Iggy played drums and did various things, worked in a record store, attended the University of Michigan for a semester. Headed to Chicago for additional hands-on learning in the mid-1960s. “I saw a glimpse of a deeper life,” he notes on film, but also: “I realized I was not black.”

Back in Michigan, Iggy taught Scott Asheton how to pound out the drums. Some of the band members were sons of World War II vets and had that in common. The Asheton brothers took off for an adventure in London and immersed themselves into the Marquee Club until they ran out of money.

After the 1967 riots in Detroit, Iggy decided to move into the city. “I’m going to prepare a house where we can live” as “true communists.” He had very little idea of what he was doing, but somehow it worked (eventually). In Detroit, they gestated.

“Michigan was a key crossroads between San Francisco and New York.” The members of the band tried various altered states and listened to Harry Partch records that highlighted the sounds and noises of various handmade, found or modified instruments.

They became The Psychedelic Stooges, had a gig at the Grand Ballroom featuring Iggy playing a vacuum cleaner. They exhibited the energy and antics of “chimps and baboons.”

Iggy: “In the Asheton brothers I found primitive man.”

The MC5, Fred Sonic Smith and all, took them in. “We joined their circus in many ways.”

Iggy preferred not to become overtly political in the way John Sinclair wanted. He did somersaults and wiggled around as a protest.

The MC5 said to Elektra Records scouts, “Check out our little brother band.” Danny Fields loved them, first hearing their mesmerizing sounds coming from the University of Michigan Student Union. Both bands signed with Elktra on September 22, 1968. The Psychedelic Stooges became “The Stooges plain and simple.”

The droning simplicity of The Velvet Underground thrilled Iggy. John Cale came to help them record their first album, followed by Nico: “Morticia and Gomez.” 

Jac Holzman (who also worked with The Doors) was there and helped make it happen. There weren’t enough songs for an album to begin with, so Iggy and the rest of the band went to the Hotel Chelsea and hurriedly came up with additional songs – twenty-five worlds or less.

Skipping forward a little, The Stooges are sent to Los Angeles to record 1970. Iggy, being interviewed, notes that much of the “California sound” that came out in the 1970s was manufactured under the guidance of record executives. “It still smells,” he notes, true to his Michigan-style phrasing. “Cultural treason” is what it was.

For 1970, Iggy brings in Steve Mackay to lay down some saxophone. He had in mind Miles Davis and James Brown. “Play like Maceo Parker on acid!” Big aural space is there.

Iggy walks by a pet store and notices a beautiful dog collar. He buys it and adds it to his persona.

The Stooges play the Whiskey a Go Go and blow the mellow minds of Californians. “Theatre of the moment.” The band plays deadpan and still in Bill Wyman style while Iggy prances around, dives into the crowd and acts like James Brown and Mick Jagger on speed. Inspired by the Egyptian pharaohs, he performs shirtless.

I could go on, but why?  You can dig it for yourself! Gimme Danger. Raw Power. 

“All we cared about was what we liked!” 

Iggy gets the final say: “I just wanna be.” Amen, brother.

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Werner Herzog: 'Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World' (2016)

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, Werner Herzog's free-wheeling documentary about the rise and impact of the internet inspires thought. Though low-key, the film is consciousness-raising, like Marshall McLuhan's concept of "the electronic envelope" into which we are folded, or McLuhan's "Global Village" (1962) and "Global Theatre" (1970).  

Here, Herzog asks several globally-connected people: "Does the internet dream of itself?" Not coincidentally, Philip K. Dick's dystopian vision is brought into the mix at one point (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- the 1968 novel that morphed into the 1982 movie Blade Runner). 

A scene from LO AND BEHOLD, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. The memorably strange choice of interview setting and style in this scene speaks volumes about Herzog and his creative crew.

In Lo and Behold, Herzog interviews all sorts of people, including the visionary Elon Musk. 

As one fellow movie-watcher noted, Herzog really knows how to shake people out of the trees. 

Several facets of the internet are covered, including cyber attacks, other disruptions in the net, collaborative research, social media personae, self-driving vehicles, people afraid of "the rays," the rise of the robots and upcoming plans for colonizing Mars. 

It's not all good to think about, but behold, even the most oblivious users of the internet are daily immersed in its ways. Much to be aware of and ruminate upon.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Liz Garbus: 'What Happened, Miss Simone?' (2015)

Liz Garbus' What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) is a thrilling, consciousness-raising documentary about Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul. 

The inescapable context of the life of Nina Simone (1933-2003) was and is the intractable racial divisiveness of the USA. American society just can't seem to get it together as a whole.

Born in North Carolina before becoming Nina Simone, Nina was known locally as Eunice Waymon. Eunice/Nina became a classically trained Julliard pianist. Her most active recording years took her from the late 1950s into the 1970s. She became a powerful civil and human rights advocate.

However, disgusted with the slow pace of social progress in the United States (and to escape from her violent ex-cop husband), she went on to live more freely in Barbados and London before finally basing herself, for the last ten years of her life, in the South of France. 

A strong and unique singer and person, Nina's mental health suffered in later years -- perhaps, one may suspect, in part from earlier domestic abuse. But when she was on, she was truly spectacular, even towards the end.

What Happened, Miss Simone? is an outstanding Netflix Documentary and RadicalMedia/Moxie Firecracker Production. I waited for the 2016 DVD, which includes a companion CD. The latter has a sampling that highlights many of Nina's most powerful tracks, ranging from "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and "I Put a Spell on You" to "Mississippi Goddamn" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." I dig it!

Today's Rune: Protection. 

Amy J. Berg's 'Janis: Little Girl Blue' (2015)

Amy J. Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015), a state of the art documentary biography of Janis Joplin (1943-1970), presents her life in a most compelling, sensitive and soulful manner. My first serious foray into this field was Howard Alk's Janis (1974), which I saw at the Melkweg in Amsterdam when I was twenty-two -- and I loved it, not to mention the audience's raucous response. Now I'd consider Alk's documentary as a complement or supplement to Berg's. There have been other films, and there have been excellent books on Janis, too. As anyone who knows her music can testify, Janis Joplin was intense. Amy J. Berg has done her justice here. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Werner Herzog: 'Encounters at the End of the World' (2007)

Another stellar documentary by Werner Herzog: Encounters at the End of the World (2007). In it, we are led to meet various workers and other denizens of Antarctica. 

After seeing this, when I think of Antarctica, I dream these and similar images, many of them haunting -- a very strange and compelling impact: why I dig Herzog.

Memorable footage includes people, equipment, research stations, stunning under-the-ice sweeps, seals, bizarre below surface seal communications, penguins, a volcano, and ice-caves created by volcanic fumaroles. 

Herzog always seems to find the strange wherever he goes. Here, Antarctic neophytes awkwardly train for whiteout conditions by wearing plastic boxes over their heads. 

And here, a lone penguin heads into exile. By free choice or through some kind of madness? Herzog wonders.  

Encounters at the End of the World delivers on the promise of its title. It's dedicated to film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013). 

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Werner Herzog: 'Grizzly Man' (2005)

It took me ten years to see Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005) for the first time; by now I've seen it twice. Didn't like the idea of the main guy and his last girlfriend being eaten by a bear. But it's an excellent documentary, with Herzog shaping Timothy (Dexter) Treadwell's field footage, expanding on it with new material, and providing narration. 

Treadwell, after surviving near death by alcohol ingestion and heroin intake, found a new path in life by camping part of each of his last thirteen years among grizzly bears and foxes in Katmai National Park and Preserve, a massive expanse located at the base of the Alaska Peninsula, which points at the Aleutians. This is a volcanic region, worth noting since Into the Inferno (2016), one of Herzog's upcoming films, focuses on volcanoes. 

Treadwell's thirteenth year, culminating in a last-minute late season stint inside the Grizzly Maze, was not a charm.

A nod to Grizzly Man appears on the promotional postcard for "An Evening with Werner Herzog, August 31, Winspear Opera House / AT&T Performing Arts Center," Dallas, Texas, USA, where I was so happy to hear Herzog speak. On the card, it appears as if a grizzly is sneaking up on him, as in a dream.  

Today's Rune: Defense. 

Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (2014)

Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown (2014): Directed by Alex Gibney, produced by Mick Jagger. Aired on HBO and available with extras in DVD format. 

This one's an entertaining and insightful documentary for any and all James Brown fans. The archival footage is worth the whole package; newer interview footage is also better than the usual in such motion documentaries. 

I'm pretty well-versed in James Brown musicology and cultural impact, but even so, with Mr. Dynamite I learned a lot of new stuff, new ways of considering things. 

(In one of the more surreal scenes of Mr. Dynamite, see presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey sing along with James Brown in 1968. It's plain bizarre!) 

Alex Gibney is a trenchant documentary filmmaker -- compare with some of his other works such as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005); The [Lance] Armstrong Lie (2013); We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013); Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (HBO, 2015); Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015).

Today's Rune: Gateway.      

  

Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman: 'Derrida' (2002)

Deconstructing Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman's Derrida (2002). 

In this documentary, we can see layers of Jackie Élie "Jacques" Derrida (1930-2004) over time - sometimes he looks refreshed and relaxed, at other times pensive and taciturn.

Overall, Derrida thinks through words and ideas carefully. 

At times in certain frames he looks like Norman Mailer, then Richard Burton, then Ralph Nader, then Peter Falk -- like a human kaleidoscope.

Derrida was born in Algeria. He was of Sephardic lineage with Jewish-Spanish origins dating back to before the 1492 and later expulsions of Jews and Muslims from Spain. As a boy, Derrida was expelled along with other Jewish students and teachers from "normal" Algerian schools, but he survived the Second World War. This background shaped his outlook as a philosopher. Increasingly, he became attuned to the power of words in discourse and their link to social action. 

In this desultory, entertaining documentary, Derrida speaks about biography, autobiography, history, texts, recording devices, archives, memory, reconstruction, deconstruction, mirrors.

He speaks of the "eye" of the spectator and audience: "between fiction and reality, a phantom eye." (Eg., Facebook)

Seeing his own portrait at one point, he quips: "It's uncanny. It's bizarre." (Iggy Pop expresses similar thoughts in "Success:" upon seeing someone wearing a t-shirt with his face on it approaching him, Iggy sings: "Here comes my face . . . It's plain bizarre . . .")

Derrida speaks of historical dots: "These are facts. Raw facts."

The Story of One's Life: facts vs. autobiography or a biography "in the mode of a story . . . I don't write a narrative. . . I'd love to tell stories, but I don't know how to tell them . . ."

Jackie and Marguerite Aucouturier Derrida, his spouse of many years, decline to say much about their relationship beyond the "raw facts." 

Upon being asked to speak of certain things, he replies, "You need to pose a question."

Of love: "Fidelity is threatened between the who and the what." Initially, one may be seduced by certain of a person's qualities, and later become disillusioned (or as a former brother-in-law once put it: "Love is blind; Marriage is an eye-opener). Or, one loves the "singularity" of another person beyond their most charming traits. 

During a visit to South Africa, after seeing Nelson Mandela's small jail cell when he'd been confined for eighteen years of his life, Derrida speaks of different types of forgiveness and reconciliation.

He delivers general observations and advice: "I am blind to myself . . . It's for others to see. To speak is not to see."

And to the intellectually lazy: "Do your homework and read."

On his archives: "urns in a graveyard . . . An archive is . . . a question for the future."

Of other philosohers: "I'd love to hear something about what they refuse to talk about."

On editing this film, to the directors: "Editing will be your signature, your autobiography."

Fun stuff for a Sagittarian. This post is in honor of Jeron Jackson, RIP. 

Today's Rune: The Self. 
  

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado: 'The Salt of the Earth' (2014)

Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's documentary The Salt of the Earth (2014) focuses on the life and lens of Brazilian Sebastião Salgado, a total immersion photographer, including major projects, such as the awe-inspiring Instituto Terra reforestation effort, with Lélia Wanick Salgado. 

To deepen and widen the scope of his (or their) major photography projects, Salgado (and companions, from time to time) has traveled to the Ends of the Earth, the Far Corners of the World, from vast areas with no human habitation to locales filled with refugees of famine and war, or workers laboring as if from the dawn of time in mines (as above), from ancient peoples living half-hidden from modern economic systems, to migrants and nomads on the Edge of Tomorrow. 

The Salt of the Earth delivers a stunning blend of documentary film and photography in both color and black and white. Images range from disturbing atrocities (people dead from starvation or massacre) to mystic beauty, from social panorama to natural vista.

Whereas most photographers tend to focus on either natural or social settings, Sebastião Salgado does both, without privileging one kind over the other: to me, this is an optimal way of looking at the world, with very impressive results.

Today's Rune: Fertility.