'Sita Sings the Blues: Art Should Be Free, but Artists Need to Eat

The film with this image as one of its centerpieces is currently available to watch for free at Reel 13.

I'll say it again.

The film with this image as one of its centerpieces is available to watch for free at Reel 13.

The creator (director, writer, animator, editor, pretty much everything else-er), Nina Paley is some kind of genius.

To fuse ancient Hindu literature with postmodern New York relational angst, mingled with 1920s sultry blues and contemporary competing narration from delightful (and delighted) semi-experts makes 'Sita Sings the Blues' the most imaginative film I've seen this year.

The fact that Paley has made it available through a creative commons license (partly due to the copyright labyrinth) not only speaks volumes about her generous nature (it shines through in the light touch of her movie) and the future of film distribution, but makes 'Sita' probably the most fully realised cinematic incarnation yet of the paradox the poet and cultural critic Lewis Hyde is getting at in his book 'The Gift'.   Art should be free, if it is to be faithful to the place from which creative urges come; but artists need to eat.

That paradox is at the heart of how market economies diminish the quality aesthetic. (Best current example: A friend tells me that the version of 'Wolverine' he downloaded is far better without industrial special effects than the one that will be released to cinemas ever could be: for the spectacular explosions that are the reason for its absurdly high budget only serve to diminish the human/hybrid story.) Even this blog exists at the axis of this paradox - writers need to make a living as well as making a life - but, to reflect on only the part of my work that is film criticism, the potential for economic bonding among cinema's impoverished professional fans has never been greater. Nor the potential for envy toward those who actually get paid for their work.

'Sita Sings the Blues', therefore, is one of the most inspirational works of art we could see right now. Nina Paley has given us a gift, a beautiful, smart, often hilarious film that we can watch for free.  Forever.  It's free, but I'm going to send her a donation, because I have consumed her gift, and I want her to be able to make more films. I'll write to her after posting this, and maybe she'll write back; and a community will come into being, maybe just for the duration of one email and its reply. But I'll have had a direct relationship with the person who made this film and deserves my thanks - not just for the work of art itself, but for her risky decision to be in the vanguard of a new movement that can only be good for the world.

And whether or not you buy my logic, please do yourself a favour and see this wonderful film 'Sita Sings the Blues'. Its director couldn't have made it easier if she came over to your house and showed it herself.

Eddie Adams An Unlikely Weapon

You’ve seen Eddie Adams’ photographs before.  You’ve turned away from the one that made him famous; that of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan  executing a Vietcong prisoner, an image that some people credit with creating a turning point in the Vietnam War.  Woody Allen covered a wall with the photo as a way of satirizing the tendency of some artists to wallow in self-pity while the world burns; at least one musician used it as home décor to remind – he says – himself of the tortuous nature of how other people live.

You’ve seen some of Adams’ later photos too – Clint in a longcoat, gun held behind his back in the ‘Unforgiven’ poster image, Ronald Reagan pumping iron, Bill and Hillary when they could look happy together and no one asked if they were faking it.  I've used the Ali portrait above because I think Adams would prefer his most famous image to take a sabbatical.

And if you watch ‘An Unlikely Weapon’ you’ll see Eddie Adams; walking from his home to his studio, talking about the life of the mind, the power of photography, the bullshit detector that may have constituted his worldview.  He doesn’t want you to know him or to want to know him because he once photographed a man being killed.  He wants to capture the essence of a human being, and allow the possibility of compassion to arise in his audience.  He doesn't want photography to harm anyone; even if he does want it to tell the truth about human frailty.

‘An Unlikely Weapon’ is the kind of documentary that knows how to reveal a story as it goes along, rather than having everything tied up neatly before it begins.  The walk from home to studio is a nice structuring device, and director Susan Morgan Cooper has fashioned a compelling version of a life story, a man troubled by what he saw, and wedded to a particular idea of American masculinity.

But it’s also about the power of images to affect the world – today I can find a photograph in seconds of the street where the prisoner was killed, staring down from space, the crowded street, the pathos, the moral universe of this story mediated – and therefore ignorable - through the distance of satellites.  You get the sense that Eddie Adams would not have enjoyed Google Earth.

No one Photographed Red Like Jack Cardiff

Jack Cardiff has died, at the magnificent age of 94. He shot his last motion picture work only two years ago; and not only was he working til very late on in life, according to people who knew him, was one of the film world's true gentlemen.

It's hard to think of anyone else who worked with Marilyn Monroe, Sylvester Stallone, Frank Langella, David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Stephen King, Arnold Scwarzennegger, Laurence Olivier, Ned Beatty and Ernest Borgnine; not to mention the fact that he participated in both the 1935 and 1984 versions of 'The Last Days of Pompeii'. Must have had a thing for volcanoes - and I'm not kidding, for Vesuvian reds were a specialty. Of course, the work that Cardiff is best known for is that done with Powell and Pressburger - 'A Matter of Life and Death', in which heaven's black and white stasis mingles with life in earth in glorious hues; 'Black Narcissus', whose visual garishness apes its vision of religious sexual repression; and, most of all, 'The Red Shoes', which manages to feel both emotionally real, despite its melodrama, and appear to take place in a Disney cartoon villain's psyche (and I mean that as a compliment).

Looking at his later credits, it's easy to imagine he loved working so much that he would take whatever job was going (I'm not sure he did 'Rambo II' because of the aesthetic qualities of the script), and he was known for going beyond the call of duty to support younger film-makers, not long ago agreeing to shoot, and encouraging Martin Scorsese and Michael Nyman to attach their names to, a Scottish director's vision of a film about Freud and Jung. Alas the funding fell through, but what a film it would have been. It's a measure of the beauty of Cardiff's images that I fully intend to watch 'Rambo II' for the first time as soon as I can.  Though I might give The Red Shoes' another dip first.

Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love

The best known African singer in the world, the most significant cultural figure in Senegal, the voice that 'Rolling Stone' described as perhaps containing the whole of the continent (though I'm not sure whether that's a kind of silly post-colonial statement or a magnificent expression of what it can do), father, son, brother, political activist, mystic, and frankly one of the most obviously attractive human beings I've ever seen, Youssou N'Dour is the subject of a new documentary by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, 'I Bring What I Love', which I saw last night at the Nashville Film Festival.

And what a film it is.  We follow N'Dour's tour of 'Egypt', an album of Sufi devotional music whose sound envelopes the audience in a transcendent challenge to the populist 'understanding' of Islam post-9/11; Youssou's experience of his own religion is one in which generosity to the stranger, peace among neighbours, and celebration at the drop of a hat are the common marks.  Even when these are not the means by which the faith is manifested - we all fail to live up to our best traditions - Youssou N'Dour appears so committed to its outworking that he even has a problem with the violence necessary to slaughter a lamb at a sacred feast.  This may be the most telling moment in the film, for it includes the moment in voiceover when he admits that even pushing 50, every time he is in the presence of his father, he feels like he's '15 years old'.  It's at that point that so many of us will identify with him - and maybe hope that we are all doing better at life than we give ourselves credit for.

'I Bring What I Love' is not the most clearly structured film; I felt it was about a quarter of an hour too long, and the story became repetitive after a while - but these are tiny concerns far outweighed by the sheer human vitality on display in the form of this man, an heir of the 'griot' tradition who suffered insults from his own country for trying to fuse religion and popular culture; a global superstar willing to let a camera crew observe him relating to his frail grandmother without it seeming exploitative or publicity-hugging; a person who appears to be living from his best self, or at least his most self - he's not letting pain or difficulty get in the way of figuring out what it means to be a fully human being.

And the scene when a Dublin audience is gently admonished to drink up because Senegalese Sufi musicians don't want to play devotional music while alcohol is being consumed (and the audience politely agrees, even applauding the invitation) seems to me to be a sign of hope that marks the best consequences of globalisation.  Youssou N'Dour's music invites us to consider the religious cliche that we are all one.  So far, so what?  Well, what can I say to that?  If you don't listen to the music, you won't know why I'm so excited about this film, and the life-altering potential presented in essence in its title.

David Dark on Life in the Reality-based World

My friend Dave Dark's wonderful new book 'The Sacredness of Questioning Everything' hasn't yet been given to President Obama by Hugo Chavez, at least as far as I know, but I'm sure that's only because the Spanish translation hasn't been published yet...You can, however, read an extract of it here, at Killing the Buddha - a site where Dave's work has been crying out to be posted for years.

The extract begins like this:

"In a now famous piece in the New York Times (”Without a Doubt” October 17, 2004), Ron Suskind described a conversation with an unnamed aide within the executive branch of the federal government. The aide listened to Suskind’s questions and eventually observed that Suskind and his ilk were a part of “what we call the reality-based community.” The reality-based are those who still “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” Suskind agreed to the label, perhaps presuming it to be a compliment, and the aide cut him off:

That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actor…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Is it such a surprise? Manufactured realities are the business of governments, transnational corporations, and other top buyers of advertising space. Advertising isn’t what they do with a small percentage of their budget, with whatever’s left over after they’ve provided excellent services and manufactured goods; advertising is primary vocation. As McLuhan taught, the mediums are the messages. We’re soaking in them, as it happens. Did we expect a memo?

Two hundred years or so before we heard reports of a magically reassuring place called the No Spin Zone, William Blake talked about “mind-forged manacles,” metal clasps forged by the mind and for the mind. He heard the clank of the manacles whenever human beings opened their mouths. It’s the sound of people letting other people do their thinking for them. It’s the dirty trick whereby we keep perception at a safe arm’s length, denying ourselves the ability to think carefully, and letting a talking head, a career politician, or an ideological authority do the work for us. As Simon and Garfunkel tell us, it’s the way we hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.

News networks understand this. They have to sell the news, after all. And what is news? Whatever they can sell unto us as news. They anticipate what it is that most people will watch and, for better or worse, deliver the audiovisual goods. If we want to hear about Lindsey Lohan’s woes more than we want to know about genocide in Darfur, Lindsey Lohan’s daily life will be the news. To survive, the networks have to play to our “felt needs.” In this sense, we are the newsmakers—and the networks are just the sales force. They’ll give us whatever they think we want. It is all they can afford to give."

Read the rest of it at Killing the Buddha.