Ryan Conrad recently pulled his film from the Frameline San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival because the festival, despite a robust budget and years of protest from filmmakers, audiences and activists, continues to accept money from the Israeli consulate. Conrad joins a growing list of artists who are taking a stand in
Continue readingTag: Friday Film Pick
Art Threat: Friday Film Pick: Blockadia Rising: Voices of the Tar Sands Blockade
This week’s FFP is a new one-hour documentary by Garrett Graham (in collaboration with the Tar Sands Blockade) about the direct action efforts of activists in Texas, who try to stop construction of the planned Alberta tar sands pipeline. There is some seriously heavy-handed narration at the beginning, but if
Continue readingArt Threat: In honour of Morgentaler
Democracy on Trial: The Morgentaler Affair by Paul Cowan, National Film Board of Canada This week’s Friday Film Pick is the NFB doc about Dr. Norman Morgentaler, the Canadian physician who fought for abortion rights for women in Canada. A hero to most in Canada, a country that is largely
Continue readingArt Threat: Democracy on Trial: The Morgentaler Affair
Abortion-rights activist and pioneer Dr. Henry Morgentaler died Wednesday of a heart attack. Appropriately, our Friday Film Pick is Democracy on Trial, a 1984 NFB documentary by Paul Cowen in which Morgantaler’s historic legal battle over abortion in the 1970s is unraveled and explored using a combination of archival footage,
Continue readingArt Threat: Tree-sitting among giants
This week’s Friday Film Pick is the Vimeo staff pick and festival favourite short film Among Giants. Image-rich and information-light, it’s a lovely meditation on activists putting the environment before their own personal safety and one imagines sanity (given some tree-sitters stayed three years).
Continue readingArt Threat: Fatal fish farms
Salmon Confidential is a new film by Twyla Roscovich on the government cover up of what is killing BC’s wild salmon. It is absolutely shocking to see the lengths the provincial and federal governments are going to in order to not allow the dissemination of information about the role of
Continue readingArt Threat: Print your own gun
This week’s Friday Film Pick is a new 24-minute documentary produced by Motherboard and distributed by Vice Magazine, on 3D gun printing (video after jump). The film peaks into the weird and extremely controversial world of Cody Wilson and associates, young gun-loving geeks who celebrate the intersection of firearms, freedom
Continue readingArt Threat: Free Int’l Women’s Day Films at NFB.ca
The beaten (by the Canadian Conservative budget cuts) but not down National Film Board of Canada is offering a treasure trove of titles for free streaming today, in celebration and recognition of International Women’s Day. Included in the bunch is the 2012 experimental short by Jenn Strom, below (after the
Continue readingArt Threat: Identity, Oppression, Resistance
For this week’s Friday Film Pick I’m choosing two very different, seemingly unrelated docs that are available for online viewing. Girl Inside is an intimate portrayal of a male transitioning to female, and because the film is available for streaming from Canada’s TVO broadcaster, it is likely unavailable to non-Canadian
Continue readingArt Threat: Pirate Bay documentary debuts online
The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard documentary, which tells the story behind the embattled Swedish Pirate Bay project, is now available on YouTube. The film just premiered in Europe and was simultaneously launched on line at Youtube and for download on…Pirate Bay. Following the TPB founders, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij
Continue readingArt Threat: War on Drugs doc launches for free – Friday Film Pick: Breaking the Taboo
It’s too early in the day for us to watch a documentary on the so-called “war on drugs,” so we’re not actually endorsing this week’s FFP, Breaking the Taboo, which has just been launched for free viewing on YouTube, but it looks like it will be an interesting hour of
Continue readingArt Threat: Scrap America – Friday Film Pick & Interview: Scrappers
An interview with one of the filmmakers behind the poetic documentary Scrappers.
Continue readingArt Threat: Embedded with a West London Eco-village – Friday Film Pick: Grasp the Nettle
Filmmaker Dean Puckett is following up from his fantastic documentary The Crisis of Civilization with another doc from the front lines of the war on want. This time Puckett’s lens is set on squatters and eco-activists who set up camp and community in Puckett’s home turf of London, following the
Continue readingArt Threat: Friday Film Pick: Togetherness Supreme
Barack Obama was still just a U.S. Senator in 2006, but he was already spooling up for his presidential run. Seizing on his rising visibility and popularity, Obama made a mostly-business trip to Africa. The unprecedented buzz surrounding a senatorial trip culminated in his arrival in Kenya, the birthplace of
Continue readingArt Threat: Green among the grey – Friday Film Pick: Edible City
Edible City is a new documentary charting what for some, has become familiar non-fiction territory: that of food politics. In recent years a raft of films looking at organic growing, urban gardening, slow food, agricorps, seed saving and more have contributed to a wider understanding of the complex issues around
Continue readingArt Threat: A loud revolution – Friday Film Pick: Casseroles – Montréal, 24 Mai 2012
This week’s FFP is a lovely short film showing what has become the nightly ritual of taking to balconies and the streets of Montreal to bang on pots and pans, showing solidarity with the student protestors and registering disapproval of the draconian measures undertaken by by the Quebec government to
Continue readingArt Threat: Of Waves, Bears and Oil – Friday Film Pick: Tipping Barrels
Tipping Barrels (Ben Gulliver, 2012) is one part surfing movie, one part wildlife documentary, one part guy flick and one part political commentary. It’s for parts two and four that I include it as this week’s Friday Film Pick. The short doc, running at 18 minutes, gazes in on British
Continue readingArt Threat: Emotionally devastating documentary explores Israeli bombing of Gaza – Friday Film Pick: Tears of Gaza
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed or wounded in Israel’s latest bombing campaign of Gaza, while the Israeli military stubbornly insists the child-killing attacks are necessary to stop “terrorism”. Such bloody assaults on Gaza are unfortunately common, and those that took place over 2008-2009 may have been the most devastating.
Continue readingArt Threat: Farmers fight back against Honduran elite – Friday Film Pick: Resistencia
Produced by Amy Miller, the documentarian behind MYTHS FOR PROFIT and her much-anticipated follow-up THE CARBON RUSH, this week’s Friday Film Pick is the film-in-progress RESISTENCIA. Directed by Jesse Freeston, the documentary follows the land-and-rights struggle by farmers against Miguel Facussé, the richest man in Honduras. Freeston is a committed
Continue readingArt Threat: The power of citizens media at Vancouver Olympics – Friday Film Pick: With Glowing Hearts
This week’s Friday Film Pick is a documentary about the power citizen’s media has to diversify representation, tell under-represented stories, and contribute to community. With Glowing Hearts looks at the flurry of alternative media activity that took place in the lead-up to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. With corporate media
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