Far East Film Festival - Share

Far East Film Festival - Share

Far East Film Festival - Share

Far East Film Festival - Share

The Revolution Will Be Twitterized

Established Mainstream Media vs Twitter News Snippets?

"We know from crisis communication research that people typically search for corroborating information before they take a corrective action—their TV tells them there's a tornado brewing and they talk to relatives and neighbors. And now they look at Twitter."  Bill Braniff, Executive Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism.

"I have been following my friend's Facebook who is near the scene and she is updating everyone before it even gets to the news".  Email sent during Boston Marathon.

The way we get our news is changing. Paper newspapers are going digital. Digital subscriptions have forced newsprint to come up with inventive ways to package news. Nothing seems to last for long since it is impossible to compete with the immediacy of digital information. Even reading the entire paper in digital format is time consuming. 

Twitter is becoming the news preference.

Marcus Messner, a communications professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the rash of mainstream media errors [of Boston Marathon bombing news coverage] stemmed at least in part from pressure to compete with fast-flowing social media. 

"If you look at Twitter, the news snippets on the events are a lot more advanced than what you're seeing on websites or even what you're seeing on the air," Messner said. "Twitter, especially, has put a lot more pressure on news organization to get it out fast."

Social media is changing everything, that is the need for quick, cinematic messages that may or may not be accurate, information that can be skimmed in a heartbeat, and forgotten in a nano second. The paradigm shift awaits for the entire work force to adapt to the digital revolution. Standing with your pitchfork in protest as the agrarians did during the industrial revolution will not matter.

The revolution IS digitalized and will continue.

The Boston Marathon Patriot Race

The Boston Marathon is the oldest marathon in the world that began in 1897 as a patriot race. For the 117th race, over 23 thousand  runners from 92 countries were suddenly paralyzed by two young Chechnyan men with homemade bombs and IEDs.  Major gunfights in the neighborhoods of Boston put Watertown on curfew for a day. The two young men were discovered through surveillance cameras and personal digital images.  The race and manhunt was relayed around the world through mediated images. The BBC reported from someone's apartment in Watertown hooked up on Skype. The primitive weapons of two sociopaths contrast strongly with the electronic and digital surveillance. This is definitely symbolic of living in a world of opposites.

Social Media and the Boston Bombings

From Palestine to Boston

The Boston bombings were real. They were also mediated. The entire world was on live feed as the manhunt began and there was enormous support everywhere. This event is symbolic of how we deal with a real event and how far reaching its grasp can become. As much as I am irritated by the power of two corporate social media empires that have enslaved young people and diminished personal contact, this has become part of the world we live in. In Sweden the major papers report EVERY DAY about who twittered what and almost EVERYONE in mass transport is on their EYEPHONE (iPhone) in a PC society. And here I am on Blogger because I want to connect my thoughts to this vortex of mediated images.....
I am a part of it all too.

© 2013 - Moira Sullivan - Publication Date: 04/20/13
CinéFemme Forum

Créteil Films de Femmes Celebrates 35 years

35 th Year Poster by Karine Saporta 

The Créteil International Women’s Film Festival, which was held from March 22 to 31 honored veteran filmmakers and actresses who have attended previous festivals such as Margareta Von Trotta, Suzanne Osten, Mira Nair, Ulrike Ottinger, Agnes Varda, Carmen Maura, Maria Schneider and Anna Karina. 

Jeanne Balifor

The guest of honor this year was Jeanne Balifor, an actress unknown outside of Europe who selects films that are noteworthy for their extraordinary themes.  L´Age d´Ellen (Germany 2009), (The Age of Ellen) by the German director Pira Marais was screened for the occasion on Day 2 about a flight attendant (Jeanne Balifor) who decides to abandon her career after an incident in Africa when a leopard on the landing field is sedated by an animal rights activist.

Youth from the Créteil high schools and university are involved in the festival, documenting the festival on film teams, and the government supports the festival. During the year, the festival creates video workshops for them with selected themes and their films are screened in the Créteil Prefecture.

Nayat Valaud-Belkacem 

The new “Minister of Women”, Nayat Valaud-Belkacem in François Hollandes cabinet, visited the festival on Day 3 and proclaimed how important the Créteil event was. “Even the Lumière Brothers had a sister”, she declared. In the festival catalogue, she was generous in supplying ample statistics defying the myth equality has been reached by women in France: “Five percent of classical concerts are directed by women; 90% of the national dramatic theatres are directed by men; 4% of operas are directed by women, and 13% of the technicians in cultural arena are women. For the world of cinema, it is the same”, wrote Valaud-Belkacem.

Créteil nevertheless devotes itself to “the privileged exhibition of film directors around the world; it has become over time the only professional event on a major international auteur cinema long discriminated against and poorly dispersed”. It is a festival supported by both the Ministry of Culture in France, and the Creteil borough. Director Jackie Buet has been with the festival since 1979.

An invitation to the “L’Étrange” or Strange Film Festival in Paris featured two films by French filmmaker Angélique Bosio.

The first was the world première of a documentary about a virtually unknown French designer– Fifi Chachnil. In Pretty en Rose (Pretty in Pink). Fifi is known for designing fashionable lingerie and attire for women and has worked with filmmakers such as the gay team of Pierre and Gilles. Bosio spend six years making the film which she also successfully crowdfunded in part.

Bosio’s “Llik your Idols” from 2007 was also screened about the Cinema of Transgression movement of the 80’s coined by the American Nick Zedd, films which were inexpensively underground films created for shock value, often having a humorous effect.

On the final evening of the festival was a special event called an ‘avant première’ of Margareta Von Trotta's biopic  “Hannah Arendt”. Barbara Sukorow plays the German American political theorist. Arendt wrote several important books and also covered the trial of Eichmann as a reporter for the New Yorker. She was critical to how the trial was conducted and a large part of Von Trotta’s film treats this. 

The international jury selected Hemel as the best feature film of Créteil festival this year.

Grand prix du Jury Meilleur long métrage fiction
Hemel by Sacha Polak (Netherlands 2012):
The story of a woman who is lost in a series of relationships and whose father soon becomes seriously interested in a new woman, which shakes Hemel’s foundation.

Honorable mention. Mention special. The Mirror Never Lies by Kamila Andini (Indonesia, 2011):
The story of an Indonesian mother Tayung and her 12-year-old daughter Pakis whose husband is missing at sea. The film is set in the Coral Triangle and portrays the lives of the Bajo people today

Public prize for feature film. Prix du Public Meilleur long métrage fiction
Inch’Allah by Anaïs de Barbeau-Lavalette (Canada, 2012)
The story of Chloe, a young Canadian obstetrician working in a makeshift clinic in a Palestinian refugee camp of the West Bank.

Public prize for best documentary. Prix du Public Meilleur long métrage documentaire
Même un oiseau a besoin de son nid (Even a bird needs a nest) by Christine Chansou and Vincent Tritignant-Corneau (France, 2012).
The film about one million Cambodians who have lost their homes to make way for commercial development, which elicited a massive protest led by women.

Best feature, Jury Youth Prize. Prix du jury Graine de Cinéphage
Sac de Farine  (Sack of Flour), Kadija Leclere Tunisia, 2012): the story about a young girl in Belgium whose father one day arrives at her school to take her to live in Morocco. She grows up learning how to sew and knit rather than study math science and art. One day everything changes.

Créteil is clearly up to date, and defies the protocol of rival festivals with its special programming criteria. After 35 years the festival remains a maverick in the arena. 

Annette Funicello was the darling of the original Mouseketeers

April 9, 2013 9:26 AM MST 

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Annette Funicello as "Annette McCloud" is new in town and is invited to a party.

Walt Disney

Annette Funicello was the popular "Mouseketeer" whose career continued with over 20 films and television appearances after her childhood TV roles. Her passing on April 8 was sad news for babyboomers who had grown up with her. Diane Disney Miller posted a personal letter on the Walt Disney Museum blog with a poem written by Byron that she feels could have been written about Annette.

Walt Disney

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Walt Disney

What made Funicello so endearing to the public was her wholesome and beautiful good looks, her demeanor, her ability to stand up to her boyfriends in her films, and her perpetual cheer in life. She lived her life almost as the person in her films, sticking up for herself, helping others, making others happy. There were never stories of a different persona behind Annette. She was genuine on screen, as in life.

The original Mouseketeers of the Mickey Mouse Club were only on the air from 1955 to 1960 but their faces are immortal for those who watched the popular TV show. They could all dance and sing and each had a unique personality. One of the best things about the program was that it was educational but the commercials and merchandising that were used to pay for it were not lucrative enough, which was exactly why Disney and ABC could not hammer out a deal and later cancelled it. However, the show did help in part to finance Disneyland.

Annette was the darling of them all. She seemed taller than most of them and was a big sister to the younger ones like, Cubby O'Brien and Karen Pendelton. 

The Mouseketeers continued up through 1997 with new children such as Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears who are big stars now, so it goes to show what Disney magic can do.

In interviews in the 90s's Funicello said her eternal friend was Mickey Mouse. Even if Annette retired from entertainment due to her long illness with MS, her passing yesterday evokes one of the newspaper cartoons at the Walt Disney Museum in San Franciscoshowing Mickey crying when Walt Disney passed away in 1966. This cartoon could just as well apply to Annette as one of Mickey's ardent champions.

Listen to an interview of Annette Funicello starting April 10, 10 pm Pacific time in the Movie Magazine Listening Room, a San Francisco based streaming radio program for 20 seasons nationally. The interview will be on there for a week for national and international audiences.