Much ink has been spilled and pixels punctuated regarding the ongoing controversial topic around the copyright, downloading, streaming and file sharing of creative content, yet there has been little discussion (outside of organizational listserves and at festival forums) of documentary cinema and file sharing. This may be in large part due to
Continue readingAuthor: Ezra Winton
Art 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 readingezra winton: Scrap America – A conversation with Scrapper filmmaker Brian Ashby
This week’s Friday Film Pick is the beautifully shot and tenderly rendered Scrappers, a documentary that quietly follows two Chicago residents as they eke out a living from the salvaging of metallic refuse. It’s not fist-in-the-air advocacy filmmaking for the downtrodden, but in its own way Scrappers gets under the
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 readingezra winton: Russian LGBT Film Fest pushes ahead despite attacks – A conversation with the founder of the Side By Side Festival
It is an extreme act of bravery and commitment to put on a queer film festival in many parts of the world, where the cultural politics of film festivals play out in ugly and often violent manifestations of hatred and ignorance. Homophobia is rampant the world over, but in countries
Continue readingezra winton: Love and death on the side of the road – A conversation with taxidermy sculptor Kate Puxley
Kate Puxley is a visual artist whose work has drawn attention to the Harper government’s damaging policies toward art and culture as well as our relationship with animals and the natural environment. Arresting, breathtaking, and inimitable, her drawings, paintings, installations, and most recently her taxidermy sculptures, are provocations and interventions
Continue readingArt Threat: The art of roadkill – A conversation with artist Kate Puxley
Kate Puxley is a visual artist whose work has drawn attention to the Harper government’s damaging policies toward art and culture as well as our relationship with animals and the natural environment. Arresting, breathtaking, and inimitable, her drawings, paintings, installations, and most recently her taxidermy sculptures, are provocations and interventions
Continue readingArt Threat: Russian LGBT Film Fest pushes ahead despite attacks – A conversation with the founder of the Side By Side Festival
It is an extreme act of bravery and commitment to put on a queer film festival in many parts of the world, where the cultural politics of film festivals play out in ugly and often violent manifestations of hatred and ignorance. Homophobia is rampant the world over, but in countries
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: Aggressive misinformation from millionaires – Koch brothers-funded institute takes down offensive billboards
The Heartland Institute, that whacky rightwing think tank in the US that has corporations abandoning it faster than you can say Titanic, has added another bonehead move to its long list of ridiculous and offensive propaganda tactics. Last week Heartland, which is already facing isolation in a charged US pre-election
Continue readingArt Threat: Indian state attacks artists – Poets & performers jailed, driven underground
Last week the award-winning documentary filmmaker and activist Anand Patwardhan, along with Ratna Pathak Shah, Sudhakar Suradkar and Prakash Reddy launched a defence fund for Kabir Kala Manch, a cultural performance group that had been spreading awareness in India on many issues including women’s rights, caste oppression and development inequality.
Continue readingArt Threat: Watching them watching us – Monday Music Pick: Our Protection by LAL
The deeply political, community-committed, and talented LAL from Toronto, sing about surveillance with images from the Toronto G20 manifestations from two summers ago. LAL was formed in 1998 and is comprised of poet, singer & Bengali-rooted Rosina Kazi, producer, sound designer, philosopher, aphorismist and Barbados-born king of chill, Murr, and
Continue readingArt Threat: More houses, less prisons – A review of the compelling documentary Herman’s House
It’s hard to make a house without materials, and even harder if you are in solitary confinement in a US prison and have been there for forty years. What is required in that situation is imagination and perseverance, mixed with a healthy dose of love and anger — all of
Continue readingArt Threat: A doc that makes you want to occupy – We Are Wisconsin at Hot Docs 2012
Yesterday we caught three political docs at Hot Docs, and before I race off to The Law In These Parts, here is the first of many more micro-reviews. We Are Wisconsin, directed by Aimee Williams, is the first film I’ve seen at the festival that champions activism and calls on
Continue readingArt Threat: Hot Docs 2012 Midpoint Roundup – A guide to the political stuff at Toronto’s fest
Today is day five of Hot Docs 2012 and unlike last year, a lethal combination of meetings, movies and meanderings have kept me from a daily tally here at Art Threat. No mind, I intend to make up for in the remaining five days of the fest, beginning with this
Continue readingArt Threat: Just do it (direct action)! – Activist documentary made free for May Day
From our activist and filmmaker friends in the UK: Constellation and Occupy.com present A FREE 24-hour ONLINE SCREENING of Just Do It – a tale of modern-day outlaws, in celebration of May Day and in honour of the direct action being taken by thousands of people. The film will be
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