This music video was directed by Michel Gondrey, whose name you might recognize because he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2004 for his work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In this piece made for the New York based band, Cibo Matto, Gondrey uses split screen to tell a surreal […]

This student documentary was made by a member of Cleveland High School’s graduating class of 2015, during and after his senior year. The school has for the past few years offered a multimedia production class, and it was through this that Ben Grayzel acquired the skills and equipment necessary to make the film. The filmmaker […]

This video has been around a while, but I think it’s very relevant to our discussion of Telling True Stories. In it, David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) talks to the New York Times about his appreciation for biking, and his disdain for driving. He first articulated these feelings in his non-fiction book Bicycle Diaries, […]

Based in Berlin, Run Lola Run is fragmented. Each of its three sections, or “runs,” begins the same way, with the same characters working to solve the same problem: Lola must come up with enough money to pay off a crook who aims to kill Manni. However, the methods and attitudes of the characters differ, […]

Today I’m thinking about the gimbal. Not only how much I enjoyed using it last week, but also how it has contributed to some of my favorite visual works. We’ve already mentioned in class this impressive scene from the first season of True Detective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_HuFuKiq8U. And we’ve mentioned this one from Goodfellas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sr-vxVaY_M. Both of […]

A friend of mine recently posted a link to this website on her Facebook timeline. It presents a powerful set of images, which portray a perspective on the current Syrian crisis that is worthy of more attention. That is, the collective perspective of children forced to part ways with their families, friends, and sense of security as […]

Since last week I’ve been thinking about the opening scene of that interview with Slomo. What impresses me most is that the way in which Slomo’s story is presented seems to be tailor-made (i.e. Slomo is filmed in slow motion, and often from the point of view of someone skating close behind him). That’s so effective […]

Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 film There Will Be Blood is a masterpiece; and because our cohort is currently learning how to tell stories that are unreliant on words, I think its opening sequence deserves our attention. For the first fifteen minutes the film is without dialogue. Nevertheless we (the audience) fully understand the events laid […]