Thursday, January 5, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Narcocorrido Poster
Thought I'd post the finished poster, as I was putting the process up as we went along in designing and discussing it. It's amazing.
Jeanne D'Angelo is an outstanding artist, and you can see more of her work at www.wanderinggenie.blogspot.com
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Ethnic Time: The Movie!
First off, love these posters.
Second, started thinking if I SHOULD love these posters. There's something about these, specifically the ethnicized typeface, that makes me uneasy. Like, of course they chose the "African" typeface for a movie called "Zulu", because it just makes sense. It's also silly as hell and an easy choice and very typical of the time.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't look great and make me want to see the film.
Got me thinking about what we're doing with the poster for my thesis film "Narcocorrido". Settled on some beautiful, startling imagery that I feel is authentic and of the folk tradition of the music and very fitting for the type of film we made, but also could be taken as one of these sort of cultural assumptions made by the uninformed. Something made outside of a culture discussing a culture and using just enough hints of cultural identity to sort of suggest being of the culture. The Mexican FUBU, if you will.
I don't think we're this deep in the bullshit, of course -- it doesn't keep me up nights or anything like that. We've taken great care to tell the story we wanted from multiple perspectives set in this world of the Narcocorrido. And we want the film to act as an introduction to this music and culture and the stories told, this artform that's really great and interesting. So the film works as an outsider's look in.
And it's probably just worth a thought before you go full ethnic on your film's marketing, nonetheless.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Bukowski
Sums up everything I keep facing in my own art. But, of course, said much better than I ever could.
Transcript
7-22-85
Dear Hans van den Broek:
Thank you for your letter telling me of the removal of one of my books from the Nijmegen library. And that it is accused of discrimination against black people, homosexuals and women. And that it is sadism because of the sadism.
The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.
If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women it is because of these who I met were that. There are many "bads"--bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even "bad" white males. Only when you write about "bad" white males they don't complain about it. And need I say that there are "good" blacks, "good" homosexuals and "good" women?
In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of "sadism" it is because it exists, I didn't invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds. In my writing I do not always agree with what occurs, nor do I linger in the mud for the sheer sake of it. Also, it is curious that the people who rail against my work seem to overlook the sections of it which entail joy and love and hope, and there are such sections. My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the "light" and never mentioned the other, then as an artist I would be a liar.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
I am not dismayed that one of my books has been hunted down and dislodged from the shelves of a local library. In a sense, I am honored that I have written something that has awakened these from their non-ponderous depths. But I am hurt, yes, when somebody else's book is censored, for that book, usually is a great book and there are few of those, and throughout the ages that type of book has often generated into a classic, and what was once thought shocking and immoral is now required reading at many of our universities.
I am not saying that my book is one of those, but I am saying that in our time, at this moment when any moment may be the last for many of us, it's damned galling and impossibly sad that we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunters and the declaimers against reality. Yet, these too belong with us, they are part of the whole, and if I haven't written about them, I should, maybe have here, and that's enough.
may we all get better together,
yrs,
(Signed)
Charles Bukowski
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/10/charles-bukowski-on-censorship.html
Transcript
7-22-85
Dear Hans van den Broek:
Thank you for your letter telling me of the removal of one of my books from the Nijmegen library. And that it is accused of discrimination against black people, homosexuals and women. And that it is sadism because of the sadism.
The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.
If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women it is because of these who I met were that. There are many "bads"--bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even "bad" white males. Only when you write about "bad" white males they don't complain about it. And need I say that there are "good" blacks, "good" homosexuals and "good" women?
In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see. If I write of "sadism" it is because it exists, I didn't invent it, and if some terrible act occurs in my work it is because such things happen in our lives. I am not on the side of evil, if such a thing as evil abounds. In my writing I do not always agree with what occurs, nor do I linger in the mud for the sheer sake of it. Also, it is curious that the people who rail against my work seem to overlook the sections of it which entail joy and love and hope, and there are such sections. My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the "light" and never mentioned the other, then as an artist I would be a liar.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can't vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
I am not dismayed that one of my books has been hunted down and dislodged from the shelves of a local library. In a sense, I am honored that I have written something that has awakened these from their non-ponderous depths. But I am hurt, yes, when somebody else's book is censored, for that book, usually is a great book and there are few of those, and throughout the ages that type of book has often generated into a classic, and what was once thought shocking and immoral is now required reading at many of our universities.
I am not saying that my book is one of those, but I am saying that in our time, at this moment when any moment may be the last for many of us, it's damned galling and impossibly sad that we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunters and the declaimers against reality. Yet, these too belong with us, they are part of the whole, and if I haven't written about them, I should, maybe have here, and that's enough.
may we all get better together,
yrs,
(Signed)
Charles Bukowski
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/10/charles-bukowski-on-censorship.html
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Narco Poster References 2
A lot of great stuff out there. More likes from looking around at different poster designs.
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