Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

Posted on July 8, 2011 by RichardPrins

Via SnagFilms, a 90-minute documentary from 2008:

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is Fear of the Unknown.

“H.P. Lovecraft was the forefather of modern horror fiction having inspired such writers as Stephen King, Robert Bloch and Neil Gaiman. The influence of his Cthulhu mythos can be seen in film (Re-animator, Hellboy, and Alien), games (The Call of Cthulhu role playing enterprise), music (Metallica, Iron Maiden) and pop culture in general.

But what led an Old World, xenophobic gentleman to create one of literature’s most far-reaching mythologies? What attracts even the minds of the 21st century to these stories of unspeakable abominations and cosmic gods?

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown is a chronicle of the life, work and mind that created these weird tales as told by many of today’s luminaries of dark fantasy including John Carpenter (The Thing), Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), Neil Gaiman (Coraline), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator), Caitlin Kiernan (“Daughter of Hounds”) and Peter Straub (“Ghost Story”).”

Preview below, view the rest at SnagFilms:

Musical Minds

Posted on July 2, 2011 by RichardPrins

Can the power of music make the brain come alive?

Throughout his career Dr. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and acclaimed author, whose book Awakenings was made into a Oscar-nominated feature film starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, has encountered myriad patients who are struggling to cope with debilitating medical conditions.

While their ailments vary, many have one thing in common: an appreciation for the therapeutic effects of music.

NOVA follows four individuals — two of whom are Sacks’s case studies — and even peers into Sacks’s own brain, to investigate music’s strange, surprising, and still unexplained power over the human mind.

Refridgerator Mothers

Posted on July 1, 2011 by RichardPrins

It is America of the 1950s and 1960s, when a woman’s most important contribution to society is generally considered to be her ability to raise happy, well-adjusted children.

But for the mother whose child is diagnosed with autism, her life’s purpose will soon become a twisted nightmare. Looking for help and support, she encounters instead a medical establishment that pins the blame for her child’s bizarre behaviors on her supposedly frigid and detached mothering. Along with a heartbreaking label for her child, she receives a devastating label of her own. She is a “refrigerator mother”.

Refrigerator Mothers paints an intimate portrait of an entire generation of mothers, already laden with the challenge of raising profoundly disordered children, who lived for years under the dehumanizing shadow of professionally promoted “mother blame.”

Once isolated and unheard, these mothers have emerged with strong, resilient voices to share the details of their personal journeys. Through their poignant stories, Refrigerator Mothers puts a human face on what can happen when authority goes unquestioned and humanity is removed from the search for scientific answers.

Preview below, with a link to watch the rest:

CBC: To Sell A War

Posted on June 30, 2011 by RichardPrins

To Sell A War is a documentary which first aired in December 1992 as part of CBC programme The Fifth Estate. The programme was directed by Martyn Gregory and produced by Neil Docherty.

It exposes the Citizens for a Free Kuwait campaign as public relations spin to gain public opinion support for the Gulf War. As well, it reveals that Nurse Nayirah was in fact Nijirah al-Sabah, the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, coached by Hill & Knowlton to forge her infamous testimony about Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators, which was widely reported and repeated throughout the media.

The story that Iraqi troops murdered 312 babies in hospitals by removing them from their incubators broke at a time when American public opinion was wavering over President Bush’s call to arms to defend Kuwait. It tipped the balance and helped persuade the Americans and their allies to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

On-screen participants include John MacArthur (Publisher, Harpers & Queen), Nasir al Sabah (Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US), Congressman John Porter (Co-Chair, Human Rights Caucus), Dr Ibrahim Behbehani (Red Crescent, Kuwait), Dr David Chiu (World Health Organisation, British Columbia Institute of Technology), Dr Ian Pollock (Physicians for Human Rights), Sean Stiles (Amnesty International), Andrew Whiting (Middle East Watch), Dee Alsop (Wirthline Group).

Thelonious Monk: Straight , No Chaser

Posted on June 26, 2011 by RichardPrins

A documentary film about the life of pianist and jazz great Thelonious Monk. Features live performances by Monk and his band, and interviews with friends and family about the offbeat genius.

The story behind ‘Straight, No Chaser’ began in West Germany in 1967 and ended more than two decades later in Kansas City, Hollywood and New York.

It had its beginnings in 1967, when the film-maker Michael Blackwood was commissioned by West German Television to make a film about Thelonious Monk. Over a six-month period of time that stretched into 1968, Michael and his brother Christian Blackwood, acting as cinematographer and co-director, followed Monk around, capturing him on and offstage, in the studio and on the road, at work and at rest in New York, Atlanta and several European cities.

In total, fourteen hours of film was shot and edited by the Blackwoods down to a film that was broadcast only once in Germany and never again anywhere else. From time to time, talk would surface in the jazz community about the existence of this precious footage, often described as ‘the Dead Sea Scrolls of Jazz’.

In 1981 the Blackwoods, joined with director Zwerin and producer Ricker, planned on turning all this material into a film. But they had to wait until 1987 for their (financial) breakthrough. Clint Eastwood, a lifelong jazz fan, was producing and directing the movie ‘Bird’ about Charlie Parker and heard about this project.

After viewing the samples, he was prepared to step in as executive producer, arranging for the financing to complete and for its eventual release through Warner Bros in the summer of 1988.