Человек с киноаппаратом ("Man with a Movie Camera") is a classic experimental documentary film that was released in 1929. Directed by pioneer Soviet filmmaker
Dziga Vertov, this classic, silent documentary film has no story and no actors, and is actually three documentaries in one. Ostensibly it documents 24 hours of life in a single city in the Soviet Union. But it is also a documentary of the filming of that documentary and a depiction of an audience watching that documentary and their responses. "We see the cameraman and the editing of the film, but what we don't see is any of the film itself."
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 13, 2012 -
26 comments
From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with
March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often
tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing —
foreign affairs,
social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.”
(Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and
may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues,
including (
eventually) America’s
entry to WWII. Video samples are available at
Time.com, the
March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online,
(free registration required) at
HBO Archives. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 22, 2011 -
8 comments
In 2009,
Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth
initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films:
1000 Voices,
HIV: The Musical,
Man Made,
No Way Through and
War School.
(All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 24, 2011 -
3 comments
Right Wing astroturfing A non-scientific analysis of the patterns in forum board discussions on a variety of topics. The gist: discussions of issues in which there's money at stake (like
climate change,
public health and corporate
tax avoidance) are often characterised by amazing levels of abuse and disruption by rightwing libertarians who are pro-corporate, anti-tax, anti-regulation. Discussions of issues in which there's little money at stake tend to be a lot more civilised than debates about issues where companies stand to lose or gain billions.
posted by novenator
on Dec 20, 2010 -
79 comments
"The symbiotic relationship between the press and the power elite worked for nearly a century. It worked as long as our power elite, no matter how ruthless or insensitive, was competent. But once our power elite became incompetent and morally bankrupt, the press, along with the power elite, lost its final vestige of credibility."
"The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News" by Chris Hedges.
posted by AugieAugustus
on Feb 2, 2010 -
51 comments
Fox News is the most trusted news network in the United States, according to a
new poll [.pdf] of 1,151 Americans conducted by
Public Policy Polling (a polling firm with a mostly Democratic and progressive
list of clients), the most trusted news network among Americans is FOX News, which was trusted by 49% of respondents (beating out CNN, MS-NBC, CBS, NBC, and ABC (though PBS was not included in the survey)).
The pollsters conclude:
“A generation ago you would have expected Americans to place their trust in the most
neutral and unbiased conveyors of news,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy
Polling. “But the media landscape has really changed and now they’re turning more
toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.”
posted by washburn
on Jan 26, 2010 -
126 comments
“They are brands that may not be considered cool by the often elitist and self-absorbed standards of New York media,” she said. She had taken a car from Manhattan that morning, and wore a pink wool shirt-dress, patent leather Manolo Blahnik heels, and diamond hoop earrings.
Reader's Digest
jumps the shark.
(NYT)
posted by squalor
on Jun 19, 2009 -
177 comments
My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example:
God,
college,
flag,
liberal, and
World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand
liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the
reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn
on Aug 15, 2007 -
105 comments
CENTCOM trolls for a blogger to help with the propaganda--but he picks Jesus' General --
I am a Public Affairs Officer writing from US Central Command. I would like to inquire about the possibility of you posting a link to our web site. I see that you are covering a lot of different types of stories in a lot of countries. I would like to get some of the stories out that are happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa. ...
Gen. JC Christian, patriot, of course responds with an even better idea, and cc:s Pat Robertson.
posted by amberglow
on Aug 25, 2005 -
20 comments
What Barry Says. (
mirror of the quicktime video) Though it may stray towards the tinfoil hat in places, you can't dispute that a small group of neocons
really is actually trying to reform the world in their vision. But are they doing it merely for profit on the part of their closely related weapons companies? Even if you don't agree with its provacative message, it's a damn fine looking piece of type, design, and film all rolled into one 2 minute short [via
randomfoo].
posted by mathowie
on Oct 6, 2004 -
18 comments
Michelle Malkin and the Big Hustle Matt Stoller does a good job explaining the right-wing
noise machine backing up author
Michelle Malkin, whose
new book promotes the virtue of Japanese internment camps and racial profiling. Eric Muller, UNC law school professor also does a pretty good job
ripping up her arguments. As Stoller says: "Right-wing institutional support, with places to house people to create ideas, outlets to distribute and promote them, and the tactics and relationships to turn these ideas into the mainstream, is breathtaking".
posted by owillis
on Aug 7, 2004 -
65 comments
Fake news. How is it legal to present a commercial as real news, without any indication that it is a commercial? And when did it become legal to use government money (i.e. *my taxes*) to push partisan issues, as well as try to influence election politics?
posted by rich
on Mar 18, 2004 -
12 comments
Propaganda analysis: A very interesting page on how to recognize and avoid emotionally-charged propaganda and political rhetoric. A broader question would be, how do you go about analyzing competing truth-claims made by environmentalists and anti-environmentalists, pro- and anti-gun control activists, Moonies, socialists, libertarians and capitalists? Are there any hard and fast rules you use to choose who and what to believe in a world of name calling and information glut?
posted by hanseugene
on Jan 17, 2002 -
5 comments
Taiwan's ruling party receives some
very controversial assistance. 'The commercial opens with a 10-second clip from a Nazi propaganda film, showing Hitler raising his arms and putting his hands on his chest.'
"Hitler was chosen as one of the four leaders because he dared to speak his own mind,'' Juan said. Among former Taiwanese president, Castro & JFK are featured in the commercial. AP notes that Taiwanese lack a deep understanding of the Holocaust and at the same time are suprised to that Mao Tse-Tung is used as a pop symbol in the West...
Is this a case that warrants cultural relativism ?
posted by noom
on Jul 12, 2001 -
13 comments
