EBN: The Emergency Broadcast Network

Remember the "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" as sung by Bush video that was a minor phenomena last year? The technique was invented 15 years ago by the new media collective EBN. The group is led by Josh Pearson whose bad-ass website is an archive of old EBN films. Below are a few gems. EBN makes funky music/video cut-ups which were so powerful in there time, they were co-opted by ad agencies and music video makers to make more shit for EBN to parody. Viva la detournement!

Santiago Alvarez and the Latin American Found Footage Contingency

I recently came across one of the most original and politically provocative found-footage filmmakers of the 1960s, Santiago Alvarez. His films are available on DVD under the title "He Who Hits First, Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Alvarez." These are some of the most refreshingly uncynical found-footage films I've seen from a man devoted to montage juxtapositions which have tremendous emotional impact on the viewer. If you like Jon Josts early work it is a must see. Below is one of his early films "Now!" I strongly urge everyone to see his films "LBJ" and "79 Springtimes" aka "79 Primaveras." Alvarez had no formal film training and worked for the Cuban Film Institutes newsreel division. A bio from Wikipedia is below. For anyone interested in newsreel found footage films, check out the book "Films Beget Films" by Jay Leyda.



Santiago Álvarez (born 1919–died 1998) was a Cuban filmmaker. He wrote and directed many documentaries about Cuban and American culture. Among his most famous works was the short Now (1964), about racial discrimination and featuring singer/actress Lena Horne. LBJ (1968) and 79 Primaveras (1969) examined figures of the Vietnam War. In 1968, he collaborated with Octavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanas (members of Grupo Cine Liberación) on the four-hour documentary Hora de los hornos, about foreign imperialism in South America. Among the other subjects he explored in his film were the musical and cultural scene in Latin America and the dictatorships which gripped the region. He died of Parkinson's disease in Havana on May 20, 1998 and was buried there in the Colon Cemetery.

News Found Footage

'Special Report' by Bryan Boyce


AMERICAN GULAG (Caution: Graphic)

Andrew Keen's dissapointing self-reflexivity

I picked up Andrew Keen's "Cult of the Amateur: How Todays Internet is Killing Our Culture" in hopes of finding a thinker who could articulate some of my own anxieties about the subject. I may blog, study internet video appropriation at a graduate level, sing the praises of Lawrence Lessig, etc, etc...but I am aware of serious problems facilitated by the wonderful contributions of the internet. Unfortunately, Keen's work is not the place to find insight. In fact his work seems to suffer from the problems he derides so often. Keen loves to make sweeping generalizations and outrageous claims without evidence. Furthermore his lack of reason and logic is puzzling at times. He blames the blogosphere for Wendy's restaurant's plummeting stock after the "severed finger in the chili" farce, but fails to mention that THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA wasn't skeptical of the event either. He sets out to deride the amateur but spends much of his time attacking the ease by which corporations can moonlight as anonymous amateurs to build product loyalty. Ultimately, he is guilty of what many people in the establishment who didn't grow up in the computer age are; He doesn't realize that internet users are savvy enough to know that everything they read isn't the truth. His major critique of blogs is that they aren't peer reviewed or published and don't face the quality control that authors do. However a myriad of opponents to his ideas (far more than followers of his skepticism) are published authors who've gone through this very process. Lets not forget how much misinformation, plagiarism and forgery occurs even in publishing. Keen has done one good thing--he brought this conversation out into the open in a way it hasn't before. Unfortunately, this serious conversation, which should be dialectical in nature and not a screaming match, has been completely undermined by Keen's amateurish, illogical, unreasoned and ill-researched arguments. Please see the video below celebrating everything Keen hates:

Perfected Jews and Anne Coulter

Copyright Hitmen

Below is a video by John "Bull" Dozier. Described by online magazine "Virginia Super Lawyer" as an "Entrepreneur, Technologist, Hired Gun and Founder of Dozier Internet Law, PC." This hired gun's law firm recently threatened the website infomercialScams.com with legal action if they posted A CEASE AND DESIST LETTER?!?! That's right--they threatened to sue if they published their threat to sue. The initial suit was over InfomercialScams.com's publishing of material denouncing the service of a "manufacture-direct" furniture company. Hot damn folks. This is why THE LAW remains in the public domain--so it can't be copyrighted by assholes like this. Here's the original site which goes into detail.

Apologies

Alright, I know. These Brokeback mashups are done and done. But this is just too good. Best title cards EVER.