Well, here’s something you don’t see every week:
The Simpsons team has celebrated a long history of poking fun at themselves for outsourcing to South Korea. Even so, it’s surprising to see the famed street artist, Banksy, taking this sweatshop couch gag to such darkly humorous depths.
Haven’t seen High School Confidential yet? It’s high time you did. (Double-decker pun intended, natch!) Directed by Jack Arnold, it’s a campy, unexpectedly sharp teensploitation romp that peaks with this adrenalizing scene:
The finger-snapping nihilist’s name was Phillipa Fallon, and that was her all-too-brief moment to shine.
Via the ever-entertaining CONELRAD webzine:
Approximately mid-way through the Albert Zugsmith exploitation film masterpiece High School Confidential (1958), an attractive, quasi-bohemian woman strides on stage at a coffee house and belts out a beat poem that provides a delightfully nihilistic snapshot of the Cold War—including references to the space race and atomic evacuation. The fact that she happens to be accompanied by Jackie Coogan (who plays a heroin kingpin in the film) on piano is, like, pure existential gravy. Predictably, the teens in the audience appear to be digging Coogan’s incongruous ragtime key work and disregarding the depressing content of the lyrics.
B-movie actor and writer Mel Welles (1924-2005) was the person most responsible for the hep jargon —including “High School Drag”— in Confidential. He was recruited by producer Zugsmith for help in this regard because, as Welles recalled for interviewer Tom Weaver in 1988, “I was an expert on grass in my day…”
Up until very recently, precious little was known about the sneering sex bomb “who so memorably portrays the hipsteress delivering Welles’ boptastic words.” But just last month, after years of sleuthing and compiling, CONELRAD began to parse out Fallon’s story on a separate site devoted to her life and times. Installments are still going up.
A wee bit o’ cheer, courtesy of Marlon Riggs and the Institute of Snap!thology…
… that’s spurring me to write up an overview of something far deeper and more complex. This “Snap Diva” sequence is one of the more lighthearted scenes from Tongues Untied, a powerful independent film by activist/educator/filmmaker/author Marlon Riggs. The clip was sent to me earlier today by an old friend as an offhandedly affectionate “oooo gurl” moment, but ended up triggering intense memories of watching Riggs’ films on PBS over a decade ago. I was bowled over by them at the time, and I’m overjoyed to be reminded of them again.
Riggs died of AIDS in 1994 while still struggling to complete his final film, Black Is…Black Ain’t. An intensely personal, well-researched examination of the diversity of African-American identities, Black Is…Black Ain’t was completed by Riggs’ colleagues after his death, and released posthumously in the mid 90s. “His camera traverses the country, bringing us face to face with Black folks young and old, rich and poor, rural and urban, gay and straight, grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contested definitions of Blackness.” [via]
Riggs was a giant of public television during the late 80s and early 90s, and a truly inspiring force for positive change. Via glbtq:
Riggs’ experience of racism began in his segregated childhood schools but continued even at Harvard, where he studied American history, graduating with honors in 1978. He then earned an M. A. in 1981 at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he later taught documentary film courses.
Riggs first gained recognition for writing, producing, and directing the Emmy-winning, hour-long documentary Ethnic Notions (1987), which explored black stereotypes and stereotyping. The film helped establish Riggs’ career as a contemporary historical documentary producer.
But most of his later films and writings probe the dichotomy Riggs perceived between the strong, “Afrocentric” black man and the black “sissy” gay man. As a “sissy” himself, Riggs felt deeply his status as a pariah within the black community.
Tongues Untied (1989), Riggs’ most famous film, is an extensively reviewed and critically acclaimed documentary that met with controversy in conservative circles when it was aired on public television. Funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant, it figured in the cultural wars over control of the NEA and the Public Broadcasting System.
Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s 1956 piece ‘Gesang Der Junglinge’ (Song of the Children) analysed song verses into their elementary phonetic components and deployed electronically generated aperiodic sound – more commonly known as ‘white noise’. The Disabled Avant-Garde also generate white noise in this piece by varying the syne-waves produced by a loudly whistling boiling kettle. As with Stockhausen, a vocalist intones ‘inside’ the white noise (but using a different song – something by Roy Orbison). The total effect produced is to provide the listener with no idea whatsoever of what it must sound like to be profoundly deaf’.
That is the official description for Disabled Avante-Garde’s video “Stockhausen”. I must say, however, nothing may encapsulate the internet better than image of a disabled little person in a wheelchair, plastered in heavy makeup, accompanied by a tiny, confused dog and a conveniently placed broom, giggling gleefully as a man waves his posterior in front of her — all set to the tones of a screeching tea kettle.
Hot and steamy mini-documentary action on today’s FAM in the form of The Return of A Clockwork Orange, Film4′s look at the controversial film 30 years after director Stanley Kubrick banned the film’s showing in the UK. I’m going to assume that if you have any interest in this you are familiar with both the film and the book it was based on, so I’ll not go over them here.
Even with a working knowledge of Clockwork Orange it is difficult, I think, for modern audiences to understand why a film like this would cause such an uproar, saturated as we are with films that go way beyond Kubrick’s film in terms of graphic depictions of violence, both physical and sexual. The Return of A Clockwork Orange does an excellent job, then, of painting a picture of the political and social climate of England in the early 70s, giving a much clearer for the context for the furor over this film. Released in the same year that saw Ken Russell’s beautiful, bloody The Devils and Sam Peckinpah’s shocking Straw Dogs it was the crescendo in an increasingly heated debate on whether films should be allowed to portray such extreme behavior — a debate that continues today mostly concerning those video games the kids seem to love so much.
The end result is a short but well-informed look at a war between a nation and one of film’s greatest visionaries.
Addendum: Apologies for the inferior quality of this video. This version features much clearer visuals but the audio gets completely out of sync by the second part.
An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), circa 1910.
This series of exquisitely beautiful images from southern and central Russia is already all over the web via the Boston Globe, but Coilhouse has to post a heads up in case anybody missed them. Absolutely stunning. Boston.com editor-in-chief, Alan Taylor, says:
“With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.”
A man and woman pose in Dagestan, ca. 1910.
“The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.”
The full gallery is viewable here, high res. Previously on Coilhouse:
Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (Khiva, now a part of modern Uzbekistan), full-length portrait, seated outdoors, ca. 1910.
Pink Tentacle recently posted a glut of gorgeously creepy children’s book illustrations by Ishihara Gōjin (or Gōjin Ishihara). A prolific illustrator in post-WWII Tokyo, the man has been repeatedly referred to as “The Norman Rockwell of Japan”. Which, of course, in the context of drawings of shrieking children being terrorized by human-headed snakes and anus-gobbling demonic turtle men, is pretty goshdarn special.
The first several images in Pink Tentacle’s gallery of Ishihara Gōjin’s work “appeared in the Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters (1972), which profiled supernatural creatures from Japanese legend. The other illustrations appeared in various educational and entertainment-oriented publications for children.” But wait, there’s more! Soooo much more.
Kiddie yokai and sci-fi are only the beginning. Delve a little deeper, and you’ll discover that in addition to creating monstrous children’s fare, Ishihara Gōjin adapted the story of famed samurai Yagyū Jūbēi, which this manga reviewer describes as “Norman Rockwell drawing a manga series…about a gay love affair between Abraham Lincoln and a lean-hipped, square-jawed cowboy”. He’s also the mastermind behind this utterly mind-rending, eye-melting, Joe Coleman-would-be-proud cover of issue 2 of The Seikimatsu Club manga:
Lessee now… Charlie Manson’s got Sharon Tate in a chokehold while rubbing elbows with members of the Klu Klux Klan, and there’s benevolent ol’ Jim Jones, and AUM Shinrikyō’s Asahara Shōko on the cross… Alex Sanders… Ya Ho Wha 13… Anton LaVey (and barnyard pals), Deguchi Onisaburo… Ruth Norman (speak of the Atlantian!), and last but not least… Aleister Crowley? Holy fucking shitballs.
Then there are these oddly scintillating depictions of the Mario Brothers:
Quivering brainmeats not yet liquified? Observe more embolism-inducing imagery after the jump. Apologies in advance for the lack of English titles and references– most of the scans were ganked from an incredible Japanese language shrine to Ishihara Gojin. Also, sure to read the in-depth feature over at Comipress covering his visionary career.
No doubt, if you are Brazilian, have kin from Brazil, or you’re just generally fascinated by the brief, impassioned revolution of Tropicália/post-Tropicálismos, you’re already familiar with Secos & Molhados. Otherwise, all you really need to know before you chug your morning smoothie is this: S&M were a scrumptiously plumed and glittering glam-rock trio fronted by a sexy sopraniño beast named Ney Matogrosso, and they were fuhhuhHIERCE. Enjoy a sampling of their performances –and a few of Matogrosso’s solo clips– below:
Bear in mind, those trio clips are all pre-Rocky Horror, pre-KISS, and pre-Nomi.
RAWR.
ROLL CALL. Who among our readers has a vinyl toy addiction? We know you’re out there, setting aside monthly Kid Robot allowances, religiously reading JUXTAPOZ, chuckling appreciatively at the inclusion of a Nathan Jurevicius figurine in Splice, etc.
You’ll be interested to know about an independent feature film exploring the American vinyl toy movement, its creators and collectors, called The Vinyl Frontier. Directed by Daniel Zana, it’s the first comprehensive documentary on the subject. Via Spread Art Culture:
Brilliantly shot on location [over the course of several years] in studios, homes, convention centers, and offices around the country, The Vinyl Frontier is sure to be a favorite in this year’s festival season. Featuring such heavy hitters as Tristan Eaton, Ron English, Gary Baseman, Dalek, Frank Kozik, Tim Biskup, and many more.
The Vinyl Frontier will be having its world premiere at the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival (July 2-3) at the Roxie Theatre. Tickets are available for Friday, July 2, 8PM (an array of artists involved with the film will be in attendance after screening to take part in an audience Q&A) or Saturday, Jul 03, 9:20 PM.
UPDATE #4, THURS, 11:20 pm PST (scroll to bottom to see previous updates):
Still no word or follow-up from Kiana Firouz, or anyone in the Cul de Sac camp. I’m worried by lack of communication or verification from them, and since this post has gone viral, I’ve had mounting concerns. Please stand by.
UPDATE #5, FRIDAY, 4:41am PST:
Okay, I’ve received confirmation of the basic facts of this case from a reputable source: Stefano Bucaioni, who sits on the executive board of international affairs at Arcigay. Stefano informed me that he’s in direct contact with Kiana and the emails she’s sent to him do confirm the full story. He’ll be meeting Kiana in person in London next Thursday. He’s said that she is currently overwhelmed with requests from journalists. Arcigay will be posting an official press document concerning Kiana Firouz’s case either later today or early tomorrow. When they do, I’ll post that link in an update. Grazie, Stefano. Good luck, Kiana.
UPDATE #6, Tuesday, 3:30pm PST:
Arcigay posted their press release for Kiana Firouz today. It’s in Italian, but scroll down more information in English.
Kiana Firouz in a still from Cul de Sac.
Kiana Firouz, 27 years old, is an outspoken Iranian LGBT rights activist, filmmaker, and actress. When clips of her video documentary work featuring the struggle and persecution of gays and lesbians in her country were acquired by Iranian intelligence, agents began to follow Firouz around Tehran, harassing and intimidating her. She fled for England where she could safely continue her work and studies.
She plays a starring role in Cul de Sac, a documentary film produced in the UK about the condition of lesbians in Iran, and based heavily on Firouz’s own life story. Directed by Ramin Goudarzi-Nejad and Mahshad Torkan, the movie will premiere in London in a few days. Since the trailer was posted on YouTube in December 2009, Cul de Sac has attracted global media attention, with thousands of views. Apparently, some of those views included members of Ahmadinejad’s puppet media in Iran. They know who Firouz is and what she stands for. They may want her to come back to the country she was born in to answer for it.
Still from Cul de Sac.
Firouz, understandably, has requested asylum from the British government. Much to everyone’s shock and dismay, the British Home Office has rejected her application for refugee status. Yes, they know she’s gay. Yes, they know she could be deported back to Iran at any time, and that if this happens, Firouz will most likely be sentenced to torture and death after being found guilty of the “unspeakable sin of homosexuality” because she has participated in explicit lesbian sex scenes in the movie, and been a fierce proponent for human rights in her country.
In Iran, the punishment for lesbianism involving mature consenting women consists of 100 lashes. This punishment can be applied up to three times. After a fourth violation of Iranian law, a woman convicted of “unrepentant homosexuality” is finally executed by hanging, often publicly, in front of a howling mob.
From EveryOne Group:
Kiana filed for a court appeal following the Home Office’s decision to reject her application for asylum, but the judge overruled her appeal. According to Kiana’s lawyer, the last remaining chance is to appeal the judge’s decision, but the risk of deportation is imminent.
The EveryOne Group, an international human rights organization, which was involved in the asylum cases of the lesbian Pegah Emambakhsh, who risked being deported from London to Tehran in 2007, and of the Iranian gay, Mehdi Kazemi, appeals to the British government and the democratic forces of the European Union, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, that Kiana Firouz be immediately guaranteed adequate humanitarian protection and that the order for her deportation be repealed, given that on return to Iran she will face a death sentence not only because a lesbian but because of her civil rights activism.
The EveryOne activists invite concerned readers to send protest e-mail messages to the British Home Office (public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk) requesting that Kiana receive refugee status as soon as possible, for she is a symbol of the international fight against homophobia and repression of gays and lesbians in Islamic countries.
I’ve spent a fair amount of my day researching, fact-checking and [edit for clarification: attempting to] verify this story, and I can’t figure it out: why is this news not EVERYWHERE right now? Why is this petition for Firouz so anemic? There should be hundreds of thousands of names on that list.
