Our memory is dissipating. Hard drives only last five years, a webpage is forever changing and there’s no machine left that reads 15-year old floppy disks. Digital data is vulnerable. Yet entire libraries are shredded and lost to budget cuts, because we assume everything can be found online. But is that really true? For the first time in history, we have the technological means to save our entire past, yet it seems to be going up in smoke. Will we suffer from collective amnesia? This VPRO Backlight documentary tracks down the amnesiac zeitgeist starting at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, whose world-famous 250-year old library was lost to budget cuts. The 400.000 Books were saved from the shredder by Ismail Serageldin, director of the world-famous Library of Alexandria, who is turning the legendary library of classical antiquity into a new knowledge hub for the digital world. Images as well as texts risk being lost in this ‘Digital Dark Age’. In an old McDonald’s restaurant in Mountain View, CA, retired NASA engineer Dennis Wingo is trying to retrieve the very first images of the moon. Upstate New York, Jason Scott has founded The Archive Team, a network of young activists that saves websites that are at risk of disappearing forever. In San Francisco, we visit Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive that’s going against the trend to destroy archives, and the Long Now Foundation, which has put the long-term back on the agenda by building a clock that only ticks once a year and should last 10,000 years, in an attempt to reconnect with generations thousands of years from now. Directed by Bregtje van der Haak / produced by VPRO Backlight, The Netherlands You can watch the Dutch episode here: http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/afleveringe... For broadcast rights: www.nposales.com / info@nposales.com.
Duration: 58 min.
Directed by John Hughes
One way street explores the life and work of German Jewish critic and philosopher, Walter Benjamin, who died escaping the Gestapo in 1940. Although Benjamin's work is little known in this country, he is regarded in Europe as one of the most influential figures in 20th Century thought.
One way street provides clear and accessible introductions to some of the central ideas in Benjamin's writings. Expert commentary from a range of English scholars situate Benjamin's work in the context of their time and evoke a sense of the excitement that his work has generated. A heightened visual style, montage structure and strong musical treatments correspond in evocative and powerful ways with the concerns and the strategies of Benjamin himself.
Art and copy is a powerful new film about advertising and inspiration. Directed by Doug Pray (SURFWISE, SCRATCH, HYPE!), it reveals the work and wisdom of some of the most influential advertising creatives of our time.. http://artandcopyfilm.org
After discovering that the Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saone, France, was closing its film production facility, Dean obtained permission to document the manufacture of film at the factory with the soon-to-be obsolete medium itself. http://www.ubu.com/film
Matthew Barney makes art on a Hollywood scale with videos, sculptures, photographs and drawings. His Cremaster Cycle - the art world's answer to Star Wars - generated queues at the Guggenheim in New York. Video from http://www.ubu.com
the acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9-11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960's and 1970's. By the 1990's, such characters were apparently no more...
A documentary about art, design, street art with Ed Templeton, Margaret Kilgallen, Geoff McFetridge, Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey http://www.beautifullosers.com/