Who doesn’t like a good movie or a good cup of coffee?
One of my rituals of long-distance air travel is to rent one of the 99¢ movies of the week from iTunes. Usually, there’s a mainstream, fiction film—sometimes good, often terrible—but there’s always a reliable supply of independent and documentary films.
Before my recent flight to Los Angeles for the holidays and the subsequent weeks, I rented the documentary Barista (Rock Baijnauth, 2015). The competition follows five baristas from the Los Angeles area as they make their way to the 2013 National Barista Championships in Boston.
To an esoteric coffee snob—that’s me!—I was already familiar with barista competitions that take place all over the world. In fact, I was fortunate to meet and learn a couple of things from Erin McCarthy, a World Champion who ran the coffee cuppings at the Counter Culture Coffee Lab in Chelsea some years ago and, in my estimation, singlehandedly brought respectability to the basket filter well after everyone jumped on the cone-style filter bandwagon—both the two-dimensional cones and the 3D cones found in the Chemex and Hario manual drip methods.
The competition is fierce. It’s fascinating to see how contestants are judged not only on the coffee they brew—an espresso, a latte, and a personal signature drink. Each contestant engages in a kind of performance art and is judged on presentation technique and technical skills. Much of the competition reminded me of academic or professional conferences, where each contestant is firmly associated with an institution. In the barista world, each is identified by name, coffee shop, and city, not unlike academics who are judged by their institution and its recognition well before anyone listens to their presentation.
In the documentary, five baristas were representing three cafes: Intelligentsia in Venice, the Portola Coffee Lab in Costa Mesa, and G&B in downtown LA. The heavy representation of Los Angeles area baristas is likely due to the filmmakers working in their own backyard, which not only skews the prestige of the Southland in the coffee world, but it also creates a dilemma when only one of their profiled contestants makes it to the final, six-person round of the national Barista competition.
Despite the gravity of Good coffee permeating throughout the film, the documentary is compelling because its subjects are so relatable. Each is clearly passionate but none articulates a holier-than-thou attitude about their craft. (Perhaps, profiling LA-area baristas instead of those from San Francisco or from Seattle was done for this reason.) The film makes a humorous attempt to outline the three waves of coffee and the significance of competitions to the professional development of each barista. To most people, coffee is as pedestrian—and complimentary—as milk and sugar, and very few people can understand how one kind is distinct from another. However, because the contestants are so passionate and driven about their artistry and chemistry for brewing extraordinary coffee, it provides the necessary ingredients for a wonderful film.
Barista
A compelling profile of five Los Angeles-area, third-wave baristas competing in the national Barista championship in Boston.
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There are favorites, no doubt: Elf, Scrooged, A Christmas Story, and It’s a Wonderful Life. But it’s not easy to remember that the following films were Christmas movies, even if they weren’t Christmas movies..
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang probably because it was a neo-noir set in Los Angeles, where balmy temperatures belie what is supposed to Christmas in movies.
The Ref probably because the hostage situation and really dark comedy lack the usual warmth of Christmas.
Eyes Wide Shut probably because it was Kubrick’s final film and the chilling masquerade party scene is anything but…
Not quite two years ago, Time ran a listicle about such movies that I found while researching this post, which reminded me about Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and lists other not-Christmas, Christmas films.
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DMCA Exemptions for Circumventing Copyright Protections on Motion Pictures, 2015 edition
Since 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) has prohibited the use of technologies that circumvent copyright protections. The letter of the law prohibits the use of DVD ripping software, jailbreaking your smartphone or smart TV, or modifying the diagnostic software of your automobile. Every three years, however, the US Librarian of Congress considers various exemptions to these provisions, and on Wednesday, the Library of Congress ruled on those exemptions, which took effect the same day.
As a film and television scholar, I am most interested in the provisions governing the circumvention of copyright protections on motion pictures on digital video media. Students and teachers in film studies courses need to study short clips and even individual frames. Making these excerpts and stills from a copyright-protected DVD offers the best solution in terms of efficiency and fidelity. Since at least 2006, the Librarian of Congress has exempted college and university faculty teaching film-studies courses from the technological protection measures on motion picture video works to make those short clips and frame grabs.
Each triennial review considers new technologies and new, non-infringing uses for exempting certain parties from the prohibition on copyright protections. When I first learned of these exemptions in 2006, extracting digital video clips only applied to DVDs. Since then, however, new digital video technologies have emerged, including Blu-ray disks and streaming video protocols, and those have surpassed the image resolution and availability of standard-definition DVDs. Moreover, groups beyond film-studies faculty, such as community librarians and documentary filmmakers, have made compelling cases for circumventing the copyright protections on digital video formats and petitioned the Librarian of Congress for similar exemptions.
The Librarian of Congress divided the petitioning parties seeking exemption into seven classes:
college and university faculty and students, for purposes of criticism and comment
kindergarten through twelfth-grade educators and students, for educational purposes
students and faculty participating in massive online open courses (“MOOCs”), for purposes of criticism and comment
educators and learners in libraries, museums and nonprofit organizations to circumvent access controls, for educational purposes
authors of multimedia e-books
filmmakers
videos made for noncommercial purposes
The Ruling on Motion Pictures, 2015–2018
Wednesday’s ruling extends the exemption for several methods and instances. The Librarian of Congress outlined two methods for recording short excerpts from a copy-protected medium:
using screen capture technology
using software to circumvent the copyright protection from a DVD, a Blu-Ray, or digital transmission (a “stream”) where screen capturing will not produce the “required level of high-quality content.”
In all cases, the video being extracted must be “lawfully made and acquired” for the purpose of criticism or comment. This excludes unauthorized (“bootleg”) videos and also videos that were imported from an licensed market to a market where no licensing exists. Again, the exemption only applies to “short portions” of a motion picture for the purpose of “criticism or comment.”
Summary
From reading the ruling, these are the instances where the Librarian of Congress has granted an exemption to the prohibition for circumventing copyright protection on motion pictures. Although I’m not a lawyer and can’t defend you in an infringement suit, I am reasonably smart and understand the ruling to allow circumvention of copyright protection in the following cases.
Can I circumvent copyright protections on a legally made and legally acquired motion picture to extract a short portion for the purpose of comment and criticism for use in…
This includes a commercial entity, such as a video production house, paid by a non-commercial organization.
a nonfiction multimedia e-book offering film analysis?
Yes
Yes
This is a very specific kind of e-book.
by college and university faculty and students, for educational purposes?
Yes
Yes, for film studies courses
That’s me!
by faculty of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for educational purposes?
Yes
Yes, for film studies courses
MOOC must be administered by an accredited institution and must do their due-diligence to prevent infringement.
by kindergarten through twelfth-grade educators for educational purposes?
Yes
Yes, but only for film studies courses
Screen capture only for other, non–film studies courses.
by educators and participants in nonprofit digital and media literacy programs offered by libraries, museums and other nonprofit entities with an educational mission?
Yes
No
Screen capture only.
These exemptions took effect on October 28, 2015, and will remain in effect until they are replaced after the next triennial review.
Screen capture technology must “appear to be available to the public” and only used to “reproduce a motion picture that has been lawfully acquired and decrypted.” This permits someone to use screen-capture software to grab the content from something that you legally acquired and can legally play. ↩
The ruling specifically mentions two copyright protection methods that can be legally circumvented: CSS for DVD, and AACS for Blu-ray. The ruling also vaguely mentions whatever “technological measure” is used to protect a “digital transmission,” presumably because there is no standard method for protecting different digital video streams. All of these fall under the technological circumvention. ↩
One of the reasons I was drawn to New York City was the presence of many great places to see movies, especially small independent theaters that are often referred to as “microcinemas.” These are not necessarily repertory houses, such as the Film Society and the Film Forum, although those are great, too. A microcinema screens rare, forgotten, or cutting-edge work that only a small audience would ever want to watch. New York was perfect for that. As I’ve said elsewhere, New York has a thousand things to do and a hundred people that want to do that, too. But as moviegoing and New York City both have changed over the years, many of these microcinemas have disappeared like the video stores that once supplemented one’s rabid cinephilia.
The Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn is one such remaining microcinema. Located on South 3rd Street off Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, it screens a wide variety of offbeat films you probably can’t watch anywhere else (except the Internet), and they screen their films in what looks like a storage room inside a prewar tenement building (except the space was last a bodega).
The Spectacle Theater occupies a former bodega’s space on South 3rd Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Photo: Ken Rowe / Cinema Treasures.)
Also, they charge only $5 per screening.
As with any financially unfeasible operation, they have taken to Kickstarter to raise some money. The folks behind the Spectacle have somehow secured a ten-year lease on their space and have launched a fundraising campaign to in order make some much needed repairs and improvements to the space.
According to their Kickstarter announcement, some of those improvements will include:
upgrade to a new and better projector and sound system
sound-proof the theater so that Brooklyn’s sirens and screams no longer form part of our films’ soundtracks
install upgraded 16mm projection capabilities (no more tripping over our projectionist extraordinaire John Klacsmann as you enter the theater for 16mm screenings)
install an actual HVAC system so you will no longer swelter in the summer nor freeze in the winter, and we’ll build new risers so that you back-row people will be able to see the screen better
repair our sad-looking floor
redo our facade (but not in a lame way)
I’m as skeptical as they come with many, many Kickstarter campaigns. But this is a good one. If you’re a New York–area cinephile, contribute some money so they don’t have to resort to “raising ticket prices or selling $12 single-origin chocolate bars and açaí bowls,” as they threaten to do in their campaign announcement.
Chantal Akerman, an internationally renown filmmaker who made her first film in the late 1960s, has died in Paris at age 65. Le Monde reports that she committed suicide.
I first learned of Akerman in college in 1997. It was then that I watched one of her films—Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), that changed my life. I’m not exaggerating.
As a newly declared film student at UCSB, I was already watching quite a few films, although most of them were standard commercial, narrative films from a variety of countries and a range of time periods. This film, however, was different. It ran for about three-and-a-half hours, very little happened in terms of story, and most of the film seemed to be shot from the eyeline perspective an adult’s hip.
This film is very hard to watch, but that is exactly the point.
I was taking an interdisciplinary course that was equal parts women studies, film studies, and art history and was taught by film studies professor Constance Penley and Abigail Solomon-Godeau from the art history department. The class was a survey of women in art history, and it met twice a week on Monday and Wednesday afternoons for our lecture/discussion period. We also usually convened for two hours on Wednesday evenings for a film screening. One week, Professor Solomon-Godeau warned us that, on this particular Wednesday night, we would be staying late. We would be watching Jeanne Dielman, a film she described as a “feminist horror film.”
This may have been the first time I understood the relationship between content and form, and how a spectator can relate to an onscreen character. Jeanne Dielman is a single mother who spends almost the entire film cooking and cleaning. We watch her wash each dish, one by one, that is more boring to watch than the proverbial drying-of-paint. By showing each of these household chores in real time, or maybe even expanding the duration, we experience Jeanne’s ennui along with her. It is one thing to have a character explain how bleak her life seems as a domestic servant, but it’s quite another to have to endure the never-ending dreariness of household labor.
Akerman’s oeurve was a lot more eclectic than this one feminist film with avant-garde tendencies. She made documentaries, narrative shorts, as well as other narrative features throughout her life. But for a student getting his feet wet studying film, Jeanne Dielman was the first film I saw where it began to make sense.
Tom Stathes was a former a student of mine from CUNY Queens College and has since graduated to become a recognized film archivist and historian on silent animated films. Last winter, Stathes released a DVD and Blu-ray collection of silent film cartoons from a personal archive that he has amassed over many years.
For a second act, Tom is putting together a second DVD and Blu-ray set in the Cartoon Roots collection. The collection will feature the works of Bray Studios, an early New York City–production company in operation between 1913 and 1927.1 To raise the money to properly produce this videodisc set, he has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.
In the annals of silent film history, animation is often overlooked except for a handful of production companies in operation at the time. Tom’s diligent collecting, curating, and finally publishing the works he has collected over the years provides a fresh look at films produced a century ago to round out our understanding of silent film and animated film. Please consider contribute to this campaign.
Like many others, the studio folded in the late 1920s concurrent with the coming of sound, which was an immensely disruptive transition for the film industry. ↩
With only three weeks before the start of the fall semester, Final Draft is offering an eighteen-week trial for students at eligible educational institutions. Eighteen weeks should be enough for a semester. After that, students can purchase the software for $129—a discount of $120 off the standard pricing—and then regular upgrades for $99.
The Japan Society is hosting its annual festival of new Japanese films. Japan Cuts starts this Thursday, July 9, and runs through Sunday, July 19. Much like the New York Film Festival, this festival devotes a program commemorates experimental filmmaking.
Mono No Aware x [+] (Plus) celebrates the work of two filmmaking organizations: New York’s Mono No Aware and Tokyo’s [+]. The program of films screens on Sunday, July 12, beginning at 8:45 PM, at the Japan Society.
Almost all of the films in the program will be screened in New York for the first time, and many of them will be screening publicly for the first time anywhere.
Here’s the complete list of films:
Title
Filmmaker
Year, Time, Format
Synopsis
Premiere
Mono No Aware Direct Filmmaking/Animation Workshop Films
Various
2015. Approx. 8 min. 16mm.
Various 16mm works from the participants of Mono No Aware’s Direct Filmmaking/Animation Workshop held at Japan Society on June 21.
World Premiere
RELAY
Steve Cossman
2014. 11 min. Super 8mm to HDV
A moving-image document of the visual environment created by artist Ei Wada that emphasizes his grassroots approach to instrument making and reflects his concepts about performance as art.
New York Premiere
Koropokkuru
Akiko Maruyama
2015. 5 min. 16mm.
A moving portrayal of an ineffable force that can be humanlike or embody itself within displayed objects. Inspired by concepts from the Koropokkuru folktale within Japanese Ainu culture and The Invisible Man.
World Premiere
Louis Armstrong Obon
Joel Schlemowitz
2015. 14 min. Super 8mm and HD to HDV.
A portrait of Japanese jazz musicians Yoshio and Keiko Toyama as seen through their annual summer pilgrimage to the grave of Louis Armstrong in Flushing, Queens.
World Premiere
EMBLEM
Rei Hayama
2012. 16 min. 16mm to HDCAM.
Video footage for the research of Japanese endangered species of raptors is turned into a decorative fiction film through the conversion process between video and film.
New York Premiere
Stella Nova
Ted Wiggin
2015. 4 min. 16mm.
Red blue green, circle square triangle, dog star man. The life and death of a star.
World Premiere
Emaki/Light
Takashi Makino & Takashi Ishida
2011. 16 min. 35mm & 16mm to HDCAM.
Drawing on film by Takashi Ishida; edit and telecine by Takashi Makino; music by Takashi Ishida & Takashi Makino.
US Premiere
sound of a million insects, light of a thousand stars
Tomonari Nishikawa
2014. 2 min. 35mm.
100 ft of 35mm negative film was buried under fallen leaves about 15 miles away from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station from the sunset of June 24, 2014 to sunrise the following day.
DUB HOUSE Experience in Material No.52
Kei Shichiri & Ryoji Suzuki
2012. 16 min. 35mm.
Strict but exquisite evocation links two artistic disciplines and two visions of light and darkness. Architecture and film meet in the cinema.
Remember those documents that hackers took from Sony Pictures Entertainment at the end of last year? Did the North Koreans retaliate against Sony’s plans to release The Interview? Were they upset because it depicted an attempt to assassinate its supreme leader? Or did they want to spare us a really bad movie? In any case, the hacking escalated to the point of involving the White House. And today, those emails and documents are available for anyone to read.
Wikileaks released a searchable version of the hacked Sony Archives, including internal documents and emails. Some were released last year, but today, they are all searchable in one place. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange rationalized the release of these documents because it “shows the inner workings of an influential multinational corporation. It is newsworthy and at the centre of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain. WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there.”
Apparently, Wikileaks is very interested in showing the connection between Sony Pictures and the Democratic Party. The press release mentions some key interactions between the multinational media company and the US political party over the years, including:
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Lynton attending dinner with President Obama at Martha’s Vineyard
Sony employees being part of fundraising dinners for the Democratic Party.
Setting up a collective within the corporation to get around the 5,000 USD limit on corporate campaign donations to give 50,000 USD to get the Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo elected as “Thanks to Governor Cuomo, we have a great production incentive environment in NY and a strong piracy advocate that’s actually done more than talk about our problems.”
Also, the artwork used to illustrate the Sony microsite consists of the “Sony” wordmark and an illustration of Spider Man, a Sony Pictures property, lifting his mask to reveal the donkey logo long used by the Democratic Party.
The New Preservationists?
As a media history scholar, digging in the archives of a film studio, a broadcast network, and even a government agency was fun—because you got to browse through a lot of old material—but also very time consuming…and expensive. For example, anyone wishing to research the early years of NBC, a company founded and headquartered in New York City, had to travel to Madison, Wisconsin.
The papers of people working in this New York City building are located in Madison, Wisconsin.
That’s great for researchers at the University of Wisconsin, but it was a frustrating experience raising money to travel about 1,000 miles to research the activities of a company located two miles north of my Greenwich Village apartment at the time.
Looking at papers, tucked away in folders, and stored in boxes is one thing, but what about digital artifacts, such as email messages, spreadsheets, and other communiques? What will historians, particularly those who labor in the archives, do when researching this digital age when the paper archives of a private corporation or individual will not exist? Will hackers and the NSA’s PRISM collection project be our new preservationists?
Teaching this past semester has been a bit different than it has been recently because I’ve been teaching two non-intro classes: New Media and Media Criticism. Although New Media is technically called “Introduction to New Media,” I’ve always run it like an undergraduate seminar with a lot close readings. The same goes for Media Criticism, where the students and I criticize criticisms of media.
One of the results of doing so many close readings this semester—especially ones that I have not read since being an undergraduate, if at all—is that I’ve become self-reflexive about some academic practices and rituals.
For example:
Why does seemingly every essay start with a premise that the author immediately challenges? I prefer the illustrative case study.
Why must we literally turn a page before we get to the author’s central method for challenging that premise? My advisor indoctrinated me that a reader should know your topic and approach before turning a page.
Why does seemingly every argument take a twist or turn about 60-70% through the text? What’s wrong with sticking what you outlined in the methodology?
One of the stranger practices in academia, especially among film scholars, is to say…
I’m not sure I’ve seen that film all the way through.
Allow me to decode that. That’s academese for…
I haven’t bothered to watch that film, and I’m too ashamed to admit it. Also, I can’t have a conversation with you about it because I must have missed the part of the film you’re describing.
Why not just admit that you haven’t seen it?
It’s a clever trick, and I’m guilty of having used that once or twice. In fact, I kind of did that when, back in November, I announced that filmmaker and scholar Laura Mulvey was coming to Pratt. I said that I had wished I had scheduled her film, Riddles of the Sphinx, for my experimental film class, but didn’t because it was “too long” for our class. Truth be told, I didn’t schedule it because I never bothered to watch it “the whole way through,” which is to say not at all. But, in my defense, no film we screened in class was longer than ninety minutes, and I was not going to speed up this film.
To atone for my scholarly and pedagogical sins, I’ll be heading to Pratt on Tuesday, March 10, for the screening of Riddles of the Sphinx, with introduction and Q&A by scholar-in-residence/filmmaker Laura Mulvey. You should go, too.
