arthouse

Pre-Orders for our upcoming feature film MAN are live

Time has come to start releasing a plethora of new work spearheaded by ANIMALS for 2018. First up is our rather experimental, though wholly timely (and watchable I might add :) ) arthouse feature film, MAN. 

You can watch on Vimeo VOD (worldwide) or Amazon Prime (US/UK) starting on Friday 27th, 2018. 

The film goes live on a handful of digital platforms shortly after (few weeks). It's been a long road, but one thing is for sure, I've been meaning to cut time out of the release cycle, and I think I've found some ways to do it. 

If you are press and would like a screener, please let me know. I will be getting our crowdfund codes ready as well. 

Talk soon, much love.

 

 

Zebras in America Podcast Episode 54 with filmmaker Amir Motlagh

Was interviewed on the Zebras in America podcast with host Marcus Pinn (Pinnland Empire) and Scott Thorough. We discussed a range of topics, with the focus being my two latest 2018 films, Three Worlds + MAN.  

Come listen in to Marcus Pinn of Pinnland Empire describe Three Worlds "like jazz".

Filmmaker and musician Amir Motlagh comes through to have an insightful conversation about techmology, music, access, and singularity. He has two films slated to be released this year. Scott quotes Lil B. Favorite rapper lists are made. Friendships are formed. We read an email. Hot takes are made. Peep his work- https://www.amirmotlagh.com/ Follow Amir on Friendster or twitter @amirmotlagh Email us at ZebrasPod@gmail.com Tweet us at @ZebrasPod Scott is doing a charity walk https://www.theovernight.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=25411 Survey https://goo.gl/forms/tFjRm4p0aHFHds1h2

Double Feature Screening....

Looks like both the new features will be screening together late April. While MAN is locked, still working on finishing THREE WORLDS. My big aim all along was to be able to screen these two works along with CANYON in a single show. Basically, the THREE MARKS, TOO MANY SIGNALS series as one piece.

A long road indeed. Stay tuned. If all works well, I should be able to announce the location and date. One really big thing to note, it's not an LA show. We don't do arthouse well in LA :) 

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Japanese cinema, "now" now, and then....

I've been on a Japanese kick of late.  I happen to return to this culture, frequently, for a vast bouquet of inspiration.  Simply, the well is never dry.

The last five films I've watched this week were Japanese. One observation I've made is that the Western Cinematic tradition has lifted heavily from this world, and Akira Kurosawa ( i feel silly leaving a link here, but I'm going to assume that a good percentage of people are not that familiar with him, and do not give the same unwavering adulation to say, Stanley Kubrick) being on the receiving end of this homage ripping, while also being the most universally influential. But aside from the good type of artistic stealing which is mostly an "influential" lifting, there has been a much more malignant form of culture appropriation, which comprises of the more serious form of perjury. And yes, this bad form of stealing is rampant in cinema.

In the prior decades, distribution was the real barrier to familiarity with international cinema. The world, before NETFLIX and the web was a localized arena.  So localized in fact, that believe it or not, you'd have to go to a movie theater to see a movie (perhaps a film festival, or art-house theater, school, etc).  And, if you didn't catch it, then you'd have to hope for some form of taped distribution.  It wasn't till the late 70's whereby people were actually renting and buying movies.  At this juncture in the space time continuum, the selection was incredible limited.

With the explosion of VHS and the video store, more titles could be discovered. But, media was not ubiquitous, and our reference points were limited to stuff we heard about, or actually saw; which again, had serious limitations in breath, scope, and in memory. Image those days, in which Wikipedia, Google and Youtube were not at your beckon call, and did not serve as your assistant brain (soon to be, First Brain). Yes, scary indeed.       

Say you saw something really interesting in an obscure Japanese movie from the early 70's, and were a filmmaker in the 80's and even early 90's, and you happened to steal heavily from it.  In fact, even go so far as to purge it's images, its style, its flow.   People would hardly know.  Only a relative few.  And surprisingly, unlike music and other types of arts, this type of heavy lifting would not even be frowned upon critically, and certainly not by the general movie going audience.  For the most part.

The idea of originality in Western Cinema has long been a secondary by-product; a term Hollywood tried to bury (and successfully) in the 50's (purely conjecture here).  It's worked.  This is one of the only arts where familiarity gets a pass almost every-time.  And as the post-modern infiltrated movie making in the early nineties, it was even considered cool.  

But on a personal level, I always felt a more kindred liking to original works (herein I'm referring to a more direct style of moviemaking) then post modern assemblies of those styles.  But that was then, and now is now.      

But, "now" now, is not like the 90's now.  People dream up movement phrases like, "The New Sincerity", and while this might last for "now", it can never congeal into anything resembling the classical arts movements of a prior century.  Because we have moved past time oriented "movements".  We are in a post-movement world; better yet, post-mechanical-watch.  Human time doesn't neatly pack itself into bubbles anymore, because it's umbilical cord to our evolutionary clock has been cut.  

And "now" is like the scene from the Mel Brooks film SPACEBALLS:  Now "Now", Not "Then" Now.  This sentence above, however is not my own, i'll gladly admit.  In fact, I lifted it from a wonderful conversation between media theorist David Ryan Polgar and Douglas Rushoff.  If only cinema were so nice to attribute.

I'll leave you with this apropos image from Kinji Fukasaku's BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY

a quantum question....

a quantum question....