Cinema

Young Ali nominated for two awards at the Arthouse Film Festival...

young ali: those were the days has been nominated for the Cassavetes award and the Godard award at the Arthouse Film Festival.

you can still watch the film virtually till Jan 20th.

tickets avail here: Arthouse Film Festival

Sales on Films on Vimeo on Demand until August 10th....

in the spirit of THREE WORLDS theatrical LA run at Laemmle Friday, August 4th-10th, there is a heavy discount on Vimeo on Demand for some of my work that is available on that service for people that are distant & or curious, or just chill like that.

not only THREE WORLDS but the 2018 sister film MAN and others….

this link will take you to the page….

w/ love & presence

THREE WORLDS - Film Poster

MAN - Film Poster

Three Worlds is evergreen part 2

What I’ve always found amazing about Amir Motlagh’s films is how he deals with connection in a disconnected world.....As Saam navigates his life and relationships, we as viewers are challenged to consider what is art, what is artifice, and what we think our world really is - Jamie Toth

I was sent this earlier and since it came recommended, i read it. Truth is, I don’t read attentively what people write about my work because good or bad, my creative pursuit wants to remain untethered to opinion, & its wave-like aftermaths.

But, when i get the impression that a connection was made, I get curious. And in this piece, that connection was made.

The Three Worlds piece by Jamie Toth can be read here or here.

still from Three Worlds

A quick way to find some of my work on Tubi to stream for free

For the time being, I have four features available on the free streaming platform Tubi.

Just click to find WHALE, THREE WORLDS, MAN, & RAINBOW SEASON on this consolidated page.

I’m only slightly annoyed that some of my title cover art has been altered, but we move on….

film cover art on Tubi with slight modifications, lol

Amir Motlagh films now available on the streaming platform Tubi

Just a quick update I was alerted about a few days ago. Four of my feature works are now available on the US Streaming Platform Tubi, including THREE WORLDS (2018), MAN (2018), WHALE (2010) & RAINBOW SEASON (2019). Like most of these distro services, it is time-bound.

I believe Tubi is North America only, but, VPN, maybe….i dunno?

Cheers & enjoy the beautiful day my friend….

new work on the OpenSea, web2 web2.5 web3, film update with doxxed title, proof of life, what is time, mirs wakes, etc...

It feels strange with the current world background to go on about living as if we are distanced from exceedingly unnecessary human suffering. But we are cocooned in our bubbles. If you’ve had any experience with war, you realize very clearly that the whole is affected, regardless of the degrees of separation.

In my own case, I have to go about my work, my thoughts & my attention the same as it was. Consciousness is an arrow.

Recent tings:

Here is a proof of life pic in web2.5. Not my current PFP on socials, but nevertheless, I breathe. With all this excessive talk of the transition to web3, there are more similarities to the past decade than most want to admit, yet, a new base layer of influentials has made a mark. With the soon insurgency of legacy media, safe to say things will look even more similar.

i exist, a pfp

In this fully doxxed web2.5 version of me, I get to talk about my new feature film in post-production. I can finally release the title, a proper doxxing if you will - "Young Ali: those were the days". Hopefully, we can finish the post by the end of Q2. I cannot be certain the film will release this year, but I would like that. Post-production at this stage is being handled in Chicago, and I am proud of our team, and what we have been able to create.

I recently released three works on OpenSea in my first collection which essentially conclude all my March drops. I have yet to transition to my other mediums, but I suppose I will in time. Cinema in particular is full of friction and doesn’t make the best transition over. But, we will hammer in the peg. We are working.

______

March OpenSea Drops:

the wind will carry us, creature
edition 1/3
.24Ξ

Description:

in my youth, some of my favorite memories involved long cross-country trips with my father. this desire for the empty road, the expansive middle continued into adulthood.

little ape boi, dream (part 1)
edition 1/1
1.5Ξ

Description for both part 1 and part 2:

we are all little ape bois trying to find our way home. this little ape boi has yet to awaken. help him on his journey through the dreamscape on this starry night.

little ape boi, dream (part 2)
edition 1/1
1.5Ξ

Awakening:

Last but not least, Mirs has awakened for this new szn. New release imminent.

A spotlight on MAN - Kicking the Seat

A funny thing happened a few nights ago that succinctly describes the plight of independent filmmaking and the practice of sending screeners. Let me preface that with this; one of the most rewarding aspects of filmmaking in the true independent sense is the process of self-actualization, a partially controllable condition. Now, the uncontrollable condition (everything after the creation) is that the farther a vision strews from established norms, the harder it becomes to attract a certain level of attention. This is woven into the classic gatekeeper paradigm.

Ok, back to the first sentence. Nearly two years ago, Chicago Film Critics Association member Ian Simmons was handed a screener to the film MAN (screening at Chicago at the time) by a colleague, he watched the first ten minutes of it and shut the screener off prematurely, writing it off as not his thing. Fast forward to a couple of nights ago, as he confessed this earlier sin on his “Kicking the Seat Podcast”, and now proclaimed that the film had, “blown his mind” while dedicating an entire episode talking about the film. A massive change of opinion nearly two years in the making, done in a transparent, respectable & honest way.

This is the reality of artmaking and it is unavoidable when the access & context is not in place. One cannot demand that people pay attention to your work. But it is always the artist's responsibility to tell what needs to be told, in the only way that one can.

Time takes care of the rest, not in the sense that people will come around, but in the sense that ultimately, it never really mattered in the first place.

Here is the link to the Kicking The Seat Podcast in which MAN is given a positive, newly minted spotlight in the eyes of one critic.

And below, a link to watch on our preferred platform.


Life, Like A Fingerprint (or: Why Ted Never Wanted To Be Marlon Brando)

In my very late teens, I took up acting by chance. I had been interested in movies (grew up on foreign cinema), and had no direction in my life (aside from snowboarding), and it fell into my lap in the way most things do. One part, get out of trouble card, the other, channeling the trouble. It was sort of necessary, however brief.*

One of my earliest teachers, Ted Jones (an alias) was a white-bearded man in his sixties. He had bit roles in several major movies, and did regional theater most of his life. And for extra money, he was a licensed taxi driver. He emphasized that the profession of acting was an ill-advised path, whether you “make it or not” and like many actors, he found the line of work accidentally, to get out of trouble himself. Nevertheless, he was good at it, and I believe he actually liked it. At his point though, he might not have had a choice, habits are hard-worn.

One day after some standard, silly actor exercises, while we sat in some weird meditative sit down position, while giving a lecture, Ted Jones blurted out tangentially, “I would never trade my life for Marlon Brando’s”. I felt he had ruminated over this many a time before. Marlon Brando was of course, at that time, and to this day, regarded as one of the greatest movie actors in cinema history (if not the greatest). This is of course, a consensus popular type of “greatest” because people hardly ever know what they are talking about when describing performances. But Brando was mythicized in acting circles, much of that owed directly to the hands of director Elia Kazan, most notable, when Brando played ex pugilist & has-been Terry Mallow in the exceptional film, ON THE WATERFRONT. The myth was solidified, specifically in one scene romanticized to death, that in which Brando plays with his co-stars (Eva Marie Saint) glove in a naturalistic, off- the-cuff, improvised way. To this day, there is neither a film school nor an acting class unwilling to sell you on the regurgitated magnitude of this moment, frozen in time. Kazan was certainly a sound director (a personal favorite), and one that became infamous in the black listing scandal during the McCarthy era, which seems to be in the zeitgeist again. Brando of course rose to fame prior, playing Stanley Kramer in A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE, first on stage, then on the big screen.

Brando always disparaged his profession whenever given the opportunity (as do other well-known actors, possibly as a mimetic homage to other great actors, or possibly something more internal, though I don’t want to speculate), and barely prepared for his roles as his career went forward and fame overwhelmed. A story comes to mind is that he had a microphone in his ear, reciting lines feed to him over radio waves. Though, he certainly was a natural, and his naturalness was something we like to see on screen. That’s usually what differentiates actors that we prefer. Something about the personality and ease in front of a camera. The rest of it, the spectacle of losing weight or becoming physically something altogether different, those actions have a tinge of superficiality attached, though they make great press and help win awards. But that extra stuff often has less gravity then a mere smile, a face never too pretty nor too ugly, and a certain charisma we call star power for lack of the right words.

But coming back to Ted Jones remark - Brando’s life was full of tragedy. He hit the highest highs, and the lowest lows, and for Ted, life was more than a career. That kind of thinking is irrational, or rather, incomprehensible for a 20-year-old would be artist. Glory is after-all, the immortality that we seek. To change the world, blah blah, ego blah! But, we all learn of the tradeoffs of these grandiose illusions as time marches forward, and with every level up, after a brief period of ecstasy when going up, the psyche neutralizes and you deal with life in much the same way as any other period. There is a clip of an older, more mature Mike Tyson dismissing all his championship belts as meaningless. And a life filled with excessive tragedy and suffering, even when the highest peaks were reached, was too much of a net negative tradeoff when the macro lens was applied as far as our subject Ted was concerned.

Of course, there is an additional argument to be made here, one that we can’t skip over, one in which the great writer, & lover of the twitter argument Nassim Taleb calls an example of “sour grapes”. That Ted Jones, never achieving the status he craved consoles himself through an illusion, or rather, delusion to protect his ego. Of course, this is a psychological possibility, but also, a weak, projected judgement about the wants and needs of another human being, with another fate, and an individual path like a fingerprint, as valid as all others, and inseparable from all others. All of the upside, and limited downside is nice, but the universe is a trickster. (a side note here, Taleb has major distaste for actors and the acting profession, which is ironic in that it is the king of Lindy when it comes to professions).

Which brings me to this: the highs will bring the lows, and like a roller coaster, up and down it goes.

*Post script - I quickly found my way out of that career because the auditions I got called in for and the opportunities at the time where horrendous (terrorist shit). I had decided that my stories where essential & no one but myself could tell them (immigrant shit), so I moved into another realm, just a hop, skip & jump away. This trajectory is partly why I have such fondness for John Cassavetes to this day.

THREE WORLDS Reviewed by Premier Arthouse Cinema Site PINNLAND EMPIRE

When you make art & you put it out into the world, it becomes a vulnerable time if you haven’t done the necessary work to detach. Essentially, equanimity is the only barrier between this raw period and the world. I seldom read or look at reviews, but this one was a bit different because I felt the reviewer got it (the essence), for lack of a better term, and that connection is wonderful.

So, when you got a moment, check out this THREE WORLDS review from the stellar arthouse cinema site, PINNLAND EMPIRE.

Amir Motlagh dispels some of the superficial stigmas put on Los Angeles while at the same time embraces the very real superficialities associated with L.A. (outside of Los Angeles being the epicenter of the entertainment industry, it’s a very cool city unlike any other if you know the right people).

And putting all Mekas/Malick comparisons aside, this is very much Motlagh’s own film. The movie is filled with obvious autobiographical content that comes off as genuine & organic as opposed to pretentious. That’s not an easy task with a film like this (ambient, sprawling, artistic and sometimes chaotic). A young filmmaker could easily get self-absorbed & pretentious with a movie like Three Worlds but that’s not the case here.

This will definitely require a second (or third) viewing. And that’s a good thing. This isn’t something to fully digest in one sitting.
— Marcus Pinn