During a busy trip to Boston from their native São Paulo, Brazil, brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who are better known as Os Gêmeos, held their first "solo" exhibition in the United States and painted a mural as a gift to the city of Boston. MOCAtv was on hand for the exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, as well as the painting of the mural, the first of this scale in Boston.
There might not be a better place to talk to a filmmaker than in his/her favorite video rental store. Despite the increasing scarcity of such shops, Nowness managed to interview Michel Gondry in his favorite video store in Paris, La Butte Video Club. During a tour of the tiny shop Gondry opens up about his influences, his love of Wim Wenders films, and explains why he prefers visiting a physical store to "watching movies on the net."
French lux brand Hermès has us dreaming of picnics, croquet, and Birkin bags with its latest crop of leisure-themed stop-motion spots, “Vive Le Sport.” Touting its spring/summer 2013 accessories with a play on park life, four short videos directed by Simon Cahn showcase the brand with a burst of fresh spring air. Hermès ties loop into croquet hoops, pillows snooze with pétanque balls, shoes play leapfrog, and the oh so iconic Birkins watch the latest line of Hermès tableware play pingpong. And, of course, the brand's beloved silk scarves make an appearance as flags. Did you notice the lovely soundtrack of tweeting birds? Neither did we. We just wanna make out with those Birkins.
Hermès Vive Le Sport - Croquet from Bridget Jung on Vimeo.
Hermès Vive Le Sport - Pétanque from Bridget Jung on Vimeo.
Hermès Vive Le Sport - PingPong from Bridget Jung on Vimeo.
Hemès Vive Le Sport - Saute mouton from Bridget Jung on Vimeo.
Today, we're soothing our winter chill with thoughts of the shorts and linen jackets to come in the spring, like the ones in GANT Rugger's SS13 lookbook. In the tidy piece of video above, GANT creative director Christopher Bastin shows us the collection, uses the phrase "slow fashion" to describe Rugger's version of menswear, and calls out the line's color choices, details, and variations on traditional warm weather sportswear. Now, if only the mercury would rise.
David Bowie's second single from his forthcoming album The Next Day is "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)." Bowie, as we might expect, takes it the extra mile in concept and visuals, turning the video for the tune into a short film featuring Tilda Swinton (as a suburban housewife) and directed by Floria Sigismondi (The Runaways), commenting on the nature of celebrity itself.
The asteroid that exploded over Russia last week awoke us to an interesting fact: these days, many Russians drive the highways with dashboard mounted video cameras. With all the police harassment, insurance scam accidents, and gangster crime that can befall the ordinary driver, these cams are something of a must. And thus, there's a surplus of footage of the asteroid and its ill effects.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg, evidently. There's an incredible amount of dashcam footage from Russia roads that's almost surreal. We're not talking about morbid car crash and road rage videos. It's the pissed-off babushkas, tumbling cows, runaway horses, military tanks, and drivers tossed through windows unscathed that make this crowd-sourced documentation of adventures and mishaps so interesting. Here are some of those that have caught our eye this morning.
Lizzy Caplan stars in this Viva Vena "art/fashion film" (or, as her friend informs her at the end, "just a commercial"). Lizzy looks amazing even as she parodies typical fashion promos and their overabundance of hip totems and props. At first we cringed realizing how thoroughly we've been taken in by the Virgin Suicides trend list, but in the end, this still has everything we treasure about the cliché videos: ombre hair, seashell collections, collages— it just adds a sense of humor. And hey, if you can't laugh at yourself, you might not want to watch this video.
Members of Chicago's Brokeback wear big fuzzy mittens in the beautifully simple video by director Ben Geier for "The Wire, The Rag and The Payoff." We're crazy about the bits with the starry sky projection. The mittens are more than appropriate today, however, as temps dipped to the single digits in the Windy City. That said, we're still generally fans of fingered gloves on adults, no matter the climate.
Slit-scan photography is a technique with its own fans and adherents—it was famously used to make the Enterprise-D stretch as it engaged warp drive. Slit-scan images can be beautiful, chaotic, or strangely abstract like seeing the warped results of a glitch in time. Making slitscans from web videos can be somewhat laborious. Sha Hwang's new Slitscanner bookmarklet makes slit-scan creation available to even the most idle of us would-be contemporary artists. It's pretty basic, only works with HTML5 modes of Vimeo and YouTube, and you'll need to take a screenshot to save your piece, but it does have a variable speed option and you can start over whenever you'd like. We've already made some slit-scan images from the new video "Full of Fire" by The Knife. Not awful, but we're sure we can do better.
Drag slitscanner to your bookmarks to get in on the action.
A treasure trove of slit-scan work at Flong.com
Nab Slit-Scan Movie Maker to make your own slit-scan videos, like this one.
The time to learn how to tie a bow tie is not 45 minutes before your best friend's wedding. Trust us, you won't come up looking like 007 on his way to play baccarat without some practice. With spring wedding season quickly approaching, it might be time to bone up on bow tying. And believe us, it's not easy to find a video online that's not totally confusing. Thankfully, The Hill-Side, which also happens to sell fantastic bow ties, has created a video for those of us that want a sharp-looking collar on those days to remember. And the video doesn't end with you scratching your head like you just got taken in a shell game. So study up—and work on that toast—everyone at the reception will be glad you did.
"HOW TO TIE A BOW TIE" by The Hill-Side from The Hill-Side on Vimeo.