Photo: Trudy Goodman... InsightLA is an organization that focuses on meditation and mindfulness in day to day lives. Its mission is to reduce stress by having its participants concentrate on the present moment, focusing on sounds, breathing or the movement of the body.

Founded by Trudy Goodman in 2002 after she moved from the east coast and started a small sitting group made up of only three people, including herself. Having studied under Jon Kabat-Zinn, an early proponent of Mindfulness, Trudy brought together her psychotherapy training and mindfulness ideals in creating the non-profit organization. Since then InsightLA has grown to where it offers sittings around the city and various classes, retreats and groups that teach Buddhist meditation principles for a joyful and peace-filled life.

What is mindfulness? It is said that mindfulness is being fully aware of your present experience. In one of the most popular classes, Mindful Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), students are taught to focus on what’s happening around them in order to learn how to calmly manage the stresses that occur in daily life as well as in the long term. “I think it’s about developing my capacity for compassion because I think as I have a better understanding of myself, I have a better understand of other people,” said Amy Smith, mediation administrator of Insight LA and, with Trudy Goodman, the only other staff member. After eight weeks of training, participating MBSR members learn how to become compassionately aware of themselves, everything and everyone around them.

MBSR combines meditation and guidance from various teachers, one of whom is a physician named Christiane Wolf. Studies have shown that Mindful Based Stress Reduction can alleviate pain or help parents deal with disabled and dying children in a healthy manner. Dr. Wolf works at the Westside Regional Center to help parents deal with their children’s illness or disabilities in manageable way. Ms. Goodman is now offering a retreat that guides caregivers of the terminally in Mindful Based Stress Reduction.

“Meditation, I believe, is observing the change in our minds and our bodies,” Amy Smith, a mediation practioiner for several yeas, says. Together, Amy and Trudy work with the experienced teachers and peer leaders who guide meditation, MBSR classes and sitting groups. “You know your mind is always producing thoughts but it is possible to calm the mind, not get rid of thoughts, calm the mind,” she says.

For people who are new to the idea of meditation the Santa Monica Beginners Sitting Group guides newcomers on the purpose and methods of mindfulness. I went to this class, having only practiced meditation a few times myself. Theclass was led by Jane Davis, a peer guide, who spoke of meditation as a means of focusing your mind away from your thoughts. “It is impossible to turn off your mind. Meditation is about focusing your mind something else in order to bring you to the present,” Davis told us.

Located right off of Main Street in Santa Monica, the Hill St. Health and Wellness center where this particular class (classes and groups are located in different locations in the city) is held, is a standard home in which the living room is converted every week into a peaceful place for sitting, meditation and discussion. There are windows all along the western wall and lighting that can be dimmed for any given mood. Large pillows, chairs and cushions are scattered around in a circle to allow for a friendly, comfortable and open environment.

The class and InsightLA uses Vipanassa meditation, an element of the oldest Buddhist tradition called the Thervada. With everyone sitting on the floor, our knees below our butts, on our padded pillows and cushions we shifted from meditating to discussing our experiences and our reasons for being. As the class progressed we would meditate for longer and longer periods of time, with Jane guiding us some of the way but allowing us to find our own groove.

By focusing on breathing, the sound all around, or a point of contact on the body, the mind can be moved away from the thoughts that are constantly floating in and out of our consciousness. As a beginner I noticed how difficult it was to stop my mind; to stop from thinking about things I wanted to do, things I had done, and the emotions I felt about those things. Jane told us that when we feel an emotion, it is helpful to repeat what the emotion is in our head. This will allow the passing of the emotion and bring us back to our breathing or the sounds around; back to the present moment. This is called noting. So, when I would think about what I wanted to do when I got home, I would get very excited and I would note that I was excited, repeating the word "excited" in my head over and over again. “It is very hard not to make judgments or create stories about what you are feeling or hearing when meditating but by coming back to your breathing you can learn to focus on the here and now,” Jane guided us.

First time meditator and class participant Levi Matkins said, “It was almost impossible for me to turn off my mind but that being said I felt much more peaceful after the class than I had before.”

The class left me feeling refreshed as well. While meditating I found that my eyes began to feel the weight of relaxation but my mind became more awake and alert. After a total of 40 minutes in this state, I walked out of the class feeling tranquil, rejuvenated and buzzing with an inner sense of calm. It was exciting and at the same time very soothing.

InsightLA is constantly growing. Their classes, groups and retreats are held all over the world, with one retreat in New Dehli, India for people to learn about the roots of the principles governing the organization. If there is no sitting group or class location near you, you can request one be created and, with enough requests, the organization will do so

While meditation can be a very individualized process, some practitioners from the various programs do come together to meditate. “I meet with a group to do what is called deepening your practice. We have a group that meditates on the beach between 6am and 7am everyday,” Amy said.

Classes, retreats and sitting groups are listed at www.InSightla.org. Many are priced on a sliding scale or by donation.

Every year the International Documentary Association (IDA) selects a stellar group of documentaries and features them in it's weeklong DocuWeek fest, helping deserving documentaries qualify for Oscar consideration. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences' rules require films to be exhibited for paid admissions on theatrical screens in Los Angeles County and Manhattan, twice daily for seven consecutive days.

Since DocuWeek started in 1997, 25 films presented at their week of commercial showings have been nominated for Academy Awards. Six films won Oscars, including the 2008 Feature Documentary winner, “Taxi To The Darkside”

The must see "Flow" is showing in Los Angeles. Expect the rest of these documentaries to surface during the run up to the Academy Awards.

According to Irena Salina's passionate wake-up call "FLOW: For Love of Water," the impending water wars will make the oil wars of this decade look positively benign. Canadian activist Maude Barlow, who appears in the film, dubbed the world's most precious commodity "blue gold."(Water competition is a vastly underreported issue in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and throughout the Middle East.) A mixture of talking heads, alarming statistics and global footage makes her case.

We see water riots in Bolivia with Riot squads clubbing protesters. (Happily, Bolivians won the rights to their water back from this deadly privatization scheme). We learn about South Africans unable to pay for their suddenly privatized water, dying from the river water.

Salina pulls no punches indicting the big three multinationals- villainous Nestle, Vivendi-Universal and Suez that are battling to own the worlds water reserves. Privatization is forced on governments of developing countries by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. (This is the new colonialism, on steroids.) Water that was free becomes unaffordable for the working poor. Deaths from contaminated water kill five million people a year.

These and lesser companies continue to drain the world's aquifers.
The NIle, the Ganges, the Jordon, and China's Yellow River no longer complete their courses to the sea. The seas they fed are shrinking.

Agro-business linked to dam projects, grows crops in wrong climate zones, creating unsustainable crops, increasing the problem. These crops need ever more water to shed the waterborne chemicals that are rendering them inefficient.

We pay subsidiaries of these companies for our bottled water. It turns out our bottled water is less regulated than tap Water. There is one part-time person regulating the entire industry. Salina includes a funny "Water Boutique" sequence from Penn Gillette's TV show-“Penn & Teller: Bullshit! “

Our own sources are contaminated with rocket fuel and the toxic herbicide Atrazine, banned in the EU, but still imported to us from Switzerland.
Besides the obvious pesticides, chemicals flushed from our sewers reach the aquifers. Local polluted water travels across the world in rainwater, so that no region in the world is safe. Prozac is found in Polar bears and in the breast milk of Inuit mothers. Chemicals in water are rendering reptiles sterile. Human sperm count in the developed nations is down.

Can-do regional activists like engineer Shri Rajendra Singh, “the waterman of India”, deliver the good news. Using centuries old wisdom about harvesting water, Singh's developed low-tech, inexpensive, grassroots solutions for mining underground water that give control back to local low-density communities. Berkeley educated Ashok Gadgil's low-tech ultraviolet-light water purification system can produce potable water at a fraction of the cost proposed by centralized, privatized schemes. Gravity driven water passes under a UV light over a shallow pan and into a holding tank. His system, UV Waterworks, can disinfect four gallons of water a minute, killing 99.999 percent of bacteria and viruses. This produces enough clean water to serve more than 1,000 people, for the cost of one 40 watts car battery. As one activist said" The World Bank knows how to spend millions of dollars in one place. We need a thousand dollars, spent in a million places."

"Flow" seeks signatures for a petition asking the UN to add one more article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified in 1948: "Article 31: Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance." Miss this film at your own risk.

Many of these films share a common subject, surveying political repression around the world through the eyes of victims of repression who've become activists to fight back.

Makoto Sasa's "Fire Under Snow" follows Tibetan monk /activist Palden Gyatso's attempt to pressure the Olympics Committee to move the 2008 Olympics from Beijing. 75-year-old Monk, Gyatsu was imprisoned and tortured in Chinese prisons for 33 years. His memoir "The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” is the tutorial on the Tibetan Exile movement, and he is its conscience.

During the 2006 Winter Olympics, Gyatso, along with other Tibetan activists, staged a 10-day hunger strike in Turin, Italy. Attracting the International press, he was visited several times by senior officials of the IOC. The IOC ultimately issued meaningless statements, promised to put their position in writing if the protestors would end their strike, then didn't honor their promise. The juggernaut of corporate sponsorship was unstoppable.

As China's economy takes center stage in the Global economy (and holds much of our International debt), Western protest against China's shameful occupation and human rights abuses in Tibet have faded away.

During DocuWeek (and the Olympics), despite a Chinese media blackout, reports surfaced that 400 people were shot in Lhasa, and another 140 protesters in Eastern Tibet. Gyatso's interpreter Ginden Gyatso was desperately trying to get information about his missing monk brother.

The Venerable Palden Gyatso, a Buddhist monk since childhood, was first imprisoned by the Chinese at age 26. As a United Nations torture expert remarks in the film, the brutality of the Chinese prison system in Tibet is aimed at enforcing ideological capitulation." Those who resist, like Gyatso are tortured without mercy." He was beaten with clubs, burned with boiling water, hung “naked like a light bulb from the ceiling” and electrocuted. After an escape attempt, a guard jammed an electric cattle prod into his mouth, destroying all his teeth and his sense of taste. Watching him matter of factly wash his dentures in Turin, reminds you of the underlying sacrifice this man of conscience has endured. Prisoners who agree that Tibet is Chinese Territory are released.

Pressure from Amnesty International (who adopted him as a prisoner of conscience in 1991), and an Italian human rights group, led to Gyatso's release from Drapchi prison in 1992. He attempted to rejoin a monastic life, but activism wouldn't let him rest. He trekked illegally across the border to Dharamsala, headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile. He lives near the Dalai Lama, and respects him, but disagrees with the spiritual leader's current rapprochement with China.

The monasteries, once home to thousands of monks, now hold a few hundred monks and are run under Chinese police supervision. Monks and Nuns must undergo "Patriotic Re-education" classes, denounce the Dalai Lama and accept that Tibet is a part of China. The region has become an enormous military base. Approximately 3,000 religious and political prisoners are held captive in Tibet, tortured and forced into labor camps. The Chinese also practice forced sterilization on Tibetan women. Relocated Chinese outnumber Tibetans in their own homeland.

Ms. Moynihan, who became interested in Tibet when her father Senator Moynihan was the United States ambassador to India, became the executive producer after seeing the film at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

Makoto Sasa, a Japanese film student at New York's The New School, read Gyato's extraordinary autobiography, and within three months she was in Dharamsala with her film crew. Sasa deftly mixes archival footage of Chinese prison camps, interviews with the Dalai Lama and Human Rights experts, footage of the hunger strike in Turin, and daily scenes with Gyatso in his home in Dharamsala .

Gyatso's Buddhist serenity only increases the horror of his testimony.
His humble presence lights the film, teaching us about the beauty and courage of the human spirit. One of the thrills of DocuWeek was the opportunity to interact in Q and A's with the remarkable, inspirational, Venerable Palden Gyatso.

Dilip Mehta's "The Forgotten Woman" is a graceful documentary about the Hindu Widow Houses. Returning to the centuries old environment that provoked Deepa Mehta's exquisite Oscar-nominated "Water", Mehta's brother Dilip visits the dilapidated ashrams of the holy city of Vrindivan, the legendary home of Lord Krishna. Little has changed since the period of the 30's portrayed in Deepa's fictional film "Water".

As shown in "Water", Hindu widows leave their families, willingly or by force, to beg for their existence on the streets, believing this is their entry to paradise. Prohibited by law from remarrying, widows of every age, from the frail elderly to young war widows live a life of penury, their inheritance or pensions stolen by their in-laws before they are shipped to Vrindivan.

Over 20 million widows suffer this life. Stigmatized by a culture that cruelly strips them of their finances, and leaves them to live on the street unless rescued by fate. Rich and poor, highly educated or illiterate, still young or haggard and tragically stooped, the neglected women wait for the religious alms offered by religious Hindus visiting the ashrams or holy city.

They beg in the street or chant in temples, paid 6 rupees ($1.00) a day. The majority is illiterate and can't read the government signs announcing their pensions. Those not abandoned by their families, leave because of the ill treatment they receive. One widow describes being forced to face away from her in-laws during meals, punished for her husband's death. Widows are regarded as witches or bad omens.

We visit Varanasi. A young Bengali, the follower of a holy man, blithely explains.
"A woman is a flower," he says. "You do not give the same flower as a gift twice." When asked "What about your own mother or sister?" he beats a hasty retreat.

Highly educated widows resignedly describe the pressure their sons put on them, demanding they sign over their inheritance and move on to their religious duties- begging in the street. Begging is the centuries old atonement for their sins, which, it is believed, caused their husbands' deaths.

Marginalized in an invisible community, the widows seem reluctant to say too much before the cameras. They laugh nervously, like oppressed peoples everywhere. How can they criticize "religious" habits ingrained in their patriarchal culture? They are married off as children and rendered destitute when they are widowed. Says an elderly widow "I was gifted to my husband when I was 5."

A valiant widowed mother, living in a shack in rural Rajasthan, fights through the courts, for her property rights. We visit an apartment where young war-widows live together, fleeing their abusive in-laws.

We meet the Indomitable Canadian Ginny Shrivastava, who moved to India and married an Indian man in the '70s. When her husband died in a freak train accident, she created The Association for Strong Women Alone, a network
that promotes empowerment and fights for widows' human rights and property.
Shrivastava describes a political intervention, leading a mob of women to the home of a widow's in laws, to recover her stolen money. Over 36 years she has helped 20,000 women a, a mere fraction of the abandoned widows.

Widow Activist Dr. Mohini Giri fundraised, opened shelters in Vrindivan and fought for a raise in the widows' standard of living.

Interviews with professional urban women illustrate the lack of knowledge about the overwhelming numbers of women (over 20 million) living in degradation, marginalized by ignorance, tradition and greed.

Exquisite images of the centuries old conditions only underscore the horrific situation. Seasoned photojournalist Mehta's verité style, and compassionate portraits leave a powerful impression. He captures the color and unique details (the omni-present monkeys hanging about, as if waiting to be interviewed, smoke trailing over the nearby Ashram at the cremation Ghats in Varanesi, stooped widows in their course white saris, bending their shaved heads over their one meal a day), while avoiding the cliché or maudlin. It's a tribute to Mehta that we never lose sight of the awful truth amidst his glorious images.

Perhaps "Water" and "The Forgotten Woman" will ultimately be packaged together on a CD. Hopefully response to "Water" and "The Forgotten Woman" will ignite a global Human Rights investigation of India's shameful secret.

"Yudok Stories" director Andrezej Fidyk filmed the fortieth anniversary of dictator Kim II Sung's Korea In his 1989 documentary "Parade”. The lavish totalitarian spectacle, meant to overshadow South Korea's Olympics, reveal the frightening cult of personality that is called the "government" of Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The precision-drilled "brainwashed" masses recall the spectacles of Nazi Germany and Stalin's May Day parades.

Fidyk used no commentary. A voiceover of North Korean propaganda comprises the soundtrack. European audiences read this as an anthropological portrait of KIm Il Sung's neo-Stalinist regime. Oblivious to the rest of the world, North Korea offered Fidyk an award for his "perfect" propaganda piece.

Stories about North Korea's death camps that Fidyk heard while filming "Parade" provoked his activist "Yudok Stories". Unable to film in North Korea, Fidyk tracked down survivors of the camps. Theatre director Jung Sung San had managed to escape to South Korea. Fidyk's production company underwrote the development of a musical, built around survivor's tales. In South Korea they interviewed surviving prisoners and guards, including one of KIm Jung ll's body guards. An Myong Choz drilled the actors in torture technique. Overwhelmed by shame, he suicided before the musical was finished. Once an elite performer, elder Kim Young Soon (whose child drowned at the camp) choreographs the dancers. Her resilience in the face of her life story is astonishing. Famous performer Young Soon was imprisoned for knowing about Kim Jong Il's mistress.

"Yudok Tales" weaves the most horrific life stories with sections of the musical. Eight refugees act as instructors, coaches and consultants. Their stories are beyond appalling. A woman tells of the mothers who learn to trap pregnant rats, slitting their bellies to feed the hairless fetus to the own child, the sole available protein that might mean the difference between life and death. Kim Hyok discusses cannibalism, describing how good humans smell when you're starving.

Despite threats, the defectors were determined to put on their show. One wrong step could put the defectors' families at risk of imprisonment, torture, even death. Afraid of the material, financiers backed out. Jung Sun San even put up his own kidney as collateral ( worth about $20,000.00.)

North Korean Great Leader Kim Il Sung ordered the "seed of class enemies destroyed to the third generation". Anyone in a family with a "criminal" is considered guilty by association. Even the mention of the dictator's name can send an entire family to a labor camp for life imprisonment. There are currently over 200,000 in camps, dying from torture and/or starvation. Those who do escape, swim the river to China. Escaping North Korean women prisoners face a harrowing experience, captured, sold into brothels or forced to sleep with Chinese farmers, victims of China's shortage of women (a product of both the "one- child" policy and rural China's preference for boy children abetted by sex selection abortion.)

Punished for his son's defection, Jung Sun San's father was stoned to death in the camp. The production team and the director travel to the heavily guarded border between North and South Korea, where Jung Sun prays to his ancestors to help him share this story with the world. The crew shoots down at the border where guards hide behind pillars to avoid being filmed. The guards stand with their backs to the "free World", literally. Fidyk is the only western cinematographer to shoot the border from both sides, once during filming "Parade" and once on this visit.

The musical and the film serve as a wake up call. Completely shut off from the rest of the world, with South Korea's Roh government "diplomatically" turning a blind eye, Totalitarianism is flourishing in North Korea.

"Yudok Story", the musical, broke box office records in South Korea, and premiered in 2006, stateside. The flashes of the polished musical illustrate why it had such an effect in South Korea, sparking parliamentary internecine battles and protests. The GNP, South Korea's conservative party used the Musical to bash their political rivals. The Chosun IIBO, Korea's daily paper, championed the play.

Christian Karim Chrobog's "War Child" is a portrait of hip-hop artist
Emmanuel Jal, once a child soldier in Sudan. Underscored by Jal's didactic raps, "War Child" is a tutorial about the tragic genocidal war in Sudan and Darfur, told through the cold-eyed testimony of a boy/man who, unlike many of his fellow child soldiers, survived the most horrific journey from pawn to witness, turning his experiences into tools to teach peace.

When the civil war broke out, Jal was one of hundreds of boys, put on board a ship to send them to Ethiopia for safe schooling. (The "schooling" was a smokescreen; the boys were taught warfare and given weapons.) His SPLA soldier father put him on board the overcrowded boat. Capsizing-260 of the boys perished. Jal was one of 50 survivors. Parents rushed to the site of the tragedy to see their children, Jal's family neglected to come. The survivors trekked through the war zone to the enormous refugee camp in Kalma, near Nyala. Fighting off crocodiles, their band was whittled away by starvation and suicide.

Unbeknownst to the United Nations peacekeeping forces, and international aid NGO's; the camp functioned as training and recruiting center for rebel forces.
The food helped to feed the rebels, who trained the boys in warfare and sent them out to fight a two decades long war. To build morale, the boys sang war songs, substituting PC songs about "pencils as weapons" whenever the UN officials, press or aid officials showed up.

Wiry, underfed 7 year-old Jal became a spokesman for the rest of the boys, interviewed by any media who visited the camp. This sharpened his communication skills. Director C. Karim Chrobog uses those early camp interviews to fill out Jal's early years. Young Jal shows off his bed, asked about what he wishes for replying "a day that I can just live.” His childhood ripped from him, Jal served five years in the brutal battlefields of Ethiopia and Southern Sudan, fighting Muslims, along with 10,000 other child conscripts. The story details the various secular rebel armies who fought the Muslim governments in Khartoum for control of Southern Sudan. The 2005 treaty established Southern Sudanese autonomy.

Already a soldier, personable Jal was rescued by Emma McCune, a British aid worker married to a general in the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army.
The U.S. funneled military equipment to the SPLA.) McCune smuggled him onto a plane, and adopted him. For the first time, Jal blossomed, schooled and cared for by a generous woman, whose love taught him the emotional skills that sustain him now. (She's evoked in one of his most famous songs.) When Emma dies in a car accident, her husband turns him out of the family home but sponsors his acceptance at a premier Kenyan school.

The film details his journey back to Sudan. He reunites with his loving Granny, who kept her grandchildren alive during the worst of the war. His visit to his father's tribal home is less rewarding. Jal cannot forgive his callous treatment after the boat disaster.

Jal supports his siblings, living in Nairobi. Jal, whose music and mission seem to be expiation for his acts of war, has committed to fund a school in his hometown. Jal lectures and teaches. Fielding questions in an American high school, to primarily African American students, he tries to answer, "Have you ever killed anyone?" In another sequence he lectures students in Kenya's Kakuma Refugee Camp, warning about giving "give someone with nothing to lose a weapon.”
The film is redemptive. Jal chose rap as a platform for his political agenda to end child soldiering, war and poverty. Once a pawn in a religious war (masking a war for resources) Jal collaborated with Muslim Musician Abdel Gadir Salim on the 2005 breakout album “Ceasefire.”

One surprisingly ebullient film celebrates a group of courageous Liberian women. When Gini Reticker's "Pray the Devil Back To Hell" won the best documentary feature award at this year's Tribeca festival, the festival jury announced, “In a relentless pursuit of peace, the women of Liberia show us how community, motherly love and perseverance can change the fate of a society. `Pray the Devil Back to Hell' is a reminder that we have the power to say `Enough!' to the atrocities of the world.”

After seven years of vicious civil war, brutal warlord Charles Taylor was elected president of Liberia in 1997, ignited the country's second civil war. Corrupt warlords from the North moved in to seize the government, raping murdering, and terrorizing the citizens of Liberia. Taylor spurred on the violence, secretly supporting the warlords and profiting from the fearful chaos. Boy soldiers were ordered to loot, rape and kill their families and neighbors. The war killed 250,000 people and displaced one million citizens.

But, like Martin Luther KIng, Leymah Gbowee, an ordinary Liberian woman, had a dream. "To get the women of the church together to pray for peace." Soon grandmothers, mothers, and daughters from other churches banded together to start the Christian Women's Peace Initiative. Leymah inspired a Muslim woman, police officer Asatu Bah Kenneth, who said "Does the bullet know Christian from Muslim?" and formed the Liberian Muslim Women for Peace. As a police officer, she was able to filter information to the woman's moment. (Asatu Bah Kenneth, currently the Deputy Inspector General of the Liberian National Police, earned a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in public administration from the University of Liberia, a rare achievement for a Liberian Muslim woman.)

Wearing white, the women staged daily sit-ins at the fish market, and led peace rallies across the country. Over 2500 women participated. Like Lysistrata, women withheld sex from their husbands to influence them.

As the war continued in Liberia's divided capital, Monrovia, delegates from the brutal armed opposition groups -- Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) lived it up in a luxury hotel in Ghana, the site of peace talks underwritten by Western nations and the 16-nation Economic Community of West African States.
Leymah and Asatu went to Ghana, organizing a delegation of Liberian and Ghanian women to sit-in at the peace talks and keep the pressure up.
When the peace talks stalled, the women formed a human barrier, trapping the men inside the building until a peace deal was struck.

With a blend of talking head interviews, international media and archival footage, Reticker and her producing partner Abigail E. Disney demonstrate the power of these courageous women's determination. Persisting in the face of systemic violence, they helped factor a peace accord, achieved the arrest of Taylor (facing trial in the International Criminal court for crimes against humanity) and opened the door to the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first democratically elected female head of state. The United Nations peacekeepers couldn't disarm Liberia, Liberia's mothers did.

In a time of horrific global conflicts and tribal wars, two African women (one Muslim, one Christian) and two American women filmmakers demonstrate that non-violent protest can be a solution. Abby Disney, Walt's niece, financed the film herself. Since Liberia has no power, they brought generators and built their own sets, filming images of the women's peace movement, overlooked by local and mainstream media. The film has been shown in Georgia and Kurdistan, sparking a woman's peace agenda in each country. DIsney and Reticker are co-producing a 4-hour series on women in conflict for Wide Angle on PBS.

One docu-portrait became a full-blown true-crime story. Kurt Kuenne's "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father," which began as a heartfelt tribute to his dead best friend, morphs halfway into a shocking true-crime story. True plot twists follow fast and furious, leaving you emotionally drained and angry. You also leave understanding the nature of friendship and familial love, meeting along the way a warm cast of friends and family, and one astonishing couple, David and Kathleen Bagby, the indomitable parents of Kuenne's slain friend, Dr Andrew Bagby.

Kuenne began his highly personal labor of love as a video diary, travelling across the United States, Canada and England interviewing Andrew's friends and co-workers as a portrait for his infant son, Zachary.

Kuenne had extensive home movies and documents of important events to draw on, a friend's wedding, an eagle scout award, an ironic sci-fi amateur film about time-travel, all of which showed the charismatic, lively Andrew, a well-loved boy who grew up to become a Family Practice resident in Latrobe Pennsylvania. Kuenne's editing and construction are part of the marvel of this film. Interviewing Andrew's loving friends and family, Kuenne's sharply edited montages of anecdotes build a rapid portrait of Andrew's legacy. By now, you're mourning this good-hearted man with a knack for always doing the right thing.

Then you learn about the murder. 28-year-old Andrew was allegedly killed by his mentally unstable girlfriend, Shirley Turner, when he tried to break up with her. Turner (40) then fled to Canada, pregnant with their unborn son, Zachary.

During the filmmaker's journey, information surfaced about Andrew's death, and the loving tribute turned into a powerful polemic- a broadside hit on Canada's judicial system. Kuenne pulls out the stops with fast cuts and an emotional score, all at the service of a story with more twists than I can tell you.

By the time you meet Andrew's astonishing parents, you've experienced every emotion you can imagine, Pity, sorrow, shock, rage and spiritual inspiration. For all of Kuenne's adept manipulation of the material he has brought a very real story to the screen. Bereft after Andrew's murder, David and Kathleen move to Newfoundland to support their unborn grandson Zachary, and to try to bring Andrew's murderer to justice. They're in for the long haul. Canada's legal system grinds slow. Their grandson Zachary, a spitting image of Andrew, is born. This compassionate dedicated couple, like the son they brought up, quickly touches the lives of everyone they meet, as interviews with neighbor's church friends and their lawyer illustrate. Swallowing their rage, they share custody of Zachary with Shirley, driving long road trips for family visits at the prison, all the while fighting to have Shirley extradited to the U.S. Kuenne draws a powerful portrait of the pathological Shirley using court transcripts and disturbing phone messages left on the Bagby's home phone.

David Bagby has detailed the outrageous story in his bestselling "Dance With the Devil," but I urge you not to read it until you've seen the film. You need to feel the power of this film.

Docuweek offered several portraits:
"An Unlikely Weapon" Fearless war photographer Eddie Adams defined the Vietnam War with his searing photographs. A former Marine photog, Adams insisted on doing his share. The platoons he traveled with considered him another soldier. He often led the missions, running backwards to shoot the grunts as they entered a battle zone. In 1968 he tracked a group of Saigon police hauling away a Vietcong guerilla. Pacing with them in the street, he shot a series of photographs showing Saigon's top Police Chief, General Nygoc Loan, shoot the man pointblank in the head. The shot that won him the Pulitzer (it could be called "deadman standing") caught the already dead guerilla before the bullet left his skull. Some believe that photo ended the Vietnam War. Adams was haunted by the picture forever associated with him, saying, "Two lives were destroyed that day, the victim's and the general." Learning that the general shot the man responsible for killing his friend's family earlier that day, Adams regretting destroying Loan's reputation. Years later Adams tracked Loan down in the Pizza parlor he bought, before death threats forced Loan to sell his Virginia restaurant.

Adams wrote in Time : "The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?' " Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen's family for the irreparable damage it did to Loan's honor while he was alive. When Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a "hero" of a "just cause".

Powerful images like Adam's "execution" shot and Nick Ut's classic "napalm girl," turned public opinion against the Vietnam War. Since then, war correspondents have been embedded in controlled situations (Afghanistan and Iraq) blocked from shooting/publishing that kind of policy changing image. You might say "embedding" was a backlash to the power of the Nam photos. Kim Phuc, the naked little napalmed girl, now a peace activist, appears in the film.

Relentlessly self critical, Adams was never satisfied with his photos. The only series he was proud of was the photographs he took while traveling with Viet boat -people. Jumping aboard a small boat, he offered money for gas and food. His moody photos helped convince Jimmy Carter to offer Asylum to two hundred thousand boat people from Vietnam. Adams claims that the Viet boat children were the only kids he had ever filmed anywhere in the world who smile at the camera.

World famous Adams shot covers for Time and Life and even found it challenging to work for Penthouse. He claims he warmed his centerfold subjects up by playing it cool. Driven to excite him, the girls outdid themselves emitting sex appeal.

Over the years he documented 13 wars, until he hit the wall. He restored an old Bath House in the East Village, creating a home and studio, legendary for its party atmosphere. He began a stunning, witty series of Celebrity portraits, originally on his own dollar. A no nonsense populist, he had the ability to put everyone at ease. He photographed world leaders and coal miners. When Parade magazine gave him an offer he couldn't refuse, he created indelible cover portraits of Clint Eastwood, Louis Armstrong, Mikhail Gorbachev, Anwar Sadat, Mother Teresa, Fidel Castro, the Clintons and Pope John Paul II.

Filmmaker Susan Morgan Cooper met Adam's sister-in-law (co-producer) Cindy Lou Adkins by chance. Flying to New York, Cooper had an inspirational meeting with ebullient Adams. She committed to the film, but while she was working on another film, Adams became gravely ill with Lou Gehrig's disease and died shortly afterwards. Working from bad home movies and one low-rez VHS interview Eddie shot with Hal Buell of the Associated Press, Cooper was stymied. Sound editor Mark Stoekinger worked his way through the challenges. USC cinematographer/ editor Isaac Hagy completed the team.
Cooper includes interviews with Morley Safer, Tom Brokaw, and the late Peter Jennings. Adams is remembered as an older brother figure, a helpful coach to the myriad photogs and war correspondents he worked with. He was also remembered as an irascible friend who would put friends on a "shit list', sometimes for decades.

Eddie Adams, who published one scant book before he died, will be remembered by another generation because of Cooper's portrait of the irascible, intuitive "grunt" to whom the image was everything.

In later years he began lecturing, culminating in the annual workshops at his farm Barnstorm in Jeffersonville, N.Y. Adams selected a group of 100 deserving photographers, exposing them to lectures, assignments and creative criticism from influential friends like Pete Hamill, Gordon Parks, Alfred Eisenstaedt and the editor of Time magazine.

Every year, as a culmination to his workshop, Adams lay offerings on the tomb of his fallen colleagues, Nam photographers Thanh My, Larry Burrows, Henry Huet, Kent Potter and Kyochi Sawada. Under a stand of pines on Adam's beautiful Catskill retreat, crowds of colleagues, teachers, family and students, let off yellow balloons as a tribute. The film concludes at the first workshop session after Adam's death. This time Adam's son August laid the flowers. Buried with his camera, at his request Adams (71) had finally joined his fallen comrades.

Australian director/ camera operator Scott Hicks' ("Shine") video portrait of
prolific composer Phillip Glass "Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts" is a surprisingly intimate look at the prolific 71 year old composer, favoring winsome behavioral moments over musical passages.

Meant to coincide with the 2005 celebration of Glass's 70th birthday,
(and reminiscent of "32 Films about Glenn Gould"), Hick's non linear twelve parts
survey Glass's early years, family life, spiritual practice and absolutely workaholic creative life but fail to reveal much of Glass's actual process. No mention is made of "Music in Twelve Parts", the landmark composition that gives the film its name

On the first day of shooting, Hicks used his temporary HDV camera to catch Phillip preparing homemade Pizza for his family and guests. When Glass turned to Hicks and, talking directly at the camera, describes music as a ” river underground - you know it's running, you know it's there”, the style of the film had been established. Subtly, Glass had taken over the process, turning the director, who'd hoped to remain a fly on the wall, into an involved co-worker.

Buoyant and unselfconscious, Glass would interrupt sequences to ask Hicks to turn off a teapot, or to hold a web-cam so that Glass could show his young son, halfway across the world, what he was doing. And, like most of the people who work with Glass, Hicks complied, while holding his HD cam and continuing his shot. Years of controlling his work environment meant Glass could sweep Hicks into his wake without disturbing the flow of things. That may be the expense of the film; everything is so "inside" that we have no distance from the subject, no external viewpoint on Glass's achievements, his choices or his failings.

HIcks rambled around the world, following the peripatetic Glass from one project to another. Glass maintains a studio where he practices Xi Gong, and other moving meditations. We meet three of his spiritual coaches. We join the Glass family summer at "PhilvIlle", his beach house in Nova Scotia, where his sister and current collaborators gather (in this case Dennis Russell Davies, the conductor of his newest opera "Waiting for the Barbarians”), insuring that Glass will never have to actually relax. His young family share meals and morning playtimes, the rest of the day is spent working. "Get up early and work all day. That's the only rule," says the grinning Glass, balancing 4 film scores, a symphony and the premiere of his newest opera.

Glass was exposed to a vast variety of music at his father's record store. Although his brother and sister studied piano, he did not. Eight-year-old Glass, the youngest student at Baltimore's Peabody Institute, took lessons in violin and flute. At 15, he enrolled at the University of Chicago to study mathematics, philosophy and composition, working as a crane operator between semesters to pay for his studies.

Like many influential American composers, Glass went to Paris to study with the martinet pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, who counted among her hundreds of students Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Gian Carlo Menotti, Michel Legrand, & Burt Bacharach. He credits her with making him a composer, describes himself as a child of Nadia Boulanger and Ravi Shankar. "She taught me through terror, Ravi Shankar taught me through love." Glass first discovered the Indian use of rhythm "in developing an overall structure in music", when Ravi hired him to transcribe his sound -track to Conrad Rook's film “Chappaqua”.

The most interesting section showed Glass's work with the Philip Glass Ensemble in late 60's/ early 70's when the experimental ensemble of voices and amplified instruments played in six floor walk ups, galleries and Soho lofts. Audience members lay on the floor, tripping out to the aural journey of repetitive structures and elegant iterated melodic fragments. Speaking about the period, and the ghastly reviews he received from perplexed music critics he says, “I was never captive of other peoples' ideas about me. I did what I wanted to... I didn't care what people thought.” Glass worked as a cab driver and a "poor" plumber to support his work with the Ensemble. As remembered by first wife, theater director JoAnne Akalaitis, and close friend, painter Chuck Close, Glass' life stopped cold when his soul mate, painter Candy Jernigan (39) died suddenly of liver cancer.

After years of playing the field, he married restaurant manager Holly Critchlaw, thirty years his younger. An endearing morning scene shows Pops Glass fondly watching his toddlers bang around the playroom. During a reverent tour of his office, Holly explains, "for Philip, music is his therapy, his conversation, his place to be when he can't talk about what it is he's feeling." Later, in a shockingly candid scene, a tearful Holly confides, "Our paths have converged". No one could keep up with his constantly multi-tasking life. (He's since moved in with new girlfriend, cellist Wendy Sutter.)

Glass is eccentric, charming and expressive, but his natural reserve preserves the secret of his work process. Or perhaps it's something he can't explain. Like its subject, the film keeps many secrets. Why did the Toltec shaman bury him in the wilderness? The closest Glass comes to describing his work is a statement about film scoring "That psychological distance between the image and the music is both subjective and precise."

Lastly, DocuWeek offered two wonderfully entertaining pictures: Stunned and fascinated by his first bullfight, art photographer Stephen Higgins planned to shoot photographs of this art that few outside of Spanish-speaking world know about. But photos can't capture the magnificent rhythms, the music and motion of the world of corrida de toros (literally running of bulls), beloved in Spain and Latin America.

A series of chance meetings granted him access to the inside world. He spent three seasons following rising star matador David Fandila aka “El Fandi.” Higgins brought three years of stunning footage, shot by Christopher Jenkins and James Morton-Haworth, to veteran filmmaker Nina Gilden Seavey (founding director of Silverdocs), who got financing from San Diego bullfighting aficionados, Scott Dunklee and Kristie Nova.

Working from a rough-cut, composer John Califra ("Tarnation"), created a sweeping orchestral score that he recorded live with the Sophia Metropolitan Orchestra in Bulgaria. Ian Rummer cut the film, like a music video, to the impressive score. The result is a physically beautiful, immersive film that reflects the passion, art and controversy of the centuries' old ritual. Higgins described it as "a sort of passion play... that enables all of us to confront mortality."

Proud of its cultural heritage, Spain has protected this brutal, primitive ritual. Bullfighting is one of the last sports based on the Roman Coliseum. Dating back to rituals dedicated to the Bull God Mithras, versions of Bull Fighting and Bull Dancing existed throughout Mediterranean Culture. Bloodless versions, closer to the famed Bull Dancing of the Minoans, still exist in France, Portugal and parts of Spain.

Rapturous shots from the Bullring or corrida, capture the glory and fear that make up this 'meditation" on life and death. Shooting from a dangerous place in the arena, the cameras capture the speed and weight of the bull. Extreme close ups accompany El Fandi as he sweeps, turns and poses, taunting the bull into a glorious clean kill. We watch him run in front of the bull holding out his hand as if to push the bull back. He kneels in front of the bull. Even manager Santiago Lopez is amused "David is not exactly artistic...classical. He's never been satisfied with doing things the traditional way. When he grabs the bandilleras I never know what he'll do next. Lopez, a retired matador is credited with training El Fandi. In a sad moment, in the film, David separates from Santiago and begins to work with promoter Antonio Matilla.

For three generation, the Fandila family had been involved in the art. His father, John Fandila, was a banderillero. Young David was playing Matador since a boy of four (as his mother's snapshots show.) A member of Spain's national ski team, David gave up his career to fulfill his family's three generations destiny. His brother Juan Alvaro, another star in Alpine Skiing and Acrobatic Skiing, retired to become his David's second in the ring. Everyone in the family works for him, plus a team of 12 assistants. Higgins had carte blanche, eating breakfast with the supportive family, a fly on the wall during frustrated David's bouts of recuperation, traveling around Spain in a van. The Spanish season lasts from June till September or October. David only has 10 days off " sometimes I wonder if my brother regrets giving up his life to live this life with me." During the off-season, The El Fandi team tours Latin America.

In order to become a star Matador, David attempts to achieve 100 Corridas (bullfights) in one season. The norm is 50-80 in one season. As journalist Jose Antonio de Moral explains, only a torero with great character and mental strength can fulfill this challenge. Only 12 have ever achieved this in centuries of the sport. David would be the thirteenth.

Recuperating from a sprained ankle, David fumes "When I get gored, it's easier to understand, because that's normal, but to be laid up for weeks because of a twisted ankle, I can't stand it. One misstep my whole season went to hell." David finishes the 2005 season with 72 corridas, 28 short of his goal.

Shy, easygoing Fandila prefers fighting to meeting the crowds, or explaining his art. Describing a bull he's inspecting in the enclosure he says, "Every bull has a different expression, this guy has a noble, good guy face." The torero picks the three bulls he will face. Fandila explains. "You pick a bull that inspires you, you have to like the bull. We say it's like meeting a women, you only know about her when you talk with her. Some days you get bad bulls. The worst ones are the quiet ones, erratic and difficult to manage. The best bulls are the brave ones, the ones that charge with fury. You can do beautiful things with them...You can't disappoint the crowd. You only have a few moments to bring them to ecstasy."

Jose Antonio de Moral explains "You never learn a lesson from one bull that applies to all bull, never".

Higgins captures the last moments before the fight. Alone with Juan Alvaro he prays before his personal shrine, crossing himself in a way that every Torero we see in the film seems to do.

David goes on tour with the master Enrique Ponce. He has triumphant days, carried out "on shoulders" next to Ponce. On one rainy dramatic day, Ponce and David struggled through the torrential rains. A faulty ending compromised David's fight with his second bull. Ponce made a magnificent gesture, refusing to be borne out "on shoulder". He walked out of the ring with David, bringing the crowd to tears. David, who didn't triumph, was saluted by the greatest torero in the world. In another fight, David, gored in the leg returns to the ring after 24 minutes of surgery without anesthetic.

In response to the controversy surrounding the tradition, writer Eduardo Lago states "You must approach this as something truly on the margin of rationality and margin of modernity and of our current values, but which reflect a centuries old cultural/ anthropological history."

"Bulls are bred for the corrida and then the meat is sold. The bull has a chance to defend itself. If it's brave, its life is spared. Few animals have a chance to defend their lives that way,” says Fandi. "This is my art, this is the life I've chosen."

David completed his 2005 season, facing 100 bulls. Currently, he is ranked number one among all bullfighters in Spain.

The Wrecking Crew is Danny Tedesco's entertaining tribute to his dad, Tommy Tedesco " king of LA session guitarists" and the core group of session players Hal Blaine, Don Randi, Earl Palmer, Al Casey, Plas Johnsonand Carol Kaye (the sole, stellar female member) known to music industry insiders as "The Wrecking Crew". They were amplified by a rotating gang of thirty or more session players, plus a strings section, whose names appear on a roll at the end of the film.

This shaggy group of LA studio session musicians played with virtually everyone who mattered in pop music, from Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Dean Martin, Herb Alpert, Nat KIng Cole to Sonny & Cher. The Fifth Dimension and The Mamas and the Papas.

Older studio musicians, known by the Crew as "the suits", treated pop sessions as a paycheck. The younger players collaborated with the producers, trying out endless riffs. Their music had a different feel. When the old school guys looked down on rock 'n roll/ soul or pop, these young Turks stepped up, becoming the new generation of "firstcall' players. The brilliant musicians (with solid jazz and classical chops) developed riffs and acted as on the spot arrangers, laying down some of the most recognizable pop music of several decades. They were the real musicians recording the hits for Jan and Dean, The Monkees, The Association, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass Band. Alpert called them the "established groove machine".

Filling the studio with multiple keyboards, drum sets and guitars, they were Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound. As Brian Wilson (who used them instead of the Beach Boys to record Good Vibrations and Pet Sounds) said "They were the ones with all the spirit and all the know-how."

The backbone of the West Coast music industry, their licks were the soundtrack to the 60's and 70's.Besides the aforementioned pop hits, Crew members contributed to the iconic themes songs of The Twilight Zone, Bonanza, Batman, Hawaii Five O, MASH, Gilligans' Island, Charlie's Angels, Dallas, Jaws, The Exorcist, The Godfather and The Pink Panther. They backed Elvis, Striesand, Dean Martin, The Fifth Dimension and Zappa.

Director Tedesco began the film in 1997 when he learned his father Tommy (only 67) was dying. Tedesco retired from recording when he suffered a stroke in 1992, published an autobiography in 1993. Dubbed by Guitar Magazine as "as the most recorded guitarist in history" Tommy played on thousands of recordings.

For twelve years Tedesco chased down personal anecdotes and interviews and assembled the killer soundtrack that make up this swinging behind the scenes view of a remarkable decade of music. There are fascinating testimonials from Dick Clark, Roger McQuinn (The Byrds), Cher, Herb Alpert and Mickey Dolenz. Glenn Campbell, the versatile Crewmember who sang on most of the demo tracks they produced, then toured with The Beach Boys before launching his solo career, also weighs in. Campbell, who couldn't read a lick of music, was famous for his brilliant off-the wall solos. (Piano man Leon Russell was another Crewmember to break away and find commercial success.)

Nancy Sinatra is a wonderful surprise. Earthy and smart, she describes her awe watching their sessions and what it felt like to walk into one of the longest running, most together grooves anywhere. It's fun to hear her wax nostalgic over "These Boots Are Made For Walking", a song she fought to record, Happily, she shares some private footage of her Vegas show.
Hal Blaine was the featured player on Nancy Sinatra's hit single Drummer Man. Sinatra put Hal Blaine's name next to hers on the marquee (one of the few times a WC player was publicly recognized) and the performance footage is a blast. I just wish it were longer.

The best scenes are the table talks with Tedesco, bassist Carol Kaye, drummer Hal Blaine and saxophonist Plas Johnson. Hearing their war stories gives you an inking of the surprising fun these musician had in an era when every producer in the pop world wanted to work with them. Blaine recounts heart breaking post divorce stories (he wound up as a security guard when the studio work dried up). Carole Kaye, considered by many the greatest electric bass player of all time, is a gifted storyteller. She describes being a working mother, who started her day doing jingles, did the circuit of Decca, Capitol or RCA an ended up in an all nighter for Brian Wilson, remarking that she pulled down more money than the President. Describing the invention of an iconic riff, the camera follows her hand as she illustrates signature baselines on her Fender.

Tedesco comes off as a fun loving, good-hearted guy, who didn't resent the hits going out under other peoples name. He was the life of the party, keeping the loose band together. Like the rest of the Crew, his family played second fiddle to his demanding job. The guitarist-for-hire from Niagara Fall, who never said no to a gig, had the time of his life, playing music and putting food on the table. The fact that Danny Tedesco was granted the rights to the endless list of hits that underscore the film, speaks loudly about the high regard the Industry holds for these pop juggernauts.

Pop animated titles, inspired by the title sequence of the 1969 Dean Martin pic "The Wrecking Crew" add a lively polish to the film.

Watch out for this rewarding crop of Docs.

Studio 1636 on Wilcox is an impressive gallery space that, for the time being, is showcasing a multi-media movie theater in the form of a massive hunk of steel and metal called “The Engine” - a transportable, retractable film screen that sits atop 1000 pound steel sculpture. Aside from displaying this portable movie theater in its Hollywood home, the goal is to encourage independent filmmakers to take advantage of a resource that is something other than a traditional corporate venue.

Creator/Founder/Director/Filmmaker Burke Roberts through the summer invited filmmakers and programmers to curate their own screening presentations and dates were booking quickly. The “Engineering Cinematheque,” is now running features monthly. (Burke Roberts' own piece on the phenomenon taken from The Engine website is below.)

The studio’s preview night early in the summer included a film screening of different sorts, I managed to catch bits and pieces of one that included black and white horror and running sequences, with live percussion (I did see a kiddie keyboard) as the backdrop music, and a harpist to top it all off.

Just don’t expect to catch a midnight showing of anything predictable. Roberts is focusing on documentaries, skate videos, short animated films and the like. Aside from the ever-powerful ‘Engine,’ the studios’ design through the summer incorporated graffiti art by Kofi’One/Draftsman and art installations by Sonik Mercury. Not your typical graff though, Kofi kept a neutral palette and made use of linear designs which draw the eye down to the wooden seating blocks that congregate that rear of the studio.

www.theenginetheater.com; 1636 Wilcox Ave; 323.860.9936

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INSPIRED BY TH ENGINE

A Piece by Burke Roberts

In the early 21st century the art form most widely practiced by the generation is MOTION PICTURE (FILM/VIDEO). A variety of social and technical attributes are responsible for the rising phenomena, but the most apparent cause can certainly be traced to the advancement and availability of pro-sumer resource and technology. An era of “power to the people” (so to speak) in this medium threatens the corporate media empire as never before.

Now, what “the people” do with it, is beside the point. Sure, the fact that ‘everybody’ is a “filmmaker” clutters the path with unending mediocrity – However, let us not forget that in the 1960’s and 70’s “everyone” played guitar. –And as a result; that was inarguably the greatest era for the instrument.

Following this first major burst of innovative guitar, the major label record industry quickly reached peak capacity for it’s narrow view of what could be done in Rock & Roll. And so, If a band did not strive to fit into the commercial formula – they could rarely gain access to venues and audience. Corporate circles controlled concert halls - and nobody else had P.A. systems.

To remedy this over run of boring, soft rock hair bands, something that could not be calculated by the commerce vampires had to occur.. Enter: Punk Rock. Venues such as CBGB’s gave a platform for far more interesting music. In succession came the American Hardcore scene which gave way to, what has now become, a globally accessible, D.I.Y. Indy music circuit. Now, 8 out of 10 bars have a P.A. and stage.

Film has always evolved much slower than music. This was formerly because of the amount of money and people needed. So now, with the availability of the afore mentioned resources; why is there not more adventurous/experimental film prevalent for us all to see in America?

It is very simple: Lack of venues.

There are currently only 3 major viewing outlets for motion pictures.

1.

Movie Theaters.. largely locked down by commercial interests. (DVD distribution to chain stores is related to, and under similar constraints)
2.

Film Festivals.. although there are more popping up than ever, these venues are subject to unending politics and are, more often than not, mainly focused on bringing ‘Product’ to ‘Buyer’ – and therefore are not actually “Festivals” but “micro-corporate convention centers”.

-Both of these Venues call for filmmakers to “audition” for their narrow tastes in cinema.

(….regardless of how much they may claim otherwise…)
3. Lastly, is the internet.. Although definitely an arena for anything (in fact the bathroom wall of the world) – it lacks the most basic desire for any true filmmaker; PRESENTATION.

A film takes a lot of work (even bad films) and deserves better than a 4 inch pixilated screen – for those that want to view it.

Through out history; all art and entertainment, from Tap Dancing to tapestries, was created for public viewing. Creation is a gesture in communication. And although the modern age is rapidly redefining that concept – certain basic human desires of group sensory experience will not be destroyed. Numbed perhaps. But not extinguished.

It is time to reinvigorate what is being abandoned:
Pride in presentation.
Wider opportunity for motion picture venues is imminent.

In cities all around Europe it is already becoming standard for clubs and bars to have a quality PROJECTION SYSTEM along with the stage and P.A. that was ushered in by independent music.

This screen may be 10 years to early, 10 years to late or right on time, but the fact of the matter is:

A less constrained circuit for cinema viewing will lead to less constrained experiments in the medium.

Film has been through many waves in it’s short 100 years, and this new situation is leading to another important era.

It’s just my opinion.. but I tend to agree with it.

While at a party, I was asked the inevitable party question, “So, what do you do?” I answered that I was a writer, but my life's work was to facilitate holistic conversation in my salon.

My new friend looked puzzled. He said, “So, you mean you teach in a hair salon?”

I quickly explained that my “salon” was a conversational salon called The Wisdom Circle.

For anyone who has not experienced a salon, there is fascination and intrigue. The word “salon” usually conjures some impression of the old socials in the grand tradition of Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, a small circle of wits engaged in clever repartee in dim, candle-lit drawing rooms, where cigar smoke swirled and bourgeois guests dined on caviar as they murmured about activism and the arts.

Today that scenario is close … but no cigar. These days the salon is less focused on externals and more focused on resonating tradition, timeless trends or ageless wisdom.

In this age of disconnect, the cyber chat room has replaced the telephone and even the neighborhood bar; the stroke of a keyboard has replaced the handshake. The surge of technology has dulled us to the tone of person-to-person conversation. We have forgotten what it was like to bounce ideas off of each other and. We have lapsed in our communication skills, choosing litigation to solve our disagreements. We are searching for more meaning or purpose to enrich our lives by learning more and connecting more with those around us. How can we expect there to be peace in the Middle East, if we can't and won't relinquish our road rage in exchange for a dignified and productive dialogue that results in a more human nature?

One way to reconnect with humanity is to join a provocative new movement by starting your own affinity group. These groups, commonly known as salons, are springing up all over. If you are searching for more meaning or purpose and want to enrich your life, by organizing a salon you can share new thoughts and practices with like-minded souls.

If you have a hobby, a pastime or a special interest and want to share your ideas and opinions with people who enjoy talking and listening, you will like participating in a salon.

Starting a salon can be elementary: If you know one person who shares your passion and wants to talk about it, you have the beginnings of a salon. A salon should reflect the personal style of the facilitator and attendees. The subject will determine the theme, and attendees will determine the mood. It can be peaceful and meditative, or frenetic and gleeful. Success depends greatly on the facilitator, who leads the salon. She or he plans the gathering of interested people. But creating an environment for discussion that is informative, heartfelt, fun and safe is easier said than done. It takes some knowledge, mentoring and practice.

The first steps are to visualize your salon, then create a mission statement outlining the type of salon you want. By taking these steps you will breathe life into its existence. I started a nondenominational and nonpartisan salon for holistic discussion of religion and politics. I called it the Wisdom Circle. My mission was to contribute to a more peaceful world by establishing a safe place for people to discuss their core beliefs, without judgment.

Decide on the size of your salon. Is it small and intimate with perhaps four to six people? Or is it moderate with 10 to 15, or larger, with 15 to 20? It is OK to start with as few as three people; it will give you practice for honing your leadership skills.

Screening attendees is important to the dynamics and sustainability of the salon. You can find attendees through referrals and word of mouth. A salon is something people will talk about, so word spreads fast and you will find your contingent. You want people who share your passion, not necessarily those who agree with you on everything. A level head and tolerance for others’ opinions is good. Assertive is fine, stubborn and overbearing is not. Shy is OK, passive aggressive is not.

Decide on a location and how often to have your salon. Commit to that frequency.

Do your research. Read periodicals and newspapers. Talk to others. Become informed of many points of view on the topic. Use videos, written materials, music and guest speakers. Use the talent and resources you have in your group. Ask attendees to be speakers.

Make sure that you are within the time frame that you promise. If you have planned a two-hour salon, make sure you do not go over that time frame. Don't pack it with too much activity. Sometimes just the conversation alone can be overwhelming. Keep it simple.

By facilitating a salon, you have the opportunity experience the joy of creating a brilliant environment and explore the brains, hearts and passions of other individuals. When planning your salon consider what you enjoy most about the chosen subject. Have fun and discuss what you absolutely love. The opportunity to discuss deeply felt, core beliefs, without having to be right, is an accomplishment in and of itself. While a noticeable change may not be obvious, shift does happen. The idea is not necessarily to change, the idea is to be willing to see things differently, to learn, understand, tolerate and ultimately inspire brilliance. The environment is unfettered, yet self-possessed expression.

The lively Santa Monica Museum Of Art (SMMOA) recently hosted a fascinating traveling show curated by Ingrid Shaffner of The Institute Of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania and Carin Kuoni, Director of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. The Puppet Show (May 24- Aug 9) brought together works by 27 International artists exploring the imagery of puppets in sculpture, video and photography.

As part of this installation, SMMOA commissioned two evenings of Puppet Shows from LA-based artists, many of them trained at the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts. This interdisciplinary lab, housed at Cal Arts, explores the use of puppets and other performing objects in the arts and is an important hive for emerging theatre/ film artists.

Some of the puppet clique complained that the show contained very few literal puppets, but I was excited by SMMOA'S invitation to cross boundaries: to interest the audience for fine arts in the art of puppetry and vice-versa. Puppetry is experiencing a renaissance worldwide. There is a renewed interest in pre-industrial age forms of entertainment, including Paper and Toy Theatre, dioramas, Panoramas, Robert Poulter's reproductions of Loutherbourg's 18th century Eidophusikon and early theatrical special effects like the Zoetrope, and other forms of cylindrical projection.

The installation featured discrete wooden viewing boxes, minimalist suggestions of traveling puppet stages, in which video documentation of previous installations, curated and shown together in this new context, explored the anxiety underlying the loss of personal "agency" in an increasingly corporatized, branded, surveillance-prone world.

Bruce Nauman's " Violent Incident (Man/Woman Segment)" replayed an aerial view of a physical fight between a man and a woman. Constant repetition underscored the mechanical nature of their interaction, as each takes turn becoming the aggressor.

Dennis Oppenheim's 1974 "Theme for a Major Hit" presents a chorus of automata, motor driven marionettes who tap incessantly to " “It ain't what you make, it's what makes you do it.”

Other mechanical repetitive acts in the same gallery included documentation of San Francisco's Survival Research Lab 2004 installation at LA POST Gallery. Flame throwing machines and robots conducted a mechanical war to the amazement of gallery visitors. The nighttime installation with its booming flames and glimmering oil slicks recalls the brutal siege wars of the Middle Ages.

Swedish artist Nathalie Djuberg's produces silent gothy puppet shows all set to Hans Berg's music. Djuberg's ropy claymation puppets cater to the dark side- exploring revenge fantasies and the bloodthirsty side of human nature. In "The Swing" Fragonard's errant courtiers come to life. In Fragonard's famous Rococo painting "Happy Accidents of the Swing," an aristocratic suitor lies on the ground, enjoying the wonders under a swinging beauties skirt. Fragonard's beauty kicks off her shoe. In the animation, the roseate girl falls off the swing, abandons her swain, crawls through the underbrush and surrounded by winsome bunnies gnashes her suddenly bloodthirsty teeth, leaving us to wonder what will transpire.

In "Madeleine the Brave," Bemelman's Madeline and her schoolmates spend an exceedingly dark, unchaperoned visit to the Zoo. In " Feed All The Hungry Little Children" a streetwalker is pawed by horny, starving slum children who crawl over her like succubae or the horde of ragged locals who devour Sebastian in "Suddenly Last Summer". The voluptuous black hooker transforms herself into a massive wet nurse, spurting milk from her breast like a Ghetto version of a primitive Earth Mother. (Djuberg first solo museum exhibition in the U.S runs September 28, 2008 to January 4, 2009 at the Hammer.)

In Maurizio Cattelan's tense " Untitled," a puppet clings to a glass wall affixed with suction cups. Nattily dressed in a felt suit (and a long pigtail down his back), with a determined expression on his face, he attempts to scale the wall. The piece is unaccountable moving, perhaps more so, shown in a context with other mechanically functional puppet brethren.

In Kiki Smith's moving "Nuit” a woman's disembodied arms and legs dangle from the ceiling. The white plaster-casted life-size arms and legs seem to reach for the floor, barely inches away. Louise Bourgeois's "Henriette” a hanging bronze leg, recalls African art and prosthetics.

Nayland Blake's "The Philosophy Of the Bedroom" is an inactive Toy Theatre version Of De Sade's famous play, whose three person dialogue between Incestuous Madame de Saint-Ange, her brother/ lover Le Chevalier and cynical homosexual Dolmancé, educate virginal Eugénie in the libertine philosophy." The sole aim of human existence is pleasure". Blake's theatre hangs immobilized; it's rod puppets and etching derived stage flats displayed like a cat scan of a miniature play.

In another of Nayland's pieces "Hans Bellmer as Mr. Dolmance", De Sade's libertine appears as an articulated, distorted puppet doll, as conceived by German -born surrealist Hans Bellmer. Deconstructed dolls haunt Bellmer's work. He began working with truncated body images as a protest of the Nazi Party's cult of the perfect body. Bellmer's work also quotes Alfred Jarry's Ubu. (Hans Bellmer. The Palace of King Ubu. 1936)

The figure is part jointed artist doll, dwarfed by it's additional appendages hung on every side. Nayland is one of several artists in the show who credits a teenage fascination with puppets (he worked as a teenage assistant puppeteer) for the direction his adult work has taken.

In Mike Kelly's "Gussied Up," a bedroom suite of furniture, dressed in doll's clothes, conjures up 1920's black and white cartoons as if this were the backstage area where Max Fleishman's anthropomorphic animated objects wait between shots. The more you look the more Kelly evokes private moments, perhaps childhood abuse and empathy, recalling his seminal essay "Playing With Dead Things: On the Uncanny". Ernst Jentsch (quoted by Kelly) defines the Uncanny as uncertainty about whether something is animate or inanimate. Freud defines it as a "return of the repressed". That dread haunts Kelly's piece and adds pathos to much of The Puppet Show. Doubles are another classical marker of the uncanny. SMMOA'S show is full of simulacrum doubling the human body, but only Kelly's piece uses furniture to summon the ghostly images of missing persons.

Political South African artist William Kentridge is well represented. One of my favorite pieces "What Will Come", based on Renaissance optical experiments, is an imagistic evocation of the Abyssinian War (Mussolini's annexing of Ethiopia) and the Exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Kentridge drew the curved segments of the images in a mirror. The images are decoded and viewable when projected from a cylinder onto the circular platform screen.

Kentridge's portfolio of eight etchings "Ubu Tells The Truth" evokes Alfred Jarry's "Pere Ubu". Originally a puppet play, this 1896 trangressive scatological work prefigured Dada, Surrealism and the Theatre Of The Absurd. Jarry's blanket condemnation of government continues to influence artists and his brand of anti-philosophy "Pataphysics" is still in play. Ubu is the lynchpin or "historical jumping off place" for SMMOA's current exhibition.

Eschewing the Uncanny, Kentridge summons the horror of Twentieth Century barbarity. A video excerpt of the Pataphysical "Ubu and the Truth Commission”, the 1994 theatrical collaboration between Kentridge and The Handspring Puppet Company, is a startling mixture of animation, film projection and expressionist theatre. The protagonist, an officer and ex-agent of the state, hides his racial crimes form his black wife, a shaking mountain of a woman. Kentridge's images, recalling totendanz, Jarry and Max Ernst, detail the horrors of Apartheid, civil violence and institutionalized torture. This activist play was an important part of the civil discourse that lead to South Africa's emerging Democracy.

In the chilling prison sequence an animated machine gun, hobbling around on its tripod, stomps a prisoner. It evokes the Kleister-headed birds of Ernst. A camera pans an enormous black and white building, each window of the fortress another interrogation cell. Tossed out of a window, a body falls in silence past us. A suitcase dog puppet crosses the stage. Carried around by a valise handle in it's back, it's operated by three puppeteers. Three talking dog heads, mounted on duct material, snake around barking their bellicose remarks. This junk art Cerberus recalls both the mythological hound of Hades and the brutal police dogs made famous in photographs of Concentration Camps, Apartheid, and our Southern segregation.

In “Testimony: Narrative of a Negress Burdened by Good Intentions, 2004” and “8 Possible Beginnings or: The Creation of African-America, A moving Picture by Kara E. Walker,” shadow puppets designed by the celebrated Kyra Walker explore the creation of African-America. Walker's silhouette art is an ironic comment on a portrait art form, which fell out of favor once the camera was invented. Identified with a comforting nostalgic world, Walkers racially activist works call into question the notion of Euro-centric consensual history.

Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner's "Elis: A story of an Ostrich Chick" uses wonderful puppets, part child and part articulated suit. A child, standing waist deep in an ostrich suit, manipulates the head with a huge rod. The upper half of the child, all concentration, comments on the relationship between puppet and the puppeteer, the lower half, ostrich feet and all, act the part of the ostrich. It's a curiously lyrical combination.

Christian Jankowski's Puppet Conference (made for the Carnegie Museum of Art) plays like a United Nations of famous puppets. Big Bird, Grover, Elmo, Lambchop and others address an audience of puppets, discussing the careers and private lives of their puppet colleagues, though the concept was more involving them the text.

Vaudevillian cabaret act Doug and Mike (Doug Skinner and Michael Smith) offers a series of hand puppet review sketches. In "Shop Talk," two toilets commiserate in the men's room, than amble over to visit a commode in the lady's room. Many of the sketches involve the same characters- art scene insiders gossiping about each other. A series of repetitive jokes wind through the scenes. In "Shane and Cory's Gallery Opening" they gossip about the missing artists (they're attending more prestigious events), with the cognoscenti who come early for the free food.

In Cindy Loehr's "Colloquy, 2004,” a man and a woman, represented by Senor Wences-like fist puppets (with sequins for eyes) talk dulsatorily about their personal politics.

The most invigorating pieces in the show, celebrating collaboration and the art of story telling were the products of two student workshops, developed by Asuka Hisa, SMMOA's Director of Education. Park Studio, SMMOA's free outreach program, was offered to neighborhood middle and high school students during spring break.

16 young people (ages 14-19) worked for four days with shadow puppet artists Paul Zaloom and Lynn Jeffries. They wrote 3 fractured Fairy Tales, designed puppets, rehearsed and filmed their comic takes on Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and The Beanstalk and the Three Little Pigs, all entitled " Shadows and Gags". Haley Castro, Anthony Hernandez, Joey Leba and Kimberly Puebla devised a perfect politically correct multi-ethnic protagonist. It took the narrator, over a minute to detail Little Red in the Hood's ethnic roots. All three of the stories gently called into question the absurd modern world these young artists are inheriting. Their original puppets were on display and the shows played on video. In "Print Making and Puppets" nine students worked at La Mano Press Studios with master print maker Artemio Rodriguez to create linocut prints based on the theme of puppets. The prints were cut out and stop-motioned animated. The original art was also on display.

The first evening of Puppet plays was introduced by playwright Eric Ehn, Dean of Cal Arts' School of Drama. Ehn's witty comments essayed the theology, morality and cultural inevitability of puppetry. Quoting Dali's essay on Saint Sebastian he discusses three types of patience-the Patience of a Fisherman. The repetitive inaction used in rowing, and other forms of labor represent stillness in action. Patience as Passion, he likens to a Vermeer painting or the ripening of fruit trees- representing action in stillness. Patience as Elegance- Dali defines puppets, as holy or contemplative objects, martyrs whose active stillness stirs us to pour forth and inhabit them.

Regarding the morality of puppets, Ehn suggests that puppets require our nursing, constant physical therapy, at the same time they evoke gestures of caring from us, working our delicate, atrophying muscles of empathy.

Ehn believes in the cultural inevitability of Puppets-The impulse towards (designed) total theatre and the new opera is moving to the puppet stage. " Puppetry is where opera has gone. We need portable theatre because we live in fugitive times." Ehn introduced the evening's experimental artists as "working with great patience and an overflow of love."

In "His Hands Make an Army, His Hands Make A Hospital," Katie Shook and Eric Lindley poetically describe a brother and sister from a farm in New Mexico, experiencing rapid industrialization and a foreign war. Shook manipulates inanimate objects. Across the tilted platform stage stretches a quilted version of their farm. She pulls cloth vines out of the padded hillocks and creates her garden. She hangs laundry and plants seed in a display that read more as performance art than puppetry.

Kyle McBain Leeser's "Cold Mountain Light," the opening chapter of a puppet epic tells a fairy tale about a historical cult of airship designers. Each generation produces a master airship builder who finds his sole apprentice. The apprentice must learn by assisting and watching, only building his first airship as his master lied dying. If it is airworthy, he must fly off, searching for a place to set down and build his own airship studio. The Master builder sets up shop on the peak of a daunting mountain, his only companion pet goat. After years of working in solitude, a lost young man appears as if by magic. The new apprentice (the protagonist) breaks the cycle.

The puppet stage included lit vignettes on either side of the proscenium, serving as shadow sideshows. Part of the delight was watching the puppeteers' fierce concentration. In one sequence, a story within the story, an underground chamber opens under the main stage. A puppeteer curled on the ground quietly moves her cave dwelling character, who's only drawn onto the earth surface by the charitable rabbit who brings him food.

A narrator sits beside the stage, at a desk filled with period props. Dressed like the builders apprentice, the narrator dips his quill pen and reads to us from his book, creating the timeless Alpine mood. Inventive puppets are a further delight. The Carved wooden builder and apprentice have an antique feel. The do-gooder rabbit, the hairy articulated goat, and the marvelous airship, shown in different sizes were memorable.

"Concrete Folk Variations, Chapter 1.75" presented one chapter in Susan Simpson's Noir inflected saga. Early iterations have shown at The Museum of Jurassic Technology, the Velaslavasay Panorama and Manual Archives, a micro theater and exhibition space devoted to the presentation of newly discovered and invented folklore of Los Angeles.
( check http://www.manualarchives.org/ for dates of upcoming shows).

The Velaslavasay Panorama, an exhibition hall, theater and garden dedicated to the presentation of unusual visual experiences, is located in the West Adams district. Simpson also performs with The Little Fakers, whose marionette serial, Sunset Chronicles, is currently playing in local venues. See http://www.sunsetchronicles.com/

Susan Simpson's serial is set in the neighborhoods, lesbian bars, cop shops and streetcars of McCarthy-era Los Angeles. Simpson illuminates her imaginary subculture in the same way that author William Mosely's Easy Rawlins' series of books and films reclaimed the Noir tropes to explore African American life in postwar Los Angeles.

Loretta Salt is a lesbian detective, canny in the ways of LA politics circa the 1950's. Her adventures take place in a minimalist version of Los Angeles's neighborhoods, writ large on a projection screen above the play space. Simpson employs cylindrical projections; witty sequeways and thoughtful first person narrative to create a hypnotic enclosed time machine, moody and poetic.

When a society matron and philanthropist, known in Lesbian circles as Big Lee ,is murdered, L.A.P.D. beat cop Salt steps up to the plate. Her investigation of corruption and hidden police brutality leads her to turn in her badge. One of the witnesses, Big Lee's girlfriend, comes to her for help. The two women bond. A visit to the Lincoln Heights' Ostrich farm on the historic streetcar-the Red Car, is haunting. Salt sends her new friend home, but she's murdered before she ever reaches her sister's house. Images of ostriches reappear; a sound loop of their mad cry becomes a clue for Salt.

Moody moments build onstage. Watching the depressed wooden puppet drink her coffee at the diner is deeply moving. "Here you go,” whispers the short order cook, passing her the cup. A close-up of the hand, the cup and the tabletop has all the intensity of a film close-up from a classic studio Noir.

When gritty, grey haired Salt, rubs her neck, the subtext is clear, she's remembering her dad. The gravitas of Simpson's characters add depth to the existential drama, surprising in a puppet context.

Jamie Gieser's "The Reptile under the Flowers" was a multimedia peepshow, diorama, live and video puppet performance. Ten audience members at a time were ushered into a dark gallery. An enclosed circular peep show offered ten eye level peepholes, and a few lower down that revealed the puppeteers at work underneath. Staring through the holes we saw a spinning multi-storied wooden house. A woman, waits in the doorway, looking mournfully towards the hidden audience. A man, in a jacket and bowler hat, walks the perimeter of the house, staring occasionally through a peephole at a surprised voyeur, then returning his stroll around the outside of the house. Once he walked up to my window and put his hands to his forehead to stroke away a headache. I wondered if other viewers witnessed this behavior or if it was a bit of privileged stage business. A third, projected puppet seemed to haunt the upstairs rooms. Three puppeteers rolled around inside the peepshow operating the rodded puppets and the peephole windows.

In another miniature theatre, puppeteers controlled rodded puppets and scenic elements, placed at three sides of the narrow rectangular diorama. Audience members bent over to stare through viewing holes. The lights came up, revealing a pond, hidden by trees and heavy underbrush. One by one the bushes moved aside, as if we were approaching the waterhole. A huntsman appeared. The sun began to set. As the sunset, the bushes began to cover our viewpoint and the huntsman was hidden once more behind the trees.

CaiItlin Lainoff's surrealist puppet opera was an elegant, if mystifying blend of avant -garde visual tropes set to Kazoo music. It is based on Gyorgy Ligeti's contemporary opera "Le Grand Macabre", which, itself is based on Belgian playwrite Michel de Ghelderode's "La Balade du grand macabre." Ligeti's co-writer Michael Meschke is the founder of Stockholm's Marionetteatern (“Marionette Theatre”).

Unfamiliar as I was with the original opera, I was confused and distanced from the material, but marveled at the puppetry. I wish the program notes had offered a synopsis. As in macro opera, projected supertitles explained the sung text, including the ravings of the devil character, determined to destroy the world to make way for the new century. The inept devil, and his goad Piet the Pot, expect destruction of the world to lead to a brighter century. Set in Bruegelland, we visit a graveyard, an astrologer's star gazing chamber and a pair of demented characters locked in an S& M relationship- an astrologer, and the dominatrix who controls him. Mescalina, the dominatrix, begs Venus to send her a good man, hoping an aphrodisiac "as strong as poison" will bring her a well-hung lover.

The visual components were wonderful, including cosmic projections, a jointed telescope, and beautiful flat, jointed puppets of the three major characters. The chunky dominatrix in leather bra panties and boots, and a character attached to a surrealist carapaced scarab were particularly striking.

Laura Heit's show-stopping "The Matchbox Show" closed the two evenings on a high note. Diminutive Laura narrates her wee show with the wry aplomb of a later day Bob Benchley. Laura's wistful characters, all made of matchsticks and working on stages made of matchbooks, whose drawers are pulled open to disclose other playing surfaces, celebrates the art of the miniature. She was recently named the Co-Director of the Experimental Animation Program at California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). Her animations play film festivals worldwide. I have recently reviewed her work in "Toy Theatre: The Smallest Show on Earth." RUN, do not walk to see her work whenever you have the opportunity. You will never forget it.

If the name of the late African-American composer William Grant Still is unfamiliar, you’re not alone. To my admission of not knowing who he was, Joyce Maddox, the coordinator of the William Grant Still Art Center in the West Adams district of Los Angeles, responded, “A lot of people don’t.”

Dedicated in 1978 and housed in a refurbished fire-station originally built in 1929, The WGS Art Center is named after a man considered by many to be “the dean of African-American composers” who “tried to use music as a means to achieve inter-racial understanding.” Born in Mississippi in 1895 and moving to LA in the 1930’s, Still authored more than 150 works, including operas, symphonies, ballets and numerous classical compositions. He also holds the distinction of being the first black man in the U.S. to have a symphony performed by a major symphony orchestra, the first to conduct a major symphony orchestra in the U.S. (which happened to be the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl), and first to have an opera produced by a major company in the U.S. when his “Troubled Island” (libretto by Langston Hughes) played in New York in 1949.

Funded by LA City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the art center is a charming place a few blocks from the 10 FWY and LaBrea, in what is commonly referred to as the north edge of South Central, meaning the area is largely poor and in recent history, African American, with a growing Latino population. In other words, this is that rare gem: an arts center in the inner city.

The center boasts several gallery rooms, a recording studio, and a covered outdoor theatre along with an accessible and gracious staff. The students, local kids, are a friendly, lively bunch (one asked if I was going to write a good article or a bad article) who seem to be comfortable with the staff, mindful and obedient. I was impressed on my visit that there wasn’t any scolding or sighing from the staff, nor any crying or fighting among the students. A real sense of joy pervades.

Arriving a few minutes prior the day’s official end at 5:00 pm, I was beguiled by the good spirits of everyone. From teachers to students to their parents, a warmth and excitement infused the proceedings. Disney tunes were wafting from an unseen piano and children were proudly displaying their completed artwork.

The annual Music LA Summer Camp runs this year from July 14 through August 25 and is open to children aged 4-12 on a first come, first serve basis. The schedule for the nine to five day begins with yoga and includes classes in acting, musical theatre, vocal, dance, visual art, many musical instruments, and more. There is even a weekly field trip.

Maddox stresses the importance of variety in their curriculum. “You come here during the day and every child takes everything. You try everything and develop into what you want to do.” Camp concludes on August 25 with a musical production at The Nate Holden Center for the Performing Arts at 7pm.

Spring and Fall Sessions are open to all ages and include classes in Piano, Drums, Visual Arts, and Guitar at various times during the day.

The center also holds annual art exhibits like Bridges (Sep 20 – Nov 15) which is a celebration of women artists and the Black Doll Exhibit (Dec 6 – Feb 28). Prison Nation, a show of prison-related posters, just closed to make room for camp. There are even plans for the Alley Art Project which will consist of painting the nearby alleys with murals and artwork. The center is currently seeking clearance from Public Art – a division of Cultural Affairs.

Also, the center is one of the sponsors for a cabaret show at Vintage Hollywood on Washington Blvd. called “Bananas: A Day in the Life of Josephine Baker.”
Maddox, who was influential in developing the music program, says one of the most important aspects of the center is the services they provide. “There are really no other places in this entire area that have an extensive visual and performing arts program. Not even a lot of people in this area teach private lessons. That should be the central focus of the center, along with everything else.”

Certainly the center’s popularity is growing, as is its reputation as a beacon of creativity for the area. This year 65 students are enrolled in Summer Camp, the maximum thus far.
Ami Motevalli, the Education Coordinator, is clearly proud of work they’ve done and relishes “these really talented students. I get blessed with beautiful art every day that I can put on the walls.” She says she has plans to add more programs to the curriculum like a beat-making workshop, cartooning classes, poetry writing, photography and video-making.

Asked how she’d like the center to be known, she said she’d like for people to “really feel like this is a place that they can come and shake off the stress of everything else, leave all of that behind and get into a creative state of mind. Whatever it is that they’re processing – turn it into art.”

Walking through the remarkably clean gallery rooms, I was awed by the center’s capabilities and eagerness. I don’t recall there being a local organization dedicated to the arts in my neighborhood when I was growing up. I was a dreamer who figured I would have to wait till high school and college to take the creative courses I desired. The artistic opportunities afforded to children who have access to places like the William Grant Still Art Center are multiple and the rewards enriching.

Some alumni have even gone on to earn places in the Alvin Ailey youth programs and various other institutions and arts academies. One famous alum is DJ Kahlil, who has worked with such luminaries as Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, and Jay-Z.
One recent collaboration the WGS Art Center undertook along with the Museum of

Contemporary Art was a retrospective of performance artist Alan Kaprow. Based on one of his pieces called “Pose,” the center involved the entire community in a photography project to resounding success. Says Motevalli, “Our neighborhood needs to be monumentalized. I think a lot of people have a negative view of the neighborhood. People who I think are generally kind of used to being told that their neighborhood is not a positive place came here and were so proud that their neighborhood looked so positive and were so happy. It’s good to see what positive things we have so that we can take ourselves in a more positive direction. There’s so much beauty that exists we really don’t need a lot of gentrification to create that beauty, we have our own beauty here. We create it ourselves.”

The William Grant Still Art Center is located at 2520 West View Street, Los Angeles, CA 90016 – Phone: 323/734-1165. For more information on the man himself log onto www.williamgrantstillmusic.com.

The Los Angeles Art Walk, a once a month evening event in downtown, is a place for up and coming artists to show off their talent. Sponsored by a number of hip galleries, this venue usually attracts a crowd consisting of downtown loft aficionados, Los Feliz hipsters, Beverly Hills highbrows, and a few bums looking for free alcohol.

Despite my hopes, I was quickly disappointed by the quality and content of the art. Generally speaking, the art was young. In other words, most of the artists had this, "just a year out of college, still clinging to the curriculum of their professors feel to their work."
Nothing I saw the night I went struck me, haunted me, made my life better, increased me, or simply taught me something new. I felt like I was back in college, senior year, attending student exhibitions while getting toasty on cheap wine.

And yet, people were having fun. People were engaged, excited, and interacting with exuberance, as if some great thing had happened. Why had I not been affected? Was I blind? What was I missing?

I think I can say without taking any professional risks, that art is a type of pulse on society. It's a device that shows us the state of things coming from within. Here’s a metaphor: art is like a flower; the flower represents the life within; it shows us the plant is living and healthy, or desiccated and in trouble. The healthy flower represents a life force, pollination, reproduction, advance, and for our purposes, creativity. As such, art has the unique ability to tell us what is going on.

And much as I needed to discover what was going on, the art I was looking at left me disappointed, like discovering pretty flowers at a wedding to be fake. I realized, and it struck me hard, that my problem was that I was looking at the art, and only at the art. I wasn't looking at the entire canvas.

Let me explain. I was examining some photography; small unframed prints of objects,
like telephone poles and garbage cans. The photographs had a particular look to them, as if they had been taken by an inexpensive medium format camera, such as a Russian Holga.

And literally, as this thought came and went, I realized that the person standing next to me was the artist, and she had a black Holga camera neatly slung over her shoulder, like an accessory to her look.

She was animatedly talking to a few guests of the gallery about her art and her technique. I wish you could see the snapshot in my mind's eye of this young artist with her Holga camera standing next to her work, talking with these people. Because at that moment I saw the entire canvas. There was art at the Art Walk worthy of my flower metaphor but it wasn't framed or hung on a wall.

The Holga gave it away. The Art Walk was not so much about the art as it was about the appearance of being art-like. I'm sorry, but the girl was a poser.

Every morose undergrad art major goes through their Holga stage. The Holga is like the new Polaroid. The girl's true art, and that of the Art Walk, was in the appearance of being like an artist. I finally found the pulse, sniffed that flower, and I'd say it's accurate.

Isn't L.A. all about appearances anyways?

For roughly five years now, a seemingly inscrutable storefront space dubbed Machine Project has been nestled in between the Echo Park Film Center and the Downbeat café on Alvarado Street. A brightly lit, white-walled space usually filled with nothing more than a few haphazardly arranged fold-out chairs and one long table, it gives off the impression of an as-yet-to-be-opened office, or a gallery between shows. Machine Project founder Mark Allen admits, “People always come in and they want to either know what it’s going to be when it’s done, or can they rent this space, or can they turn it into their yoga studio.” But the place is not mysterious by design, nor is it as inactive as it sometimes looks.

Machine Project has hosted nearly 250 events in the past years –events like lectures on the mating habits of sea slugs, workshops on meat cloning, and, well, “Sewing 101.” Allen explains it this way: “I think presenting in the same space, with the same attitude, something like sewing as something like robotics as something like bioengineering makes a kind of philosophical position on how technology functions.”

Machine Project does have, at its core, a pervasive interest in technology, but it’s the approach –a kind of playful, artistic, mad scientist, quirky Home Ec. course approach- that makes the place unique. There seems to be a constant balance between whimsy and hands-on practicality to all the events. A presentation on the fairly esoteric subject of psychobotany, for instance, includes straight-forward demonstrations. “I like finding the most absurd thing and then very seriously executing it,” says Allen. The exact opposite might just as well be true. An upcoming night of jam-making (like the mundane stuff you spread on toast) will be hosted by a jump-suited collective who will encourage participants to make “radical and experimental jams” as well as your strawberries and your blueberries.

As for the apparent inscrutability of the place, Allen suggests that this is actually an ironic side-effect of “a certain kind of transparency.” “I wanted to have a space that could just turn into whatever it wanted to” he says. “Rather than being a place of display, it would be more process oriented. So the space would be this machine that’s constantly working with materials and generating ideas and processing things.” Hence the name.

Machine Project isn’t, properly speaking, a gallery. It’s a malleable, events-oriented space with a focus on the more eccentric edges of hands-on technology. But, if you want to call it a gallery, that’s fine with Mark Allen –whatever framework you need to get enthusiastic about blubber bots and bacterial terrariums.

After clearing that up, though, Machine Project is in the midst of becoming more than a space with a distinctive curatorial sensibility –it’s becoming a sensibility on the move and in demand. In July, Machine Project will be doing some events for a show in Santa Monica. In September, they’ll be occupying an art gallery in New York for a whole month and, in November, the loose network of artists will being doing a one day event at LACMA, during which they’ll be utilizing the whole museum as a site. Allen doesn’t necessarily see this development as something requiring a redefinition of Machine Space, though. The “space/group” already works in a “fairly collective way.” “What changes in some ways, as we work in other spaces, is that this informal process (of collaborating and brainstorming) becomes a little more deliberate.”

In the meantime, Machine Project is almost always “half open,” so if you happen to be passing by, you should feel encouraged to peek in. If nothing else, you could donate a dollar into the pneumatic tube that runs the length of the gallery. But if you want to witness an acute example of what the good people at Machine refer to in their mission statement as “heroic experiments of the gracefully over-ambitious,” head over there on Sunday, July 6, and bring a video camera if you have one. In what almost seems like a bizarre updating of Yves Klein’s famous “Leap Into the Void,” Allen, and the others, are hoping for at least 40 people to simultaneously record a stuntman as he jumps out of their second floor window. Afterwards, the footage from all the cameras will be edited to create a “clumsy” version of the Hollywood effect known as ramping.

Be there for the historic moment when neo-Dadaism and “The Matrix” meet.

www.machineproject.com/

When I say “farmer’s market,” what comes into your mind? Sno-cones? Bounce house? Instead you should be thinking “affordable,” “free samples” and “pupusas.”
Locally grown food travels a shorter distance from the farm to your fork, meaning that not only is it fresher and thus, tastier, but also expends less gas to get to
you.

Shopping you local farmer’s market is a great way to do your part to help out the environment without having to really sacrifice anything. You get to eat better- tasting food that costs as much or less than food at a supermarket. Does Vons let you sample food before you buy it? A farmer’s market does. Do they have kettle corn at Ralphs?

West Siders know plenty about markets and nothing I am saying is new to them. The East Side is trailing, thus this guide to three Northeast LA farmer’s markets we hope it behooves you to shop. It should be noted that the majority of vendors at
the markets are organic, though not all have banners with certification numbers. Moreover, all vendors are “local” in the sense that they are from Southern
or Central California (though I did see a guy from Fresno).

Highland Park
3- 8 p.m on Tuesdays
Figueroa St. and Ave.57 (next to the Gold Line
station)
http://www.oldla.org

At first, I was disheartened by the seemingly small size of this farmer’s market — about eight tents for produce and four for crafts. But I quickly realized that these tents are pulling double duty: I could buy cage-free eggs and purple potatoes at the same stand; a bag of walnuts from the guy selling me apricots.

Free samples abound at the fruit and vegetable stand closest to the chicken rotisserie wagon—try organic grapefruits, nectarines, and avocados before you buy
them (and you will buy them). Some of the fruit is as much as 25 cents cheaper per pound than that at the South Pasadena market, which makes a big difference if
you have a family and kids. There are also some cool specialty products like organic honey, dried fruits, and goat cheese brought in from Kern County.

And while there are only about four food vendors here, they are worth your time. The smell of the rotisserie chickens makes my vegetarianism quivers and the
zucchini-cheese pupusas and fresh watermelon aguas by La Gordita Feliz call to me weekly. At $3 for two pupusas, I can afford to give in.

The market is growing every week — there’s now a used book vendor, a pita and hummus booth, and more people selling crafts (handmade jewelry, vintage stuff) — and it’s accessible from the Gold Line and by a number of buses.

******

South Pasadena
4-8 p.m. Thursdays
Meridian Ave. and Mission St. (next to the Gold Line
station)

South Pasadena’s farmer’s market is very suburban - much like an open-air Whole Foods with more children. This is the most crowded of the three markets; often
you have to step over people sitting to eat on lawns. But there are good reasons to face the crowds.

For one, the prepared food selection is considerable: Peruvian, Indian, Mexican, roasted corn (recommended), Mediterranean. SP offers the most exotic selection of
prepared foods: hummus, roasted red peppers, fresh loaves of bread, Korean side dishes (banchan), sugar cane juice. There is also a boutique ice cream maker
whose long lines indicate a quality product.

There are more produce vendors in general and quite a few offering unique items items. One booth has a good selection of vegetables used in Chinese and Southeast
Asian cuisine — bok choy, bean sprouts, Chinese broccoli. Another woman sells sprouted grains, which are apparently high in protein and excellent on salads. Although they look like that grade-school science project where you put pinto beans on a damp towel and watch them grow, they have a slight sweetness to them and a great texture.

There are also people selling beeswax soap, wild honey, and dry beans
of every kind. Plants also have a strong presence at the South Pas market. Potted plants, succulents and fresh cut flowers are supplied by at least three booths.

******

Eagle Rock
5- 8:30 p.m
2100 Merton Ave. (next to Colorado Blvd./Eagle Rock
Blvd. intersection)
http://www.farmernet.com/events/one-cfm?venue_id=837

Eagle Rock always was a little different. The only market with a bounce house and funnel cake, ER’s market is equal in size to the South Pasadena but magically less congested.

The produce is fruit-heavy, with tons of cherries, nectarines, peaches, and even blueberries and blackberries. Every vendor gives samples and calls to you as you walk by. Fruit sellers here are all gregarious characters, most notably The Raisin Man.
His farm is located in “Raisin City, CA,” and wherever that is, it apparently produces the amazingly plump raisins. Though raisins are his claim to fame, they are not all he sells. As I was walking by, someone stopped to ask him the name of a small reddish fruit. “These are called The Best Peaches You’ve Ever Had In Your Life,” the Raisin Man responded seriously.

I was excited to find green grocers offering kale, chard, and collard greens, which are sometimes hard to find elsewhere. I was new to the Eagle Rock market, but I will undoubtedly be going back.

For more information on what’s in season, check out http://www.farmernet.com

PHOTO BY LORI UCHIDA

Two years ago (May 11, 2006 to be exact), in a valley, far, far away, Police Chief William Bratton, Councilman Grieg Smith and City Engineer Gary Lee Moore gathered amongst the wreckage of a demolished sex-toy factory, with golden shovels in hand, to break ground on the construction of a new state-of-the-art police station. Rumor has it that the first shovel-full of dirt unearthed a ridiculously oversized dildo, a half-empty can of Turtle Wax and Jimmy Hoffa's toe ring.

Anyway, after much had been said and very little done, the shovels were swiftly handed over to more capable men in hard hats, and the quaint city of Canoga Park hasn't seen or heard from the councilman, city engineer or police chief since. Go figure.

So, with $37 million earmarked for the project, construction began almost at once and continued in earnest. Initially, an enormous pit was excavated at the site, presumably to make room for the countless holding cells where a battalion of drunkards will be left to 'sleep it off'.

Trucks rumbled through the neighborhood, laden with I-beams, power poles and concrete slabs cut into various shapes and sizes. An army of men went to work like a well-oiled machine with a hundred moving parts, wielding jackhammers, nailguns and chisels, determined to build a singular something out of the nothing scattered and stacked around them..

Time passed. The sun rose and fell, as did the men’s picks, shov