> tapioca world tour

My short vacation has come to a blunt end.

I had a marvellous weekend doing all sorts of vacationy things: swimming in Walden Pond (with tons of Russians and Latin Americans), going to a Sox game (we won), watching Pirates of the Caribbean (a letdown), and guzzling ale (ginger) at BB’s happy suaree. Best of all, DD returned from three weeks in the oxygenless land of incredible pollution (DC) and now the apartment no longer feels empty and pathetic.

It’s summer, and after 15 minutes back in the office, I wanted to cry. My human rights epoch has reached its apex and is waning now. In a sad, relentless way.

The word NADIR comes to mind as appropriate:

1. Astronomy. A point on the celestial sphere directly below the observer, diametrically opposite the zenith.
2. The lowest point: the nadir of their fortunes.

The Burg has hit cyberspace, and my friend Jeau of the never-updated Photon Theory and assistant editor of The Onion (my God, when did he get that job?!) is in it, albeit briefly.

I want to make a bigger, better movie, but not about Williamsburg hipsters, and in my syndicated feature Jeau would have a much much bigger role. CONGRATS, MISTER RANDAZZO!

This is an insane video of X-treme street-walking hot Russian guys.

Last weekend, a laborious three days lugging AV equipment through inches of mud and 50 degree rain in Burlington, Vermont, DD and I visually documented some really lame wedding for a bunch of waspy strangers. In a stunning show of GPCC (Gore-Predicted Climate Change), it’s now 90 degrees. In an effort to ignore our CCSA (Climate Change Shock & Awe) and instead celebrate the tropical feeling, we’re having one of our three rooms in the small but happy new apartment painted as I type, a cool Palm Leaf Green, which looks crappy online but glows like green tea ice cream when smeared on a wall. J’adore!

In between Home Depot and moving boxes, we stopped at Whitman’s Peaceful Meadows dairy farm for some ice cream and cow love. I think of anthrochica this week, in moving solidarity, and also in gratitude for the still photos of Holy Land she let me borrow for the 2-minute promo video I finally half-finished (it’s moderately passable, N., but still reflects the nausea and bad weather integral in its conception) for the Globe’s affiliate website, travelnewengland.com, though there’s no telling they’ll actually use it.

One small step for painting the new bedroom, one miniscule leap in my unpaid freelance video work. Lead thou me on…

Thank God for PBS. Who are John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, anyway? (Actually, they’re a fabulous grantmaking organization.) Seems like they fund all of public broadcasting these days, thanks to the administration’s current disdain for all things educational, progressive and unifying. Yay for the MacArthurs!

I saw two excellent documentaries on Point of View last night:
What I Want My Words To Do To You, about a women’s writing group in prison, and Chisolm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossed, a documentary about Shirley Chisolm’s run for the presidency in 1972.

Watch them! Shirley Chisolm is my new hero, seriously, and the producers of the prison doc are my new rolemodels. I really need to get a grant, one of these days, and go off to make The Great American Documentary about the 90,000 Burmese refugees Condy Rice is accepting into the U.S. in 2006. John D. and Catherine T., want to fund me? It’ll be awesome, I swear!

It’s playing at Coolidge Corner in Brookline, Harvard Sq. Cinema, and the Embassy in Boston. Watch the trailer or go to the film’s website.

Is it ridiculous to say that I hope Gore runs again for presidency? Wouldn’t it make people ask themselves, what would have happened had W. not bribed his way in last time? I mean, maybe people will give the guy another chance. He is a movie star now. Bitterness has fueled his rage and, possibly, his motivation, making him a little more edgy and entertaining in the process. Who knows, right?

So it seems we were on TV on Tuesday for 48HFP. I missed it, but the piece is also available to watch online if you’re interested (click ‘launch CNN video player’).

Press coverage is always tremendously exciting. And a big up to the production team for making a cool movie without killing eachother (or me). I love you all, people!

This is cool: U.S. campaign for Burma is starting an initiative to invite anyone with a camera to videotape a 10-minute or less birthday message to imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner and rightful leader of Burma, Aang San Suu Kyi. The initiative is called Beaming Burma and I think it’s a neat idea.

Visiting Southern Thailand last month was like a glorious punch in the gut for me: the staff of Grassroots HRE, who not only support undocumented Burmese workers in Thailand but are themselves undocumented workers in Thailand, were amazing. Their mutual support and commitment to a Free Burma was moving. Now I finally understand the real human struggle behind all those Free Burma bumper stickers. Every Burmese person I met was so kind, so humble, so helpful, and so very nationalistic — that is, to the Burma not imprisoned by a violent dictatorship.

That said, this is a cool video opportunity. Go to it!

DD’s in Chicago. Ry’s stuck in NYC. It’s raining outside and I’m still in my pajamas, watching French New Wave films by Godard from the 60s. Yesterday was Alphaville, today’s is Le Petit Soldat, which tops off the other eight or nine I’ve already seen. We’re on a kick to watch every Brando film, Godard film, Cassavetes, and Kurosawa film ever made. I like Godard’s movies because they go completely against the conventions of today:

Someone’s always reading aloud in Godard films. People speak in poetry, half the time, and they frown as they speak. Improvisational dialogue and oddly-timed voiceover narrative is intriguing and different. His portrayal of women makes me puke, though: their incalcitrance, their lubricious, fickle attitudes, plus their unfailing youth & beauty (Why, Godard, when there are so many normal-looking women who can also act?). But he uses wide shots and long takes, tracking motion instead of cut-cut-cut close-ups, which these days is refreshing. If he focused more on reality and less on the ideal of beauty and the ideal of politics and the ideal of masculinity, his films would be much better. Then again, I’m just a little girl with a little film crew and I have no idea if Rezeroing has even won audience award yet.

Tra la, tra la.

Tapioca Productions’ lovely film REZEROING is now available for all of cyberspace to enjoy:

www.stream-video.net/Benjamin/RezeroingV1.wmv

Note from Ben: To view this, right click on the link to select “Save as” or “Save Target As” and save file to your hard drive. Don’t try to stream it online, it will not play well.

Re-zeroing, Tapioca’s short film for the 48-hour film project is screening tomorrow (Wed) night at Kendall Cinema at both 7.30p and 9p. You can either buy tickets there or order online. It’s not as good as Brick, which I had the pleasure of seeing the other night, but it’s high-def and decent and was a blast to shoot, and seeing the other films is always pretty cool. So come on down!

Ok, so the 48 hour film project is officially over now. Drama drama on the high seas of post-production, mostly regarding personality clashes and immature little boys, but other than that, everything was peachy. No, we didn’t turn in our film on time. Yes, the acting was great and the shoot was excellent. Yes, we’re going to make a “real” short film for a “real” film festival in upcoming months. Yes, I was overwhelmed by love for humanity (or at least cast and most of crew) during this project. Yes, it reinforced my desire to start a multimedia production company. No, I’m never hiring men who can’t take directions from women again. Yes, we are available to review your script and possibly make it into a movie. Yes, you can make your philanthropic check out to Audubon. Make sure to add 20% to cover overhead.

Every year, we get closer and closer to glory…

Thanks to everyone — even those whose heads I wanted to tear off, and who wanted to tear my head off — for your collaboration on this. Onward, upward, and our film screens at the Kendall Cinema next Wednesday, April 19th. And you might be able to watch footage of our team (and me, looking awful, talking about our team) on CNN next week. Stay tuned for details.

PS - Check out DD’s still photos of the shoot from the weekend.

I really loved this movie. In addition to redeeming whatever faith I had lost in Natalie Portman following her flawless role as the incredibly annoying chic in Garden State, V for Vendetta is just all around great. Here’s why:

+ It’s based on a comic book, so all excessive theatrics and unrealistic stunts are excusable, even fun.
+ The whole movie is a complete metaphor for the power of organizing as a political strategy to overthrow the W. administration.
+ Just when you think Natalie is going to retain her nonviolent peaceful protest and somehow fix the conflict of the film without resorting to violence [insert fundamentalist ethical agenda HERE], BOOM! — she changes her mind, and that’s cool.
+ The acting is really good.
+ The focus is on the players behind the scenes of neo-conservative presidential dictatorships, much like Rummy & others. The president is merely a face on a screen, and spin doctoring the media is standard practise understood and acknowleged by the general public.
+ Inciting fear = political propoganda. Also, “terrorist attacks” = plotted within the administration.

There are so many reasons to go see this movie. It’s just pretty cool, minus Natalie’s cheesy socialist speech at the end. Go see it!

We walked around Philly’s Magic Gardens, filled with trash and bike rims and teacups glued together, before beginning the drive home.

You should all contribute photos (yes, you in Hawaii, you in the City of Sin, you in New York, you at Harvard, you in South Asia) to Round’s Photoblog. The theme for the next two weeks is portraits. If you’d like to contribute something, email me so we can set you up with a login.

I’m going to see Mardi Gras: Made in China tomorrow after work, described accordingly: “David Redmon’s sly, engrossing documentary is an expert riposte to smug proponents of globalization.” Who wants to come with me?

What: Human Rights Watch International Film Festival is stopping in Boston. You can see lots of films!

When: 19-28 January

Where: Coolidge Corner Cinema, the MFA, Peabody Essex Museum

Then you should buy my friend Kate’s book, “A year in Japan”, which includes illustrations. She also has a Hello Kitty book, which you can buy for all your little people.

Shameless promotion. That’s right. I will gleefully promote everyone I know to everyone else. Because networking is just about the most gratifying thing I can think of, especially when all these talented people I know meet other talented people and all the talent melts together into one big gob of super-talent…also: independent artists need to support eachother. Don’t forget it, people.

What a great day. N. picked me up early to go stained glass shopping on the South Shore. The store itself was like something out of 1885. I seriously don’t think anything about the store had changed since then. Every sign in the store was sarcastic, all the glass was shelved by color, with a light film of dust on top. The cash register, tape dispenser and invoice machine were something out of a Rockwell painting.

And then we went back to Cambridge and I fell asleep on the floor as N. more or less did the entire glass-cutting/soldering process for me. Well, I tried to cut glass, but wasn’t very good at it (cutting glass is difficult!) though I did manage to wrap copper tape on things. And so she made the beautiful framed thing at right to hold one of my Hawaii photos. I’ve had a queue of photos waiting for months to get framed in handmade soldered glass. Just hope we can finish this week.

And then I went to a wonderful Christmas party at my old teacher’s house, and it was so cool, and great food, and nice people. Everyone brought something to share — songs, poems, testimonies, articles, memories, you name it. It was such an inspiring evening, I feel like Christmas is over now, that we had it tonight. I love people, and green glass, and everything.