The program is pretty incredible actually: basically investing large amounts of money and time to foster the BC artist community (even more important in the face of devastating Liberal funding cuts).
Ben is one of the Top 20 finalists for 2010, and his first challenge was to shoot a video introducing the project and his own involvement. We batted around ideas, at one point seriously considering a parody of the Old Spice guy (we gave up after it didn’t pass my wife’s cliche test).
Instead, we opted for the following: straightforward, with a little twist. Enjoy!
Sometimes… persistence pays off. I’m thrilled to report that I’ve now joined Canadian documentary filmmaker Velcrow Ripper for his new film: Evolve Love.
I’ve had tremendous respect for him and his work ever since watching his first film Scared Sacred (2004), about visiting the “ground zeroes” of the world.
He followed up with Fierce Light (2009), a film about what happens when “spirit meets action.”
It wasn’t until earlier this year when I heard of his new film Evolve Love, and discovered Velcrow was starting development. I also realized both earlier films were part of a trilogy, documenting what he believes is the global evolution of consciousness.
The third film will ask: how can the climate crisis be seen as the greatest love story of all time?
You know… the usual.
I felt compelled to offer my services. After none too few emails, we finally connected and I came on board. I’ll be leading a restructuring and design of the Evolve Love website, as well as joining Velcrow in the field when needed.
In fact, last weekend, I accompanied him to shoot a First Nations healing walk near Fort McMurray, Alberta in the tar sands. (Check out the full photo set)
You can’t tell from the photo, but I lost a bit of my breakfast after shooting tar sands aerials in the plane.
Someone asked me recently “what do you do?” I replied “I’m a storyteller.”
In the moment, I was referring to my work in documentary film. I tell stories (or more accurately) the stories of other people through the medium of film. My personal worldview is revealed through the types of stories I share.
Later on, it struck me: what other ways do I tell stories?
Certainly on my blog, the topics I write about. But also the articles and quotes I post to Facebook and Twitter. The comments I leave on other people’s walls. The status updates (some witty, some not).
In the world of social media, you are what you share.
But storytelling is also offline. How you spend your dollars, your time, your moments. How you sit in traffic, or ride your bike, or play with your dog, or hold the door open for someone else. The food you eat, the smiles you offer, the calmness or anxiety you project. The words you speak, the steps you take, the breaths you exhale.
All of these are passages of a story you’re writing – the story about yourself and your relation to the world.
As part of our fundraising campaign for the One Week Job documentary, I shot a clip explaining the power of crowd-sourced funding. Basically, the idea is that content creators can appeal directly to their fans to finance their projects.
“I believe in fact, and I believe in the plain truth told wholly — that the truth retold can be a net thrown around life at a certain time and place, encompassing all within, and that people can go out there, live as actors, work within their staging ground, do so with a soft heart; I want others to go in the world with an idea, with intentions and means, and come back with a story about how their actions affected the world and how they themselves were shaped by the results.
I have a belief that such endeavours can improve the world, however recklessly, especially when these people go forward and interact, give, solve, change the situations they encounter–and also, even those with no intentions of recording their actions.
There’s nothing to be gained from passive observance, the simple documenting of conditions, because, at its core, it sets a bad example. Every time something is observed and not fixed, or when one has a chance to give in some way and does not, there is a lie being told, the same lie we all know by heart but which needn’t be reiterated.
Friends, I urge you to find us hopeful. I urge you to find that we tried something, knowing nothing of the results. There is a chance that everything we did was incorrect, but stasis itself is criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.”
Funny enough, it’s been 11 years since The Matrix was released, first asking the masses “what is reality?” The answer, at least according to the Wachowskis Bros, is that reality is a ruined world conquered by robots.
Enter: Inception, the new film from Christopher Nolan.
Like many, I’ve been a fan of his work since Memento, and was eager to see his latest return to the mind-bending genre. Rather than offer a general review, I’ll leave that to the other bloggers and The New York Times. Instead, I’ll share relevant thoughts about the film’s major theme.
“At the heart of the movie is the notion that an idea is indeed the most resilient and powerful parasite. A trace of it will always be there in your mind…somewhere. ” – Christopher Nolan
Dom Cobb, the film’s protagonist, is the best “extractor” there is – he has the ability to steal ideas from other people’s subconscious. But aside from corporate espionage, we also learn he spent much time with his wife in their own deep subconscious realms – co-creating an artificial reality.
The power of creation is a gift. We do it every day, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Dom and his wife spin their own fantasy world, filled with their own imagination and memories. Unfortunately, the nature of fantasy is that it isn’t real. Dom realizes this, and attempts to wake up from the dream. His wife chooses to remain lost, forcing him to take more drastic measures.
Don’t worry, I won’t offer any spoilers. But I do believe this potent love story is the heart of Inception.
Whereas The Matrix asked “what is reality?” this film asks “what is meaningful?” In their dream world, Dom and his wife were able to create anything they desired – but ultimately, it’s a false reality. And it’s impossible to create meaning in a meaningless world.
You might assert that the “real” world is just as meaningless; therefore the false reality is just as valid. In response, I can only offer: if you can’t find magic in the real world, you’re not looking hard enough.
A decomposing bird carcass, filled with plastic pollution on Midway Island. Photo: Chris Jordan
In 2008, worldwide consumption of bottled water surpassed 52 billion gallons. 86% of these bottles will not be recycled, but will rest in a landfill.
Should you care?
Rationally, there’s no reason to care. The bottles will be buried and mostly out of sight. Besides, with the human population exploding, and the developing world hungry to consume as much as the rest of us, humanity is doomed anyway.
It is quite irrational to believe things will ever be much better than they are today. When you really study the situation the world is in, you realize that it is going to take a miracle, lots of miracles, so save us. The situation is quite hopeless, from a rational standpoint.
On the surface, that’s pretty depressing – and it’s fairly easy to give up and decide to carry on with “business as usual.”
But every so often, when we catch moments of stillness, when we relax the cold logic of rationality, we touch upon the beauty of intuition.
It’s intuition that grips our hearts when we view images like the one above, revealing the brutal effects of plastic pollution on wildlife. There’s something about it that feels… wrong.
It is the same feeling that demands we phrase the Gulf “oil spill” for what it truly is. As Naomi Klein writes:
The hole at the bottom of the ocean is more than an engineering accident or a broken machine. It is a violent wound in a living organism; that it is part of us.
It is the feeling that we are more intimately connected than we’ve been led to believe. Eisenstein describes this connection:
I think we know in our hearts that we have the power to create a beautiful world. It will only happen, though, if we listen to our heart’s knowing enough to actually carry out the actions necessary.
We are called to live according to what our hearts know. That is the only sure guide. That is also a true revolution.
The mental calculations we call ethics, minimizing your carbon footprint, etc., none of those are a sure guide. Like, should I fly to California to co-create a transformational event? Well, it burns a lot of jet fuel. How can I possibly add up all the costs and benefits? It is impossible.
When we try to choose from the head, we get into a maze of indecision, and even when we do choose we have no certainty and no courage. So now it is time to listen to our heart knowing.
Ian MacKenzie is a new media producer based in Vancouver, BC. He shoots video journalism and documentary films. He also blogs about pop culture, new media, philosophy, and religion.
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Ian MacKenzie is a new media producer based in Vancouver, BC. He shoots video journalism and 