invisible ann

Aerial Shots

Los Angeles-based photographer Niaz Uddin captures beautiful aerial shots of beaches, forests and a volcano. Check out more of his work on his website here.

“oh my god, I think I fucking love you.”

Clash of the History of Art with Pop Culture in Digital Collages Shusaku Takaoka

Shusaku Takaoka is a Japanese graphic designer and an expert at turning history into a hipster. His works hilariously transform some of the classical art world’s most iconic faces into modern city slickers, and we actually wouldn’t be surprised if we saw any of these made-over canvas characters chilling on the subway, or strutting the latest trends on Broadway. But Takaoka didn’t stop there - he’s also reimagined them as movie stars, magazine covers, and even baristas. For more check out his Instagram.

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Surprising Compositions by KangHee Kim

KangHee Kim, a Korean-born photographer currently living in Brooklyn, NYC, invites us to her surreal world. She plays with her vision to explore something new and magical in New York, and at the same time, she never ceases to amaze us with her saturate, eclectic works.

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Dawson City: Frozen Time (2017) Review

Last Friday I saw a screening of the documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time at the Laemmle Pasadena. 

It all started in 1978 when a City Alderman/contractor in Dawson City in the Canadian Yukon started clearing the land of an old civic center in order to put up a new civic center.  His bulldozer kept bringing up old movie film from the permafrost.  What was it?  He stopped and called the Canadian National Archives and the rest is history.  Literally.  

In partnering with a local city museum, eventually over 500 reels of silent movie film were recovered from the site.  The Canadian National Archives and the US Library of Congress have restored many of them.  Bill Morrison’s documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time (2017) traces the trail of these films and explains how all those reels got there. 

A confluence of the Yukon Gold Rush at the turn of the last century and being on the end of the movie distribution chain kept the city’s film on hand.  The city’s pool and skating rink played a crucial role in this silent film drama (see pics above).  When the city decided to fill in the pool because it created bumps on the ice hockey rink in winter, the stored silent film from the town’s library basement served as a method to fill the pool!!  (A sad fact from the flick is that the rest of the film that didn’t fit was just dumped in the trash.)  Not only were whole lost films recovered mainly from the 1910s but newsreel footage long lost has now been found.  Spectacularly, live footage from the 1919 World Series scandal has been recovered!!!

Dawson City does not have a narrator per se.  You have to read brief explanations of the history of the town and the citizens’ many pastimes up on the screen. Reminiscent of a silent film itself, this modern documentary is a fascinating way to present the history of these reels and is a unique vehicle for a silent film buff.  If you love silent film, please see this flick!

Highlights:

Found live footage of the 1919 Black Sox scandal:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mPHqbJXDQI

Dawson City: Frozen Time trailer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEbHM8Vsvlo&feature=youtu.be

You can even see a screening of one of the found films, The Social Buccaneer (1916), at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival:  http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/dawson-city-frozen-time/