Bronx Princess

Big Sky announced its awards, and I was glad to see that the new film from Musa Syeed & Yoni Brook won for best short. I haven't seen Bronx Princess yet, but I'm a fan of their previous short A Son's Sacrifice. (I saw it twice last year at screenings, and it's good enough that I got more out of it the second time.)

I'm guessing they'll be making something feature length in the next year or so -- and I'm looking forward to it.

Bend & Bow on Doc Challenge DVD

Our film Bend & Bow is now available on the International Documentary Challenge DVD, along with 16 other great short films. It looks like you can pre-order now, and it will ship on March 17.

"This DVD collection features a variety of short non-fiction works from around the globe - from China to New York City; from Seattle to Amsterdam; from Montana to Japan - representing the very best from filmmakers who participated in the first three years of the International Documentary Challenge."

There's more information at Typecast Films.

Bend & Bow at Big Sky

This Wednesday at 5 p.m., our film Bend & Bow will be screening at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.

Next year, I want to get another film into that fest -- and actually go. It looks like great fun.

The List

Here's the full list of videos I worked on for The New York Times, usually as a producer and editor:

2007: Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip
(12 Episodes -- Won 2008 Webby Award)

Week 1: Maryland and North Carolina
Week 2: Armuchee, Georgia
Week 3: Nashville, Tennessee
Week 4: Columbus, Indiana
Week 5: West Lima, Wisconsin
Week 6: South Dakota & Nebraska
Week 7: Greensburg, Kansas
Week 8: Austin, Texas
Week 9: Columbus, New Mexico
Week 10: Fort Collins, Colorado
Week 11: Wyoming & Montana
Week 12: Newport, Oregon

2008: Frugal Traveler: The Grand Tour (14 Episodes)

Week 1: Dover to Calais
Week 2: Paris, France
Week 3: Southwestern France
Week 4: French Riviera
Week 5: Rome
Week 6: Malta
Week 7: Cyprus
Week 8: Bucharest
Week 9: Vilnius, Lithuania
Week 10: Gdansk, Poland
Week 11: Germany
Week 12: Dutch-Belgian Border
Week 13: Frugal Edinburgh
Frugal Traveler: Looking Back

2007 - 2008: Frugal Traveler: Various Cities (6 Episodes)

Chicago
Seattle
Santa Fe
Hawaii
Toronto
New York City

2008: On Par by Bill Pennington (15 Episodes)

The Long and Short of It
Rules That Rule
Relief on the Range
Coming Up Short
The Starter
Nothing Fancy
Hitting it Fat
Personal Best
Playing Backwards
Slow Play
The Fitting
First Tee Jitters
Child’s Play
The Annoying Guy Part II
One-Club Wonder

Artistas Revisited

Previously I posted an embedded version of the "Artistas" trailer. As with many Flash-based video embeds, it doesn't appear in all browsers. So here is a link to the Artistas site, which explains about the film and has a QuickTime version of the trailer.

Persistence

Well, each time my students submit papers, I get at least one that tells me about "persistence of vision."

Ain't no such thing. The brain scientists know this, they've written about it, and the film people should stop copying-and-pasting the myth into their papers, blogs, articles and textbooks. It doesn't exist, it isn't important to film, and it is an unnecessary and incorrect start to a discussion of film ideas.

Don't trust me. Go read this complete article:

The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited

Several years ago we wrote an article entitled "The Myth of Persistence of Vision" which appeared in the Journal of the University Film Association in the fall of 1978 (Anderson and Fisher). In it we offered a considerable volume of evidence that the concept "persistence of vision" was an inaccurate and inadequate explanation of the apparent motion found in a motion picture. At the time we thought the article had laid the matter to rest. We had pronounced persistence of vision dead. And frankly, we expected never again to hear the term, other than in an historical context.

Now, more than a decade later, we are drawn once more to the myth of persistence of vision. Why? Because it is still with us. [1] We read a student paper, and we cringe. We attend the lecture of a seasoned film scholar, and we cringe. We cringe not only because they have chosen to perpetuate the notion of persistence of vision, but because they apparently, even at this late date, do not understand its implications. By this time most film scholars seem to have heard of the inadaquacy of the term "persistence of vision." Some have mistakenly substituted the generally misunderstood term "phi phenomenon" as an explanation of filmic motion, and many still cling to the myth.