Synopsis:

Thirty-eight years after it was completed, a 1972 documentary following Leonard Cohen—the enormously influential poet, folk musician and, since 2008, member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—on tour in Europe finally has its moment. Originally made as a promotional film for the artist, whose record sales were meager at the time, Bird on a Wire was produced and edited by Tony Palmer, then famed for his seminal 1968 documentary All My Loving, an eye-opening dissection of rock n’ roll that featured, among others, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Donovan. In Bird on a Wire, Palmer neatly captured the tour itself––threadbare, fraught with technical difficulties and emotional upheavals––but on first viewing, Cohen balked at the bare bones honesty of the film and demanded a complete re-edit from another source. The result was so disastrous that the film opened and closed on the same day, was forgotten about, then lost. In 2009, 294 cans of celluloid labeled Bird an a Wire were found locked in a Hollywood warehouse and immediately shipped to Palmer, who set about re-creating the original film he made all those years ago. The work is a visual poem—Palmer’s camera followed Cohen without judgment, opening the floor to the man as well as the artist. Today’s exclusive clip shows the music legend during an abortive attempt to ask a young German fan out on a date.

Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire by Tony Palmer is available now on DVD.

Synopsis:

Mesrine: Killer Instinct – the first of two parts- charts the outlaw odyssey of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the legendary French gangster of the 1960s and 1970s who came to be known as “French Public Enemy No. 1″ and “The Man of a Thousand Faces”. Infamous for his bravado and outrageously daring prison escapes, Mesrine carried out numerous robberies, kidnappings and murders in a criminal career that spanned continents until he was shot dead in 1979 by France’s notorious anti-gang unit. Thirty years after his death, his infamy lives on. Mesrine was helped along the way by beautiful and equally reckless Jeanne Schneider (Cecile de France), a Bonnie to match his Clyde. Mesrine made up his own epic, between romanticism and cruelty, flamboyance and tragedy. Both a thriller and a biopic, Killer Instinct explores the man behind the icon.

In select theaters now. The sequel Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 hits select theaters on September 3.

Synopsis:

In his feature–length documentary The Big Uneasy, humorist and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) gets the inside story of a disaster that could have been prevented from the people who were there. As we approach the fifth anniversary of the flooding of New Orleans, Shearer speaks to the investigators who poked through the muck as the water receded and a whistle–blower from the Army Corps of Engineers, revealing that some of the same flawed methods responsible for the levee failure during Katrina are being used to rebuild the system expected to protect the new New Orleans from future peril.

In short segments hosted by John Goodman, Shearer speaks candidly with local residents about life in New Orleans. Together, they explore the questions that Americans outside of the Gulf region have been pondering in the five years since Katrina: Why would people choose to live below sea level? Why is it important to rebuild New Orleans?

The Big Uneasy is laced with computer imagery that takes you inside the structures that failed so catastrophically, and boasts never–before–seen video of the moments when New Orleans began to flood and the painstaking investigations that followed. The Big Uneasy marks the beginning of the end of five years of ignorance about what happened to one of our nation’s most treasured cities — and serves as a stark reminder that the same agency that failed to protect New Orleans still exists in other cities across America.

The Big Uneasy was only in theaters for one night on August 30, it will eventually make its way to DVD sometime this month. Check the film’s Facebook page for more information and updates.

Bonus: Chloë Sevigny co-stars in Barry Munday, the story of a suburban wanna-be ladies man who loses his testicles after he is attacked at a movie theater.

posted by: Brent Carter

Prankster activists The Yes Men are sick of having the videos depicting their shenanigans taken down through copyright complaints, so they’ve put the latest video, a full-length doc called The Yes Men Fix the World up as a torrent file through VODO, resistant to censorship and easy to get.

From The Yes Men:

We have been impersonating people in power in order to make political points for over a decade. The Yes Men Fix the World is our second feature film. It’s won a bucket of awards and accolades, but we’re still broke. We are hoping that people who share it will donate some money so that we can do even more outrageous actions.

How outrageous? Outrageous enough to get us sued! Not long ago The US Chamber of Commerce took us to court for impersonating them. That is why on this special p2p version of the Yes Men Fix the World, we have included an exclusive video that the US Chamber of Commerce does not want you to see. You can only see this surprising film on the exclusive VODO p2p release.

One final note: making films takes lots of hard work. And money. We busted our asses to make this film and still owe our friends barrels of cash they loaned us. By supporting us and joining the Yes Men Labs, you not only get a membership card and an entry into the prize draw, you also help us to pay all those people back and fund future projects. We’re sharing by P2P because we made this film to be watched, and with your help we’ll able to carry on with what we love doing.

Download The Yes Men Fix The World here (697 Mb)

posted by: Brent Carter

According to Donny Mahoney, The Fader Magazine, issue No. 57:

Roam just four miles north of the Liffey and the frenetic buzzing of boomtown Dublin gives way to the hollowed-out urban desert that is Ballymun. Known affectionately as The Mun, Ballymun flats is the most flagrant example of Irish social planning gone awry. In the late 1960s, seven fifteen-story towers, each named for an Irish revolutionary, were built on farmland near Dublin Airport. The government’s plan was to clear out inner city Dublin’s tawdry, teeming slums, but it provided the area with no infrastructure–no jobs, no stores. Ballymun’s decline was swift and dramatic.

Dublin burns on Halloween night. Each year, as the Irish pagan celebration of the dead is revisited with firecrackers and gasoline-stoked bonfires, the lurking menace of the city is uncorked. In 2006, Ross McDonnell was photographing one such blaze when he was approached by a kid in a tracksuit drinking a bottle of Budweiser.

“Here mister, you want to see something mental?” the kid asked. McDonnell was escorted to a derelict building known as The Block that local teenagers had transformed into a “mix of Mad Max and New Jack City.” From that night, McDonnell began documenting the lives of the youths who grew up in shadows of Ballymun’s towers, inside crumbling buildings and the surrounding wasteland, where cheap thrills and illicit rituals turn boys into men. “These pictures document the transition from anti-social behavior to criminality, from childhood to adulthood without a ‘youth’ in between,” says McDonnell.

Nothing quite typifies this abandon like the nightly pursuit that gives this piece its name. In practice, joyriding involves robbing a car from one of Ballymun’s housing estates, racing it down residential roads while dodging stoplights and Garda cars, before finally burning it beyond recognition. There is no material gain in joyriding, only the sheer, fleeting pleasure of speed and destruction. McDonnell envisions joyriding as a philosophical response to life lived in the cracks of Irish society. The subjects of these photos are “kids who are willing to dive into a world of drugs and guns, kids without any fear of prison, of fatherhood, of violence,” McDonnell says. “It’s a short life, a joyride all the way.”

See more of McDonnell’s photography here

posted by: Harold Johns III

Studio Synopsis:
Jack Rebney is the most famous man you’ve never heard of — an RV salesman whose hilarious, foul–mouthed outbursts circulated underground on VHS tapes in the 90s before turning into a full–blown Internet phenomenon, seen by more than 20 million people worldwide. Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer goes in search of Rebney — and finds him living alone on a mountain top, unaware of his fame. Winnebago Man is a laugh–out–loud look at viral culture and an unexpectedly poignant tale of one man’s response to unintended celebrity.

Winnebago Man hits theaters July 9. Learn more about the movie here

Watch the original video that made Rebney so virally famous here

posted by: Harold Johns III

“Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian immigrant, scored the greatest goal in American soccer history. He should have been a hero. Instead, Gaetjens was abducted and died in a Haitian prison. ‘Outside the Lines’ sheds light on his story.” (via ESPN)

Don’t forget the U.S. Soccer team plays England at the 2010 World Cup this Saturday starting at 1:30 pm CST. You can catch the game on ABC. See the entire schedule of games here

posted by: Harold Johns III

From Films for Action:

In celebration and exploration of all things green, two bicyclists are on a year-long journey around the United States to share what they’ve learned about sustainable communities. They’ve traveled more than 6,000 miles to visit and film 100 sustainable communities of all types, working to capture in film the abundance of community-oriented solutions out there that are already working. The result of their effort will be Within Reach, a feature-length documentary to be released in 2011.

Join Films For Action at Liberty Hall on May 20th as we welcome Ryan and Mandy to Lawrence, KS. The two film-makers will be sharing with us what they have learned along their journey with an interactive presentation, video-clips from the film in progress, and a dynamic group exercise to help recognize the gifts and skills our community already has to create a bright green future here in Lawrence.

To find out if/when you can find the filmmakers in your area go here

posted by: Tricia Rock