Thursday, March 12, 2009

Bruce Branit - World Builder (high quality)


A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405.

Filming took one day, and post-production two years. A Michelangelo of our times? As creative as painting, writing, composing... the artist is using digital tools, creating worlds, merveilleux!

An architect's dream!

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Direct link: World Builder.


Update March 13th:

Awww, this is so sweet! This video has been viewed over half a million times, and he has time to send out these tiny batches of thank-you's...an amazing guy, clearly.

bbranit has sent you a message:

World Builder Thanks

To:[about 20 people, including me]

Thank you for your support and your kind comments. Really an overwhelming and amazing response. Now I am speechless. It's been a real pleasure to see everyone embrace this movie. The feedback has been tremendous!

If you are on Facebook please stop by and become an official fan of the short. I hope to be able to expand upon the story of the builder and his love in a larger feature film as many of you have asked about. Everyone here and their response may help make that happen. So check out....

http://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Builder/73936485659

...I hope to have some updates and inside info on there every now and then.

Bruce Branit

Celestial DancerIII






Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Terry Snow - Healing Music (6:13min)

There have been many difficulties in my life in the past few years that sometimes I forget to stop and breath. I was transfixed by this gentle piano solo this morning.



Terry Snow writes: "A contemplative piano piece, written at a time of needing balm and comfort. The music refers briefly to the rhythm of a funeral march in the central section before returning to the "healing" theme. The piece gains warmth from being written virtually all on the piano's black keys, in the key of C sharp major.."

(cc)



Direct link to Terry Snow's piano solo. "Terry Snow is a New Zealander who enjoys composing for classical music ensembles such as string orchestra, piano trio, string quartet etc."

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Sweet the pleasure of your friendship



Recently I had a birthday (on March 7th) and received many birthday wishes and so I composed this little video of thanks to accompany my thanks to each person...

Photographs from my collection: flower mandala on the sidewalk in the late Summer outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival, 2008; images from Lumiere, Trout Lake, Vancouver, 2004; photo of me taken by Oswald Phills on March 2, 2008 at Sublime Cafe in Kensington Market.

Snippet of music from the group, BEMS, album "Panspermia," track, 'Forme Troppo Perfette.' A group found on Jamendo with the Creative Commons License: give credit to the artist; distribute all derivative works under the same license.

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Direct link to this video at YouTube: Sweet the pleasure of your friendship...

Friday, March 06, 2009

White, a Butoh-inspired dance by Brenda Clews



A poetry in motion. I played with negatives. It reminds me of ice and snow, of liberation from constraint. Of imaging between being and non-being. Of the mother. Of the sorrow of the mother earth. Of disappearing into and emerging from. Of the continuous cacophony of the dance of life. Of the disjointed, an awkward grace. The film loses some of its quality in the uploaded video: the semi-opague layers appear more like faded images than the transparencies they are. Yet you let go of the white leaf and let it float out to the sea. I wanted to add a poem, and perhaps that's next. The flowers are from photographs I took last year of mandalas of fresh flowers in the street outside an Indian restaurant in honour of a Hindu festival. The increasing presence of the flowers behind the screen of the dance is a reminder of what is ever-present, profundita natura, the profundity of nature at its most beautiful, fragile, transitory, in the flower. I leave you with a screen of flowers, like a prayer.


Hi beautiful friends, Sharing 'White, a Butoh-inspired dance.'.. film clip from late last Summer, and then all last night editing (editing video I'm discovering is like that:-) ...layering... images, sounds, yet not wanting to disturb the vulnerability, perhaps strangeness, of this 'silent film'... Butoh can express the painful and beautiful paradoxes of life in an intimacy that is almost unbearable to watch, I don't know if this film has that, but it's in the intent.

Feedback is always wonderful as I stumble down the path of this art form.

If 'White' opens something out in you, even in resistance, or in a sense of discomfort, then that is the Butoh influence, and then I'll know your reaction is like mine. For I don't know who that woman is, something else takes hold, another energy flows through.

Many thanks for taking the time to look at this. Many thanks for the blessing you are in my life,

hugs, Brenda xo


direct link to the video at YouTube: White, a Butoh-inspired dance.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Erica's 'Dance Our Way Home'

The theme was Amaterasu, Japanese goddess of the sun, a retreat to and emergence from our caves. In the slivers of mirrors we saw ourselves and we enjoyed our shining. We mirrored each others' beauty. Did we become luminous beings by the end of the day of the dance of the shining?

Our sun-wings spread like sun beams caressing the air and we flew as angels of light, I am sure of it.

Everyone's skin was fragile, luminous. Didn't matter what age we were, or size, or what life has carved on us.

Did our eyes shine delicately lit radiating out to illumine the world?

I saw the women's eyes shining; I saw them enlightening the world with their woman-wisdom, their wily smiles, their open-flowered red hearts. I saw their curvaceous dances, their plunging depths, the way they flung themselves into ecstatic states from which they would never emerge, never, if life was composed of the harmonious flowing energies of the dancefloor.

The unwinding from the tight to the relaxed was like approaching an apex and once you reach it you fly. With your feet, your hands, your twirling torso, your wildly swinging hips.

We flaunt it. Our tulle and taffeta and silk and microfibre; pinks and greens and purples and blacks; yogic symbols and alpine wild flowers. Hot breath; luminous, damp and streaming.

In the dance we are embedded in the broad sweeping swaths of sun as she revolves around the planet illumining the world as she goes, spreading rays of wisdom like falling petals of light from the crown of the thousand-petaled lotus that she wears.

We are. In our quiet ways. Or exhibitionist. Or wildly celebrating. Deep. Rich in our sorrow. Visions. Glimmering. Sparkling. Bedazzled. Radiant. Luscious.

Dancing at Erica's Dance Our Way Home (DOWH) is very sweet.




Many thanks...





Beautiful Erica Ross leading a prayer for peace at a DOWH session.


A video created during a short post-DOWH dance at Summer Solstice where my voiceover was this poem:

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Oz's Photo




Oz's photo of me yesterday. Oswald Phills is a powerful djembe drummer who I know from Tam Tam along with his beautiful partner, Eve. He used to send out a great newsletter, Drumcultures, on the drumming scene in Toronto as well as life around Kensington Market, where they live, and I think he might resurrect that project in the future as a website. I knew he also was a painter but did not know about his film-making abilities, which I've been discovering on Facebook. Yesterday, at Sublime Cafe in Kensington, Oz filmed a short film he wrote with Ordo and I acting in it. I love the script, Oz's filmic consciousness is very much the 'art film.' He's a brilliant guy, all in all.

Self-Portrait with a Fascinator 2016

On Monday, I walked, buying frames from two stores in different parts of the city, then went to the Art Bar Poetry Series in the evening, ab...