All Posts Tagged With: "politics"

The Garden

July 13th, 2009 • Agnes Varnum • Comments Off • Related Posts • Tags

Looks like it’s going to be and garden week here at doc it out. I just got back from watching The Garden by Scott Hamilton Kennedy and later this week, I’m going to watch Food, Inc. Both come on the heels of my picking up and subsequently putting down Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma…

SXSW 09: Along Came Kinky… Texas Jewboy for Governor

March 29th, 2009 • Agnes Varnum • 2 comments • Related Posts • Tags

Along Came Kinky… Texas Jewboy for Governor by David Hartstein premiered on Thursday, March 19th at after much of the film industry had headed out of town. That slot implies that the film would have local appeal but maybe shouldn’t take up a slot during the official Film festival. I might take some heat for saying that, but the reason I’m saying it is because I think the film deserved more. In talking to the filmmakers after the screening, I was dismayed to hear that the film hasn’t been offered other fest slots. Really?

in America is fucked. I don’t usually say stuff that that, but come on… Obama was a welcome glimmer of hope that perhaps, just maybe, we might start making a few good decisions to get ourselves out of the total mess we are in, but if anyone is thinking we are out of the woods, all I can say to that is No Way! Not even close. Budget crisis, healthcare crisis, employment crisis, foreign relations crisis and rampant greed and corruption. We are just at the tip of the iceberg. The Great Depression was worsened by The Dust Bowl, and we’ve gone ahead and nurtured the possibility of environmental disasters to rival anything that has happened in the past, just to define what a fine precipice we stand on right now.

SXSW 09: Letters to the President

March 17th, 2009 • Agnes Varnum • Comments Off • Related Posts • Tags

Petr Lom had some unbelievable access into the lives of Iranians in this film. It is so rare to watch a film about people in a foreign Muslim country that seems genuine, but this one sure does. Lom had a film permit from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself. There is only one man more important in Iran, or so says the bouncer at the front gate of the mosque, the Ayattolah Khomeini, as it was his mosque they were trying to enter with their cameras. Ah, ok, I’m gonna say that I don’t think we should be disrespecting Muslim religious spaces. Seriously. Thank goodness the filmmaker backs off and we cut to another scene. I hope that is how it went in real life.

The most moving scene for me was between two women who were waiting to have a face-to-face meeting with Ahmadinejad, and as they sit and chat, the camera and mic are on. They move from adoration of Ahmadinejad, to their lives, which include having to save for 3 weeks to buy strawberries for her daughter and having to pay $17 for a hunk of meat for family dinner. The women held their scarves up to their faces either to hide themselves or unconsciously, I’m not sure which, but they didn’t seem to know there was a camera on them. I felt the pain of their . Beautiful work by Lom in letting that moment happen.

Obama on the Recovery Plan

February 9th, 2009 • Agnes Varnum • Comments Off • Related Posts • Tags

I know this isn’t a documentary I’m posting; it’s a piece of , but I think it is really important so I’m posting it here. If you watched I.O.U.S.A. or An Inconvenient Truth or any other myriad of works created in the past few years, you know we are in deep shit. We came together to elect Obama because we believed that he would assemble the right people and get us on a course to changing our tides. He’s trying but I have to admit to having dropped the ball. The and were such high moments, it was a long pendulum swing back into “real” life. That’s the thing though, our “real” lives are in jeopardy.

Ray Pride had a video project at were  he was asking people to share a hopeful, truthful moment with him/everyone. My outlook is bleak so I told him I wasn’t sure if I could come up with anything to share for the project. I did come up with something but he never asked me again to do it, so hey, blog fodder, right? Well, you’ll notice that I even forgot to make my post about it post-.(Ray, help me out with a link if you read this – I can’t find it.)

Sundance 09: USA 2.0

January 20th, 2009 • Agnes Varnum • Comments Off • Related Posts • Tags

When I was leaving for Park City, I drove past a long line of homeless people waiting to get a bed at the shelter. It was a stark reminder of how fortunate I am and of how badly so many others are suffering. I am grateful for the subdued tone of the fest this year. With everything that is going on, it feels like the right time to forgo celebrity, commercialism and opulence (though don’t worry, that is still here in a measure) and try to focus on the art and business of film.

It was with great excitement that I woke up this morning and went looking for the right place to view the historic of President Barack Obama. I found it—the Filmmaker’s Lodge on Main Street.

When I got there, I spyed Yance Ford of P.O.V. and her lovely partner Amanda. They had arranged the chairs and couches around the TV in stadium style and as 10 AM drew nearer, more and more people arrived. Laura Poitras (My Country, My Country), Pamela Yates, Paco de Onis, and Peter Kinoy (The Reckoning, State of Fear), Cara Mertes of the Sundance Documentary Program, Tia Lessin (Trouble the Water), Debra Zimmerman of Women Make Movies, and younger filmmakers like Jesse Epstein and Trish Dalton (34×25x36) and Ingrid Kopp of Shooting People.

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