For a conference that was ostensibly about media arts and culture, there was lot of talk about the Slow Food Movement at the national NAMAC convening in Austin, Texas last month. Helen De Michiel, the co-Director of NAMAC, opened the conference by embracing the phrase “slow media.” The comparison highlights how NAMAC’s member organizations support localized media like concerned foodies and environmentalists support local farmers. Richard Linklater then came to the stage and riffed on the Slow Food metaphor, comparing the refreshing quality of independent film to the pleasure people draw from eating healthy, locally produced foods. Rick, a filmmaker whose work calls out for the big screen (if you’ve seen Waking Life in the theater you know what I mean) is particularly concerned about the distribution problem for slow media—that many of us won’t be able to access it. He feels that there is a human need for independent media that exists even if the marketplace doesn’t provide an easy way to get it. He likened corporate media to McDonald’s and independent media to the food we might have to go out of our way to get at the farmer’s market (see NAMAC’s blog for Wendy Levy’s take). I liked this idea: it echoes something we discuss at Arts Engine about seeking alternative measures of success apart from box office returns. And the conference’s Keynote Speaker, Gary Chapman, a professor at University of Texas who runs the 21st Century Project, used slow food as a reference point as well, describing how Italy’s Slow Food movement has spawned “Cittaslow”, Slow City, which works to devise new ways to promote civic life. This movement critiques globalization for creating mediocrity, and instead strives to find means to disseminate “excellence” (which he pointedly indicated is not something that should only be available to the elite).

This conceptual framework appeals to me in part because it provides an alternative to the culture of marginalization that characterizes much of the dialogue within our field of slow media. And, appropriately enough, here at Arts Engine we’ve been working to promote both slow food and slow media in parallel for the last two years through our Good Food program, which helps get short films about sustainable food options out to large audiences.

But the slow food / slow media analogy only goes so far. The key difference between food made by a farmer and media made by the independent maker is in our capacity for wide distribution. By definition, a small farmer can only produce a relatively small amount of food, whereas we independent media makers are working with a MASS medium (even if we sometimes fail to meet the masses with our stories). So in a way, I feel we have a responsibility to take advantage of our medium, and at least attempt to reach more people through the power of mass replication offered by video and film and the engine of mass distribution offered by the internet. If we fail to reach a wide audience, so we fail, and that’s okay, too—we’re slow media after all, and we don’t value quantity above quality. But the effort to go wide is important. While I don’t object to an artist creating a piece of media designed to only reach a handful of people (as if a film were a bushel of fresh beets), it seems a shame for that to be all we aim for. Perhaps the way of looking at is to say that the making of the media is analogous to, say, artisanal cheese making, but the distribution of it has the potential to be McDonalds itself: available almost everywhere to everyone, for cheap. This perspective could inspire a new generation of media artists to take their cheese making on the road in a big way, and give big media a run for its money.

Sgt. Coco Fusco and Emily North at the Symposium - picture by Danielle Latman

One panel that caught my attention was On Display: The Role of Performance. It began with a drill by Sgt. Coco Fusco. She entered the stage in military uniform and ran through the “Strategies for Gender Management.” Her power point presentation ran through six bullet points which included points like Don’t Deny - Contain and Fair and Balanced. Don’t Deny - Contain discussed showcasing beautiful women as feminists. This way feminism will appear less radical and appeal to more people. Fair and Balanced asserted making sure to place opponents of feminism at the table so as not to exclude the important argument for why feminism shouldn’t exist. She also noted that erotic exhibitionism is marketable. Fusco referenced Tracey Emin, among others, as an artist who gets media attention with her outrageous personal exploits and that success of women artists today is measured by the money they make rather than the meaning of their work, showing a shift in the goals of feminist art.

Her multi-messaged performance critiqued how feminism functions today in the art world as well as women’s role in the military and other concepts that my exhausted mind couldn’t process. Coco Fusco is an amazing woman to watch and uses performance as fiction to take people to a place that’s real.

Dr. Midori Yoshimoto spoke next on the On Display: The Role of Performance panel. She presented the work of four Japanese women artists and how they “obliterated” or “hid” their bodies in their work. She showed the work of Yayoi Kusama who emersed her own body within installations of polka dots or phallic sculptures. Then she presented the Electric Dress by Atsuko Tanaka. This dress is made from hundreds of lights that create a sort of cave which the artist would enter. This heavy piece commented on the history of the atomic bomb in Japan and themes of energy and life cycles. Of course Yoko Ono’s, Cut Piece was mentioned. In this piece Ono asks the audience members to cut pieces of her clothing off of her body. And finally, Miyori Hayashi boxes were shown. In these pieces the artist lies down motionless inside a box, the dark box representing an endless hole, death or the universe.

Yoshimoto discusses how Japanese women artists do not explicitly identify as feminists for various reasons but work to show more universal themes about the complexities of life and the universe around them. I found her presentation even more interesting after the question and answer period, when she was asked why Japanese women artists were “invisible” from the art world in America.

Do you love the Media That Matters Film Festival films and want to discuss them in a classroom setting or with a group of your friends after an independent screening? Do you want to find out more about the films and find out ways to stimulate dialogue and action around a particular issue that one of the films addresses?

Well you’re in luck because the discussion guides are ready for the seventh annual Media That Matters Film Festival and for our FOCUS release, Media That Matters: Good Food.

You can download the guides at the Screening Tools section of the Media That Matters Film Festival website.

We hope you enjoy the discussion guides! Make sure to return the evaluations provided so we know how useful they were for you and your group.

Dan Rather takes a close look at balloting and the change-over to touch screens. I recommend watching this clip. It’s an amazing and infuriating report. The entire piece was originally broadcast on HDNet in August.

Rather suggests that the reason for the chaos in Florida in 2000 had to do with corporate corruption - an interest in selling touch screens to the US government in place of paper ballots. In other words, Sequoia Voting Systems deliberately made poor quality ballots to push the sale of electronic voting machines. In the process they seriously compromised our democracy and sentenced us to eight years of inept leadership.

Many of you Mac users saw this piece of news on the Apple homepage but I figured I would pass it along:

This is a big story in the digital download world. We’ll have to see how successful it is.

A couple of weeks ago Arts Engine hosted the IFP’s annual Rough Cut Lab – a fantastic chance for first-time documentary filmmakers to show their work to distinguished professionals working in all areas of film.

Out of hundreds of applications, around nine different projects were invited to participate in the week-long event, held at SoHo House in Manhattan. Clips from their films were screened throughout the week in front of editors, composers and distributors who then gave feedback to the directors in front of the whole group. Each at varying stages of a “rough cut,” the challenges faced by the filmmakers were very different—while some were still debating the focus of the film as a whole, others were grappling with the soundtrack for one particular shot…and (with imminent deadlines) could be seen scurrying back to the edit room after their session was over!

I also dropped into a few of the talks that took place, one of which was by digital media maestro Lance Weiler. Among the most engaging and compelling speakers I’ve seen, Weiler talked mainly about the making, distribution and publicity of his two cult horror movies The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma. Both made on relatively tiny budgets, they are prime examples of innovative use of new technology at every stage of the filmmaking process. Edited solely on desktop equipment (which in the late nineties was still pretty pioneering), The Last Broadcast was self-distributed through entirely digital means, and simultaneously screened to multiple audiences via satellite. A strong online presence, including a website and accompanying computer game (with hidden levels and mass conference calls for hard-core players) ensured the film had a major following.

In Weiler’s case, the concepts behind his films are closely tied to the digital world, but his experiences would prove useful for anyone looking to distribute and promote their work beyond the conventional routes. His description of the festival scene as a totally saturated “broken system” is a sentiment that was echoed by many of the speakers. Simple ideas, like having high-resolution images from your film easily available to download off your website, could be make or break in terms of high-profile coverage in the press. He said that on one occasion the flyers for his film (which had been downloaded and printed by fans), preceded his arrival at a screening…with a little effort at the beginning, it seems you can sit back and let the film’s own momentum do some of the hard work. Check out his “Workbook Projectâ€? for more info, stories, and advice.

One of the other very useful topics covered was outreach—the process of finding not only the audiences you aim to access, but also the groups who might be able to use the film, and the communities you hope to affect. The key idea put forward by Sonya Childress from Firelight Media, was that the film screening itself should be seen as only one part of a much broader and long-term strategy to communicate and discuss the ideas in the film. It was an attitude reiterated by Chris White from P.O.V., a PBS channel which produces outreach tools for educators and communities, to run alongside every documentary they screen.

At the end of each day, fueled by delicious brownies, there was a “break-out session”—a chance for the filmmakers to talk through the issues of the day with three of our wise and friendly producers Angela Tucker, Jolene Pinder and Beth Davenport. The event was a great opportunity to pick through every aspect of getting a film out there in the real world, as well as providing focused and detailed feedback for the filmmakers involved—well worth applying for if you’re at the rough cut stage next year.

And now it’s time for me to say my goodbyes…today is the last day of my internship and, alas, it’s time for me to return to London. It has been a fantastic three months, a huge learning curve, and a great place to take my tentative first steps in the world of documentary film. So thank you all at Arts Engine!

— Clem

Why Tuesday? is active. I met Jacob Soboroff, Why Tuesday?’s fearless leader, at Claim Democracy a few weeks back. The gathering itself was sort of like the depth psychology version of electoral reform - profound and important, but slow as can be.

In contrast, Why Tuesday?’s project is immediate. Check out A PSA from William H. Taft from that conference, shot on the fly. It already has 33,000 YouTube views.