Japanese photographer, Satoki Nagata moved to Chicago in 1992 to document the city and its people. His background is in neuroscience (he has a PhD in the field), but his passion is creating intimate documentary photography projects in his city.
During a recent winter, Nagata decided to try his hand at using a flash for street photography at night. Instead of mounting his flash to his camera, however, he decided to use it off camera. Combined with the light rain and falling slow, the flash turned many of his photographs into abstract and surreal images that almost look as though he overlaid photographs of stars. The resulting series is titled “Lights in Chicago.” Nagata tells us, “In my most recent work I see the light and shadow produced by flash is the pure form of reality of people living in the city. Inside the bright light line, the significance of existence of the person appears. The image is abstract and surrealistic but also full of life and personality. Transparent layerings are created by flash with slow shutter speed and no reflection is involved in these images.”
“When we sleep, we dream. What we have gone through during the day gets reenacted in a form that is a very strange deformation of what had actually happened. Stoker is that kind of film. The beautiful fairy tale picture book that was read during the day becomes the material for such a dream. A fairy tale twisted into a bizarre, unfamiliar and frightful form. In other words, a nightmare one dreams after reading a fairy tale.” (x)
7/? films - The Aviator (2004)
“Sometimes I truly fear that I am… losing my mind. And if I did, it… it would be like flying blind.”
Joss Whedon found a cult following when he created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But now he’s directing Hollywood’s biggest superhero movies â and Shakespeare. Emma John meets the fanboy who has turned his obsessions into box-office glory
Holy Land USA
Waterbury, ConnecticutHoly Land USA was once an 18 acre Bible-themed park located in Waterbury, Connecticut. The park had about 40,000 visitors a year until it closed in 1984 for renovations. Holy Land USA never opened back up again due to the death of owner John Greco in 1986. It has been abandoned ever since. The abandoned acres of the theme park have been watched over by groups of nuns for decades, but the place keeps getting more and more creepy as the park continues to deteriorate.
On top of the vandalism and eeriness the park gives off, a teenager was murdered on these abandoned grounds in 2010. Since then police records have shown that the amount of trespassers have been decreasing which just means abandoned Holy Land USA is as creepy and deserted as ever.
Just looking at this makes me nervous. This is where they should have filmed Zombieland.
tremendously creepy themepark is tremendously creepy.
Director Martin Scorsese claims that the most important shot in the movie is when Bickle is on the phone trying to get another date with Betsy. The camera moves to the side slowly and pans down the long, empty hallway next to Bickle, as if to suggest that the phone conversation is too painful and pathetic to bear.
life affirming?! schm-ife affirming! it’s about seven fuckin’ psychopaths!!
“Put your hands up!”
“No.”
“But I’ve got a gun?”
“I don’t care.”
“This doesn’t make any sense!”
“Too bad!”
THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST - UK RELEASE - 10TH MAY 2013
We’re are really looking forward to seeing ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’. It’s a gripping tale that couldn’t be more current with the times and is a much-needed balance to films such as ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (not to mention we get to see the lovely Riz Ahmed on screen!)
Here’s what wonder woman director, Mira Nair had to say about her connection with the story…
“When Changez, a hard nosed financial analyst on Wall Street, is sent out to shut down a very important publisher of Latin American fiction, which has brought out the voice of that continent, the publisher takes him to lunch and asks Changez, “Does it trouble you to make your living by disrupting the lives of others?” He then tells Changez about the janissaries, Christian boys captured by the Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army, at that time the greatest army in the world. They were lethal killers. They had fought to erase their own civilisations because they had no memory, they didn’t know where they came from. Their allegiance was to the empire. Changez says he has no allegiance to the empire. The publisher asks, how old were you when you came to America.’ He says 25, and the publisher comments, ‘Oh too old to be janissary.’ That’s the core of the story and that is the reason I have made the film. You have to wake up now. Think where you come from, think where you are going. Question the truth that is handed to you and think where you matter.”
If you’ve seen the film, we’d love to know what you thought!
- S
