Man Powered Films

Mark Philip Lichtenstein: film maker, magician, New Yorker.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Playing around with in-camera effects and magician Noah Schaffer.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Some photos I took of the very talented magician Rachel Wax.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Old 35mm scans from the last century.  Enjoy!

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Some stills from my shoot earlier this week with magicians Jordi Magomero and Noah Schaffer.  The gorgeous video is soon to follow.

[a-bittersweet-life]

[beyondthefra-me]

Because you do not have to imitate, like painters, sculptors, novelists, the appearance of persons and objects (machines do that for you), your creation or invention confines itself to the ties that you knot between the various bits of reality caught. There is also the choice of the bits. Your flair decides.

~ Robert Bresson

(via a-bittersweet-life)

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Burning Up! in The Katra Film Series

Burning Up!, one of my recent directorial projects, will be screened publicly for the first time at The Katra Film Series event on May 10, 2014!  Come and check it out, and for the alcoholics, get drunk!  They've got drink specials!  www.katrafilmseries.com

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

And that's the last of the orchids I photographed at the NYBG Orchid Show.  Go next year.  It's wonderful.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Some more orchids for your viewing pleasure.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Some shots from the last day of the New York Botanical Gardens Orchid Show.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Exciting Projects In The Works

I'm over the moon right now, about a project that's now well underway.  I'm about to direct a web series, tentatively titled Game On and my collaborators are wonderful.  There are my writing collaborators Keisha Zollar and Zoe Samuel, who are each enormously talented, but together they come at the story with such wonderfully different ideas, which are then honed.  Working with them creatively is a relaxed and productive experience.  Laura Swisher is our resourceful and talented producer, who is managing to make sense of paperwork I couldn't understand with a translator.  Honestly, this is the most fun I've had on a project in a long time, not that my past work wasn't fun.  Burning Up! is at the submitting-to-festivals-phase, and I'm proud of that film, but there's something about being in the thick of it that just gets my heart pounding.  Excelsior!

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Going through some photos of the past couple months and found this mean looking custom.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

The production photo collection from the film Burning Up!  Congratulations to everyone for not just doing a professional job, but looking good doing it.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

A little more 50th street subway station.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Using time on the platform creatively.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

Burning Up! is finally finished and live.  It's a musical product of the Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop at BMI.  Thanks to the cast and crew who worked very hard on this, I'm proud to call it my latest film.

[vimeo-deactivated20240328]

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

How cool is this?  Paper statues.  Left to sit, they look like stone, but lift them and well... you get the idea.  Wonderful spin on a classic medium.

[manpoweredfilms-blog]

12 More Viral Photos That Are Totally Fake

Some wonderful examples of photoshop illusions so well constructed, many believed they were real.  Next time you see an unbelievable viral image online, just remember that anything (fake) is possible.