Prisoner's Cinema

A different point of view on music, movies, literature and much more

[prisonercinema]

Must-see movie - La Antena

This near-silent black and white film from Argentina tells the story of a city that has lost its voice, stolen by Mr. TV, and the attempts of a small family to win the voice back. Similar in design to early German expressionist films. 

[prisonercinema]

Must-known band - Timber Timbre

Timber Timbre's sound has been described as "an aesthetic rooted in swampy, ragged blues" and "beautifully restrained blues from an alternate universe", which creates an atmosphere that is cinematic and spooky.

[prisonercinema]

Must-see documentaries - The internet's own boy

The story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.

[prisonercinema]

Must-see videos - Nosaj Thing, Eclipse/Blue

"Eclipse/Blue," featuring vocals by Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino, is the first single off Nosaj Thing’s album Home.

ABOUT THE VIDEO

Daito Manabe is a Japanese artist, programmer, and VJ who never ceases to wow us with the constant outflow of innovative tech/art experiments. As we’ve seen with his Electric Stimulus human body drum kit, LED smiles, and more recently with Particles, Manabe leans towards untraditional canvases to showcase his enlightening works.

Daito Manabe teamed up with California-based musician and producer Nosaj Thing (who DJed The Creators Project: New York 2011), to conceive and direct the music video for “Eclipse/Blue,” a track off Nosaj Thing’s album Home featuring vocals by Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino with support from The Creators Project. With a team of all-star collaborators including artist Takcom and choreographer MIKIKO (who’s worked extensively with J-Pop sensation Perfume), the projection-mapped, reactive graphics bring a new dimension to Nosaj Thing’s minimalist electronica. 

[prisonercinema]

Must-listen song - Portishead, The rip

Lyrics

As she walks in the room

Scented and tall

Hesitating once more

And as I take on myself

And the bitterness I felt

I realise that love flows

Wild, white horses

They will take me away

And the tenderness I feel

Will send the dark underneath

Will I follow?

Through the glory of life

I will scatter on the floor

Disappointed and sore

And in my thoughts I have bled

For the riddles I’ve been fed

Another lie moves over

Wild, white horses...

[prisonercinema]

Must-see TV series - True detective

In 2012, Louisiana State Police Detectives Rust Cohle and Martin Hart are brought in to revisit a homicide case they worked in 1995. As the inquiry unfolds in present day through separate interrogations, the two former detectives narrate the story of their investigation, reopening unhealed wounds, and drawing into question their supposed solving of a bizarre ritualistic murder in 1995. The timelines braid and converge in 2012 as each man is pulled back into a world they believed they'd left behind. In learning about each other and their killer, it becomes clear that darkness lives on both sides of the law.

A gallery of great True detective fan art

[prisonercinema]

Must-listen album - Damon Albarn, Everyday robots

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Will robots ever cross the Uncanny Valley? If an ASIMO came across a Gorillaz album, would it recognize the voice of the lead singer of Blur? 

When legendary multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and Mercury Prize-shortlisted singer-songwriter Damon Albarn played a live acoustic concert of his debut solo album, Everyday Robots, as well as other Blur favorites, at Miraikan (National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation) in Tokyo, he had two special guests in the audience: lifelike female android Otonaroid®, and abstract human robot, Telenoid®.

The Creators Project was on hand to film the performance.

[prisonercinema]

Must-see art - Daria Endresen

The Norwegian photographer and digital artist Daria Endresen creates surreal, dark and disturbing pieces of work.

"Time doesn't heal all wounds. There are human beings who bleed all their lives. That is the price of protection among us. Certainly they are admired, perhaps even loved – nevertheless they bleed – each day – each hour… You do not see correctly. Nobody does." --Daria Endresen 

[prisonercinema]

The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

Must-read book - Paulo Coelho, Veronika decides to die

Veronika is twenty-four. She has beauty, a good job, a lover, a family… but there is something missing. The void inside her grows until she makes the ultimate decision some of us have secretly whispered to ourselves then dismissed out of sheer terror.

Veronika decides to die. She settles down with her bottle of pills and concentrates on savouring the delicious moments between intention and action as she swallows one pill at a time. Then comes the darkness, every so slowly, then…

[prisonercinema]

Must-see movie - Her

Set in the Los Angeles of the slight future, “Her” follows Theodore Twombly, a complex, soulful man who makes his living writing touching, personal letters for other people.

Heartbroken after the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user.Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet “Samantha,” a bright, female voice, who is insightful, sensitive and surprisingly funny.

As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own, their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other.

From the unique perspective of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Spike Jonze comes an original love story that explores the evolving nature—and the risks—of intimacy in the modern world.

[prisonercinema]

Must-listen song - Burial, Come down to us

William Emmanuel Bevan, better known by his stage name Burial, is an electronic recording artist from London.

His music contains elements of dubstep, 2-step garage, ambient and house music. His eponymous debut album was released in 2006 to critical acclaim. 

The Wire magazine named it their album of the year, along with achieving fifth place in the Mixmag 2006 Album of the Year list, and eighteenth in the best of the year list of The Observer Music Monthly supplement. 

Burial's second album,Untrue, was also released to critical acclaim and was the second-highest rated album of 2007, according to the review-collating website, Metacritic.

The song

“Come Down to Us” tackles identity and loss, ending with Burial’s most overtly political statement yet, via a speech from the 2012 Human Right Campaign gala by transgender filmmaker Lana Wachowski.

The wild shifts in tone of the track form an appropriate mirror to the contrasting mood of the vocal snippets, which range from optimism (“You are not alone”) to a quite disturbing degree of despair (“Excuse me, I’m lost,” a scared, lonely voice intones).

It’s all executed with layer upon layer of sampled noise, providing a depth that makes it feel like you’ve barely scratched the surface even after countless plays.