Swiss Action Film

In the Creative Commons site I found something very innovative and promising for us the people who support the Open Accesss movement. And it has to do with feature films, not with text or information as it is usually the case.

The Swiss movie CH7 was released on the internet under a Creative Commnos licence at the end of April. The 90min action film - featuring Denise Meili, Yvan Piccino and Noe Muller - is currently being shown exclusively in Switzerland but can be downloaded for free from www.CH7.ch.
CH7 is a production of Cineartis, an organisation seeking to support independent filmmakers.

Non-linear narratives make it to the art institutions

Non-linear narratives in the novel are quite new. I remember reading with total amazement in the 70s the famous novel by Julio Cortázar Hopscotch (Rayuela)(1966) the probably first hyper text novel ever written. It made a strong experience on me, not only for his playful and innovative structure but for his deep meaning and the strong emotional impact it makes in the reader.

Non-linear narratives have begun to appear in film, too and both Memento and The Usuals Suspects are good examples of it.

And now it looks like they have made it to art institutions and galleries. Via Jill Walker, I learn today that the “House of Culture” in Stockholm is showing an interactive art installation that plays around the theme of unreliable narrators in film by means of a private eye story in a nonlinear drama.

The project sounds very interesting and is the work of Knifeandfork an international artist collective with an appetite for social computing and cutting-edge technologies. If you go to their site, look for the trailer. I loved it.

Painting narratives of a cruel war

The New York Times publishes today an article about the recent donation of fifty paintings and sketches, made by Colombian artist Fernando Botero to the Museo Nacional in Bogotá.

These are works that represent a break from the traditional style and concept that has characterized the painter. War and violence are depicted in a very vivid manner. The "pictures intended to alarm and sadden, depict a conflict that is little understood outside Latin America: the brutal, drug-fueled guerrilla war that has been going on for 40 years in Colombia," according to Juan Forero, the journalist in charge of the article.

Besides the article there is a short and very interesting slide show where one can appreciate some of the paintings accompanied by sound and voice over.

I am horrified by Botero's pictures. I also feel that is very sad that it took so much horror to happen before a great artist like him took the trouble to portrait the conflict. I hope the attention these pictures get will somehow help people reflect and imagine another Colombia: a country without guns and war.

Unfortunately Colombia as well as Israel are examples of countries where the Military Industry of the United States and some countries in Europe have found the best arena to commercialize their "toys" contributing in this manner to spread fear, war, horror and death.