Tonight at 8pm, two of our favorite institutions, short film DVD magazine Wholphin and the curatorial brain trust that is The Cinefamily, are joining together in glorious harmony for the release party of Wholphin No. 8 at The Silent Movie Theatre in LA.
Established by Where The Wild Things Are scribe Dave Eggers and his McSweeney’s colleague Brent Hoff, Wholphin is a quarterly video magazine that collects a melange of disparate shorts linked only by their quality of excellence and their rarity. Breathing new life to the format, Wholhpin offers a unique venue for films that would otherwise only play in festivals or galleries, where most people might not get a chance to see them. From well-known directors like Steven Soderbergh, Errol Morris, Miranda July and of course, Spike Jonze, to first-time filmmakers, cartoonists, comedians and video artists, Wholphin has hosted some of the most talented artists’ work from across the globe.
For issue eight, Wholphin is presenting shorts directed by brilliant photographer/youth culture documentarian Lauren Greenfield, Interpol bassist Carlos D., British conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood, and Dave Eggers himself. Eggers, in one of his first shots at directing, presents a three-part work called The Room Before and After, starring James Franco, comedian Maria Bamford and The Office star Creed Bratton in an animalistic display of primal emotion: they’re each given the rare opportunity to consensually tear apart a room. Check out the preview below:
Vintage Eggers! Or maybe not vintage, but also not newish. This is Dave Eggers accepting his 2008 TED Prize and giving a little talk about his wonderful organization 826 Valencia. I like TED talks because they remind me of the Google headquarters, lucid dreaming, evangelical Christian rock concerts and school all at once. But in a great way.
Sarah Manguso is an renowned young writer best known for her memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay, which chronicles a long, frustrating battle with an overbearing autoimmune disease. I’d like to point your attention towards a collection of Manguso’s short (really, really short) stories published by McSweeney’s in 2007. Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape is included in a set with two other tiny books from Dave Eggers and Deb Olin Unferth. Together, the collection is referred to as One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box. With a careful, dry wit Manguso recounts minute scenes of quiet revelation, tragicomic devestation, and internal humiliation. Lasting no more than a paragraph each, the stories have been trimmed of any superfluous indulgence, getting straight to the point with a deceptively lethargic sense of urgency.
The espresso machine, which I care for as if part of my own body, has been misused again. Someone has thrown away one of the metal cups by accident, and the pump has been left on too long. It stays unclean the whole day. I have posted a list of instructions and given a demonstration, and people still cannot or will not care for it as I do. I weep as I try to fix the machine, realizing that even if I haven’t convinced the others it’s part of me, I seem, at least, to have convinced myself.
And one more, just for kicks:
One Saturday my piano teacher calls everyone out to the back porch and points to a nest full of just-hatched chicks. In his thick accent, he delivers an obviously practiced line: “It’s our little modernity wart.” No one laughs. He says it again: “It’s our little modernity wart.” Still no one acknowledges his line. He says it again. And then, improbably, he says it a fourth time. He turns to me, knowing I will have to say something. My teacher’s need for affirmation disturbs me. I understand then that his genius in the studio does not translate to genius elsewhere.
Subscribe to RSS