The confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was politically divisive, but Walt Whitman's 19th century wisdom is timeless. In 1892, the poet wrote in prose: "I have sometimes thought, indeed, that the sole avenue and means of a reconstructed sociology depended, primarily, on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of woman." Towards the end of his life in 1888, he added "America" to his collection "Leaves of Grass," and then recited four lines from the poem, onto a wax...
Last year, when the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera arrived, I made a video to break it in - http://vimeo.com/hpmoon/nyc - and laid down a commentary to share some insights - http://vimeo.com/hpmoon/bmpc. I challenged the camera to known weaknesses, while crafting a...
by H. Paul Moon | Zen Violence Films | http://zenviolence.com Video travelogue of my journey across Costa Rica in the second week of September 2009. Although the get-up is somewhat goofy, it was a nice way to practice and refine my video editing chops for future documentary/narrative endeavors. I'm also fond of the way that Juana Molina's songs complement the adventure of the first half ("Un...
Volcán Pacaya is an active volcano in the Escuintla department of Guatemala nearby Antigua and Guatemala City. Though the volcano had been dormant for over a century, it erupted in 1965 and hasn't stopped since. As recently as 2006, increased eruptions resulted in the formation of a lava river as you will see in this short film. When capturing the footage, the heat was so intense that I could only hold out for brief shots, needing to turn away regularly to avoid getting scorched. Rather than...
During the Orthodox Holy Week in 2009, I took a spontaneous pilgrimage of sorts to Russia. Moscow now is an extraordinary place to visit, so soon after the fall of the Soviet Union. Her dramatic renewal of religious expression awkwardly mingles with a generation that never knew God. Standing as you do during Orthodox worship, I could find to my left a woman covered in traditional lace head-dress, then to my right a leather-jacketed man with bloodshot eyes reeking from a binge-drunken night....
I shot this footage on October 18, 2010 in Chicago, Illinois. The music is from the score that I wrote in 1998 for the stage play "Machinal" by Sophie Treadwell, with myself on keyboards and Marilyn Park on violin. The object of the footage is Tony Tasset's temporary public sculpture called "Eye," on view through October 31, 2010. You may be further interested to see a short documentary about its creation from the Chicago Tribune, at...
An excerpt from the documentary "R. Luke DuBois: Running Out of Time" by H. Paul Moon | Zen Violence Films | http://zenviolence.com. The film premiered at the 2011 DC Independent Film Festival, won the 2011 "Best Short Documentary" jury prize at the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival, won the 2011 "Silver Medal for Excellence in a Music Documentary" at the Park City Film Music...
On February 20, 2011, the Park Avenue Armory's inaugural Tune-In Festival concluded with an historic performance of John Luther Adams' epic composition for large percussion ensemble, "Inuksuit." As he described it during the pre-performance discussion, he conceived the work originally for outdoor performance, using an ensemble as large as 100 musicians. This first indoor performance, of 78 musicians, exploited the vast space of the Armory (along with its attached formal rooms), while...
On January 30, 2011, indie folk singer/songwriter Dar Williams teamed with IBIS: A Chamber Music Society for an evening of crossover music in the Spectrum Theatre at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia. For her final encore, Dar sang this song arranged by IBIS co-founder Joseph Scheer. This excerpt is from the concert-length film. It is for evaluation and promotion by the artists, and will be further color-graded at a later date along with the surrounding footage. THE MUSICIANS: Dar Williams,...
"Hamac Cazíim" tells the story of punk rock musicians from a native tribe called the Seri nation, or Comcáac, who are using music to maintain their ancestral language and culture despite a long history of colonialists, missionaries, and modernization. The Comcáac are a nomadic people who live in a place of mystic beauty along the Gulf of California, where the mountains meet the desert meet the sea. Despite this isolation, our world's modernization—and our extinction of sacred...