Monday, June 21, 2010

Slava Mogutin




Slava Mogutin is a New York-based Russian artist and author, who works across different media, including photography, video, text, performance, sculpture, and painting.

Born in Siberia, in the industrial city of Kemerovo, Mogutin moved to Moscow at age 14. He soon began working as a journalist and editor for the first independent Russian papers, publishers and radio stations. By the age of 21, he had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation for his outspoken queer writings. Accused of “open and deliberate contempt for generally accepted moral norms”; “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence”; “inflaming social, national, and religious division”; “propaganda of brutal violence, psychic pathology, and sexual perversions”—he became the target of two highly publicized criminal cases, carrying a potential prison sentence of up to seven years. Forced to leave Russia, he was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International and PEN American Center.


www.slavamogutin.com

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Tarnation


Tarnation is a 2003 documentary film by Jonathan Caouette.

The film was created by Caouette from over 20 years of hundreds of hours of old Super 8 footage, VHS videotape, photographs, and answering machine messages to tell the story of his life and his relationship with his mentally ill mother Renee. It was initially made for a total budget of $218.32, using free iMovie software on a Mac. (As an early supporter, film critic Roger Ebert notes, $400,000 more was eventually spent by the distributor on sound, print, score and music/clip clearances to bring the film to theaters.[1]) The film went on to win awards including Best Documentary from the National Society of Film Critics, the Independent Spirits, the Gotham Awards, and the LA and London International Film Festivals.