Mobility film roundup

I have a number of interesting transportation-related films to share: two new documentaries, one experimental nonfiction film, a badass film from the 60s, and an old-timey film from way back when.

First up is La Camioneta:

Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day. Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. LA CAMIONETA follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected worlds in which we live.

Next is Go Grandriders, a film from Taiwan about the trials and tribulations of a group of elderly men on a motorcycle trip:

In Go Grandriders, a group of senior citizens embark on what may be the most daring adventure of their lives: a thirteen-day tour—entirely on motorcycle—around the island of Taiwan. A number in the group have heart problems, two have had cancer, and their average age is 81. The trip brings harrowing escapes (one rider falls asleep at the wheel, while another is knocked off his bike by a truck), pure exhilaration (including a gleeful romp in the waves when riders reach Taiwan’s east coast), and somber reflection, as riders recall their youths fighting in the Sino-Japanese War.

Then we move to a beautiful film called Trains of Winnipeg: 14 Film Poems available through MUBI.* There's a 17-minute version of the film available, and the full length version on MUBI which is 89 minutes:

Trains of Winnipeg: 14 Film Poems is a feature-length film cycle that straddles the borders between the balkanized worlds of cinema, visual art, music and literature. The 14 films in this major cycle employ a wide variety of non-linear digital and filmic formal experiments in depicting suburban and urban dystopias, in essays exploring the politics of form and the form of personal politics, as well as in audiovisual tone poems celebrating the raw joy of moving pictures, sound, colour and light. 

The films are pulled together with the overarching metaphor of a train journey, culminating in the title film, an unabashed love ballad for the rusty grace and brute power of the Trains of Winnipeg. The film also acts as a portal from the analog century to the digital beyond, where everything looks the same, but we know it’s not.

More about Clive Holden's project is on his website, including information about a related book and CD.

Another film on MUBI, the 1968 film The Girl on a Motorcycle, is described as a "counterculture classic" about a woman "on a doomed psychedelic and erotic journey":

It looks like you can watch the entire film here.

And finally, Arrival of a Train, a fascinating short silent film by the Lumière brothers:

For many, cinema began on December 28, 1895, with the first public projection of short films like Arrival of a Train and The Card Party by Louis and Auguste Lumière. But these iconic films also exist in alternative versions, sometimes with each frame of the print colored by hand! Lobster Films purchased the original Lumiere-perforation negatives of Arrival of a Train and fifty other titles at an auction in Lyon for about fifty U.S. dollars. They were wrapped up in old paper, which turned out to be an original poster of Watering the Gardener, perhaps the very first poster in the history of moving pictures!

*MUBI (formerly The Auteurs) is a really fantastic independent and alternative site that streams films. It's described as an "online cinematheque." I don't love the new film format - where they upload a new film each day and have an ongoing collection of 30 films available to view (so one rotates out each day) - because I like taking forever to watch a film if I feel like it. But, still it's only $4.99 a month and there's always a well-curated and diverse group of films. This month Nick Broomfield's films are being featured. There are also lots of free things to watch in MUBI's general library of films.

(via MUBI, Transports en Commune)

Insull transit posters

Samuel Insull, a Brit who came to the U.S. to work for Thomas Edison, became a major shareholder in the Chicago utilities and transit sectors by the 1920s. J.J. Sedelmaier describes Insull's campaign promote to the transit industry:

Chicago’s transit lines had been doing advertising and even some poster designs since the 1910s, but there was no consistent graphic approach or what we now know to be “branding” in the direction of the marketing. This all changed once Insull took hold of the Elevated Rapid Transit System and the associated interurban lines. He soon assigned the poster project to the railroads’ president, Britton I. Budd, who later brought people like the North Shore Line’s Publicity Manager Luke Grant and Commercial Department Head John J. Moran, into the fold.

The design of the posters covered a wide range of styles. From the figurative work of artists like Willard Frederic Elmes and the young Oscar Rabe Hanson to the flat graphic interpretations of Ervine Metzl, many of the works produced were as strong and bold as anything being created simultaneously in the U.K. or Germany. The series not only utilized the talents of professional artists like Leslie Ragan, Elmes and Metzl, but also was a proving ground for newcomers like Hanson, and other art school students like Clara Fahrenbach and Wallace Swanson.

Sedelmaier's piece includes a treasure trove of poster images. The poster campaign ended in 1930 and, reports Sedelmaier, the posters faded from the forefront until Dave Garlter of Poster Plus in Chicago came across a bunch of unused posters 45 years later. He mounted and exhibited the posters and renewed interest in the Insull transit posters followed. 

(via Salon)

Urban images

The Luskin School of Public Affairs building at UCLA wasn't the most inspiring place for a long time. It was drab and it felt like the hand-me-down place it was (it was the Anderson School of Management's building before they moved to their new and really fancy digs nearby).

A big donation to the school a few years ago started the ball rolling in terms of renovating and remodeling major parts of the building. Now the classrooms are sleek and high-tech, the student lounge doesn't look like it's from an undergrad dorm in the 80s, and the research centers are comfortable spaces where you want to go in to work.

My favorite addition, however, is the fantastic art that's gone up on the walls throughout the building. The artist is Yasmine Diaz, who is also a staff person at the Lewis Center. She does oil painting as well as photography and captures urban scenes from cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Rome, and Buenos Aires - what she calls "urban studies of abstracted realism."

(via yasminediaz.com)

Transportation musicality

Alexander Chen takes the routes of subways trains and turns them into an amazing aural and visual piece of art:

At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.

At the Isle of Tune, described as a "musical sequencer for the modern colonial," cars move along roads and trigger sounds when they pass a series of markers (trees, planters, houses, lamp posts). 

You can built your own sequence of sounds. Or you can check out popular tunes such as Beat It, Don't Stop Believing, YMCA, and even Katy Perry's California Gurls (under the "View Shared Islands" link). Very cool - though if you listen to the loop of any of these too long, you'll either want to stab your ears with a pencil or run out and buy an electronic keyboard. It was the former for me, so I urge you to listen with caution.