By NINA RAMOS
This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s CIA 7091, Interdisciplinary Arts Workshop. As part of a community of artists working across art perspectives, students in this course get the chance to present their work and teach each other about their art form(s), practice, lineage and influences, and are challenged to inquire into the interdisciplinary arts as well as forms new to them.
I was recently asked to cull a list of sources that have served me as inspiration or enhanced my investigations as an image maker and filmmaker. It was a great opportunity to construct a genealogy that traces my journey as an artist. Below is a sampling of ones I most often look to.
Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present - Ally Acker
Comprehensive guide of the women who pioneered the art and craft of filmmaking. The revised edition (published in 2001) extends where it left off showing that women are very much a part of today’s Hollywood. It’s also an essential read for anyone looking to enhance their knowledge of the key players who introduced motion pictures as language.
First-time filmmaker Celine Danhier has helped create a really fantastic record of the No Wave Cinema. Balanced by archival footage and well conducted and curated interviews, the film involves the audience in this moment in time with more intimate accounts of this time and place, and some stories you might not have heard before. Thanks to Netflix streaming, I can revisit it often and seem to note something new each time.
Shooting to Kill - Christine Vachon and David Edelstein
Birds-eye view to the production pipeline for
an independent film. Part journal, part production booklet, its first person
account of the behind the scenes goings on for Velvet
Goldmine manages to entertain while showcasing the creative and business
concerns of making a film. Reading through this felt as if I was actively going
along each step of the process. Nearly ten years later Vachon followed with a
more personal account of her career in A Killer Life:
How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and
Beyond.
Brain Pickings
website
Meticulously curated by Maria Popova, the site serves as a cornucopia of creative resources.
Inspiring and informative, the myriad of books, profiles, sites, concepts cover
a seemingly impossible gamut. I often reference BP when looking to expand
my knowledge of graphic and motion design
(both
examples and origins).
Or spend a fun afternoon getting lost in a curiosity-feeding labyrinth. Quoting
Maria herself, “Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for
interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers.”
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