7:00 p.m. - STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW – final showing!
Wednesday & Thursday, May 16 & 17 @ 7:00 p.m.
STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW by Bob Cringely. In 1995, during the making of his TV series Triumph of the Nerds about the birth of the PC, Bob Cringely did a memorable hour-long interview with Steve Jobs. It was 10 years since Jobs had left Apple following a bruising struggle with John Sculley, the CEO he had brought into the company. At the time of the interview Jobs was running NeXT, the niche computer company he had founded after leaving Apple. During the interview, Jobs was at his charismatic best – witty, outspoken, visionary. In the end, only a part of the interview was used in the series and the rest was thought lost. But recently a VHS copy was found in the series director’s garage. Now, cleaned up with modern technology, and put into context by Cringely, the entire interview will screen in theaters. In the interview Jobs talks about his pioneering days with Steve Wozniak, when they built a Blue Box and phoned the Pope; how they – “two guys who didn’t know much” — assembled the first Apple computer and went on to found the Apple company. “I was worth around a million dollars when I was 23, over 10 million dollars when I was 24 and over 100 million dollars when I was 25 – and it wasn’t really important!” Jobs recalls the visits he made to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and how it inspired the making of the Macintosh, the world’s first modern PC, when he was “on a mission from God to save Apple.” He talks frankly and sadly about his enforced departure from Apple and explains what he is doing at NeXT (which he would soon sell to Apple and whose software would then be at the heart of the first iMac’s operating system). Finally in spell-binding terms, he offers his vision of a digital future – a world of wonderful products created by artists and poets. It is an interview that reveals the burning passion of Steve Jobs, a passion that would go on to give us the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
Zeitgeist
Multi-disciplinary Arts Center
1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70113
504 352-1150
rene@zeitgeistinc.net
Admission to all events are
$8 general / $7 students + seniors / $6 Zeitgeist members + children / Free Zeitgeist Patrons
unless otherwise mentioned.
There are separate admissions. See two or more events on the same night for only $5 each.
STEVE JOBS: THE LOST INTERVIEW by Bob Cringely. In 1995, during the making of his TV series Triumph of the Nerds about the birth of the PC, Bob Cringely did a memorable hour-long interview with Steve Jobs. It was 10 years since Jobs had left Apple following a bruising struggle with John Sculley, the CEO he had brought into the company. At the time of the interview Jobs was running NeXT, the niche computer company he had founded after leaving Apple. During the interview, Jobs was at his charismatic best – witty, outspoken, visionary. In the end, only a part of the interview was used in the series and the rest was thought lost. But recently a VHS copy was found in the series director’s garage. Now, cleaned up with modern technology, and put into context by Cringely, the entire interview will screen in theaters. In the interview Jobs talks about his pioneering days with Steve Wozniak, when they built a Blue Box and phoned the Pope; how they – “two guys who didn’t know much” — assembled the first Apple computer and went on to found the Apple company. “I was worth around a million dollars when I was 23, over 10 million dollars when I was 24 and over 100 million dollars when I was 25 – and it wasn’t really important!” Jobs recalls the visits he made to Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and how it inspired the making of the Macintosh, the world’s first modern PC, when he was “on a mission from God to save Apple.” He talks frankly and sadly about his enforced departure from Apple and explains what he is doing at NeXT (which he would soon sell to Apple and whose software would then be at the heart of the first iMac’s operating system). Finally in spell-binding terms, he offers his vision of a digital future – a world of wonderful products created by artists and poets. It is an interview that reveals the burning passion of Steve Jobs, a passion that would go on to give us the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
Friday through Thursday, May 18 through 24 @ 6:30 p.m.
HOW TO GROW A BAND by Mark Meatto. In the music documentary HOW TO GROW A BAND, 26-year-old Chris Thile is at a crossroads. His marriage has ended, and his platinum-selling band, Nickel Creek, has gone on “indefinite hiatus.” But Thile, a perfectionist prodigy who’s defied expectations since he learned the mandolin at age five, has a plan. Step 1: Write a 45-minute, four-movement elegy to your failed marriage to be played by a bluegrass quintet. Step 2: Recruit the only musicians around talented enough to play it and crazy enough to sign on. Step 3: Make a record, launch an international tour and brace yourself. Filmed with uncommon access, HOW TO GROW A BAND provides a rare look at the start of one of America’s most promising young bands, THE PUNCH BROTHERS (who recently opened for Paul Simon at the UNO Lakefront Arena) and explores the tensions that test young artists: individual talents and group identity,craft and commerce, innocence and wisdom. Featuring Chris Thile, Gabe Witcher, Chris Eldridge, Noam Pikelny, Greg Garrision, Paul Kowert; with Yo-Yo Ma, John Paul Jones, Edgar Meyer, Jerry Douglas and Sara Watkins. www.punchbrothersmovie.com
Friday through Thursday, May 18 through 24 @ 8:15 p.m.
THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE by Marie Losier. Genesis P-Orridge has been one of the most innovative and influential figures in music and fine art for the last 30 years. A link between the pre- and post-punk eras, he is the founder of the legendary groups COUM Transmissions (1969-1976), Throbbing Gristle (1975-1981), and Psychic TV (1981 to present), all of which merged performance art with rock music. Celebrated by critics and art historians as a progenitor of “industrial music”, his innovations have transformed the character of rock and electronic music while his prodigious efforts to expand the boundaries of live performance have radically altered the way people experience sound in a concert setting. But that’s just the preamble to the story. Defying artistic boundaries, Genesis has re-defined his art as a challenge to the limits of biology. In 2000, Genesis began a series of sex reassignment surgeries in order to more closely resemble his love, Lady Jaye (née Jacqueline Breyer), who remained his wife and artistic partner for nearly 15 years. It was the ultimate act of devotion, and Genesis’s most risky, ambitious, and subversive performance to date: he became a she in a triumphant act of artistic self-expression. Genesis called this project “Creating the Pandrogyne”, an attempt to deconstruct two individual identities through the creation of an indivisible third. This is a love story, and a portrait of two lives that illustrate the transformative powers of both love and art. Legendary underground filmmaker Marie Losier brings to us the most intimate details of Genesis’s extraordinary, uncanny world. In warm and intimate images captured handheld, Losier crafts a labyrinthine mise-en-scene of interviews, home movies, and performance footage. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye documents a truly new brand of Romantic consciousness, one in defiance of the daily dehumanization of the body by the pervasive presence of advertising and pornography, conveying beauty, dignity and devotion from a perspective never before seen on film.
Friday through Thursday, May 18 through 24 @ 9:30 p.m.
GOD BLESS AMERICA by Bobcat Goldthwait. Frank (Joel Murray, The Artist, Shameless) has had enough of the downward spiral of American culture. Divorced, recently fired, and possibly terminally ill, Frank truly has nothing left to live for. But instead of taking his own life, he buys a gun and decides to take out his frustration on the cruelest, stupidest, most intolerant people he can imagine — starting with some particularly odious reality television stars. Frank finds an unusual accomplice in a high-school student named Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), who shares his sense of rage and disenfranchisement. Together they embark on a nationwide assault on our country’s most irritating celebrities. Written and Directed by taboo-busting filmmaker and comedian Bobcat Goldthwait (Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs Lie, World’s Greatest Dad), GOD BLESS AMERICA is a truly dark and very funny comedy for anyone who’s had enough of the dumbing down of our society.
Friday through Thursday, May 25 through 31 @ 7:30 p.m.
SURVIVING PROGRESS by Harold Crooks & Mathieu Roy.Presented by Executive Producer Martin Scorsese this dynamic film has been called “Koyaanisqatsi meets The Corporation”.Technological advancement, economic development, population increase – are they signs of a thriving society? Or too much of a good thing? Based on the best-selling bookA Short History of Progress, this provocative documentary explores the concept of progress in our modern world, guiding us through a sweeping but detailed survey of the major “progress traps” facing our civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment. Featuring powerful arguments from such visionaries as Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Hawking, Craig Venter, Robert Wright, Michael Hudson, and Ronald Wright, this enlightening and visually spectacular film invites us to contemplate the progress traps that destroyed past civilizations and that lie treacherously embedded in our own. Leading critics of Wall Street, cognitive psychologists, and ecologists lay bare the consequences of progress-as-usual as the film travels around the world – from a burgeoning China to the disappearing rainforests of Brazil to a chimp research lab in New Iberia, Louisiana – to construct a shocking overview of the way our global economic system is eating away at our planet’s resources and shackling entire populations with poverty. Providing an honest look at the risks and pitfalls of running 21st Century “software” (our accumulated knowledge) on 50,000-year-old “hardware” (our primate brains), Surviving Progressoffers a challenge: to prove making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead end.
Friday through Thursday, May 25 through 31 @ 9:15 p.m.
GOON by Michael Dowse. Written by Jay Baruchel & Evan Goldberg. Not content with his job as a bouncer at a local Beantown bar and a bit of an embarrassment to his accomplished family, Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) dreams of the kind of success enjoyed by minor league hockey goon Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber). When a chance encounter with an on-ice thug leads to a bloody fist fight that Doug easily wins, the coach of the Halifax Highlanders sees potential in this mammoth sized man who is only hampered by his lack of any hockey playing ability and his brother’s old figure skates. Standing up to the taunts of the other players, Doug manages to join the team, and with the encouragement of his hockey obsessed best friend (Jay Baruchel) quickly becomes a rising star. Soon he’ll have the opportunity to face off against Ross “The Boss” Rhea and perhaps finally land a girlfriend. Now – all he needs is to learn how to skate. Also starring Eugene Levy, Kim Coates, Alison Pill, Marc-Andre Grondin, etc. The first 50 patrons receive a free GOON Hockey Jersey Beer Koozie. Screens as part of our monthly series CANADA IS BIGGER THAN THE U.S.
PAYBACK by Jennifer Baichwal. Margaret Atwood’s visionary work Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealthis the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on “debt” in its various forms—societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal, and of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (Manufactured Landscapes) strikingly interweaves these (sometimes surprising) debtor/creditor relationships: two families in a years-long Albanian blood feud; the BP oil spill vs. the Earth; mistreated Florida tomato farm workers and their bosses; imprisoned media mogul Conrad Black and the U.S. justice system. With stunning cinematography and insightful commentary from renowned thinkers Raj Patel, Louise Arbour and Atwood herself,Paybackis a brilliant, game-changing rumination on the subject. Screens as part of our monthly series CANADA IS BIGGER THAN THE U.S.
Opening June 8:
A CAT IN PARIS by Jean-Loup Feliioli. 2012 Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature. Dino is a cat that leads a double life. By day, he lives with Zoe, a little girl whose mother, Jeanne, is a police officer. By night, he works with Nico, a burglar with a big heart. Zoe has plunged herself into silence following her father’s murder at the hands of gangster Costa. One day, Dino the cat brings Zoe a very valuable bracelet. Lucas, Jeanne’s second-in-command, notices this bracelet is part of a jewelery collection that has been stolen. One night, Zoe decides to follow Dino. On the way, she overhears some gangsters and discovers that her nanny is part of the gangsters’ team.
Opening June 8:
THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD by Joshua Marston. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival, the powerful second feature from Joshua Marston (MARIA FULL OF GRACE) tells the story of an Albanian family caught up in a blood feud. Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is a carefree teenager in a small town with a crush on the school beauty and ambitions to start his own small internet business. His world is suddenly up-ended when his father becomes entangled in a dispute that leaves a fellow villager murdered. According to a centuries-old code of law known as the Kanun, Nik’s family owes a life in return. Nik finds himself the prime target and becomes confined to home while his younger sister Rudina (Sindi Laçej) is forced to leave school and take over their father’s business. Marston transports us into a world rarely seen on screen, where tradition and modernity clash putting young lives in the balance.
Opening June 15:
I WISH by Hirokazu Koreeda. Twelve-year-old Koichi lives with his mother and retired grandparents in Kagoshima, in the southern region of Kyushu, Japan. His younger brother Ryunosuke lives with their father in Hakata, northern Kyushu. The brothers have been separated by their parents’ divorce and Koichi’s only wish is for his family to be reunited. When he learns that a new bullet train line will soon open linking the two towns, he starts to believe that a miracle will take place the moment these new trains first pass each other at top speed. With help from the adults around him, Koichi sets out on a journey with a group of friends, each hoping to witness a miracle that will improve their difficult lives. From the acclaimed Japanese director of Maborosi, After Life, Nobody Knows, Hana, Still Walking and Air Doll.
Opening June 15:
POLISSE (POLICE) by Maiwenn. This award-winning French drama depicts the daily grind for the police officers of the Child Protection Unit – taking in child molesters, busting underage pickpockets and chewing over relationship issues at lunch; interrogating abusive parents, taking statements from children, confronting the excesses of teen sexuality, enjoying solidarity with colleagues and laughing uncontrollably at the most unthinkable moments. Knowing the worst exists and living with it. How do these police officers balance their private lives and the reality they confront every working day? Fred, the group’s hypersensitive wild card, is going to have a hard time facing the scrutiny of Melissa, a photographer on a Ministry of the Interior assignment to document the unit. Winner Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2011.
Opening June 22:
DEATH OF A SUPERHERO by Ian FitzGibbon. After several cycles of chemotherapy, fourteen-year-old Donald (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) feels he has little left to hope for. Worst of all, he might die a virgin. Director Ian FitzGibbon’s film, adapted by Anthony McCarten from his novel of the same name, is a poignant coming-of-age story with a dark undertone, addressing the most painful of circumstances alongside a rich and often humorous treatment of classic teen preoccupations. When Donald’s parents urge him to confront his feelings, he retreats further into his own head, channelling his thoughts into sinister and eerily beautiful comic book drawings. In the universe of his sketches, Donald is no longer a skinny teen with leukemia. Instead, he becomes a brawny superhero dedicated to fighting his archenemy: a mad scientist called the The Glove, who wields syringes for fingers. Donald’s parents send him to Dr. Adrian King (Andy Serkis in a decidedly human role), a therapist with a matter-of-fact approach to death who challenges Donald’s defensive attitude. A beautifully crafted and acted film.
Tuesday, June 26 @ 8:30 p.m.
GILLES DELEUZE: FROM A TO Z by Claire Parnet. Although philosopher Gilles Deleuze never wanted a film to be made about him, he agreed to Claire Parnet’s proposal to film a series of conversations in which each letter of the alphabet would evoke a word: From A (as in Animal) to Z (as in Zigzag). In dialogue with Parnet (a journalist and former student of Deleuze), the philosopher exhibited the modest and thrilling transparency that his seminal works (such as Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus) reveal. The sessions were taped when Deleuze was already terminally ill; he and Parnet agreed that the film would not be shown publicly until after his death. The awareness of mortality floats through the dialogues, making them not just intellectually stimulating but also emotionally engaging. Because Parnet knew Deleuze so well, she was able to draw him out–as no one else had–to what might be the 1001st plateau: a place of brilliance, rigor, and charm. In “A as in Animal,” for example, Deleuze vents his hatred of pets: “A bark,” he declares, “really seems to me the stupidest cry.” Instead, he praises the tick: “. . . in a nature teeming with life, [the tick] extracts three things”: light, smell, and touch. This, he claims, in a sense is philosophy. “And that is your life’s dream?” Parnet wryly asks. “That’s what constitutes a world,” he replies. Excerpts from this film series screens in conjunction with the 2012 Deleuze Studies Conference happening here in New Orleans this year. Special introduction and discussion led by C. J. Stivale.
Opening June 29:
HICK by Derick Martini. From the acclaimed director of Lymelife, An adaptation of Andrea Portes’ controversial novel about teen sexuality, HICK unfolds the journey, at once raw and mythical, of 13 year-old Luli McMullen (Chloë Grace Moretz), who sets out from her hard-luck, troublesome home in a fading Nebraska farm town for the glittering paradise of Las Vegas. Spurred by cinematic dreams and the hope for a “sugar daddy” who might finally save her, Luli finds herself on a perilous westward trek through a larger-than-life landscape of misfits, renegades and outsiders. She is quickly drawn to two contrasting drifters: Eddie (Eddie Redmayne), a razor-tongued, baby-faced cowboy with a mysterious limp, and an alluring grifter named Glenda (Blake Lively). Snared in their unexpected paths, Luli’s trip down the interstate becomes a defining odyssey – an encounter with heartbreak, absurdity and danger, but also with wonder, tenderness and the hard-won knowledge that just maybe she can save herself. Also starring Alec Baldwin, Rory Culkin, and Juliette Lewis.
Opening June 29:
5 BROKEN CAMERAS by Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi. Winner Sundance Film Fest 2012 – World Documentary – Directing Prize. Palestinian farm laborer Emad has five video cameras, and each of them tells a different part of the story of his village’s resistance to Israeli oppression. Emad lives in Bil’in, just west of the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Using the first camera, he recorded how the bulldozers came to rip the olive trees out of the ground in 2005. Here, a wall was built directly through his fellow villagers’ land to separate the advancing Jewish settlements from the Palestinians. In the first days of resistance to the Jewish colonists and the ever-present Israeli soldiers, Emad’s son Gibreel was born. Scenes shift from the infant growing into a precocious preschooler to the many peaceful acts of protest, and the steady progress of the construction of the dividing wall. Sympathizers from all over the world, including from Israel, provide help as resistance develops, but when the situation intensifies, people are arrested and villagers are killed. Emad keeps on filming despite pleas from his wife, who fears reprisals. It makes for an intensely powerful personal document about one village’s struggle against violence and oppression. Proceeds from the screenings of this film will benefit the 2012 New Orleans Middle East Film Festival.
Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center 1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. New Orleans, LA 70113-1311 (504) 352-1150 rene@zeitgeistinc.net Advanced tickets to all Zeitgeist events are available here Zeitgeist – noun German. The spirit of the times; general trend, mood or feeling characteristic of a particular period of time, especially as it is reflected ... Continue reading »
