Handmade Nation Hits Theaters

Wednesday night I saw the SF premiere of Faythe Levine's long anticipated craft documentary Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY Art, Craft & Design, courtesy of SF360Film+Club. And I wasn't the only one. That place was PACKED.

This film has been looong in the making, it seems, and it came out just under an hour, but nicely organized, with a catchy soundtrack and great opening/closing credit animation.

It opens with a great sequence of heavy-hitters in the craft world, the stars of Handmade Nation, talking about the cult of craft; they define, describe and depict their own relationships to making, and in doing explain why craft has come to be so important to the community of people doing it right now. This is the stuff that always gets me, the composite definitions people come up with for this seemingly innocuous pastime that are compelling and powerful reactions to modernity. As one such craft-lebrity, Sabrina Gschwandtner puts it, "Being a crafter is a way to slow down."

The film was fun to watch, looking for faces and spaces that you recognize, hearing familiar accounts of craft fair culture and learning more about companies you've seen on the circuit. It's a proud film, in a good way, because it takes it back to the more emotional roots of craft's new wave and effectively separates out the business of it all. It reminded me of the time back in college when my bestie Mary Wegmann and I fawned over issues of craft zines that we had to order in the mail and craft was so romantic and subversive and GOOD.

And now we all know craft is a little different, more money-making and less rough around the edges, but Handmade Nation really transports you back to that time when it was relatively new. Lots of the crafters show how they make their work, without much proprietary concern about other people copying them--craft in the beginning was after all, about sharing resources and getting as many people interested as possible in making things.

It's a celebration of a film, for sure, and poses great questions about the future of a movement that has reached critical mass in many ways. The same real, hard bound book deals, pattern and fabric lines for craft chain stores and craft fairs that trump malls for holiday shopping destinations, while signs of the movements success are also challenges to the very anti-corporate, d.i.y. roots of it all. Keeping with tradition, there were crafters set up vending things before and after the film itself:

Faythe Levine wasn't there for the screening (which I thought was a real tragedy!) and so she wasn't available to discuss the questions she poses at the end of the film surrounding all these issues of cultural negotiation and the future. Many people see craft as a direct challenge to mass production and too, a challenge to capital itself. But when craft gets HUGE, crafters are faced with the same decisions as capitalists. And the collective decision the community makes in the next five years about whether to go big or go home, will be an important one. The movement has gotten big enough now that there are many conflicting ideas about what the future of craft will look like, and this film doesn't show that conflict as much as I would have expected. That's probably my only criticism. Though there was a fine panel after the screening, the panelists' discussion wasn't about the film specifically, but more about their experiences in the d.i.y. community.

As a document of an historic movement, the film hit its mark. Sorry for the long post! But really, my heart just swelled watching it.

E2 = MC BP

This actually has nothing to do with Einstein, which is good because it's hard to write exponents on the internet. But if you pretend the 2 up there is smaller and higher and then you use your thinking cap and decipher the code BP (Pssst! Brad Pitt!) then you will have solved the equation, leading you to the treasure, to bask in the glory that is the series on PBS called E Squared.

What does Brad Pitt have to do with it? Well apparently in his probably constant efforts to keep up with Angelina's do-gooding, Braddie has lent his voice to narrate this ongoing series on public television about sustainable design and culture. "Woah!" (That's what I first said when I caught it live on tv for the first time.)

This season, the series offers three families of programming: design, energy and transport. Both are shot in the same cinematic, well sound-tracked, crisply pictured style and both are very very good. I write you about it now because the episode featuring Velo Liberte just went up on the website in the transport family. Perhaps you've already collected quite the earful about the great success of the French bicycle sharing program, but even if you are already familiar, you should still be able to appreciate the real spotlight and consideration the idea is given in this brief documentary piece. Especially in light of all the like-minded proposals gaining consideration in cities all over the world, this piece does a great job discussing the pros and cons, the obstacles and the successes of the notion.

Photo from the Crew's documentation of filmmaking.

If you have the time, I highly recommend the other pieces too, as there are several about New Orleans and one about the Federal Building here in San Francisco. They are all listed on the program's website under webcasts. While the series on its own merits makes a great addition to the PBS roster, the program represents a great way that the technology giant AutoDesk has contributed something decidedly un-commercial that is of very high quality. With my soft spot for pretty documentaries and predisposition to this sort of programming, I was an easy target. But since you read this blog, I'm betting you might be too. And to further bait you, even BSNYC had almost entirely nice, however snarky, things to say about the piece.

E2 has no embed! option on their player and the Velib' bit hasn't made it on to youtube yet, so I need you to trust me here and follow the link. They say it will only be available for a week, so you'd better just do it today. Right Now! Ready? 1, 2, 3...Go!

Educational & Entertaining

I watched this incredible documentary the other night all about the UMWA strike in Kentucky in the 70's. For me, it was one of those things that you can't believe you hadn't seen til now. Truly a "Where have you been all my life!" moment. I have this sneaking feeling that not many people of our, er, generation have seen it, based solely on my having to repeat the title every time I mention it to someone new. But this, friends, is a travesty.



It's called Harlan County U.S.A. The film documents the miner's struggle to organize under the heavy shadow of Duke Power Company in Harlan County, Kentucky. This small instance was just one case of a local branch of the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) but their feud with Duke Power was indicative of the same kinds of struggles faced across the country between the coal miner's and their bosses. Director Barbara Koppel does a brilliant job weaving together footage of the strikers & scabs, the national media coverage and clips documenting the music that evolved within the mining community. For me, the best part of her coverage was the coverage she provided of the striking workers' wives and the huge role they played in picketing and organizing on behalf of their husbands. She later described in an interview,

The women for me were the people who were the strongest. were the most passionate. Who weren't afraid of, you know, semi automatic carbeans with tracer bullets, would just get right out there on the picket lines. Because they had watched their grandfathers and their fathers die from black lung.

Not only did this film win an academy award the year of its release in 1976, but Harlan County USA is also one of the distinguished films among the esteemed Criterion Collection. Pretty much this means that if you don't like it, you're on your own. It's that good.