813 – American Pop (1981)

timespace coordinates: 1890s – 1970’s New York City – Kansas – California

American Pop is a 1981 American adult animated musical drama film starring Ron Thompson and produced and directed by Ralph Bakshi. It was the fourth animated feature film to be presented in Dolby sound. The film tells the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music in the 20th century.

The majority of the film’s animation was completed through rotoscoping, a process in which live actors are filmed and the subsequent footage is used for animators to draw over. However, the film also uses a variety of other mixed media including water colors, computer graphics, live-action shots, and archival footage. (wiki)

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771 – Robinson in Ruins (2010)

Robinson in Ruins is a 2010 British documentary film by Patrick Keiller and narrated by Vanessa Redgrave. It is a sequel to Keiller’s previous films, London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997). It documents the journey of the fictional title character around the south of England. (wiki)

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read: 770

750 – Rudolf Steiner and the Science of Spiritual Realities (1991 documentary)

Dr. Rudolf Steiner‘s fundamental gift to mankind was the creation of the science of spirit known as anthroposophy, from the Greek “anthropos,” or man, and “sophia,” or wisdom.

This one hour television documentary takes us on a fascinating journey into the realms just beyond our five senses. Rudolf Steiner not only found how to experience these areas directly, in a very safe and methodical manner, but he also developed specific techniques which, if utilized in the right way and with the proper intention, enable the individual to have insight into the spiritual realities.

In addition to learning of this extraordinary individuality, we meet some of the men and women who are utilizing the impulses brought by Dr. Steiner to expand and enhance their specific vocations in very practical ways, e.g. education, agriculture, medicine, mathematics, architecture, the arts, +working with retarded children and adults.

watch on YouTube

694

“The day science begins to study nonphysical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

Nikola Tesla

691 – The Wonder of Weeds (2011)

“…when something does get labeled alien, an entire industry will spring up dedicated to its destruction.”

Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins celebrates the humble and sometimes hated plants we call weeds. He discovers that there is no such thing as a weed, botanically speaking, and that in fact what we call a weed has changed again and again over the last three hundred years. Chris uncovers the story of our changing relationship with weeds – in reality, the story of the battle between wilderness and civilisation. He finds out how weeds have been seen as beautiful and useful in the past, and sees how their secrets are being unlocked today in order to transform our crops.

Finally, Chris asks whether, in our quest to eliminate Japanese Knotweed or Rhododendron Ponticum, we are really engaged in an arms race we can never win. We remove weeds from our fields and gardens at our peril.

YOUTUBE

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“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

Inversnaid (1881)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

668 – Ready Player One (2018)

spacetime coordinates: 2045 Columbus, Ohio

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cultural references

The film was noted to have significant differences from the book, with some critics calling the film’s plot an improvement over the source material. 🙂

665 – The Botany of Desire (2009 documentary )

The Botany of Desire is a two-hour program broadcast by PBS based on The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip, beauty; marijuana, intoxication; the apple, sweetness; and the potato, control.

The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan’s first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.

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Michael Pollan on twitter