2093

Ukraine on Fire (2016 documentary)

Ukraine on Fire is a 2016 documentary film directed by Igor Lopatonok. It features Oliver Stone, the executive producer, interviewing figures surrounding the 2014 Ukrainian revolution such as Viktor Yanukovich and Vladimir Putin.

In early March 2022, it was reported that the documentary had been removed from YouTube, the company explaining they “removed this video for violating our violent or graphic content policy, which prohibits content containing footage of corpses with massive injuries, such as severed limbs”; subsequently, the film was uploaded to Rumble for free viewing. As of 12 March 2022, the documentary is again available on YouTube, this time with a content warning attached. (wiki)

imdb

Revealing Ukraine (2019 documentary)

“Revealing Ukraine” by Igor Lopatonok continues investigations on of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis following “Ukraine on Fire”. In addition, it analyzes the current political backstage and its dangerous potential for the world. (imdb)

on YouTube

<<< 0244 – The Putin Interviews 

2024 – Zeros and Ones (2021)

Zeros and Ones is a 2021 American-Italian thriller film written and directed by Abel Ferrara. It stars Ethan Hawke, Cristina Chiriac, Phil Neilson, Valerio Mastandrea, Dounia Sichov, Korlan Madi, Mahmut Sifa Erkaya and Anna Ferrara. (wiki)

I decided to repost my thread with first thoughts on Abel Ferra’s remarkable last production. Altough hard to encapsulate and probably not a success with the critics – Ferrara’s late foray into current world affairs is one of the most visionary & contemporary things out there. It’s impossible for me to sum up but it as if he took wll our daily digital supper, all the aberran and yet so real and hard to encapsulate -apocalyptic moods and made them into a movie. My tw were posted as sort of personal notes freshly after watching it online and reading just Steven Shaviro’s blog review (he’s a big Ferrara fan). I stumbled on Ferrara almost by chance, wachted Bad Lieutenant with my father as an adolescent. We were both blasted apart. There was nothing to compare it with. Will never forget his academic vampire movie (The Addiction) – a total and welcome radical reworking of old horror tropes.

Watched Abel Ferarras ZEROS and Ones (2021).
Incredibile piece of work – almost an anti war, conspiracy & spy genre movie. It's like nothing I've seen coming out of COVID era. Filmed almost entirely at night in Covid Rome.https://t.co/Ze5nXWyCmD

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

Everything else seems passé or cliché in comparison, completly missing the pulse of the times. Vatican explodes (implodes?). Feeds of video streams & online blackmail material is ubiquitous. A complot without a plot. Explanations are superfluous.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

Ethan Hawke (as an ex- soldier merc? with an anarchist twin brother) stumbles trough the looking glass. Pawn gone rogue, muddled & completly dissociative, praying in mosques & churches. Higher forms of corruption (like friend @IonD sez), utterly impervious & black boxed.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

The slick & vacuous corporate ruthlessness of Ferrara's New Rose Hotel (1998) gave way to ceaseless military industrial machinations, gagging orders deceptions & smoke screens. Water boarding & hand sanitizers are part of the very same world. [Julian Assange gets extradited :(].

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

It has been going on since 1000 years, but no one seems to know precisely what, apart from mullahs & anti imperialist homeless suicide bombers. Almost everyone seems to act against their own best interests. "Jesus was a soldier but nobody knows on who's side."~voicever

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

In the wake of Pentagon's new approved aberrant military budget – A. Ferrara's ZEROS and Ones – lets the whole preemptive, self actualizing illogic of War on Terror infuse every corner of life. Stripped of its makeshift ideological facade – collusion & complicity widen the maze.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

Ethan Hawke's character pandemic rules seem both strict & lax at the same time. Everything is mediated technologically: the torture, honey traps, backroom deals, confessions under truth drugs. Feverish self immolation & enlightenment ideals both gush out during interrogation.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

(Zeros and Ones made me think of Sadie Plant's 1997 groundbreaking cyber feminist clasic)
Ferrara acknowledges this digital (video) ubiquity and near instantaneity of special ops, transmissions, being one step ahead. Computer screens get shot. Warnings spoken through video call.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

Night lit monuments of Rome filmed as with a phone camera. Documentary style long shots of lonely streets get mashed with closeups & grainy, almost night vision camera or even (?) CNN bombarded skies over Baghdad, zoom blackmail, pixelated explosions by unknown terror bombings.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

Remarkable movie by a director in his 70s.
Not going to find any narrative – if that's what youre looking for. Even Ethan Hawke's (as himself) prologue & epilogue framing, maintains contradictions + unnerving incompatibility – a key duplicity you might say almost intact.

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 12, 2021

One of my favorite lines from Ferrara's Zeros and Ones – (beside many others "no worries they're negative") Ethan Hawke's brother ranting under truth serum: "Your strippers are Marxist!"

— sentient gloomberg @TironStefan@mastodon.social (@TironStefan) December 13, 2021

1982 – Oats Studios

Oats Studios is an independent film studio started in 2017 by Oscar-nominated South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp (District 9) – imdb.

Oats Studios – Volume 1 – Zygote

The studio was created with the goal of distributing experimental short films via YouTube and Steam in order to gauge the community for interest and feedback as to which of them are viable for expansion into feature films.

Adam | Unity   ADAM: Episode 2   ADAM: Episode 3

Actors featured in the films include Sigourney Weaver, Carly Pope, Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Kellan Lutz, Michael Rogers, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and Dakota Fanning. (wiki)

https://oatsstudios.com/

1957 – Man on Fire (2004)

spacetime coordinates: 2003 Mexico City Man on Fire is a 2004 action thriller film directed by Tony Scott based on the 1980 novel of the same name by A. J. Quinnell. Denzel Washington portrays John Creasy, a despondent, alcoholic former U.S. Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance Captain and CIA Special Activities Division officer – turned bodyguard, who goes on a revenge rampage after his charge, nine-year-old Lupita “Pita” Ramos (Dakota Fanning) is abducted. The supporting cast includes Christopher Walken, Radha Mitchell, Giancarlo Giannini, Marc Anthony, Rachel Ticotin and Mickey Rourke. (wiki)

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imdb

1848 – The Courier (2020)

timespace coordinates: 1960 – 1963 London, England – Moscow,  the Soviet Union / Cuban Missile Crisis

The Courier is a 2020 historical spy film directed by Dominic Cooke. The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne, a British businessman who was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service to deliver messages to secret agent Oleg Penkovsky (played by Merab Ninidze). Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley, and Angus Wright also star. (wiki)

imdb

1713 – Monsters of Man (2020)

timespace coordinates: 2020’s Cambodia

A robotics company vying to win a lucrative military contract team up with a corrupt CIA agent to conduct an illegal live field test. They deploy four weaponised prototype robots into a suspected drug manufacturing camp in the Golden Triangle, assuming they’d be killing drug runners that no one would miss. (Official Website)

imdb

1711 – The Longest War (2020 documentary)

This documentary feature unpacks the human stories and drama behind America’s involvement in Afghanistan, now the longest war in U.S. history.  (imdb)

rottentomatoes