cineSOURCE magazine

State of the Cartoon Report
by Karl Cohen

SF's Mark Fiore Wins Pulitzer for Polical Animated Cartoons

Mark Fiore, a political cartoonist and animator who rises above all others on the Internet, is presently on SFGate.com, Mother Jones.com, CBSNews.com and other sites.

Equal Opportunity Insulter: Fiore reserves his most searing sarcasm for bankers, Republicans, etc. Photo: courtesy M. Fiore

His submissions for the Pulitzer included "Science-gate" (12/09/09) which lampoons skeptics of global warming, "Obama Interruptus" (12/02/09) which portrays his trying to stay focused despite the distractions of the world around him, and "Credit Card Reform" (10/28/09) which takes on the fabulous mumbo-jumbo double-talk offers of the credit card industry.

In 2000, Fiore taught himself Flash, found two customers and started churning out Flash cartoons like crazy. Then the "dream job" he had always wanted appeared: the San Jose Mercury News hired him as their political cartoonist. Being on staff was great until he discovered his editor was under tremendous pressure to keep circulation and ad revenues up.

"It was awful," Fiore says. He lasted six months due to their restrictive editorial policy. (Translation: the Merc did not allow him to kick ass and say what he wanted because of editor's fear of loosing income if he really allowed his staff to speak freely.)

Fiore has been syndicating his weekly animated cartoons online since leaving the paper in 2001, earning high praise. The Wall Street Journal calls him "The undisputed guru of the form." He has received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and other honors. Syndicated weekly to numerous Websites run by newspapers and other organizations, his work is seen regularly by millions of people.

With excellent voice work, music, and animation, Fiore's cartoons are extremely well produced. More importantly, he is free to say what he wants. He says he gets his ideas from the daily media. Whatever upsets him the most generally becomes the subject/butt of his next cartoon. Indeed, he dares to make fun of any subject that interests him.

One brilliant Fiore cartoon, "What If_" (6/25/08), suggests what might happen if a third candidate had entered the 2008 presidential race. In a faux political hit piece, Fiore has an advertisement attacking the candidate's ethics, patriotism, etc. "He has never once been seen wearing a flag pin. He has spent years studying at a religious school in the Middle East. Some call him a hero for the injuries he sustained under torture, yet he would sit down and talk with those who would harm us. His tax plan amounts to making the rich poor and poor rich - Jesus Christ, not the change we want!" See Fiore's work at http://www.markfiore.com.

Imagemovers Starts "Dark Life" for Disney

Robert Zemeckis, who was one of the "Dirty Dozen" cabal of filmmakers at USC including Walter Murch and George Lucas, is keeping his team in the game despite Imagemovers's closure by Disney last month (see CS Apr10). "Dark Life," a science fiction set in the near future, when some humans have escaped environmental disasters by living under the sea, is slated for a fall 2010 release. But it is will contain little or no performance capture work, so I suspect the actors will perform on blue or green screen sets and Imagemovers Digital will drop in computer generated backgrounds. The studio is still set to close early next year.

Oakland Museum Celebrates Pixar

To celebrate Pixar's 25 years of animating excellence in the Bay Area, the Oakland Museum of California is mounting a massive show, with over 500 works, including several not previously seen, from July 31 to January 9, 2011. The show began in 2005 at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and over the past five years it has traveled around the world.

The local exhibit will also show off the museum's new major remodeling work, which kept it closed for months. The museum updated the exhibit so it will include art from "Up," "Toy Story 3," "Wall'E" and other recent projects. Adding a sense of novelty, there will be a giant "Pixar Zoetrope" that you can enter to see the moving images, and Artscape, "an immersive, wide-screen projection of digitally processed images that gives the viewer a sensation of entering into and exploring the exquisite details of the original artwork."

The exhibit covers about 11,000 square feet of exhibit space and is adjacent to Oakland's centerpiece, Lake Merritt, a lovely place to take a walk and grab a bite at Lake Chalet.

Disney/Pixar Sign Selick Contract

Variety announced no details except that the renown animator Henry Selick will work out of Pixar (he is still commuting from Portland but plans to move back soon) and that Henry's stop-motion work could be based on either his own ideas or adaptations. They also said, "Selick hopes to benefit from the Pixar brain trust and technology, but will continue to produce 'toons using his trademark stop-motion style."

Selick directed both "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach" for Disney. After "James" was completed, Disney decided to only produce computer-generated animation. However, after creating overly expensive CG products that were not super profitable, they suddenly see the wisdom of returning to less expensive, Selick-style stop-motion or to hand-drawn animation - a historically rare case of technological de-evolution.

Lucas Expert at Extending "Star Wars"

Variety has announced Lucasfilm Animation is working on a Star Wars animated comedy series. The Daily Show's Brendan Hay and Robot Chicken's Seth Green and Matthew Seinreich, will be among the writers.

Posted on May 11, 2010 - 12:15 AM
Romanticism and Its Discontents, East and West
by Doniphan Blair

Given the approaching holiday, we reprise our article from February 2018.

The love-inducing cherubs we see every February have been part of our romantic culture since ancient times. image: detail of Raphael's 'The Triumph of Galatea' (1514)

ON VALENTINE'S DAY OUR THOUGHTS,
positive, negative or agnostic, often turn to romantic love.

A high art with a low object, romantic love was developed by many societies across the globe to bring together two very different people by integrating emotions, intellect and biology—a tough gig by any measure. With the widespread outing of sexual impropriety and crime, the flowering of transgender consciousness and our ever-increasing idiosyncrasies, it’s getting harder and evolving faster than usual.

Admittedly, romantic theory, romanticism or Romanticism, as the classical Western version can be called, suffered major setbacks since the latter's Golden Age in the 19th century. That was when the English poets Byron, Shelley and Keats, among others, and novelists like Jane Austen, internationalized it from its German roots, turning Gothic tendencies toward enjoying nature, suicidal crushes and ennui to a more mature, adventurous and liberating passion.

Indeed, English Romanticism came to be considered the natural conclusion to The Enlightenment, since it provided a fecund workshop for free thinkers and a poetic style for America, with its oversized individualism and dreams of justice as well as natural kingdom—until it came under attack.

First were the French romantics, whose love expertise could not be denied; then came the Darwinists and pragmatists, who considered it impractical, even though Darwin’s second theory essentially explains romanticism; and finally there was the alienation and pollution of the Industrial Revolution. Soon following was the 20th century’s orgy of war and mass murder, much of it orchestrated by ersatz German romantics, who failed to grasp their own forbears’ insight into love and humanism.

Naturally, this generated widespread pessimism and cynicism, especially with the added threat of nuclear annihilation. Only twenty years after Auschwitz, however, the poets, dreamers and kids doubled down on 19th century Romanticism with an even more ambitious movement personified by The Beatles, notably their great cliché but even greater universal truth: “All you need is love.”

Regardless of those amorous achievements, romantic satisfaction remains a moving target. Although they sang of true love in the ‘60s, within a decade about half of all marriages were ending in divorce. Despite the benefits of liberated sex and revived romanticism, joining two very different people suffered the deprecations of the modern and then the digital age: atomized communities, physical isolation, attention deficit disorder and an obsession with machines.

With the emergence of the world wide web and, a decade later, smart phones, we now have near-universal access to "the tree of knowledge," albeit one swamped in triviality, fraud and porn. The latter jumped a brave-new-world level in January 2018 when Realbotix, out of San Diego, California, debuted its artificially-intelligence, able-to-converse and anatomically-correct female machines.

Realbotix, a San Diego company, debuted its lifelike and chatty sexbots in January, 2018, according to San Diego Union Tribune (9/13/17). photo: courtesy SDUT

Are we now due another radical romantic shift? Are the aesthetics and systems of yesteryear even viable? Can personality tests and big data—AKA dating apps—provide a better way to, if not true love, at least sustainable companionship, including reproducing the next generation? Indeed, reproduction has dropped precipitously in many advanced societies, making some form of activist romanticism mandatory for their continuance.

Alas, the ancient ways won’t go quietly into the night. Even as each generation must develop its own sexual mores, music, dance and other art, romantic behavior facilitating procreation follows guidelines dating back to the animals, even insects.

Long before the romance novel slew the hero narrative on the fields of literature, love was provisioning the brave souls standing against patriarchal panegyrics and epics. Italy probably had a third-century martyr named Valentinus, who healed the sick and joined the lovelorn, but he was hardly the first to highlight the work of the heart. Romantic love is well-represented in “The Bible”, from Adam and Eve, who were “naked in the garden and not ashamed,” to “The Songs of Solomon”, eight matriarchal love poems, hiding in plain sight in the middle of that Ur-patriarchal text.

Romantic love also figures highly in Hindu scripture and ancient Persian, Chinese and Arab poetry, as well as much tribal lore, but nowhere more so than in Japan, where a sophisticated romanticism emerged in the 11th century, a few hundred years before its European equivalent.

Japan is also where we find romance's biggest reversal. Starting in the 1980s, census takers, psychologists and sociologists started documenting a decline in Japanese childbirth and sex. Sometimes called the "celibacy syndrome," it came from overwork, the education of women, or their ongoing oppression, or—conversely yet again—the end of traditional culture, according to various hypotheses.

Given Japan created a classical romanticism centuries before the West and experienced its modern crisis a few generations earlier, perhaps it can illuminate the love-life travails of over-worked bourgeoisie or over-individuated hipsters elsewhere. To effect that translation, how does Japanese romanticism compare and contrast with similar desires and dreams in the West?

Sexual revolutions are nothing new, as we can see from the ‘60s but also antiquity. While pre-history can not be known, which makes Matriarchy Theory controversial, there’s ample archeological evidence indicating patriarchies emerged from older matriarchies during the onset of civilization. (Nonetheless, some 5% of societies continued as overt matriarchies and significantly more as covert ones.)

Early human communities must have gathered around adept grandmothers, given their cultural control, the child’s maternal attachment and the inability to verify fatherhood. If men wandered around hunting and were not fully aware sex led to babies, as the evidence indicates, they simply could not know the sons on which to build a patriarchy until women told them about the birds and the bees.

Naturally, pre-historic matriarchies were more peaceful, but their very success stimulated growth and systems inevitably atrophy over time. Indeed, agriculture and cities, which women helped start, require an ever-increasing buy-in from men to do all the extra work of farming, building and fighting. While hunter-gatherers are on the job only a half-a-dozen hours daily and herders can easily flee overwhelming force, farmers labor from dawn until dusk and are viscerally driven to defend their investment.

A Roman copy of Praxiteles's 'Aphrodite of Cnidus', surprised at her bath, considered the seventh wonder of the world. photo: unknown

This made a gendered revolution inevitable, while inspiring early romanticism: men will fight for families they now know they have; women will give love and its results to those who help their families; culture evolved precisely to encourage such exchanges.

As patriarchies emerged, however l, they had to compete with neighboring patriarchies, compelling them to not only fight but develop their stories, rituals and art, finally forcing a full break with matriarchal worldviews.

The ancient Greek men earned their stripes through long wars, epics about long wars and even more prodigious scientific investigation. Often left unmentioned is that they turned their romantic ideation on each other—homosexuality—which interrupted a central female power at its root.

Not coincidentally, the Greek's founding epic stars the gorgeous and independent Helen, evidently their last matriarchal queen. If Helen’s primary husband, Menelaus, stood by when she eloped with Paris, the handsomest man in the world, which is catnip for queens, there would have been no new philosophy to dramatize in "The Iliad”.

For the Greeks to evolve from their Bronze Age, warlord-priestess partnership to a cutting-edge patriarchy, with an army able to stop the enormous Persian Empire—twice in a single generation (5th C BCE)—some man had to assume full political as well as fatherly responsibility.

Since fatherhood starts with paternity awareness and matriarchal queens are free and regent, Menelaus had to fight for Helen, drag her home and lock her in the kitchen, if only mythically.

"The Iliad” debuted a patriarchal shift and host of heroes—Menelaus’s older brother Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus—but also the competition, infighting and jealousy endemic among men. Fortunately, they also invented pure rationalism, or philosophy, and the ten-year war ended with a symbol of sophisticated intellectual thought: the Trojan Horse.

Homer’s second book, meanwhile, covers Odysseus’s fantastic journey AND desire to return home to his wife, Penelope, both basic romantic concepts. Indeed, even as the Greeks reveled in their gendered revolution and exploration, they preserved their matriarchal knowledge base.

Women remained oracles and priestesses; they were idealized as Athena, the goddesses of wisdom AND war; and they were portrayed as intelligent and empowered—despite being stark naked—in the masterful statues Praxiteles started sculpting, also in the 5th C BCE, not coincidentally. As an inducement, they were allowed some freedoms, notably the annual celebration of Dionysus, which featured heavy drinking and orgies.

The more-ancient Hebrews, however, prohibited homosexuality and fostered patriarchal troth through even longer books, monotheism and circumcision. Despite the covenant-with-god or hygiene explanations offered by rabbis and scholars, cutting off the tip of the penis is obviously both a literal and symbolic deterrent to “dick thinking” and goddess worship.

Monotheism was the perfect faith for patriarchy, given a fertility goddess will inevitably birth more gods, and it granted men suzerainty not only over their children, women and houses but the entire universe, previously considered female. Moreover, its literacy and intellectual discourse fed civilization.

Despite the Greeks’ spectacular achievements in math, science, philosophy, democracy, architecture, art, theater, shipbuilding, sports AND armed forces, their failure to formulate a unified field theory, as did the Jews, condemned Hellenism to all but disappear by the 5th C CE, although aspects continued in the Roman and Byzantine empires, and in Islamic civilization.

The Hebrews, meanwhile, preserved their prior matriarchal culture in the character of Eve, "the mother of ALL living things," who obtained wisdom from the snake, an obvious symbol for both the phallus and research into how reproduction works, the obligatory first study of a self-conscious species.

Amaterasu coming out of her cave, by Utagawa Kunisada, the most commercially successful artist in 19th C Japan. image: U. Kunisada

While men had to be granted dominion in “Genesis”—it was a patriarchal text, after all—Adam is hardly the great warrior or genius, given he both blames Eve AND depends on her for knowledge. Moreover, many of the following Biblical stories tell of powerful women, and the Jewish Sabbath is essentially a matriarchal holiday, run by and for women (Christian women work on their sabbath, Jewish women do not).

The Japanese had a similar matriarchy-to-patriarchy transition. Like the Greeks, they developed a robust warrior class, which veered queer to veto pussy power. Indeed, they also defeated invasions by a neighboring super-power twice in one generation: the Mongols (1274 and 1281 CE). As with the Jews, they continued to honor women in the family and culture but more so in their religion, a fully female polytheism, unlike the Greek pantheon led by Zeus.

The supreme being of Japan’s ancient Shintoism is the sun goddess Amaterasu. While only a small percent of modern Japanese practice Shintoism (less than half are religious, the vast majority Buddhist), it remains the nation's cultural foundation; a female priest crowns each new male emperor, who is mythically descendent from Amaterasu, and its cultural and psychological effects continued to permeate.

With Japan’s unification, in the 3rd C CE, and its importation of new ideas (Confucianism, Buddhism) and tools (writing) from China, it entered its classical period. Capitalizing on the new cultural opportunities, women known as Saburuko began selling their services as entertainers and artists as well as prostitutes, a powerful trifecta since Shintoism eschewed sexual shame and featured sacred prostitution, as in ancient India and the Middle East.

Classical culture climaxed a couple of times but massively in the early 11th C with “The Tales of Genji”, by Murasaki Shikibu, a noblewoman. Nominally centered on Genji, the son of an emperor and a lowly concubine, who was reduced from royalty to commoner, it concerns a near-endless series of relationships with women, some seemingly incestuous, others generating offspring, all exploring feelings, etiquette, court culture and the power of love. This was a quantum leap from the quests, conquests and imposition of rules men had been recording since the invention of the technology of writing.

In fact, "Genji" was the world’s first “novel” or “romance,” terms originally interchangeable in Latin-derived languages. (Romance's first syllable, meanwhile, references Italy’s founding tribe, city and empire, although Rome did little to advance its eponymous philosophy until Dante.)

“Genji” generated a romantic revolution, replete with the incessant exchange of poetry (often just two lines), enumerable love affairs (often clandestine), and art and aesthetics featuring affairs of the heart and imagination. In part because Shintoism has no central text, “Gengi” seemed to provide a powerful, indigenous worldview around which society could gather. The genre continued in Lady Sarashina’s “As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams” (11th C) and “Confessions of Lady Nijo” (14th C), among others.

The Greeks wrote little poetry and less about love, preferring the physicality and drama of theater. Sappho (7th C BCE), their only full-fledged romantic poet, was an educated woman, probably even a matriarch, from the island of Lesbos, which gave name to that gendered worldview, though she was also passionately bisexual. Not much Sappho survived Hellenism's civilizational collapse, only a few thrilling lines, “For love is the military power which no soldier or sailor can withstand,” among them.

The Christians, for their part, attempted to outlaw male lust, which empowered both the fertility faiths and violent men, with a cult of chastity. By venerating Christ’s virgin mother Mary, they enshrined matriarchal wisdom and love as well as a hoped-for restraint, although they took centuries to establish a celibate priesthood, and until today to start enforcing it.

Removing religion from society’s tumult was a logical defensive technique also used by the Greeks, Hindus and others, although it was considered anti-life by Protestants, Jews, Muslims and most eastern religions including Shintoism. Despite the sexual repression, Christianity was intensely romantic, with a handsome personal deity who loves you and will forgives all your sins, not to mention its promise of eternal life and unbreakable, sacred bond with the procreative partner.

Two troubadours from Avignon, one playing the popular nine-stringed lute, circa 1350. image: unknown

By the time Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) declared his devotion to Beatrice to become Italy’s first romantic poet, southern France and northern Italy had fallen for the Cathars, a Christian sect elevating asceticism, purity, pacifism and female feelings but also a second cosmological force, Satan. For that reason, the Catholics declared them a heresy and attacked them in the bloody Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), destroying their defenders and massacring their civilians, including their poets and musicians, eventually called troubadours.

Conflating love of the Lord with that of the beloved, the troubadours advocated for both a public Christian devotion and a private sexual one, in keeping with the Jewish, Muslim and Sufi poets of neighboring Spain's first Golden Age (9-11th C). Fleeing the Crusades, the troubadours crossed Europe, singing of love and freedom, which uplifted the peasants but transported the queens and knights, whose illicit love was more sacred than marriage, they claimed, since it was given freely.

Japan also fostered clans of skillful knights, the samurai, who joined with empowered women, if not queens. Their warlords finally took over in the Edo Period (1630-1868), installing the shogun and closing Japan to the outside world, although Zen mystics, artists and women continued expanding its intellectual horizons. “Life of an Amorous Woman” (17th C) by Ihara Saikaku, a man, combined humor, sex and love to showcase a more masculine romanticism. Becoming the "Gengi" of its day, it kicked off the fantastic "floating worlds" period.

In Europe, troubadour feminism was eventually subsumed by the morality of the Protestants, who often covered women’s bodies and outlawed dancing, music and drink, much like modern radical Islam. Japanese women, however, carried on as influential writers, performers and priestesses, as well as lovers, while wearing their favorite finery and consuming their share of sake.

Combining traditional skills with pithy conversation and exquisite taste were the geisha, Saburukos times ten, many from fallen samurai families. In fact, their robes, the kimono, derived from the dress of the samurai’s gay adjuncts, suggesting an amazingly queer-tolerant, gender-competitive society. Gay men also contributed extensively to the arts, naturally, and controlled outright the popular Kabuki theater, which prohibited women.

The geishas were the queens of the Floating Worlds of Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka. But, unlike the denizens of other red-light districts world-wide, they blended male fantasy and gratification with their society’s highest arts, generating yet again the earth’s most advanced romanticism at that time.

Isolated from the real world, like the island of Japan itself, the Floating Worlds were divided from day labor but also the home, which was controlled by women, in the Confucian manner. Until recently, most Japanese men’s salaries were sent directly to their wives, compelling them to beg for booze money when on benders, a once-common sight Saturday nights across Tokyo.

Bit by bit, the men took over public life, but not creatively enough to save Edo society, which atrophied in the late 18th C. Eventually, the young samurai began to rebel, although they were divided between expelling the European traders and missionaries, who had trickled in, or embracing them and going modern. The choice was made in 1853 by the black gunships of Commodore Perry, who forced open Japan to American trade, in a catastrophe of national shame and unequal treaties.

But, as with the 3rd century imports from China, it triggered new thinking and tool use, and a determination to become equal to the invaders, leading to the Meiji Restoration. Named for Emperor Meiji, who took the throne at fourteen and ruled from 1868 to 1912, he may have contributed little. Meanwhile, a wily band of oligarchs steered Japan through years of crisis and rebellion, ended samurai feudalism and instituted a constitutional monarchy with a diet. They also achieved an amazing technological leap.

At the same time, the first schools for women were starting; some women were still prominent, like author Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-96), geisha Sada Yacco (1871-1946), and poet and feminist Yosano Akiko (1878-1942), the first tp translate "Genji" to modern Japanese. Others developed their own foreign affairs. Nine months after Perry, there began to appear mixed-race kids, starting in the main Yankee port of Yokohama, while many Japanese became fascinated with American culture.

The famous modern geisha Sada Yacco, who updated its traits and styles, circa 1900. photo: unknown

Empowered by western equipment and ideas, which they started studying zealously in the newly-opened universities, and their refocused patriarchal zeitgeist, the Meiji Restoration triggered an outpouring of male energy so massive the Japanese built an industrialized society in ONE generation. While much manufacturing was still done in huts, they soon fielded a fully mechanized army, even more astounding given their gun prohibition during the two centuries prior to Perry (because they allowed commoners to kill samurai).

While Emperor Meiji wrote poetry about peace, the oligarchs preferred the European playbook of power politics and raw materials extraction, colonizing Korea in 1873, invading northern China in 1885 and then annexing Taiwan. While not that remarkable in a century of European colonization of the Far East, Japan's victory over Russia in 1905 shocked Moscow elites, who blamed the Jews, and surprised the world.

Meanwhile, their refined romanticism continued, exemplified by Sada Yacco, who modernized geisha styles and became the Prime Minister’s mistress and then an admired actress, touring the US and Europe, where Japanese culture had, in turn, become a fad.

Japanese homosexuality, pornography and prostitution also continued apace, as detailed in Mori Ogai’s fascinating “Vita Sexualis” (1909). On top of explaining how he grew into a well-read modern man and doctor—the surgeon general of the Japanese Army, in fact—Ogai recalls many youthful adventures and societal secrets.

One is how almost every Japanese attic held an old book of sexy wood prints, if you could only ferret it out, although Ogai was initially confused when the men pictured seemed to have three legs. While the Greeks idealized small, symmetrical penises, Japanese artists preferred the exaggerated erections typical of matriarchal phallus shrines, which the women depicted in the woodcuts appeared to enjoy immensely, along with the occasional orgy or bestiality.

Those books included work by some of Japan's greatest artists, who found porn a lucrative side gig. Katsushika Hokusai, the early 19th C painter of the famous “Great Wave Off Kanagawa”, also did “Dreams of the Fisherman’s Wife”, which graphically portrays her intimate enthusiastic involvement with an enormous octopus.

By the 1920s, the films of Yasujiro Ozu, the books of Junichiro Tanizaki and Japan’s emerging democracy were showcasing a highly hybrid culture, which, as we can now see, is a Japanese specialty. Alongside the traffic jams, fanatic photo hobbyists, “modern girl” flappers and importation of all other things Western, from whiskey to classical music, they preserved Shinto rituals, emperor worship and extensive indigenous culture, including a healthy fish diet (making the Japanese some of the most long-lived people on the planet).

“Tanizaki is a special case,” noted the English-American author Pico Iyer, who married a Japanese woman and lived there for decades, in his “Nymphets in the New Japan” (New York Review of Books, 6/8/17). “Part of what gives his work their often lurid fascination is the gusto with which the novelist indulges his delight in everything girlish,” perhaps a vestige of romantic matriarchies. “The other part, is that he so unflinchingly measures the cost of such obsessions,” the male moral backlash.

Alas, military success inflates male egos. After decades of skirmishing around northern China and internal Japanese assassinations, corruption and power grabs, the militarists took over and decided to demonstrate their resolve by seizing China’s northern-most province, Manchuria (1931).

Japanese imperialism was romanticized by many in the East and some in the West as a necessary push back against Western imperialism, but not so much after the "Rape of Nanking," which killed up to a quarter-million civilians in 1938. Indeed, Japanese fascism, racism and emperor- and warrior-worship, as well as extreme violence, already evidenced an out-of-control patriarchy, which new reports of torture, grotesque medical experiments and mass murder only confirmed.

'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife’, by Katsushika Hokusai, considered Japan's greatest 19th C artist. image: Hokusai, 1814

War was opposed by Japanese communists, Buddhists and pacifists, like George Ohsawa (inventor of macrobiotics), as well as some women and artists. The great naval commander Admiral Yamamoto was so opposed to the invasion of China and, later, attacking the United States, he was subject to assassination attempts. Emperor Hirohito publicly recited an anti-war poem by his grandfather, Meiji the Great. But it was not enough to offset sixty years of unparalleled patriarchal as well as industrial and military success.

Indeed, the vast majority of Japanese intellectuals endorsed the war effort. Even the pioneering poet and feminist Akiko shifted from her staunch pacifism after the First Battle of Shanghai (1932) and endorsed "bushido," the ancient samurai code of honor, (although some say an exaggerated version was popularized in the late 19th century), even calling on the Chinese to embrace Japanese domination, despite the butchery.

Japan allied with Germany and Italy in 1940, and proceeded to conquer most of China and much of South-East Asia, including England’s super fortress in Singapore. After invading New Guinea, they threatened Australia and snuck across the ocean to surprise attack the American fleet in Pearl Harbor, in late 1941.

"We have awoken the sleeping giant," noted Admiral Yamamoto, while Zen master Kodo Sawaki predicted, "Our homeland will be destroyed, our people annihilated.” Nevertheless, most of the military and elite believed that the combination of a devastating sneak attack and their control of all the forward islands of the western Pacific would deter an American response.

Nor was there a course correction six months into the war when the US Navy sank four of Japan's five aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway. With half the US population and less than a fifth its industrial capacity, many knew that was the war’s turning point, although Japan fought on valiantly and viciously for three more years.

All warrior groups tend towards fanaticism and death cults, but Japan’s was aggravated by its ancient romanticism, which fostered Kamikaze fighters and a proclivity for dreaming ridiculously large, not unlike its ally, that other romantic innovator, Germany.

Even the impending invasion of Japan, which threatened thousands of civilians as well as the fanatics fighting to the death, or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which instantly killed almost 100,000, was not enough to inspire surrender. Emperor Hirohito finally forced his commanders to do so after an aborted coup and the vaporizing of a second city, Nagasaki, which suggested a tsunami of slaughter to come.

Conquest sharpens the mind. But unlike in Germany, where there was extensive hand-to-hand combat and rape throughout the country, and Nazism was outlawed postwar, Japan's occupation was less severe, the emperor was reinstated and samurai-worship continued among ex-military and some intellectuals.

Yukio Mishima (1925-70) began as a very creative author, who happened to be gay and was an aficionado of Japan's female culture. Indeed, he was raised by a powerful matriarch, his paternal grandmother; he adored "The Tales of Genji"; and, along with his highly literary novels, plays and essays, he wrote romance novels, which were very popular among women.

But he eventually became obsessed with samurai values, including “seppuku,” the self-disembowelment used to restore honor, which he himself resorted to after his failed coup attempt in 1970. Mishima provides a veritable roadmap on how romantic worldviews, masculine fantasy and patriarchal failure can precipitate a grievous imbalance.

The alpha girls of modern Japan like to indulge colorful and eccentric tastes, in fashion and elsewhere, Tokyo, circa 2005. Image: unknown

By the 1930s, Japanese women were largely locked in their kitchens, uneducated and unable to keep up on the news. The deprivations of war, destruction of their cities and grotesquerie of the nuclear bombs must have come as a terrible shock, especially to the romantically inclined. Although women were allowed to vote in the elections of 1948, and entered the educational and labor force with enthusiasm, they had another easily available recourse to voice their dissent: ending unqualified devotion to phallocentrism.

Japanese creativity reemerged right after the war, in an obvious attempt to process it. Indeed, there were over a half-a-dozen major art movements, from Gutai, led by Jiro Yoshihara, to the international Flexus movement, which included many women, notably Yoko Ono, an established artist long before she met John Lennon.

Geishas also continued, if in a diminished state. The funeral procession for Admiral Yamamoto, who was shot down after the Americans cracked the Japanese codes and tracked his flights, passed in front of the house of his beloved geisha, Kawai Chiyoko. The renown Mineko Iwasaki had her story fictionalized by American author Arthur Golden in his bestselling “Memoirs of a Geisha” (1997), in the first person no less (she sued and received a settlement).

Today, women are well represented in the arts; Yayoi Kusama, an abstract painter and sculptor, draws high prices in New York’s elite art market; and pop music is often pointedly female. Japan has many girl bands but also mature women musicians, like the one-named singer Nora and her salsa band, Orquesta de la Luz, which won awards and fans worldwide the 1990s on.

But when I asked a Japanese woman friend about her nation’s romanticism, she replied, “You mean like mothers for their children?” She appeared unfamiliar with classical Japanese literature, even though she was well-educated, her father was an intellectual, and her mother encouraged overseas travel and study. Evidently, as she was boarding her first international flight, they didn’t hand her a copy of "Tales of Genji”.

Moreover, her mother was not that into sex, she said; she herself praised women who rejected its thrall; and she was not that interested, even though she was a dedicated free spirit, who loved to play guitar and sing loudly while sitting in the sun, naked.

On the other hand, she accepted her sister, who was a “night worker,” which includes escort services or full-blown prostitution. Prostitution is strictly regulated in Japan, as befits the descendants of Shinto priestesses and geishas. Full penetration usually involves the yakuza, the Japanese mafia and apparent banner bearers of samurai values. Evidently, even as one sector of Japanese society recoils, another is immersed in the senses, prostitution flourishes and Japan has an internationally-famous pornography business.

A Japanese man proposes in public, in a combination of kitsch, commercialism and traditional culture, circa 2010. Image: unknown

Many young Japanese men and some women enjoy it, as indicated by the popular, sexualized Mangas (long, bound comic books) and Anime (animated fantasy films), which often feature naive immature men and smart sexual women. Although oppressed, some young women like to flaunt their ability to blend innocence and salaciousness, fostering the “schoolgirl" phenomena, which includes seducing older sugar daddies, and a flamboyant wild girl tradition.

Alas, it is often largely fantasy. Despite the baby boom which naturally follows immense slaughters, as well as their ancient romanticism and modern geishas and sensuousness, it is evidently not enough to inspire the re-invention of a functional romanticism.

There is a geek cohort called “otaku” and the more extreme “hikikomori,” young people of both genders, but mostly men. The Hikikomori are agoraphobics who refuse to leave the house, let alone engage intimately with the opposite sex. While some asexuality is standard, not at those levels and not including so many average men who are in a relationship or are married

Many explanations have been offered for Japan’s celibacy syndrome, notably the social tendency to conform and work too hard, the absence of "touch culture," and the demise of traditional culture, or conversely, the malingering patriarchy and oppression of women, who still have to contend with extensive groping on trains and subservience in the office (see "Why Aren't the Japanese Fucking?", 2015, or "Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?", 2013).

Alas, few commentators have mentioned how the inheritors of a robust romantic tradition might have been injured by the toxic masculinity of World War II. Although Japan's fecund balance between matriarchy and patriarchy was declining by the 19th C, the trauma of war and defeat may have broken it, leaving the average Japanese guy, or salary man, without a functional male role model, a modern Zen master, say.

There is nothing more painful than patriarchal collapse. Although the Greeks invented 95% of early Western Civilization, their power reached its zenith with Alexander the Great and the nation is now economically weak with a low birthrate (1.33 per woman, even less than Japan’s 1.44, circa 2016).

The Hebrews, for their part, only conquered the world of ideas, until the advent of Israel in 1948 and its military success. Despite its limited scope and low casualties, compared with neighboring conflicts, they too have been tarred as rabid patriarchs. Meanwhile an apparent gender equity has enabled the country to go gangbusters economically and reproductively (3.11 per woman, compared to the US’ 1.8).

Japan remains a very vibrant society, the third largest economy in the world. They recovered from the "bubble economy" and corruption of the 1990s, and their cars and cameras remain king. In addition to studying and working hard, the Japanese pursue all sorts of arts, hobbies and studies, sometimes from faraway, like the young people adopting the Chicano culture of Los Angeles, other times from within, like Buddhism or becoming a geisha.

Japanese romanticism continues despite the depredations—note the cherry blossoms in the background, indicating an ancient spring celebration honoring women and geishas. photo: unknown

Admittedly, refreshing romanticism is a tough gig. As the people who invented its earliest manifestation though, I assume the Japanese will eventually get back their mojo, probably with increasing input from the now-effervescent Koreans, they once conquered (see "The Story of K-Pop".

Knowing the Japanese expertise at expropriation, they will undoubtedly draw on many other sources as well. Perhaps they will even open Japan not just to foreign goods and innovation but people, wide-scale immigration, which they need to offset their population decline.

Balancing the needs of men and women, as well as practical business and romantic dreams, requires constant innovation and update. Japan may be a case study of similar problems in the West, after the recent exposure of criminal masculinity or the modern era's chilling of romance. Hopefully, however, the Japanese will eventually iron out their long twisting tale of love and art, while we can all look back on our fascinating romantic roots and create a fresh romantic future.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 20, 2022 - 12:09 AM
Tonia Rotkopf Blair: Holocaust Survivor, Matriarch, Author
by The Blair Family

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Tonia Rotkopf Blair, Brazil, 1949. photo: unknown

After this general obituary, a short version of which is in The NY Times, Doniphan Blair provides a personal remembrance.

TONIA ROTKOPF BLAIR DIED ON
December 9th, 2021, at 96, at home and surrounded by love, after a life so varied it seemed like nine. Starting in another era and enduring the Holocaust, she traveled through Europe and South America before settling in New York City and becoming a beatnik, homemaker, administrative assistant, Columbia graduate and, finally, writer.

Indeed, her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption”, was published in 2021. She was also the subject of the 2007 documentary “Our Holocaust Vacation” made by her sons and shown on PBS. Both feature her unique perspective on kindness and relationships during the Holocaust.

Born in Lodz, Poland, to Mendel and Miriam-Gitla Rotkopf (nee Sonenberg), who were socialists and secular Jews, Tonia was raised in one room without plumbing or electricity, along with older sister Irena and younger brother Salek. Poor but not deprived, they attended the progressive Yiddish Medem Schul.

After the German invasion, Tonia became the youngest nurse in the Lodz ghetto’s Lagenitska Hospital, which saved her from deportation with her family. They were all killed in 1942, in Mzsana Dolna, southern Poland. Despite this tragedy and the world war raging around her, she remained a teenage woman, who fell in love and learned about romance.

After the ghetto was liquidated in August 1944, she was shipped to Auschwitz and survived three weeks there. She was then sent to work in an airplane factory in Freiburg, Germany, where she was reunited with her best friend and fellow nurse, Bluma Strauch. Liberated from Mauthausen camp, Austria, by the Americans, they crossed to the Soviet side.

Returning to Lodz and finding no Jews but plenty of anti-Semitism, they hitchhiked back to the West and got nursing jobs in a refugee hospital in Landsberg am Lech, Germany, for almost two years. After moving to Paris, they travelled to La Paz, Bolivia, where Bluma had brothers. Continuing solo, Tonia lived with a wealthy cousin in Rio de Janeiro, right on Copacabana beach, another one of her varied lives. She finally arrived in Manhattan in 1950, where she felt right at home and started school, studying art, and working as a secretary.

Tonia at age 3 (far right), with her mother Miram, sister Irena and four Plonski cousins, 1928, Lodz, Poland. photo: professional

As an au pair for filmmaker Sidney Meyers, she met Vachel Blair, a cinematographer, veteran of the Spanish Civil War and WW II, and a gentile. They shared interests in multiculturalism, art and social justice.

After marrying and having two sons, they moved to Morningside Gardens, an experimental, integrated housing project near Columbia University. Tonia became an administrative assistant at the Interchurch Center and then Teachers College. She also went back to school, attending Columbia and graduating at 62 with a Sociology degree.

They bought a fixer-up country house and travelled extensively to visit their sons in California but also Brazil, Israel and Poland, where a 1980 journey awoke Tonia's ability to discuss the Holocaust. She also attended the second international gathering of Holocaust survivors, in Washington DC, in 1983, and joined a child survivor group, NAHOS.

After her husband died, in 1999, Tonia became part of a writers’ workshop taught by Susan Willerman and wrote some 40 stories longhand. Recognizing the strength of her style and insight into the female side of war, a son edited them and secured publication with Austin Macauley.

Tonia continued to travel until 2013, often to visit a son or granddaughter or attend a NAHOS gathering. After entering an assisted living facility in 2019, the pandemic inspired her family to bring her home. Taken care of principally by her granddaughter, she lived the last of her nine lives in comfort and community and passed peacefully, from complications due to Alzheimer’s.

She is survived by two sons and three grandchildren.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair, with her sons, Nicholas (lft) and Doniphan (rt), circa 1970. photo: Vachel Blair

Doniphan's Personal Remembrance

My mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, who resisted the Nazis with kindness, who travelled the world to find her people in New York, and who endured my teen years with permissiveness, died a month ago. Although she was 96, and we had the luxury of time and she the privilege of passing at home, her death is a gaping hole, freighted by the abyss of the Holocaust and the immensity of the love.

My mommy—our tribe’s great matriarch—is gone.

Sometimes depressed, she put a brave face on it, and I grew up feeling very cared for, adored, and safe. I thought this was standard mothering until I noticed deficiencies among some friends.

Since I had to break free early to start my own wandering, it took me decades to recognize her achievement, powered by a long tradition of humanism and romance, Jewish, Polish and female. Indeed, the atrocity that stained her, me, you, European history, was mitigated by her firm belief in humanity's general goodness.

I long knew she’d endured unworldly horror, including losing her family and surviving Auschwitz. Family lore has my younger brother and me racing into the living room, waiving wooden blocks with drawings of guns—we were forbidden toy guns—and yelling “We are going to kill a lot of Germans and run away.”

But the Holocaust wasn't taught in school in the '60s and she didn't mention it much, so I knew no details except pleasant stories about making a friend or getting a meal.

Through those anecdotes, I learned she travelled a long, hard road after the war, including hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, living in a garret in Paris, sailing to South America and settling in Bolivia, all with her best friend and fellow nurse Bluma. After La Paz, Tonia lived with her second cousin Manashe Kryzepicki, who had become a banker in Rio de Janeiro, which generated many evocative tales of wealth, art and vacations in the jungle.

I didn't realize the half of it until I visited Rio and Manashe's wife Hilda, with whom Tonia became close, told she often went to the beach where she would be surrounded by young men. Then it dawned on me: My own mother was an attractive young woman on a great adventure. After a year there and another in Miami, she settled in New York City and became what I now see was a beatnik, given she took up drawing and guitar and attending art and film shows, especially after meeting my father, Vachel Blair.

Tonia and her husband Vachel Blair, circa 1954. photo: Vachel Blair

Although quite different—Jew-gentile, quiet-garrulous, immigrant-American—they shared interests in art, adventure and socialism, and adored each other. As a cinematographer, he sometimes worked out of town, including two months shooting a documentary in the South Seas, leaving her to parent two rambunctious boys.

My mother's quest, I eventually learned, was carrying through the darkness the light of familial and romantic love, typified by the Blake poem she liked to recite, which ends, “Remember that in former times love, sweet love, was called a crime.” She remained so innocent, one of my parents' friends, a real beatnik named Jay Bell, would ask her to leave the room when he told dirty jokes.

I got more glimpses of robust femaleness when we returned to Poland, in 1997, and shot the film "Our Holocaust Vacation" (see trailer). I saw how romantic and loving the Poles were, especially the women, who had to help their men endure life between two oppressive super powers. “I don’t know why I have such a weakness for Polish men,” Tonia said during that trip.

I finally realized the extent of her female power, however, when I edited her book, “Love at the End of the World”. Over a dozen stories, especially those from the middle of war to marrying my father in 1954, involve or feature men and romance, from distance and chaste to fireworks.

Tonia working as nurse holding her best friend Bluma Strauch's daughter Hanna, 1947,Landsberg am Lech, Germany. photo: unknown

In "The Good Germans" she recalls secretly flirting with a young German pilot. He brought her silk stocking, the most romantic gift of the day, although food would have been better. “Dr. Nabrinski" is about going on a date to the opera after the war. Another is titled, simply “Men Who Fell in Love with Me”.

The most striking story, however, is “Stefan” about being shipped out of the Lodz ghetto in a jammed cattle car and meeting a young man. They recited poetry and kissed until the train arrived at its unknown destination: Auschwitz. Given that was the first story she wrote for the writing class she joined in 1999, it seemed be an experience she wanted to highlight, or attempt to emblazon in literature.

Even in that horrific period, Tonia pursued the young woman’s sacred troth of studying and enacting romance. It was not a magical shield, but it nudged some people, including some Germans, toward respecting life.

It took me ten years to get Tonia to tell me about her first lover, who is mentioned but not named in her story “The Russians”. A Christian Pole about her age, also liberated from Mauthausen camp in Austria, Stanislav was quite the romantic. He wrote her poems, two of which she carried to New York, and caught a fawn in the forest for her to pet for her 20th birthday.

Tonia was also an adventurous aficionado of books, art and film, who would scour the NY Times for interesting work. Her dedication once brought my father, me and her to the Film Forum for the US premiere of “Will It Snow for Christmas?” (France, 1996). Afterward, my father and I teased her about its slow pacing and lack of professionalism, until it dawned on us: It was a masterpiece about female life, family and betrayal.

Tonia with a copy of 'Love at the End of the World', published by Austin Macauley in May 2021. photo:D. Blair

When it came to actual adventure, like when my brother and I starting hitchhiking around the North-East when we were 14 and 15, Tonia would worry—undoubtedly extensively—but we didn't know, because she put on that brave face. She didn’t want her issues to limit us. And she was a great adventurer on road trips with my father to Maine or Florida, or with me to the hinterlands of California or Mexico.

As Tonia got older, she assumed the role of a mature matriarch, enjoying her status, including the teasing she missed dishing out as a shy girl in a dark age. But that didn’t eclipse the young matriarchal magician, who uses romance, beauty and dreams, especially when I read her book to her.

Her last year and half was a spectacular blessing. My daughter Irena and brother Nick brought her home to her Manhattan apartment from an assisted living facility in New Jersey, where she was confined to her room due to Covid. Indeed, Irena had carefully set up fully professional care taking, replete with hospital bed, all the needed supplies and a comfort cat, Etsu. She even created a TikTok channel about her.

Her last months were like a second infancy. Along with my sister-in-law Tania and many dedicated friends and caretakers, we joined in feeding her, reading to her, playing her favorite songs or discussing favorite topics, like “Who wrote The Bible?” We would rejoice when she ate well or had a good day, not so bothered by the back pain from being wheelchair bound or the increasing mania of Alzheimer's.

It was a fantastic, final chapter to a long, intricate and loving life, one which had long outdistanced the Holocaust. "I don't think about it anymore," she told me.

Tonia salutes the photographer's (and your) health, circa 2017. photo: N. Blair

When it ended, on December 9th, 2021, Irena led us in a home vigil, including her Peruvian prayers and death doula techniques, our tradition of chanting "om" and the Jewish "sitting shiva." Finally, her physical body was taken to the lab, to which she had donated her brain for Alzheimer's research, and a few days later to be cremated, a family tradition started by my father. We accompanied it every step of the way.

Now, in my moments of loneliness or despair, I recall the power that carried her through the fires and fired her tenderness and love. It is enough to enable me, her, us, to carry on those noble dreams and flourish.

Thanks mom, Tonia, grandma, Tunia, cool chick, Tonuska.

To Leave Comments: go to where I posted this on Facebook.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jan 13, 2022 - 04:10 PM
The QAnon Game, Conspiracy King Trump and Us
by Doniphan Blair

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The author near Roswell, New Mexico, on his six week journey around the American West during the 2020 election. photo: D. Blair
This was going to be our feature article in November 2020, posted from Texas, since I was driving around rural America researching it. Unfortunately, cineSOURCE had a malware attack on Election Day, so we published it on our Facebook page. Then I decided to update it and sell it as an article or book.

AS IF THE QANONYMOUS FOLKS DIDN'T
didn’t have enough on their plate these past few weeks — their hero Trump defeated, their oracle Q mistaken, their webmaster Ron Watkins quit — The Financial Times released a video on October 15th, “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” It details how QAnon, a movement with as many as fifteen million people, depending on how you calibrate participation, started as a live-action, role-playing game, or LARP.

The Financial Times’ scoop on the origins of the right-wing phenomena, which also has social, spiritual and commercial aspects, has yet to be corroborated by other major news outlets. But it was prefigured by Wired Magazine in a September 22nd article about Adrian Hon, a computer game designer, who observed QAnon adheres to the common LARP format of scavenger hunt.
“Deep state propaganda,” would probably be the response of most QAnoners. Nevertheless, it is common knowledge that their three-year-old community is guided by piecing together clues posted by “Q,” supposedly an intelligence officer with “Q-level clearance,” which refers to working with nuclear secrets, now more likely a live-action, role-playing master.

Also called “alternative reality game,” or its ungainly acronym ARG, the LARP was pioneered in California by Wizards of the Coast to promote their video game “Netrunner” in 1996. The Wizards needed advertising magic since video gaming had blown up that decade, adding three dimensionality, role-playing — from becoming a medieval knight in “Final Fantasy: IV” (1991) to a “first person shooter” in “Doom” (1993) — and “massively multiplayer online role-playing games,” or MMOs, with the arrival of widespread access to the World Wide Web.
Live-action role-playing was the next logical step. A cool combination of storytelling, technology, play and actual human beings, LARPs were adopted by ad agencies and media production companies, to advertise movies as well as games, but also gamers, hipsters and attendees of Burning Man, who developed their own.

LARP-like activities are universal among children, of course, but they are not common in adulthood, outside of games like Dungeons and Dragons, the acting profession, sex, crossdressing, criminality and undercover police or espionage work. This stimulates intense interest.

In the 1990s, European anarchists came up with “Luther Blissett,” a “multiple-use name… used to organize pranks, media stunts, and hoaxes,” according to Wikipedia. Although this doesn’t seem like the work of Blisset, “he” did publish a novel in 1999 titled “Q.”

A sample of the multi-generational and -cultural folks interest in the QAnon conspiracy theory, circa July 2020.. photo: unknown
I covered a LARP for cineSOURCE magazine in 2012. It was created by Jeff Hull, who consults on game theory for nonprofits like Greenpeace and co-founded Oaklandish, an art movement and clothing line with a store in downtown Oakland. Hull calls his LARPs “participatory arts projects” and had just completed “The Jejune Institute.” An excellent documentary on the year-long endeavor called “The Institute” (2013) was directed by Spencer McCall.

In 2008, Hull and his crew attracted more than 7,000 people to their faux Jejune office in a San Francisco office building, using paper flyers with tear-off phone numbers posted on poles. Combining high tech and old school, Jejune “officials” provided about five hundred participants clues in maps, props built into public property and post cards, which led to a protest by 250 people, exploring Oakland’s underground sewage system and solving the mystery of Eva, a punky, young runaway.

Sensing Jejuners might get too involved — “jejune” means naïve, simplistic or superficial, by the way — Hull brought them back to earth at their last meeting by explaining everything openly, after which they had a good laugh over tea and cookies.

Q took “his” LARP in the opposite direction, toward increased mystery, control and politics, when “he” began posting on 4chan, an anonymous, freewheeling forum for hackers, outlaws and pornographers, during the Trump Administration’s first year.

By the mid-2010s, there were all sorts of roll-playing games, from the multiplayer online games to real-life, dress-up fantasies — like “the furries,” people who wear animal costumes — private sexual ones or an online variant called the “anons,” such as CIAAnon, which was orchestrated by an imaginary spymaster.

Q — or what turns out to be a number of Qs, as control of the game was contested — came to widespread attention after an early post announced the impending arrest of Hillary Clinton. It didn’t happen, of course, but fulfilling predictions was not as necessary as expressing the fantasies suggested by Trump’s campaign chant, “Lock her up.”

“When you offer people a story that validates some core beliefs or resonates with their view of the world — or view of their imagined word — it has a life of its own,” Hull told me, when I called him on November 13th. “Suddenly you have followers who are activated by this content in a way that is entirely unpredictable.”

Logically labeled QAnon, Q’s LARP integrated right-wing conspiracy theories, Trump’s embattled presidency, his accusations against “the deep state,” and PizzaGate, the CT popular during the last election. QAnon validated core beliefs not only of aggrieved Republicans but some folks on the far left.

In case conspiracy theories had not yet intruded on your life, those four, long years ago: PizzaGate exploded across the web in October 2016 after a New York City lawyer and white supremacist tweeted he had evidence that Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democratic congressman and soon-to-be-divorced husband of Clinton’s assistant, was part of a pedophilia ring. Already busted for sexting, the tellingly-named Weiner would do two years for sending a 15-year-old girl “dick pics.”

The author finds a perfect writing retreat in an in-law building behind a friend's house in Tucson, Arizona. photo: D. Blair
From one pervert who happened to be a Democrat, a pedophile ring was born. It was built from clues “deciphered” from the emails of John Podesta, the Democratic Party Chairman, which were hacked by Russians in March 2016 but only made public by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, a month before that Election Day, coincidentally.

PizzaGaters became so convinced Clinton and her colleagues were Satanists running a child sex ring out of a DC pizza parlor, a North Carolina man raced up in December 2016 and peppered a locked door in the back with rounds from an AR-15 assault rifle (no one was hit) to free the children trapped in the basement (which did not exist). He got four years.

Expanding from PizzaGate, QAnon includes Obama and other leading Democrats, celebrities, like Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey, and one banker (George Soros). It also has them commit much more lurid crimes AND run the deep state.

“Why so over-the-top,” you might ask? Well, if a story like PizzaGate is gobbled up, the next conspiracy theory has to be more titillating to win adherents.

Hence, Trump was recruited by military brass to run for president and take down the cabal. Plus, he would soon reveal the entire sordid saga, order mass arrests and heal the nation.

Along with its dystopian views, QAnon promises peace, love and happiness, through what they call “The Great Awakening,” people waking up to the truth and standing up to the ruling elites of Satanists, pedophiles and cannibals (derived from the claim they ingest children’s blood). That utopia is now on hold due to Trump’s near miss of a second term.

Admittedly, “only a fraction of [QAnoners] believe the conspiracy theory’s most outlandish claims,” according to an article in Wired’s October 6th issue, which cites a recent poll. Some people may even see them as metaphors for corruption and decay, not actual fact.

Nevertheless, “some 56% of Republicans believe that QAnon… is mostly or partly true,” reported Forbes Magazine on September 2nd, providing plenty of belief to go around. QAnon-related Facebook pages leapt over 600% after the Covid-19 shutdowns in March 2020, when many people were fearful, frustrated and desperate for explanations.

QAnoners are known for their aggressive proselytizing, getting friends and family to swallow the “red pill” (of difficult knowledge, from “The Matrix,” 1999). This is to bring them onboard the secret squad that will save the world, or, from a more practical perspective, to protect themselves from intrusions on their fantasy life. QAnon evangelists includes YouTube advisors, book authors, swag manufacturers — hats, flags, shirts — and outright scammers.

Their theories have also been multiplying. The pandemic is a hoax but the new 5G networks are causing the disease, although the vaccines will be fraudulent, in accord with the anti-vaxxers. John F. Kennedy Jr didn’t die in 1999, when his plane crashed in the ocean with two women onboard: he’s been hiding, will soon go public, declare war on the cabal and take over from Pence as vice-president.

QAnoners are admonished to do their own research, which allows them to role-play cryptologists and academics, while the movement itself fosters dreams of heroism and revolution in the face of confusion, ridicule and catastrophe.

QAnon enthusiasts at a Trump rally in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, in 2018. photo: unknown
Top researchers are considered the movement’s saints and called “bakers,” for their expert analysis of Q’s “bread crumbs.” Although they disagree on the details, pretty much all pre-existing CTs — chemtrails, 9/11, the moon landings, Kennedy and Roswell — are considered factual, which makes QAnon the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories.

Unlike a 9/11-conspiracy theorist, who can only bore you to death at a party, QAnon was categorized a domestic terror group by the FBI, in April 2019. That rating stems from the 2016 PizzaGate attack, a June 2018 Nevada police standoff with an armed man who blocked the roadway on the Hoover Dam his armored vehicle, and a murder.

In March 2019, a New York Gambino family boss was killed by a QAnon-addled kid, who thought the CIA had corrupted the Mafia (instead of vice versa, as in the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy).

QAnon’s absence of actual violence is outweighed by its size, up to fifteen million people, its influence, from Trump rallies and Save the Children marches to extensive indoctrination, in person, through the web and now overseas, and its members’ violent view of what is happening right now, hidden away.

Over a year after the FBI assessment but only two weeks before Election Day 2020, Facebook, Twitter and, to a lesser degree, YouTube closed down most of the tens of thousands of accounts related to QAnon, which digital activists had been requesting for years.

Instead of algorithms favoring vetted sources or hiring enough people to manage more detailed review, those platforms were programmed to send viewers more exciting examples of their interests and what is trending worldwide. If someone searches for “QAnon,” their inboxes are eventually inundated by related material, which can lead depressed, anxious or otherwise susceptible people down the so-called “rabbit hole,” Alice’s way into Wonderland.

The same week QAnon was blocked from social media, it was sanctioned by the House of Representatives, every member except for 18, most of whom cited free speech concerns. They can now discuss those issues with their new QAnon colleagues.

In fact, QAnon had two victories among its losses on Election Day. Out of almost 100 candidates adhering to aspects of QAnon, who ran for posts across the country, the Republican congressional candidates Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and gun-fanatic Lauren Boebert of Colorado won their races. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted, on November 12th, that both women had withdrawn fealty to Q, but Boebert only distanced herself and Greene didn’t even bother.

“QAnon is not just on the internet anymore; it’s in the US Capitol,” emphasized Kailyn Tiffany, a journalist with The Atlantic, which published the first major expose of QAnon in May 2020, albeit three years after its emergence.

“It is not just a conspiracy theory anymore; it’s a voting bloc. And it is not going anywhere.”
Although most major news outlets covered QAnon from 2017, aside from The Atlantic, they didn’t start in depth investigative reporting until August 2020, which generated some frenzied catch-up but little actual news. Now that the movement has become of such public concern, however, even staid financial news organizations are taking it seriously and doing good research.
Also on Election Day, Business Insider, a respected site since 2007, referred to QAnon as a game but didn’t elaborate. Their article was investigating Q’s identity through an in-depth analysis of “his” clues, so-called “Q drops.”

Business Insider fingered Ron Watkins or his father Jim, who owns Q’s current hoster, 8kun. Q moved from 4chan to 8chan, when the former instituted some censorship. After Watkins bought 8chan, they morphed it into 8kun last year, after bad press from posting racist manifestos, notably by the New Zealand and El Paso mass murderers (51 in March 2019, 23 in August 2019, respectively).

Ron Watkins emphatically rejects such accusations. But, after years’ hard labor in the outlaw internet, he quit 8kun on Election Day, supposedly to devote more time to his wife and favorite hobby, woodworking, as it happens.

Coincidence is not causality, of course, but Q, too, went silent on Election Day after noting, “Trust the plan not the polls.” QAnoners were overjoyed when Q returned on November 12th, but “his” Q-drop, “Nothing can stop what is coming,” was not that informative.

As if that wasn’t bad enough for the symbol-obsessed QAnoners, two weeks earlier was the debut of “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?” Produced by The Financial Times, which is based in London and “the leading global business publication” (by its own account), the 16-minute video was directed by Izabella Kaminska, a star reporter and the editor of their award-winning web division, FT Alphaville.

That QAnon is a rogue LARP will have enormous implications for its FBI task force, researchers studying cults and anyone observing with trepidation its mercurial rise and excessive fantasy. If we hope to crack its code and come up with counter measures, how it emerged and operates is critical intel.

“Is QAnon a Game” is a fantastic first step, which I will examine below (see it on YouTube here), but it was overshadowed by real-life events, as so often happens in Trumpian times: a bitter presidential campaign, voting made difficult by both the pandemic and Trump Administration, and the lingering, unresolved aftermath.

Although the administration finally opened up to the Biden transition team on November 23rd, Trump didn’t concede, which could still lead to the Supreme Court, a constitutional crisis, fighting in the streets or a coup, according to extremists on the right and left.

Trump remains adamant he won in a landslide, that there was vast voter fraud and that American democracy is under attack by an enormous, octopussian conspiracy, directed by “the deep state,” another conspiracy theory Trump endorses. It may also be the Satanist pedophiles identified by QAnon.

Trump has winked at QAnon a couple of times, notably his August 18th news conference. After insisting he knew nothing, he admitted, “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me… If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”

Trump typically avoids outlandish conspiracy theories, like 9/11 or aliens, but he has built his life around devious deals and outright lies; he suspects the same from others; and he is a trained trafficker in conspiracy theories.

In fact, his main mentor after his father was Roy Cohn, the rancid New York lawyer who entered the public eye as an assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy, fabricator of the allegation that the US government was riddled with communists, the conspiracy theory which tore apart America in the ‘50s.

Along with obstructionist legal strategies, Trump learned from Cohn how to use conspiracy theories to introduce doubt, sow fear and threaten enemies, while maintaining distance and deniability — in fact, not even believing the theories themselves.

It is no coincidence then that Trump kicked off his political career by promoting the Birther conspiracy, his presidential campaign by accusing Mexicans of coming to America to rape and rob, not find work, and his presidency by claiming Clinton won the popular vote by having her minions plant three million fake ballots.

Another conspiracy theory Trump has advanced by endless repetition is that the liberal media was distorting and fabricating so much about him and his administration, they were “fake news.” Conversely, only he could provide an honest assessment, and he came to be revered by supporters for his candor and authenticity.

Republicans have long been the paranoid party, from McCarthy to Nixon and their obstinate opposition to President Obama. After the 2012 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, conspiracy theories flourished about Secretary of State Clinton, even after the Republican-led congressional investigations found them baseless.

Even so, most conservatives still can’t conceive that Trump’s go-to strategy is conspiracy theory.
Jeff Flake, a Never Trumper one-term senator from Arizona remains perplexed, even though he noted on November 20th, “He probably didn’t believe [Birtherism] but knew some Republicans would.”

Most Republicans see Trump’s conspiracy obsessions as the character flaw of a political outsider and narcissist, who can’t bear to lose because his brand is based on winning and fantasy. Actually, winning through fantasy is the main benefit of conspiracism and Trump. Before becoming president, of course, he was the star of the reality television show, “The Apprentice” (NBC, 2004–17).

Trump has indoctrinated his 88 million Twitter followers with his own tweets and those forwarded from others, including QAnoners. By identifying clandestine criminality everywhere, he stokes fear and presents himself as the only viable savior, a boast repeated ad nauseam during his presidential campaign.

Trump has supported 29 conspiracies, according to Wikipedia, from global warming is a hoax to the deep state, which emerged from the Left, or foul play in the deaths of Vince Foster and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile and Democrat, which reflects the kernels of truth CTs use to build on.

Trump almost always piggy-backs on other conspiracy theorists — Birtherism was the invention of a Chicago gadfly attacking Obama in 2004 — but his piece de resistance is entirely his own: The Democrats can only win in 2020 if they steal the election. Many of us laughed when he started hyping that one, not realizing he was a conspiracy theory master.

Even at the 2016 Iowa caucus, Trump claimed Ted Cruz stole votes. To solidify his Clinton-votes conspiracy, he established the Voter Fraud Commission in May 2017, an apparent exercise in futility, especially after it died eight months later due to absolutely no evidence. But Trump was playing the long game. He prepared the Clinton-votes conspiracy in anticipation of his 2016 defeat and, after winning, switched it to shore up his CT strategy for 2020.

Cohn would be proud. His acolyte Trump has done an A-plus job of making his voter-fraud conspiracy theory stick, even as Republican and Democrat officials testified “it was the most secure vote in American history,” the courts threw out almost all cases, and more and more celebrity Republicans and business people begged him to concede.

Regardless of America’s respectful transfers of power dating back to Washington, the majority of ranking Republicans and rank-and-file are still standing by Trump, although his followers are famous for taking him figuratively, not literally. Hence, Secretary of State Pompeo, Senator McConnell and others imagine they’re indulging his inability to process loss, even as they grossly underestimate him, as did New Yorkers and Democrats before them.

Trump’s low-brow demeanor and even idiocy serve to conceal an elevated emotional intelligence and ability to manage chaos. While it is confusing for most people, Trump has learned to take advantage of chaos, what some have called “creating controversy and watching it play out.”

Secret consultants didn’t help Trump win in 2016 or take over the Republican Party, since he generally rejects advice in favor of “gut feelings,” as he calls it. Indeed, he has developed a technique of pitching ideas, no matter how stupid, reading the room, crowd or media, and, if he feels a benefit is to be gained, plowing forth. While this system hasn’t been that effective in business or international negotiations, it worked well in reality television, celebrity culture and a political party drained of ideas and ethics.

Although the Biden Administration has started to get briefing, meetings, office space and funding, Trump’s insistence he will still prevail through the courts, even though his legal efforts have been a farce rejected out of hand by conservative Republican judges, perplexes many right-wingers, while liberals ridicule it as a scam for donations. Few recognize they are being out-chaos-ed.

Sure, Trump looks frazzled and is laying low, mostly playing golf, watching TV and tweeting frenetically, with few public events since Election Day. He’s in toughest con of his life, searching frantically for a way through, and weighing a possible end-run around all imaginable norms.
Given Trump’s long reliance on conspiracy theories, I doubt he will leave the West Wing without attempting to harness the biggest CT in American history, especially since its adherents see him as their savior.

The first real toe in this water came on November 12th, the same day as Q’s reappearance. Trump tweeted IN ALL CAPS a conspiratorial claim QAnoners took from a far-right cable news channel and had been trying to get to him for a week: “Dominion Voting Systems, a company that makes voting machines, ‘deleted’ millions of Trump votes,” (as reported by NBC News).

Although the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency dismissed it, QAnoners reject representatives of the deep state and were ecstatic. 70% of all tweets about Dominion, including the proposition Venezuela’s leaders Chavez and Maduro used its equipment to rig their elections, were coming from Q-related accounts. There’s also renewed chatter about how they should stop mourning Trump’s loss and resume their work to save America.

QAnon prayers were answered on November 19th. Since all his more reputable lawyers had quit, Trump made Giuliani captain of his legal team tackling the voter-fraud conspiracy. Giuliani in turn tapped his top associate Sidney Powell, who ranted about Dominion’s diabolical deeds, how Georgia’s Republican governor colluded with the CIA to steal the election, and concluded, almost in tears, with “stick to the plan,” Q’s catch-phrase.

She was fired two days later, indicating Trump did one of his gut feeling pitches, read the room and backed off QAnon, although perhaps not permanently.

Powell is the second senior Trump administration official to come out completely Q, after Michael Flynn, for whom she also provides legal counsel. Briefly Trump’s National Security Advisor, until his removal for failing to admit meeting with Russians and arrest after the Mueller Investigation, Flynn posted to YouTube — on July 4th, 2020, no less — his recitation of the QAnon pledge: “Where we go one, we go all.”

Flynn’s complete pardon by Trump on November 25th, will be seen by QAnon as another affirmation of their cause.

“Taken at face value, at the heart of Q is an effort to generate distrust,” notes Kaminska, at the beginning of “Is QAnon a Game Gone Wrong?”

“Whether it as a state disinformation campaign or something more spontaneous, it is hard to say. Simplifying it, as most of the media currently does, as a far right conspiracy that worships Trump and believes his opponents are Satanic pedophiles, probably misses the point.”

With that deserved dig at mainstream media, Kaminska sets out to decipher QAnon’s methods, history and roots, an epic as fascinating as it is frightening.

Her biggest download comes from Adam Curtis, who became her primary source. A reputable English documentary filmmaker, he has made almost a film a year since 1983, often focusing on social control by big money or computers but not conspiracies. Curtis has done his research and has been doing performance pieces about QAnon.

Conceptually, he traces it back to ’60s radicals Kerry Thornley (1938–98), his childhood chum Greg Hill, and their founding of Discordianism, a parody religion which worshipped chaos. Eventually, an author and ‘zine and magazine publisher, Thornley was also a seminal hippie whose Army buddies happened to include Lee Harvey Oswald.

Thornley and Hill started “Operation Mindfuck,” which involved sending to the Forum page of Playboy Magazine, a progressive periodical at the time, anonymous letters promoting the Illuminati conspiracy theory.

As you may recall from Conspiracy Theory 101 (soon to be required in college), the Illuminati were a secret, 18th century subsect of the Masons in Bavaria, who attempted to advance society through science and democracy. But instead of armchair radicals, a couple of popular books by conspiracy theorists of the day portrayed them as the hidden hand behind the French Revolution.

In Operation Mindfuck, Thornley, Hill and late addition Robert Anton Wilson claimed the Illuminati were involved in almost every war, revolution and assassination since 1789, an exaggeration so egregious they assumed no intelligent person would believe it.
In fact, they thought their Illuminati story could be used as a form of mass psychology, exaggeration as “aversion therapy,” to heal the “paranoid style in American politics,” left over from ‘50s’ McCarthyism and Red Scare and identified by Richard Hofstadter in his respected book of the same name (1964).

Thornley didn’t go when he was subpoenaed to the Kennedy-assassination conspiracy trail in New Orleans, but he told all in his book, “Oswald” (1965), which supports the “lone gunman” theory.

Later in life, however, hard luck, government interference and reading the “dual state” analysis of European lefties Ernst Frankel and Franz Morgenthau, who postulated democracies need fascist substructures to function in the modern era, turned Thornley toward conspiracism.

Hints also emerged that he was mistaken about Oswald. That the Kennedy assassination might have been a Mafia conspiracy is suggested by Oswald’s murder by a low-level but in-debt mafioso, Jack Ruby, and government documents declassified in 2017 (with one last dump postponed to 2021 by Trump, as it happens).

Despite Thornley’s disenchantment, his anti-conspiracy ideas were advanced by others, notably Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007). A prolific author, agnostic mystic, Berkeley activist and friend of Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, Wilson happened to be the Playboy Forum editor who published Thornley’s letters.

Not only did they become close friends, Wilson was anointed the saint of Discordianism by Thornley, who loved statements like, “Belief is the death of intelligence,” or “You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.”

In turn, Wilson and his Forum co-editor, Robert Joseph Shea (1933–1994), fictionalized Thornleyism into an 800 page, award-winning, sci-fi bestseller, which Wilson called “a fairy tale for paranoids.”

“The Illuminatus! Trilogy” is a tour de farce as well as force — the inserted exclamation point giving it away — which surfs from a New York City cop thriller through sex, drugs and mysticism to aliens, monsters and even post-modern asides to the reader. There’s also plenty of conspiracy, including a scene set in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, home to the historical Illuminati.

Wilson and Shea considered conspiracy an intellectual stress test, which fortified your morality and humanity, if you didn’t take it literally, but condemned you to confusion, fear and hate, if you did. Neglecting, however, to recall H.L. Mencken’s observation that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” their attempt to cure “the paranoid style in American politics” backfired completely.

Ask around, you’ll find widespread belief in the Illuminati. Indeed, we’re in a golden age of conspiracy theories, with more conspiracists and theories per capita than any time in history.
A similar series of shifts and reversals happened to QAnon.

According to Kaminska, the LARP was concocted by Manuel Chavez, AKA Defango, of Nevada. A likable but lackluster YouTuber, Chavez posts his “Citizen Zone” reports almost daily, rarely tops a thousand views, and has little Q qualities, in content or charisma. He is, however, known to smear people with accusations of pedophilia.

“[Chavez] claimed he created Q as an alternative reality game mostly for the LOLs,” narrates Kaminska, “but also to smoke out bad journalists in the alternative media space,” to see who reported his stories as truth, another stress test or satire like Operation Mindfuck.

Alas, Chavez lost control of Q to Thomas Schoenberg, who might be a musician but is obviously a brilliant programmer — since he largely scrubbed himself from the web — and a LARP master. In fact, Schoenberg sharpened his skills by usurping another internet game, Cicada, which involved riddles, puzzles and advanced or esoteric theorems.

That plot twist is detailed by Kaminska’s other main informant, Jim Stewartson, an Emmy-winning producer and creative technologist out of Los Angeles (according to his LinkedIn profile), who is also well versed in LARPs.

Schoenberg wanted to “radicalize smart people” through Cicada and QAnon, according to Stewartson, using complex challenges and codes and intriguing stories and images. Alas, he drifted into transgressive topics, including Nazism and the CT Himmler formed a secret mystical sect, supposedly extant today. Schoenberg also emphasized the deep state.

Chavez and Schoenberg remained comrades-in-conspiracy, according to possible Nevada State racketeering charges (reported by SDNY.org). They started a company using “targeted chaos,” bots and smear campaigns to defame opponents for clients, one of which was right-wing activists planning to surveil the family of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee employee murdered in July 2016. Rich was about to spill the beans on Satanist pedophiles, or it was a robbery gone bad, according to police.

As sophisticated and shadowy as Schoenberg might be, he, too, lost control of QAnon, out-programmed by a party with greater access, perhaps Jim or Ron Watkins, although Q’s identity remains a mystery.

While the Qs were battling, there was also a struggle among “his” hosters. When Q’s original hoster, 4chan, began banning some discussions in 2018, “he” migrated to 8chan, the creation of Frederick Brennan (1994-).

A talented young programmer and graphic designer, Brennan is wheel-chair confined, due to severe brittle bone disease, and dreamt up his libertarian site while tripping on mushrooms in 2013. A year later, Jim Watkins saw Brennan in an Al Jazeera documentary and recruited him to The Philippines to run his internet empire. Watkins had either bought out or commandeered 2channel, a Japanese pornography site, leading to wealth and child pornographer accusations. Brennan sold 8chan to Watkins in 2015 but continued to work for him, until their falling out three years later.

The fight for QAnon outlines a William Gibson-esque, sci-fi thriller, although it can only be produced in 2030, after we have recovered from the real-life game being played across America and increasingly England, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere.

Stewartson lays out those twists and turns calmly and professionally in “Is QAnon a Game,” but his article on Medium.com, published in August, is significantly more aggressive and explicit.
“QAnon is a death cult preparing for mass violence,” he writes. “It is being run by a group of theocratic fascists, ruthless grifters and literal sociopaths in conjunction with Russian intelligence. Each of these actors is equally hell-bent on creating as much chaos as possible leading up to the election.”

That wake-up call was too inflammatory for Kaminska, but she references it in her section on spy service dropouts or expellees. They form a large cohort of injured cyber warriors, scammers trying to monetize state secrets and nation-state spies, according to Steve Hassan, an ex-intelligence officer she interviewed.

The Russians’ 2016 election interference did not repeat in 2020, since Putin — also an expert in managing conspiracy theories — had no need. His efforts to generate distrust were already being enacted by unwitting double agents.

I doubt Putin is literally running Trump. Although he may have blackmail material, the so-called “Pee tape,” it is immaterial since Trump is a metaphysical “Manchurian candidate,” no brainwashing or blackmailing needed.

In this way, Trump is a bit like James Jesus Angleton, the CIA counter-espionage chief during the 1960s, writ large. Angleton tore the agency apart searching for high-level moles, based on McCarthy’s claims of communists, clues from an unstable Soviet defector and his own paranoia.
Trump’s devotion to conspiracism automatically partners him with Putin, since it is essentially a religion. Instead of a monotheist universe ruled by a just, benevolent lord, they believe in a dog-eat-dog, Darwinian world, run by like themselves or even more evil parties, whom they must stand against, hence, the Satanist angle.

The little guy watching the elephants fighting understandably interprets it as “the global cabal theory,” according to the best-selling Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, who finally revealed his analysis on November 20th.

The most critical issue not covered by Kaminska in her brief 16 minutes, in my opinion, is the collapse of community consciousness. Society has been long been atomizing, due to alienation, distancing, digitization, mechanization and fake news, to which we can add pandemic isolation and infection fears. But it began in the ‘60s.

Fifty years ago, psychotropic and birth-control drugs, the freedom to choose your own identity and personal behavior, and other anti-establishment ideas were welcomed by many, including myself, as innovative developments for empowering individuals and improving society. It also fertilized the ground for out-of-control fantasy.

Our minds operate by constructing inner universes from our culture, experience and dreams, according to the ancient Hindu sages, who called our private worldviews “maya,” Sanskrit for illusion or magic. Their thesis was corroborated by Plato, with his cave shadows, and Descartes, who existed because he could think, but it was only integrated into Western canon by ’60s philosophers like Derrida and Said, who developed deconstruction and multiculturalism, respectively.

A vibrant fantasy world is mandatory for creativity and hope, as well as sexual satisfaction, but we still have to connect with our neighbors and societies through agreed-upon, shared realities, which was easier in simpler times.

The digital age made good on its promise of interconnectivity and information, but it divided us into unmediated groups, led by innocent influencers, experienced celebrities, full-on cult leaders or secret agents. With our lives more scheduled, monitored and machine-based, even as we are at loose ends, anxious and disconnected, many of us look to fantasy play with a like-minded community, just as children do or people in the ’60s did.

“This exact phenomena [of conspiracies] and the things going on with Trump is the reason I don’t do that kind of work right now,” Jeff Hull, the LARP master, explained to me. “Ten years ago, that was fun, that was playful. We were activating the public space in a way to turn people on to a whimsical reality.”

Hull noticed a change during his LARP “The Latitude,” which came after “The Jejune Institute.” It was a secret society where people shared personal information in a magical realist format. Although he only invited participants personally and managed it closely, of the 3,000 people involved, many came to view it as a religion, a few dozen became fanatics and a couple tried to take it over.

“Now playing with fact and fiction is scary,” concluded Hull. “There is no room for us to fuck around, to distort truth in that way. It is not a game any more.”

And so went the LARPs two-decade rollercoaster ride from advertising and “whimsical reality” to takeover by “theocratic fascists, ruthless grifters and literal sociopaths.” Stewartson’s assessment is hard to verify, but we are definitely in one of the most dangerous intersections of politics, culture, technology, espionage and mental health EVER!

To be sure, 2020 America is not 1930s Germany, barely out of a catastrophic war and depression, with only one decade of democracy under its belt, and obsessed with cabaret, homosexuality and drugs (OK, we do share the last three). Moreover, Trump is hardly Hitler, which cripples his capacity to enact a traditional coup, along with the fact that much of the military thinks he’s dishonorable and a draft dodger.

But a coup in consciousness is not farfetched. Up to a quarter of Trump’s 70 million voters support QAnon concepts; Trump is a master at manipulating conspiracy theories, which can flip a loss to a win through fantasy and repetition; and “Paradoxically, conspiracy theories have become the most effective community bonding mechanisms of the 21st century,” according to the respected columnist David Brooks (November 26th).

History’s greatest conspiracy kingdom, the Third Reich, was built on conspiracy theories about Jews: they betrayed Germany in World War I, controlled the banks, were taking over Germany, were seducing Christian women. CTs came to rule the regime as neighbors, friends and even children, as well as the Gestapo, SS, Abwher and the other intelligence services, spied on, denounced or threatened to denounce each other.

As crazy as Nazi thinking was, it is not as irrational, technically speaking, as some QAnon allegations: sex-slave children held in caves, reptilian alien overlords, time travel. Although they don’t believe every theory and most are not like Germans in thrall to Hitler, we have entered a conspiracy kingdom.

Until I viewed The Financial Times expose, I assumed QAnon was the work of a malevolent mastermind, who could be tracked and stopped. Seeing it as an interactive game, with multiple leaders, able to adapt like a virus and evolve evermore strange — but still enlist average Americans and folks on the far right and left — makes it a mob mentality of a higher order.

You see, I am Jewish and my mother is a survivor of the Holocaust, which was inspired by German conspiracy theories but also Europe-wide ones, notably “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Fabricated by the tsar’s secret police in 1903, “The Protocols” were purported to be the notes of a meeting of Jewish power brokers. Even though it was outed twenty years later as a plagiary, taken from a French satire with the word “Jew” switched in, it was taught as history in the Third Reich and many people believe “The Protocols” today.

QAnon seemed like those old obsessions in modern garb. Indeed, their claim that Democrats and celebrities are harvesting children’s blood for adrenochrome (a commercially-available adrenaline-derived medication), which they inject for alleged fountain-of-youth properties, brought to mind medieval accusations about Jewish people killing Christian children and using their blood for Passover matzo.

Of course, pushing rational limits is common to conspiracy theories. Since the creators are writing fiction, they want the most powerful stories, but which still ring true from existing narratives. Their struggle to tailor them to the dark corners of our collective consciousness makes QAnon a Rorschach test for our times.

Thornley and Wilson hoped to correct conspiracy fantasies through satire, by humorously tricking the mind back to rationalism.

Unfortunately, unlike the Johnson Administration (1963–68), which was trying to do some good and admitted some mistakes, the Trump presidency is full-on farce. Double unfortunately, most of the 47% of Americans who voted for Trump vigorously disagree, preferring to see him as a truth teller and corruption fighter, who will “make America great again” in a warranted second term.

One slip further down that rabbit hole is QAnon, which flourishes in direct relation to the delusions of Trump and Trumpers but also the actuality of the pandemic, the absence of functional fantasy, and the unintended consequences of LARPs, social media algorithms and postmodernism.

Two of the greatest satirists of our day are Steven Colbert and Seth Meyers, likable guys who’ve been eviscerating Trump for decades. Meyers hosted the Washington Press Club gathering in May 2011, which roasted Trump and featured President Obama’s hilarious takedown of Birtherism, which Trump pushed until 2015.

That was supposedly when Trump decided to run for president, although Obama notes in his new book, “A Promised Land” (released on November 18th), it may have come in 2010, when Trump offered to redecorate the West Wing and was politely refused.

Colbert, Meyers, Bill Maher and other comedy theorists have postulated that shaming humor
would destroy Trump. Alas, aggressively attacking Trump, Trumpers or QAnoners plays into their perceptions of persecution by their intellectual, social or even metaphysical betters. Only Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che teases Trump with empathy, which can open a butt of ridicule up to the humanist realization, “We are all idiots.”

Since satire doesn’t work in a system-wide farce, sincerity, forgiveness and charity might, as naïve as that sounds.

Credible threats of or actual violence are crimes, which can be prosecuted. But QAnon operates mostly in the realm of cyberspace, free speech and fantasy and must be addressed there. Taking down QAnon pages or flagging disinformation is sensible, in a brick-and-mortar way, but it is reactive, minimally effective and hard to enforce.

“8chan is the only [online] platform featuring a full commitment to free speech,” insisted Jim Watkins in 2019, according to ABC News.

Although “8chan had banned nearly 48,000 users, deleted more than 132,000 posts and 92 discussion boards… [and] complied with 56 U.S. law enforcement requests,” Watkins explained, it is still “a one-of-a-kind discussion board where anonymous users shared tactics about French democracy protests, how to circumvent censorship in repressive regimes, and the best way to beat a classic video game… and a small minority of users post hateful and ignorant views.”

That’s surprisingly articulate for Watkins, who is accused of many nefarious deeds, including by his former programmer, Brennan, who must have some inside dope. Indeed, Brennan and Watkins are currently suing each other; their respective legal machinations have forced each other to flee The Philippines; Brennan has become a vocal critic of QAnon and a proponent of the postulate Watkins is Q or close to “him.”

2017 brought the debut of Parlor, the free speech Twitter, which opens with the inevitably intriguing disclaimer, IN ALL CAPS: “Warning!! This site contains adult materials or materials that may be considered offensive in some communities.” Then came Gab, MeWe and Rumble, two networks championing free speech and a libertarian video-sharing site, respectively.

It has been almost two decades since the start of 4chan and the dark web, suggesting we can’t rely on a strategy that depends on controlling speech. Plus there’s the argument against censorship. Prohibition pushes people underground, where they are harder to monitor, communication with outsiders is limited and their moral senses atrophy even further.

Perhaps QAnon should be considered a self-inflicted, society-wide psy-op, which reflects our malaise but could be countered by more enlightened, insightful and creative speech, dialogue and art. Such content could be amplified by sophisticated strategies, web influencers and regular folk, like suburban women or the Tiktok teens who swamped sites with hits to stop trolls.

The Conspiracy of Love — that there has always been a secret cabal of people working for good, even in terrible times — is a concept I proposed in articles and a performance piece of the same name. In the latter, I relate some of my experiences and research; I read from the Gettysburg Address and my mother’s book, “Love at the End of the World,” about being a romantic teenager in the Holocaust; and I conclude with audience dialogue.

Since I know only a couple of QAnoners personally, I base my approach on many discussions with friends and acquaintances who believe 9/11 was an inside job. While I have only succeeded a few times, there’s always a way to maintain dialogue, propose fresh perspectives and translate them into terms acceptable by a given individual.

With Trump’s defeat, many QAnoner are starting to have doubts.

On November 9th, both the NY Times and Washington Post ran articles covering their election disappointment and fear they’ve been conned. Of course, unfulfilled predictions are common to CTs and other QAnoners are recalibrating to fit, a standard practice among end-time cults.
I applaud Kaminska’s use of a few of her 16 minutes to examine how to heal conspiracy fanaticism, by interviewing an ex-Moonie cult member turned deprogrammer. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining relations, of not treating culters as enemies, of seeing delusion as a disease that can be cured.

“We have to step back from the demonization of each other and ask what role we can play in building social trust,” President Obama told an NPR interviewer on November 16th.
We don’t have to encourage views or actions to accept people as human beings. We are, however, obliged to be more tolerant and understanding, if we hope to bring them back from the polarity brink or conspiracies of hate.

President-elect Biden personifies this quest with his big-tent tolerance, his Vice President-elect Harris (the first Black, woman AND second generation immigrant in that position), his calm attention to the details of the dangers facing America, his disregard of Trump’s defiance, and his reaching out to Republicans, even as they rebuff him.

QAnon blew up in the time of Corona and Trump, when people had time to kill and phobias to channel and he was fanning the flames of divisiveness, fear and conspiracism.
As those factors fade, so will the siren call of Q and T. It will be close, like the election, but we will eventually transit through Trump’s expertly assembled voting-fraud, media-misinformation and deep-state conspiracy theories.

At least that’s what we’re being assured by many public figures, including Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russia (in a November 12th NPR interview). McFaul, who is from Montana and has Trump-supporting relatives and friends, pointed out that some of them voted for Obama and that radical right-wingers did almost nothing on Election Day.

The Proud Boys did appear in Washington DC on November 14th at the MAGA Million Man March — only attended by tens of thousands — which featured a Trump drive-by, QAnon speakers and fellow travelers. Despite a significant counter-protest presence, however, there were only 21 arrests and one serious injury.

“People are less polarized than it seems in the media,” I was told in New Mexico by a North Carolina man, who goes by the trail name Eternal and is hiking the 5,000-mile trail circuit of the western United States. “Most Americans vote red or blue depending on a few hot-button issues but are not fanatics.”

I was in Texas the week before Election Day and saw only a few pickup trucks flying big Trump flags and little of the thirst for violence that plagued 1930s Berlin.
Obviously, I need to get this right. One of the most pointed tragedies of the Jews of Europe was their intellectuals’ failure to analyze the Nazis adequately, despite having Freud and other psychiatrists and philosophers close at hand.

Trump’s attempt to split the country through conspiracy theories will surely continue through the Electoral College vote on December 14th and even Biden’s inauguration, perhaps to his possible 2024 presidential run. Naturally, he will also continue to wreak havoc with government regulations and employees, overseas relations and executive orders and pardons.

Although he will surely leave the White House on January 20th, he will probably re-join mass media and come to lead a grievance cult attempting to block all of Biden’s initiatives, as he did with Obama’s achievements, which could make the Tea Party seem tame.

This will serve as a second referendum on Trumpism, the final stress test of the Trump Era.
If we prevail, if Biden is able to rebind the factions, it will lead to legislative protections against demagogues, intellectual ones against conspiracists, and enthusiasm for the democratic process, which a majority of us just saved through increased voting and faith in our system as well as humanity.

If not, many Americans will continue to believe in Trump and some will go full QAnon, which could become even more popular if the group rejiggers its objectives, if Trump openly identifies with QAnon, or if he essentially becomes Q, who is more a concept than a person. QAnon could conceivably shift from being guided by a hidden character dropping cryptic clues to a well-known one tweeting IN ALL CAPS.

Yes, a lot of people are hurting emotionally, financially and spiritually. Yes, conspiracy theorists will keep exploiting that, inventing ever more insane notions, like QAnon is a CIA creation to identify radicals for future arrest.

We can’t correct role-playing, mind games by indoctrination, rationalism or even satire. It requires a change of heart in the believers but also in us. If we dismiss our opponents, they will dismiss us and their team doesn’t have the visionaries, psychiatrists or healers to make up the difference.

We have to bet on the Conspiracy of Love, which is where the radical multiculturalism of the new era meets the onrushing road.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .

Posted on Jan 13, 2022 - 12:53 PM
Cinephile Confessions in the Time of Covid
by Alli Antero

Please support our stories by liking articles—thanks!

Helen (Helia Rasti) and Phineas (Douglas Allen) in Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur',. image: courtesy A. Alli
BACK IN 2003, AFTER MAKING UNDER-
ground feature films for eight years, I sent a series of DVDs to various agents in Los Angeles. I was hungry for any feedback they might offer and for the off chance they might buy or find distribution for my movies.

Of the nine or so I contacted, only one replied; he actually called me on the phone! The agent said, “We love your work but your films are marketing nightmares. We wouldn’t know how or where to place them.” And then, the punchline, “Would you consider working within an existing genre?”

I thanked him for his feedback but no thanks, my creative processes wouldn’t work within any prefab format. In parting ways, he said, “Good luck. I mean that. Don’t take this the wrong way but your films are too original for the market.”

Too original for the market? That became my mantra for the next few days as I tried processing what it actually meant. WTF?! This was my wake-up call. It meant... Fuck LA, fuck genres, fuck agents and fuck their market politics. Whatever latent fantasy I harbored about “being discovered” or “hitting it big” or seeing my films achieve national release — all evaporated into the void.

In Alli's 'Vanishing Field', the Oracle (Nita Bryant) confronts Jacob on the astral plane. image: courtesy A. Alli
I was now free to create on my own terms without any subconscious drive to impress or please anyone but myself. Over the next twelve years and seven features later, I was on a burning mission from God, or the Muses (sometimes, they’re the same thing), making films under oath of zero compromise and total artistic control.

I toured my movies up and down the west coast between San Francisco and Seattle paying my way by selling DVDs and splitting the admissions with the hosting venues.

After fifteen years of almost nonstop film and music production, my wife Sylvi and I were burnt out and in late 2015, we relocated from Berkeley, California, to Portland, Oregon. Portland is a city surrounded by forests; one of them, Forest Park is larger than Central Park, NY. Our daily forest walks gradually rejuvenated us to the point of finally considering a new creative project (Sylvi and I have been artistic collaborators since first meeting in 1989; it’s who we are and what we do).

Over the next four years, we reinvented ourselves through the creation of five experimental theatre productions, each one featuring text by my favorite poets: Rimbaud, Bukowski, Hilda Doolittle (HD), Blake, and Plath. What made these productions experimental was their visceral and physically ritualistic style of achieving extreme states for performers and audience alike. This approach was initially inspired by my early exposure to the paratheatrical work of Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski in 1977 and has been documented at paratheatrical.com.

Filmmaker, theater director and other arts worker Antero Alli. image: courtesy A. Alli
This experimental theatre process came to an end when I could no longer find performers to meet the demands and standards I had set for myself. It also coincided with the end of a forty-year era of directing groups in these experimental theatre and ritual processes.

I was in my late sixties and had outgrown this part of myself. I needed to let go of something I had been clinging to. I decided to post all my films online as free views on YouTube and Vimeo, a giveaway compelled by a final renunciation of commercial gain for or with art. My gift to the world.

In the Fall of 2019, the Muses finally called with a vision about an astral-travelling subversive Zen monk. This triggered memories of a traumatic out of body experience I suffered in my early twenties, a shock that annihilated any previous identification with my physical body.

In my final experimental theatre production, “Escape from Chapel Perilous” (Dec. 2018), I invited a local Zen monk to play the disembodied spirit of a monk wandering the bardo between incarnations. A year later, in the Fall of 2019, I cast him as the astral-travelling Zen monk in my next film, “The Vanishing Field”.

He agreed and invited me to shoot the movie in the Zen monastery where he lived and worked along with other monks who agreed to appear in this chiefly improvised film. “The Vanishing Field” was completed over four months and received favorable reviews before its Portland premiere was covid-cancelled; it went straight to YouTube with my other films.

After “The Vanishing Field” was released, I wrote a book distilling the paratheatrical methods I had developed over the past four decades. The book was published as State of Emergence by Original Falcon Press in late 2020. I started wondering if the Muses of Cinema would ever call again. My life as a theatre director was over and I was feeling the earth and sky open up before me.

From Alli's 'The Alchemy of Sulphur', Calliope (Cynthia Schwell) appears in a dream. image: courtesy A. Alli
Sylvi and I continued our almost daily forest walks, along with our wonderful river walks. Besides its densely forested regions, Portland is bordered and contained by the great Columbia and Willamette rivers with nearby Mount Hood and Baker watching over us.

A year later, the Cinema Muses sent me my next vision about a writer who writes herself into a story with unexpected real world consequences.

This psychological romance of a woman falling in love with a figment of her imagination in a story she was writing ignited new fires in my ongoing obsession with mystical themes. Exploring a story of how the power of imagination shapes our experiences and our beliefs became my compass for navigating the Covid Bardo.

The term “Bardo” comes from the Tibetan Buddhist idea of an interim dimension between incarnations — when we die, our soul enters this limbo state, this bardo, where it drifts until incarnating, again, into the human condition.

“The Alchemy of Sulphur” was made over six months in 2021 during the challenging quarantine era of social distancing and masks. Four of the five actors were vaccinated and since most of the scenes were filmed outdoors at a nearby wildlife refuge, we were happy to play in a mask-free environment.

Moment from 'Soror Mystica: Ritual Invocation of the Anima'' a ParaTheatrical ReSearch performance, 2017: courtesy A. Alli
Unless we’re shut down by covid or State regulations, as of this writing the world premiere of “The Alchemy of Sulphur” is scheduled for Sunday night November 7th at the Clinton Street Theater in Portland. This new film will be also posted on YouTube on November 11th.

For more details on any of the above, see my site Vertical Pool, or my book, "State of Emergence".

As a love slave to the Muses, Antero has helped them create fourteen feature art films and numerous documentaries and shorts since 1992 and be reached here

Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 09:56 PM
What Happened to cineSOURCE?
by Doniphan Blair

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YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED CINESOURCE
hasn’t been in your inbox lately—we missed you, too, and happy new year!

In the middle of celebrating Trump’s defeat, on November 3rd, 2020, cineSOURCE was hit with a malware attack. Although we rebuilt it, cineSOURCE had long been having difficulties—its software needs an expensive upgrade—and I was busy with other writing projects. Indeed, I had recently published the book “Love at the End of the World”.

But we kept putting up articles, mostly on film festivals or by our regular authors Karl Cohen and Don Schwartz, which was good, since Don bowed out last month (see story). Thanks for your great work, Don!

I also wanted to keep covering our specialty subjects, notably the conspiracy theory movement and Oakland, which are in their most severe crises since the McCarthy ‘50s and Crack ‘80s, respectively.

Indeed, we featured an Oakland article or issue every April since cineSOURCE’s start in 2008. Sorry for running eight months late but please check out “Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis", and let us know your thoughts on cineSOURCE’s Facebook page.

I also lost my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in December, peacefully at age 96 but she lives on in her book, “Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption”, which was released by Austin Macauley in May, 2021. See her obituary here

In addition to editing it, I included “What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie", my own attempt to make sense of the Holocaust. It appears in this cineSOURCE, as well as one of my mother’s stories, “Stefan".

I am honored to present a new cineSOURCE issue, with a dozen new articles, some by stalwarts like Don's Blog and Karl, who has three ( The Computer Game Problem,, the Academy of Art’s Loan Rip Off , and Cartoon Corner), and our “unhoused correspondent,” Eric Moseley's story. Others are by new authors, from the incredible indie filmmaker Antero Alli, who offers a perspective on his entire oeuvre (here), to the philosophy of filmmaker/painter/teacher Celik Kayamar (see article on detecting BS or Darwinian evolution) or filmmaker Leslie Streit (see her article).

Despite the red ink, headaches and hackers, cineSOURCE has been one of the best projects of my life, from starting it as a paper magazine in 2008 to it becoming my entree to film showings, filmmaker interviews and film festivals, but most importantly my master’s class in writing.

Hence, I have many more articles, books and podcasts in the hopper. So, if you enjoyed cineSOURCE over our last decade, please subscribeor support me on Patreon.

I will do my best to keep cineSOURCE going.
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 04:23 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jan 22
by Karl F. Cohen

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Spiderman and love interest (Tom Holland and Zendaya) from 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' (2021). photo: courtesy Marvel/i>
20 Million Risked Omicron to See Spider-Man

Ever since the pandemic brought movie going to a halt, Hollywood has been consumed with fear of the demise of the mega blockbuster industry. With the arrival of “No Way Home”, the new Spider-Man film, which 20 million people in North American risked the new Omicron variant to see on its opening night, there is hope for the future—if a film is colossal and exciting enough.

“No Way Home” took in an estimated $253 million over the weekend of December 17th, according to Comscore. That means about 20 million tickets were sold. Indeed, it was the highest opening-weekend in the 19-year history of the eight-film, live-action Spider-Man franchise. It was also the third highest weekend EVER in Hollywood records, behind “Avengers: Endgame”, with $357 million, and “Avengers: Infinity War” with $258 million.

“No Way Home”’s big weekend gross is impressive, but the film will need more weekends to break even. The film probably cost Sony and Disney at least $200 million to make, plus there was enormously expensive marketing campaign. Will Covid 19 could ruins the film’s success?

Unfortunately, the weekend was not good news for other big productions. Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley”, a lavish noir thriller with an all-star cast, opened in 2,145 North American theaters. It bombed and it probably cost Disney about $60 million to make.

Also, let’s hope that December 17-20th didn’t turn out to be a super-spreader disaster.

Scene from Erick Oh’s new film 'Namoo'. photo: courtesy E. Oh/i>
Oh’s New Namoo Explores Life and VR

Erick Oh’s new Oscar contender is “Namoo”, Korean for tree, and the tree symbolically captures the beautiful and heartbreaking moments of his life. Oh created last year’s Oscar nominated “Opera”. He is from Korea and has worked at Pixar.

His new film is more personal and intimate than his last work. Oh was inspired to make “Namoo” while grieving the loss of his grandfather, and used his life as its centerpiece.

“I went on a journey to ask questions,” Oh told me. “I asked questions. Of course, I document my thoughts and provide a room for the audience to probe it and think about themselves too. That being said, I think I discovered a lot about who I am while making this film.”

The film shows the passage of time with changing color to represent the passing seasons. Oh says, “The tree is a symbol of your self-motivation that drives you internally, or it could be your unconsciousness with the tree and the guy interacting with each other. Sometimes tree gives stuff to him or takes away stuff or reveals something that he has forgotten. Sometimes he does something to the tree. That’s who we are. We keep talking or battling with our inner self and constantly making different decisions. That’s what makes life at the end of the day and who you are.”

“It forms in a heart shape when you meet the love of your life. Sometimes there’s a huge hole in the middle that probably represents those moments of emptiness. And then sometimes it goes super distorted, and it feels like everything’s falling apart. But after so many versions of your tree, you find a balance.”

Oh also commented that animating in virtual space and in real time with the Oculus headset was a new experience for him. Once he got up to speed, it saved him a lot of time. It took him a while to learn the “uninterrupted, 360-degree narrative flow of VR” but, fortunately, he had six experts to assist him.

The project began as a virtual reality experience created using the VR tool Quill, “which made transferring to a short much easier using the same animated workflow. One of the many reasons I was able to do VR was Quill software,” he said. “This enables artists to get into virtual space to draw and paint very intuitively. All the layers were done in Quill.” Indeed, the modeling, rigging, animating, shading, lighting are merged into one program

While the VR experience consisted of watching the tree grow in front of you, the short naturally contained a narrative flow that escalated with tension. “Thanks to Quill, the painterly, 2D-look was convincingly achievable in CG.”

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Jan 10, 2022 - 04:16 PM
How Bad Are Video Games for Children?
by Karl F. Cohen

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The Girl Queen from Tencent Games popular game 'Honor of Kings'. photo: courtesy Tencent
UNTIL AUGUST OF LAST YEAR, I PAID
little attention to the video game industry.

Suddenly, however, I was reading all over about China cracking down on the game industry to combat child addiction to their products. Authorities were calling for parents, game developers and manufacturers to work together to combat the scourge of the game industry, which grossed $173 billion in 2021. Indeed, the stories were scary enough for game companies’ stock to tumble up to 10% in just a few hours. What was going on?

I read with amazement news articles that proclaimed, “No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation.” Several articles even called gaming “spiritual opium.” Chinese authorities were labeling e-sports and games the “opium of the mind” and digital games “electronic drugs.”

They called for more restrictions to prevent greater widespread addiction among children. One article claimed children were spending food money on games, and playing them for up to seven hours a day, resulting in their school grades dropping.

Tencent, a Chinese multinational entertainment company and the world’s biggest gaming developer (“Call of Duty: Warzone”, “Fortnite”, “League of Legends”), responded by saying new measures were needed to protect minors.

Tencent wanted to show they were socially responsible, but only suggested weak measures for another of their popular game, “Honor of Kings”. They did, however, support prohibiting kids under 12 from spending money on games and suggested limiting playing time to under 1.5 hours on weekdays and 2 hours a day on holidays and weekends.

The Chinese government responded to Tencent’s suggestions by issuing much tougher restrictions. Online gamers under 18 are now limited to only one hour on Friday through Sunday and on holidays. Play must be between 8 AM and 9 PM and is not permitted on Monday through Thursday.

Also facial recognition is becoming required to insure the player is 18 or older, to prevent children from using the IDs of adults to sign on. BBC news estimates China has “tens of millions of young gamers.” Tencent has also developed a facial recognition system to limit late-night gaming by children.

It is obvious the company admits their product is dangerous, so why doesn’t China take it off the market?

Both boys and girls are attracted to The Girl Queen from 'Honor of Kings'. illo: unknown
The World’s Most Lucrative Market

“Honor of Kings” was the world’s top grossing game in 2019 and 2020. According to Tencent, it had the equivalent income of $22.7 billion in revenue from smartphone games and $6.9 billion from PC games. And gaming is just part of Tencent’s total revenue of $74 billion. Gaming has been called “the world’s most lucrative market.”

Wikipedia says, “’Honor of Kings’ is a multiplayer online battle arena developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Tencent Games for the iOS and Android mobile platforms for the Chinese market.” Interestingly, downloading the app is free but to upgrade characters or costumes to advance levels, players must pay.

The BBC says the crackdown by Beijing is based on a reaction to the rapid growth of capital and technology and the potential adverse effect on the well-being of the country’s young generation. The government is also concerned about “celebrity fan culture and private tutoring,” and is trying to create “positive energy” and restore “correct values.”

Game companies do develop ways to addict players. Obviously, they make the games as exciting as possible, which entices players to return. And they offer additional incentives, including daily or weekly use-it-or-lose-it quests, login rewards for continuous streaks of play, season passes and other incentives. Explicitly or not, they want to dominate the lives of their players.

Computer Game Addiction Also Serious Problem in US

Playing computer games is fun for millions of people. When that pleasure becomes excessive, it can be annoying to others, but it doesn’t qualify as a computer game addiction unless other areas of a person’s life become adversely affected. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening to many players all over the world.

An industry of health professionals has developed to try and help those with this serious compulsive disorder. Indeed, it is now recognized as a mental addiction in the World Health Organization’s “International Classification of Diseases” (2018).

The lure of e-sports is quite enticing to many people. E-sports players who get involved with competitions can be rewarded with big money and titles like “pro” or "grand master." Successful individuals and teams can achieve fame. Some people wanting to be great e-sports players say they spend 8 to 12 hours a day in training.

Some of the games are what are called massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs), which are designed not to have a fixed ending, so new players can join in and others can leave or take a breaks as desired. Games often have levels of achievement that encourage you to try and rise in your ranking. Players of many games can earn points or “wealth” simply based on the numbers of hours they have spent playing. This fosters the concern that if you stop playing, you may fall behind other players.

Another kind of lure are the gaming programs that adopt gambling concepts. Instead of using chips some games let you buy or win things to put in your “loot box.” Other types of games, including e-sports, have people getting excited by betting money or things called “skins.” There are lots of other ways to wager online that don’t seem to be like old fashioned gambling. Software designers are on the search for new innovative concepts to get you involved.

Some of the avatars, that players use in a type of cos-play, from the popular 'Call of Duty'. photo: courtesy Tencent
Symptoms of Addiction

Symptoms of a computer addiction include not being able to quit, being upset or angry when you can’t play, thinking a lot about playing and believing that playing makes you feel better. Other signs that someone has a serious problem include the loss of other things you used to enjoy, having trouble with your job, relationships or schoolwork, and lying about the amount of time you spend on gaming. And there are physical symptoms that can develop from a sedentary lifestyle.

Treatment

Treatment programs at mental health clinics exist in the United States, China and other nations for people who spend way too much time doing things like playing games, web surfing or even online chatting. The treatments range from group therapy to one on one counseling and outdoor experiences called “wilderness therapy.” There are also more severe interventions including shock treatment and in China militaristic “boot camps.”

China has also established legal regulations. Prior to establishing the most recent rules, they had outlawed online gaming in 2019 for kids under 18 between the hours of 10 PM and 8 AM. There were also restrictions established in 2017 limiting the numbers of hours a kid could play on Tencent games.

If you type into your computer’s search bar “video game addiction treatment” you will find dozens of businesses offering the public their services. You may also find interesting statistics like “as many as 12 percent of boys and 7 percent of girls are addicted to gaming.” The number of kids playing video games is said to be 70 to 80%, and 41% say they spend too much time playing video games. In the United States, spending money on video games grew by 30 percent in the second quarter of 2020, to a record $11.6 billion.

Should the animation community and public be made aware of computer game addiction

I believe computer game addiction can be harmful to the player and possibly others close to that person. I don’t know what to suggest, except that friends or family of people with that condition do the necessary research and try to convince the player to understand their problem and seek help. Animation can be a great art and I hate seeing it used in a way that harms others.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 03:00 PM
Honoring Don Schwartz
by Doniphan Blair

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Don Schwarz, circa 2010. photo: courtesy D. Schwarz
CINESOURCE IS SADDENED TO REPORT the closing of “Dr. Doc”, our 13-year -running documentary column by Don Schwarz, who has been with the magazine since its founding in 2008. After doing almost 700 mini-reviews, and over 20 full interviews or articles—which makes him our most prolific author—Don is retiring due to the onset of aphasia. He intends to fight the word-and-meaning-scrambling disease with alternative therapies, with which he has long taken an interest in and worked with.

Indeed, Don holds multiple degrees, including a PhD in psychology and counseling, which allowed him to serve for 21 years as the director of the Trager Institute.

Fortunately for cineSOURCE, Don just finished a number of his doc blogs, which can be seen here, Dr. Doc. The last is fittingly named, “Into The Night: Portraits of Life and Death”. He also just did a great interview with the Greek-American filmmaker, Stavroula Toska, which can be seen here. Indeed, Toska thanked cineSOURCE as well as Don profusely on her Facebook page.

Since 1977, he has written for a variety of publications and projects, including The Pacific Sun, Marin County’s alternative weekly, and some film scripts. Moreover, as an actor he has been seen as an extra in a number of feature films shot in the Bay Area, starting in the 2000s.

A strong advocate for local film and TV production, Don was a member of the Scary Cow film cooperative, the storied indie film incubator, which was sadly forced to close during Covid. Other interests include music, his twin nieces, and promoting natural healing through scientific research.

Don got into film criticism writing for Film/Tape World, which flourished in the Bay Area from 1984 to 2007. Joining cineSOURCE right when it started in 2008, he became our most a dedicated film reviewer and writer, including 38 of his mini reviews in the last six months.

A quiet and modest man as well as careful observer and deep thinker, he lives in Marin County, and we wish him well.

Thanks for your great work, Don!

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 12:54 PM
Filmmaking in the Pandemic
by Leslie Streit

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A landscape that inspired and appeared in Leslie Streit's new film '95 Days'. photo: L. Streit
Leslie Streit, who has made feature documentaries and short films, was challenged by the pandemic to make a film.

2020 and 2021 brought devastating drought conditions to the San Francisco Bay Estuary and its surrounding locations. This area is a delicate living ecosystem of marshland and wildlife. My film “95 Days” chronicles its journey from a lush spring through the progressive heat and dryness of summer when the lack of rain and humidity gives way to nearby wildfires. Using photos and videos taken from May to late August 2021, often overlaying imagery from archival sources, I documented a changing landscape that is at once colorful, abstract, poignant and threatened.

I live only minutes from the San Francisco Bay Estuary and spend spare time walking its trails and photographing its flowers, grasses and birds. To my eye the landscape translates as interesting lines, patterns and color fields punctuated by colors and textures beyond what the camera could ordinarily see. I've tried to capture those images in the hopes that others might see what I see. There is beauty even when there is damage to the land and even as climate changes before our eyes.

Although much of my work in the past 13 years has been focused on feature documentaries, “95 Days” was a return to my roots in visual and performance art which was often considered experimental. Working with my long-time editor and producing partner, Robin McCain, we chose to make every frame melt into the next one with changing color, depth perception and point of view. There are 3 sections accompanied only by music within the film’s 5 minute length. No dialog was needed to tell this story.

When it was time to send “95 Days” out into the world we found that the Covid pandemic and resulting turmoil it brought with it have radically altered our way of viewing content from live theater to virtual screenings.

The poster for '95 Days'. photo: L. Streit
As we start to come out of the pandemic it is still a time of great uncertainty. There are people who are desperate to socialize in real world situations and they are anxious to return to the experience of seeing film in a movie theater surrounded by a live audience. Recently I’ve received numerous invitations to preview screenings with live Q & As and live audiences inside an actual screening room.

On the other side Netflix, Apple, Hulu and many others are distributing theatrical films and series and have been producing their own big budget content. The big award shows (Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars) reflect the continuing importance of the streaming media providers well beyond the days of pandemic isolation. For many people this is still the best way for them to see movies.

There also seems to be a pandemic/post-pandemic trend for films to focus on content that reflects disturbing issues: disease, famine, politics, apocalypse, racism and inequality, gender issues, crime and corruption, mental illness, poverty. And an endless stream about the lives of celebrities has taken over the documentary scene as well as a looming fear that things we used to laugh about are now off limits.

But there are many new film festivals opening internationally and short films especially those about subjects like the environment and climate change are very much appreciated in many parts of the world. Our “95 Days” has already won several awards and special mentions in the only three months that it has been submitted to festivals. It has had a cross cultural impact—video art, stills, and music are universal.

Right now the short film format seems ideally suited for many things. Short films can be made with all levels of budgets – high to low – by individuals in isolation or crews and teams working together. They can be issue oriented, comedy, animated or many other genres, suitable for all age groups. Most importantly they can be self distributed. Festivals can program them in between longer films and audiences can see them comfortably on a variety of devices from television to mobile phones.

For the last many years I had only been creating short format films as teasers for feature films. But “95 Days” has changed my entire outlook on filmmaking. It is my invitation to enter a joyful world of experimentation and I think the experience of making “95 Days” has given me a new freedom to tell all kinds of stories going into the future.

"95 Days" went on to win a total of nine awards at international festivals including two for best female director and others for best experimental short and best film about nature and the environment.

Leslie Streit is a filmmaker, writer and producer, living in San Francisco who can be reached here

Posted on Jan 09, 2022 - 03:20 AM
Letter from Oakland, Part II
by Doniphan Blair

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One of Oakland's largest unhoused encampments, home to some, a den of thieves to others, is in West Oakland. photo: D. Blair
Continued from Letter from Oakland, Part I

Many of the town’s biggest camps are in West Oakland. While they provide a release valve for society’s rebels or outcasts, they are rife with addiction, theft, sex abuse and the dangerous tactic of torching rivals’ tents, according to my friends who work with the unhoused as activists, social workers or firefighters, or who live nearby.

Oakland never burned during the nation-wide riots of the summer of ’64 or ’68, the latter because the Black Panthers advised against it. By the time Vice President Kamala Harris was born here in ‘64, it was becoming a remarkable multicultural and artistic city, the center of the Bay Area Figurative Movement (of painters), with a world-class art school, California College of Art.

Times were tough for Oakland's proletariat, due to downturns at the port and in many industries. Nevertheless, most residents still had access to elevated opportunities for friendships, education (the University of California at Berkeley is four miles down Telegraph Avenue from downtown Oakland) and employment. When the Rodney King riots erupted in Los Angeles in 1992 and spread to San Francisco and Berkeley, there were no riots in Oakland.

America’s history of slavery and ongoing racism are important subjects for study and debate, especially when contextualized within America’s democratic evolution, but making it the centerpiece of Oakland’s current catastrophe belies the obvious. Indeed, critical race theory can sometimes sound like a conspiracy theory—a monstrous unaddressed evil is sabotaging society—which is problematic in Trumpian times, when so many Americans believe his Big Lie about election fraud and other conspiracy theories.

In point of fact, Oakland has been a “chocolate city” for sixty years, having birthed the Panthers in 1966 and, in 1977, elected its first Black mayor, Lionel Wilson, another McClymonds High School graduate. He served for 14 years, the second longest in Oakland history. (Panther co-founder Bobby Seale ran for mayor in ’72 but lost in a close race). And there have been two more Black mayors: Elihu Harris, 1991 to ‘99, and Ron Dellums, 2007 to ‘11.

While whites continue to hold the vast majority of power and African American Oaklanders dropped from 47% in 1980 to 29% today, many people of color became city employees, entrepreneurs, politicians, professionals, artists, and professors, as was the case with Newton’s brother and Harris’s parents. They also became cops.

Ersie Joyner, who was still recovering two months later from the six gunshots he received in October, emerged from poverty in East Oakland to become a respected officer. He was involved in a police shooting a decade ago, for which the department paid a wrongful death settlement of $75,000, but he claimed he was confronting an assailant about to commit a murder. Not only did Chief Armstrong and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf praise Joyner highly after he was shot, he was an early advocate of defunding the police.

“My whole entire career I have been taught, I have trained, and I have worked towards eliminating gangs,” Joyner told a reporter from The Guardian in 2019. “That has failed miserably for us for decades.” For most of the last decade, Joyner led Ceasefire, Oakland’s anti-violence program, which is known nationally and was instrumental in reducing Oakland’s murder rate.

Ersie Joyner: ex-OPD captain and head of Ceasefire, a gang intervention program, as well as, more recently, cannabis entrepreneur and shooting victim. photo: courtesy TGTime
What Chief Armstrong is calling for—for Oaklanders to take to the streets and internet to militate against the slaughter—did happen in 2006, after murders jumped to 145, 20% over the previous year. Pastors, politicians and teachers walked the streets to send a strong personal and public signal. My graphic studio submitted a proposal for an ad campaign using photos of funerals and street memorials and the slogan “Murder is fun for the whole family,” although it wasn’t funded.

Little of that ilk has been organized of late, save for the OPD’s small march in July. I’m guessing activists assume such efforts would cast aspersions on last summer’s hard-won reforms, hand critics a wedge issue, and be of little use, due to ongoing systemic racism.

There is also the class question. Middle class African American families, from which many activists hail, famously give their kids “the talk,” about what to do when harassed by cops. Often left unmentioned is their more frequent lectures on thugs and gangs. Indeed, they have to fight harder on that front, since some of their kids like to prove themselves by running wild. Caught between those two mortal threats, they are understandably reluctant to get involved in gang abatement.

Defunding a police department, or reforming it and redirecting some monies, is direly needed in jurisdictions which militarized or failed to integrate their police or increase social services. But that doesn’t really describe the OPD, which has long had some innovative practices, including collaborating with activists and therapists, but has struggled to fund its police for decades.

When the famously liberal but pragmatic Jerry Brown served two terms as Oakland’s mayor in the 2000s, between his four respected terms as governor, he tried to expand the force by 100 officers. Many Oaklanders of color liked Brown and voted for his additional-police ballot measure, but the measure funding it was defeated. With 681 officers today, the department is about 50 officers below Brown’s hoped-for levels 15 years ago.

OPD was docked $14 million during BLM Summer, with another $22 million lost from pandemic-related tax revenue drops, equaling five and seven percent of its budget. In the meantime, OPD’s case-solved rate went from a half to a third, although Armstrong did shift six detectives to homicide, and he recently claimed the department had cracked ten murder cases. OPD fields up to 2000 911 calls daily, one of the highest calls-per-officer rates in the country. After hearing the shots that killed Rashad Brinson, I called 911 three times before getting through.

Although the city shifted another $18 million to social services in June 2021, it did allocate $38 million for more police academies, i.e. classes of recruits, to cover the perennially low levels and the many officers who are now quitting. One academy will graduate in January 2022 and another in May. A big problem, however, is those recruits, an Oakland friend recently told me, since the vast majority are not from Oakland, let alone its inner city.

Be that as it may, the OPD has been comparatively well integrated for decades and now includes some Asian officers and members of the city’s artistic community. Jinho Ferreira (Black/Latinx), who rapped as “The Piper” while an OPD officer, also wrote the well-received, one-person play, “Cops and Robbers” (2012), which examines its opposing protagonists notably sympathetically.

Police killings, especially those resembling executions, instead of fog-of-war errors, are criminal, culturally corrosive and incendiary offences, naturally alienating people from authority and society and fueling the anger of volatile young men.

A June 2020 Black Lives Matter march passes in front of Blair's building on West Grand and Adeline, West Oakland. photo: D. Blair
According to the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, Oakland-connected cops killed 102 people from 1970 to 2015. Of the 93 victims that could be racially identified, 97% were of color and around two thirds Black. But those police murders are still small, by factors of 30, 40 or more, compared to inner-community killing. Indeed, in those 45 years, over 3000 Oaklanders of color were killed by each other.

Moreover, fratricide is more difficult to process psychologically than outsider aggression since it hits in the home. While external enemies can be criticized aggressively and publicly, as demonstrated during BLM Summer, internal oppressors are often downplayed or denied. Then the repressed anger is transferred to a more palatable opponent, hiding the injury and making it harder to heal.

Oakland’s Black community has hundreds of churches, large and small, and their pastors and parishioners do a fantastic job. I have seen them hand out food, provide medical services, set up a community recording studio, and even save the elderly parishioners living next door to my building from a fire, before the arrival of the fire department. But to address our current crisis, which is aggravated by the two major crisis of our era, the pandemic and Trumpism, they don’t have much street cred.

For that, the organizers of an “Oakland United Against Violence,” or similarly-named march, concert or social-work symposium could turn to Oakland’s many famous rappers, or Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter (who was born in Oakland but moved to wealthy Marin County and returned at 27), or Angela Davis, the internationally-known thinker, professor and friend of the Black Panthers, or Boots Riley, the brilliant indie rapper turned filmmaker, who shot his scathingly satirical debut feature "Sorry to Bother You" around Oakland in 2017 (see cineSOURCE article).

Many of Oakland’s creatives and entrepreneurs have the skills to organize concerts, clinics or neighborhood fitness or media centers, preferably located on or near crack corners. Or to contribute fresh ideas. The Oakland Occupy drew denizens from all walks of life and hoods to fruitful encounters and discussions in front of the mayor’s office. Alas, Mayor Jean Quan, a woman, Asian and longtime activist, was unable to find a way to channel that energy or hybrid it with city services.

“Blindspotting”, another excellent Oakland indie feature, which builds an interracial bromance into a political and operatic epic, was written by and stars Oaktown homies and old friends, Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, the latter fresh off his New York star turn as Thomas Jefferson in “Hamilton” (see cineSOURCE article). Filmed largely in West Oakland, also in 2017, they set their white cop’s murder of a Black man on West Grand and Adeline, my corner. Alas, there have been no police murders here in the last three decades, while well over 150 of my neighbors in a few block radius have killed each other.

“Blindspotting”, “Sorry to Bother You” and other recent films artfully address police killings and institutional racism, but when it comes to Oaklanders butchering each other, it’s slim pickings. Nevertheless, there were a couple of spectacular, low-budget films wading into the subject, notably “Licks”, which is slang for the corner liquor stores the film’s protagonists like to rob, and “Everyday Black Man”, by my friend Carmen Madden.

“Licks” was directed in 2012 by Jonathan Singer-Vine, a white, Jewish twenty-something from Berkeley whose Oakland friends, some living deep in the hood, obviously loved the project and worked incredibly hard on it. With a largely amateur cast, they produced a striking, professional film which delves deep into thug life.

Big John, played by Steve Joel Moffet Jr., is one of the toughest characters in 'Licks', the groundbreaking Oakland movie by Jonathan Singer-Vine. photo: courtesy J. Singer-Vine
Singer-Vine made the proprietor of his “lick” Black for story telling purposes, but the vast majority of corner liquor store owners are Arab-Americans, often Yemeni, which typifies Oakland’s advanced multiculturalism. Due to the demand for credit and prevalence of alcoholism, Blacks are disadvantaged running liquor stores in their own communities, but Yeminis are Muslims whose culture discourages drinking. A friendly, well-adjusted group, but also quite traditional, even though many of their grandfathers immigrated in the ‘70s, the Yemini-Americans are also very well-armed.

For thirty years, I have known the members of the extended family which owned and worked in my corner lick, where Rashad Brinson was killed in October. Indeed, their saga is central to local gossip, giving me a leg up at local gatherings. In addition to brandishing weapons to defend themselves on many occasions, they have shot a few assailants, and one, Willy, accidentally shot himself (he survived).

“‘Licks’ is so studded with the N-word and local slang, like ‘whip’ for car, as to be almost unintelligible,” I wrote in my 2017 review of the film for cineSOURCE. “[I]ts denigration of women—many of its protagonists are pimps, although they adore their mothers and grandmothers—makes it almost unwatchable.” But also accurate, it seems.

When Singer-Vine finally found a distributer, the suits wouldn’t release “Licks” unless he cleaned it up—the commercial wing of the PC police. He refused, hence its four-year delay before appearing on Amazon Prime in 2017. “Licks” still hasn’t gotten proper promo or viewing, even around Oakland, despite its insights (see it here). As is commonly known, as well as well researched, people respond to honest stories about their issues.

In contrast, “Everyday Black Man”, shot in Oakland in 2009, was by a woman about men. Madden, who is African American and grew up mostly in Oakland’s suburbs, started as an actress and became an accomplished teacher, writer and director. “Everyday Black Man”, her first feature, tackles the even thornier subject of corruption among community leaders. Although the story follows another Black lick owner and his hiring of a Black Muslim man, who turns the store into a front for drug dealing, Oaklanders knew Madden was referencing the murder of Chauncey Bailey.

A well-regarded reporter and the editor of The Oakland Post, Bailey was killed downtown in 2007 by a paid assassin with a long gun. He was about to publish another article exposing the criminal activities of the owners of the once-popular Your Black Muslim Bakery. After the hit man turned state's evidence, they got life without parole.

Many of Oakland’s progressive elite also oppose full freedom of speech, if it reflects poorly on a disenfranchised community. Almost 20 years ago, Ron Dellums, the first Black congressperson from Northern California, who was also an anti-war activist and socialist, and the mayor of Oakland in the late ‘00s—as well as a West Oaklander who attended McClymonds—led the campaign to cancel “Gentlemen of Leisure”, a proposed television show.

The show was based on “American Pimp”, the critically-acclaimed 1999 documentary about West Coast pimps, many from Oakland, by the Hughes brothers, who are Black. To have been shot in Oakland, the show was supported by Madden and other creatives and would have been a feather in the cap of the city’s fledgling film business, perhaps even paralleling what “The Wire” (2002-8) did for Baltimore.

But “Gentlemen of Leisure” would not have looked good for the airbrushed Oakland Dellums and other city elders were trying to sell gentrifiers to revive Oakland’s tax base. (Mayor Brown said he would build 10,000 dwellings, Mayor Dellums 100,000.)

Oakland is cursed by the California conundrum of being rich, beautiful and liberal, which makes its poverty, ugliness and repression more grotesque. That very quality, in fact, drives its disadvantaged to more extreme anger, envy and ambition. As the poorest of the fabulous cities by the bay, Oakland is an automatic loci of crime, simply because ambitious poor people will always sell two very popular services and products: sex and drugs. As painful as that is for my more bourgeois or politically-correct neighbors to contemplate, it requires in-depth exploration through research, sociology and art.

The Oakland mayor's office put up lackluster billboards, while more creative submissions were rejected. photo: D. Blair
Prostitution has long been a popular profession in semi-matriarchal societies, where it is not as stigmatized, and all oppressed groups are semi-matriarchal, since the men are injured, removed or absent. In addition, many tribes are semi-matriarchal, including in West Africa, traditions which helped African Americans endure the destruction of the family during slavery.

The “talented tenth” of Black men rebuilt their personal patriarchies through hard work, the arts or professions, but the less skilled looked to boom towns, like Oakland during World War II, to become fully vested family men. As those jobs waned, they suffered, while women joined the workforce and sometimes earned notable success. The revival of matriarchal traditions is largely why out-of-wedlock births are now hitting historical highs among African Americans and why the lure of becoming a gangster, with increased sexual opportunities, is so attractive.

It is no surprise, therefore, that Oakland became the center of Northern California’s enormous legal as well as illegal marijuana industry, which is mostly white owned (even though the legacy busines until 1980 was largely Black and Latino). Oakland has Harborside, one of the biggest weed stores in the world, Oaksterdam University, the world's first cannabis college, and many related classes, services and stores, from supplies and equipment to dispensaries and manufacturing.

Indeed, retired-Captain Joyner now runs the Joyous Recreation and Wellness Group, a cannabis edibles manufacturer, located in an unmarked warehouse four blocks from my house. Since the cannabis industry, which started legalizing in the US in California, in 1996, is still not permitted banking services, its workers often carry large amounts of cash. This led some journalists to speculate Joyner was not a random robbery victim.

With Oakland an ongoing prostitution and drug center, people assume some of its police simply must be on the take, an opinion which increased after the OPD’s spectacular sex scandal of 2016. That imbroglio was made even more memorable when Mayor Schaaf, who had been special assistant to Mayor Brown and took office the previous year, fired three police chiefs in one week.

Captain Sean Whent had been doing a decent job for three years, according to “The Force” (2017), a documentary by Emmy-award-winning Oakland filmmaker Peter Nicks, which has some good clips on Armstrong. Nicks's previous film, the acclaimed “The Waiting Room” (2012), was about the emergency room at Oakland’s main hospital, Highland, which is known nationally for gunshot surgery. (I was waiting for treatment once when a young Black man was wheeled in, bleeding but bragging into his phone, “I was shot, I was shot.”)

Unfortunately for Nicks, he wrapped principal photography just before the story broke about a suicide, a murder, dozens of cops, and a 17- and then 18-year-old woman of color with an hourglass figure, known by her assumed name, Celeste Guap. As it happened, Ms Guap’s mother was an OPD dispatcher and had many friends on the force, including Officer John Hege, who helped her escape an abusive husband and was beloved by Guap. They were devastated when Hege was one of the four cops killed that same day in 2009.

Coercion by powerful figures and child sex abuse were issues raised by Guap’s lawyers to win her $1 million dollar settlement from the city, and they remain her talking points today, but the actual affair was probably a bit more, well, Oakland.

The story starts with a white, increasingly-disturbed rookie cop named Brendan O’Brien, whose Latina wife committed suicide, after they argued about his possible affair. But her family thinks he killed her, and ex-OPD detective Mike Gantt agrees. Indeed, he was pushed off the case by department brass protecting their own, he says, and he filed a related claim against city officials. The intricate evidence was reported at length in The East Bay Express, by Darwin Bond Graham and Ali Winston (see it here), but the facts remain somewhat ambiguous to me.

Celeste Guap (her working name): a young Oakland woman who had family friends and boyfriends in the Oakland police and was also a sex worker. photo: courtesy C. Guap's Facebook page
O’Brien was exonerated and went back to work. A year after his wife died, he encountered Guap on International Boulevard, the Latinx neighborhood where she liked to sex work, since her family is Nicaraguan. Guap was being harassed by her pimp and hailed a passing patrol car. “He saved me,” she said of O’Brien, although he didn’t bring her to one of the many related social services or turn her over to a guardian, as recommended by Oakland’s progressive sex trafficking directives. Meeting again two weeks later at a taco truck, no less, they started dating. She was 17, he mid-20s.

Whether the relationship was coerced or consensual, we won’t know until Guap does a podcast, book or movie, but there must have been some romance, given the rumors and fantasies that started flying. Indeed, Ms Guap became the object of rapt attention of dozens of police officers from departments around the Bay Area, an adulation she evidently enjoyed.

After a months-long, half-bromance, half-serial orgy, O’Brien killed himself after Guap threatened him—during a drunken phone call from Puerto Rico, where she was vacationing—that she would reveal she was screwing lots of cops. Instead, O’Brien’s suicide note brought that to the attention of authorities.

As soon as Schaaf heard, she fired Whent. But when she tried to replace him with a lieutenant captain, it came out he recently had an extramarital affair. When her second appointee realized he wouldn’t fare well in the spotlight and resigned, Schaaf took over managing the department herself, through the mayor’s office. Eventually, her staff recruited Anne Kirkpatrick from Spokane, whom Schaaf must have hoped would help with the OPD’s testosterone problem.

The scandal was enormous, even involving cops from as far as Livermore and San Francisco. Yet the OPD only expelled four officers, suspended seven, and left a dozen unidentified. The released version of the department’s long internal report, completed in 2019, is over half redacted. Eyebrows shot up again when officials running the flawed investigation were promoted, and two incriminated officers stayed on the force. They had had sex with Guap and texted lascivious notes to fellow cops, but after she turned 18.

Guap’s mother told a retired cop who was a family friend about the abuses, but he didn't report it. Alameda County filed numerous charges, but almost all were eventually dropped.

The OPD’s 2016 sex scandal is one back story illuminating an aspect of Oakland’s descent into violence. Another is the Black Panthers.

The Panther’s three founders, Newton, Seale and late-arriving but brilliant and already-published Eldridge Cleaver were visionary, hardworking and innovative. In a spectacular bit of political theater, they took over the California capitol, in Sacramento in May 1967, brandishing their trademark long guns (see cineSOURCE story). As well as providing inspiration and ideas to Black people across America and then the world, they started a children’s breakfast program, newspaper, medical clinic and other essential services. Along the way, they were confronted by relentless attacks from authorities and infiltrators but also Newton’s proclivity for violence.

After two juries failed to reconvict Newton on appeals of his cop-killing conviction, he was freed in 1970. Picked up from San Quentin Prison by his close friend, Bert Schneider, a Hollywood producer in a white Cadillac, he was driven to a heroes’ welcome in Oakland, where he hopped on a car, stripped to the waist and exhorted revolution. Newton proceeded to tour the nation, China and elsewhere as America’s most acclaimed revolutionary. After another arrest, for allegedly murdering two women, he fled to Cuba but returned and was found innocent again.

In 1980, Newton earned a PhD from U.C. Santa Cruz with his easy-to-research thesis “The War Against the Panthers”, although, by that time, he had long been a gangster. Vying to become Oakland’s top pimp daddy, he took up residence in a fancy penthouse overlooking Lake Merritt and the Oakland court house, where he spent so much time. Even while maintaining his grueling schedule of writing and public appearances, he led a hard-nosed crew which allegedly extorted protection money from bars and other businesses, ran coke, to which he became addicted, and pimped some Panther sisters.

“I probably would have killed Huey myself,” remarked his erstwhile-best-friend Seale. Newton was finally murdered in 1989, about a mile from my building, a few months after I moved in. It was considered a standard Black-on-Black attack until it came out he had been killed by a member of a rival revolutionary group, the Black Guerrilla Family, in a coke deal gone bad.

Memorial to Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panthers, who grew up and died in West Oakland. sculpture: Dana King photo: D. Blair
Although Newton is honored in many books, classes and murals around the country, not a single monument was erected in his home hood of West Oakland for fifty years. When the Panthers held rallies at DeFremery Park, the crowds were mostly white kids from Berkeley and San Francisco as well as the Oakland hills. The Black middleclass families, of which there were many in West Oakland’s beautiful Victorian houses, opposed the Panthers’ sex and drug use as well as radical politics, and struggled to keep their kids away.

A friend of mine, Rick Moss, told me how the mother of a friend of his stridently blocked their attempt to join the Panthers’ San Francisco chapter in the ‘70s. As the director of Oakland’s African American Museum and Library, Moss mounted a Panther show in 2016 to commemorate their 50th anniversary but edited out Newton’s “posturing and showboating.”

Of course, the Oakland chapter of the Panthers was under constant attack by FBI double agents, through its notorious Cointelpro program, as well as by pseudo-revolutionaries, hustlers and local cops, which put them under immense pressure and fomented paranoia. Nevertheless, Newton was egregiously violent. Indeed, his revolutionary hero status and gun-slinger style—which Cleaver captured in his iconic portrait of Newton sitting on an African wicker throne, holding a spear and a gun—contributed to African American gun culture, which ballooned in the ‘70s and led to thousands of deaths.

A small mural of Newton appeared on a West Oakland side street in 2017, but it hardly compares to the deluxe, bronze bust of him without a shirt—Newton liked to strip to the waist to show off his prison pecs and play the rock star, even though that is an odd pose for a radical thinker—which was dedicated in October 2021. Organized by his widow, Fredrika, the golden statue sits in the wide greenway in the middle of Mandela Avenue, a block from where Newton was murdered. Oakland also named the nearby 9th Street Dr. Huey P. Newton Way.

Before the statue was placed, its stone plinth and accompanying sign were defaced by graffiti tags and the words “fraud” and “fuck you.” Fredrika didn’t call the police, which community members are loath to do, but the community did identify the young male taggers, who apologized, saying they didn’t know what the rock was for. They also helped with the cleanup.

Except for its proximity to where Newton was murdered, the plaque does not reference his gangsterism. While he achieved many successes and wrote a substantial body of work, including the plaque’s quote—“I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people”—actions speak louder than words in ethical instruction.

Some of my Oakland friends, as well some radicals, rappers and thug culture aficionados, or actual thugs, are expressing renewed reverence for Newton in statements, songs and T-shirts. But is he an appropriate hero for young Oaklanders? Imagine hearing Newton revered while growing up but learning his unexpurgated biography in college, say, especially if you lost friends or relatives to gun violence. As with the great writer Gertrude Stein, another larger-than-life Oaklander with feet of clay (she was revealed to have collaborated with French Nazis), we have to examine our heroes and forbearers honestly, just as our woke friends are doing with Columbus and Jefferson.

Would Newton applaud Oakland’s new radicalism or lawlessness? Or would he recognize the US is under attack by entirely different revolutionaries, the Republicans and conspiracy theorists who are threatening democracy and whose policies are decimating poor communities, white as well as Black. Indeed, poor whites are plagued by opiate and amphetamine addiction, the deaths from which doubled during the pandemic to over 93,000, and the anti-vax movement and QAnon conspiracy theorists, which have led to tens of thousands of unnecessary Covid deaths.

An Oakland muralist, who uses the nom de art 'Yellow Peril', salutes a Black Lives Matter march, June, 2020. photo: D. Blair
Back in Oakland, there are so many car break-ins on some streets, residents pot their trees with broken glass. Graffiti bombing is rampant, with celebrity taggers coming from out of town. A few Black men have taken to wearing their pants so low around their thighs, a prison style proving thug bona fides, they could serve as runway models for the fancy underwear they now wear. There are enormous “side shows,” street parties attended mostly by African Americans, involving automotive performances, like doing “donuts” or “ghost riding the whip,” where drivers walk alongside their coasting vehicles. Side shows tie up traffic and sometimes trigger violence.

The latest innovation by Oakland gangsters is brazen assaults by large groups, like the gang of 50 found burglarizing buildings in West Oakland. On November 19th, stores around San Francisco’s premier Union Square were looted by a “flash mob” wielding crowbars, smashing glass cases and teargassing security guards. A day later, the high-end Nordstrom store in the Oakland suburb of Walnut Creek was swamped by 80 “shoppers” who suddenly metamorphosed into smash-and-grabbers. On NPR on December 20th, California Attorney General Rob Bonta explained how the thieves coordinate on social media like crime syndicates and sell stolen goods in online markets, which are failing to police themselves.

Similar attacks have transpired from large Home Depot stores to small marijuana dispensaries, despite increases in security personnel and Bay Area counties joining to share information and policing duties. And they are spreading across California and the US.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, well-armed caravans marauded across Oakland and two people, who attempted to mount a defense, were murdered. Retired-OPD sergeant Kevin Nishita, who is Japanese-American but has an interracial family, was working as a security officer for a KRON 4 camera crew, covering a rob-mob, when gunmen tried to steal their cameras. Nishita intervened and was shot to death.

Twenty-eight-year-old Erik Davis, an African American from Los Angeles who had lived in Oakland for a few years and was known for his affable personality, was also shot and killed for confronting brazen thieves, this time those breaking into cars in a public setting. Indeed, it was 3 pm, Thanksgiving Sunday, on an avenue alongside Lake Merritt, a hundred yards from the city’s popular promenade.

Those two murders, combined with the flash mob attacks, two bullets fired directly at police, and the Thanksgiving weekend's tsunami of 911 calls brought OPD to a fever pitch that required calling in off-duty cops. “We were entirely overwhelmed with the staff we had, even by bringing in those officers,” said Barry Donelan, the OPD union’s president, who is white. He also wrote an op-ed piece in The East Bay Times warning how low morale threatened the force with complete collapse.

Mayor Schaaf, for her part, thanked serving officers profusely on camera, offered new recruits a $50,000 signing bonus, and said she would petition Governor Gavin Newsome, another Jerry Brown acolyte, for more resources. Around December 10th, she appealed for more state police and technology, including license plate readers on freeway ramps.

Vice Mayor Kaplan, meanwhile, developed and is leading the push for MACRO (Mobile Assistance Crisis Responders of Oakland), the city’s response to clamors for police alternatives, which will be run through the Fire Department. With an emphasis on recruiting community members with lived experience, it intends to provide “an effective civilian response option,” according to an October 20th press release. A friend of mine, who used to live in West Oakland and does body work, herbalism and activism, applied and is looking forward to working for MACRO, if accepted.

Despite the murders and robberies, Oakland’s always-multicultural, often-hipster and sometimes-marijuana-fueled party continued. The week after Thanksgiving, I attended my first First Friday art crawl since the pandemic. Now organized by Oakland First Fridays (.org), it restarted in October. As usual, it was fun, intercommunal and occasionally visionary, with some great people, performances and art but a fraction of its once-enormous crowds.

Street memorial for 28-year-old Cameron Windom, Oakland's first murder victim of 2022, killed by a 23-year-old after an argument at 34th and Hollis, a half a mile from Blair's building. photo: D. Blair
Race is a large part of the American story. But making it the central theme impugns our robust multiculturalism and egalitarianism, which is especially strong in Oakland, a young city with less hierarchy and racism and more artists, activists and intermarriage than Albuquerque, Nashville or Detroit, say. Despite the gangsters among our police and radicals, as well as illicit-activities entrepreneurs, Oakland’s recent renaissance and current crop of artists and progressive politicians and cops suggest we can solve our killing-each-other problem.

As well as prevent the murder of more Rashad Brinsons, Lai Dangs or John Heges, Oakland could provide guidance to other communities. For that to happen, however, even more Oaklanders will have to join their neighbors across cultural, racial or class lines, and develop even more innovative methods in education, social work and the arts, as well as policing. Lecturing or arresting will not mollify enraged neighbors willing to seek satisfaction through the barrel of a gun, we have to inspire and offer amazing alternatives.

To comment on this article, go to cineSOURCE's Facebook page.

To see the author's article on Black Lives Matter from July 2020, go here.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Jan 08, 2022 - 03:15 PM
Letter from Oakland: A Progressive City in Crisis
by Doniphan Blair

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Oakland police carefully count the 73 rounds discharged on October 15th, 2021, right behind author Doniphan Blair's building in West Oakland. photo: D. Blair
Jump to Part II here.

ON OCTOBER 20TH, SHORTLY AFTER
sunset, I was at my desk in West Oakland, California, when I heard that telltale, deep-throated sound—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom—six shots, very loud, in front of my building, or so it seemed.

I crept to my window. No yelling or tires screeching, traffic passing normally. I called the police, although some of my Oakland friends say never do that, due to the Oakland Police Department’s long record of abuse, corruption and murder. After two busy signals, I got through.

I went into my hallway. A young Chinese woman, who moved into the building last year and goes by Jasmine, since she thinks no one can pronounce Mengjiao, her Chinese name, and a friend were coming up the stairs, chatting. Had they heard shots? “No, we just parked and must have missed them.” Did they know about lying down when they hear shots nearby? “Yes, of course,” Jasmine said, laughing.

It turned out Rashad Brinson, a 28-year-old African American man, had been murdered in front of our corner liquor store. That makes him at least the twelfth person killed there in my 32 years living here. Brinson was unhoused, i.e. homeless, so he didn’t get the traditional street memorial with flowers, balloons, stuffed animals, and tea candles spelling out his name, like most young Black murder victims in Oakland. But at least we have his name.

Brinson was killed in a drive-by shooting for no apparent reason, it turned out, which surprised me, since I assumed he was a casualty of a turf war over the crack corner a block away. Indeed, less than a week earlier, on October 15th, that corner was hit with a military-style assault in broad daylight, although no one was actually hit.

My space is on the far side of the building and I was in a storage room, so I didn’t hear the 73-round barrage fired right behind our parking lot, which must have sounded like a war. About an hour later, however, I did notice the cops had closed all three west-bound lanes of West Grand Avenue. A bit rich, I thought, until I got closer and met another new neighbor, an African American man named Jermaine, who saw the entire incident from our loading dock.

A car pulled up and out stepped a 20-something African American man with an assault rifle and a few teenagers with pistols, who seemed scared, Jermaine said. They went to the corner and started firing toward the crack corner a block away, hitting mostly cars, including one belonging to Jermaine. He waited over two hours, while the cops marked where those 73 shells landed, to see if they wanted his eyewitness account. They didn’t. It is no longer unusual for shootings in Oakland to involve dozens or hundreds of rounds.

A street memorial for a young man killed around June 25th, 2022, in DeFremery Park, where the Black Panthers used to gather. photo: D. Blair
Oakland is not unique. Murders leapt up across America during the pandemic, 30% on average. If we look at Albuquerque, Nashville and Detroit, three cities slightly larger than Oakland, which have tiny, medium and large Black populations, respectively, we see that Oakland’s 2019 and 2020 per capita murders are similar to Albuquerque’s and Nashville’s and about one third of Detroit’s. But neither Albuquerque, Nashville nor Detroit are located on the prestigious San Francisco Bay.

The killing increase is obviously driven by pandemic-fostered fear, isolation and depression, which also added to the suicide rate, and the ability to move around masked. And there are other factors, like Trump’s machismo and rejection of rule of law. Although African Americans vote overwhelmingly Democratic, some Black men support Trump; their numbers increased about 6% from 2016 to 2020; and they included figures like superstar rapper Kanye West.

Five days after those kids bullet-sprayed my street, there was a shootout at a gas station about a mile away, also in broad daylight (1 pm, October 20). It killed Desoni Gardner, also known as “Li’l Theze,” since the 20-year-old from Vallejo, 25 miles away, was a rapper. He was also African American.

Gardner’s crew wounded the man who shot him, Ersie Joyner, a retired captain in the Oakland Police Department, also African American. The station’s security cameras showed them rifling Joyner’s pockets, making it a robbery until Joyner whipped out his gun. But one of my Oakland friends thought it might have been a vendetta against a dirty cop.

Four months earlier, on June 25th, a young man was murdered on that same street behind my building, due to an altercation between a father and his baby momma’s current boyfriend, according to my neighbors who heard it. The dispute involved a child and someone getting in or out of a car, they said, although they were unsure of who murdered whom. My neighbor Hannah, an emergency room doctor and white, heard the shouting and shots and ran down to see if there was anything she could do. There wasn’t.

Within a day or two of that murder, a young man was killed six blocks away on the basketball court in DeFremery Park, where the Black Panther Party used to hold rallies. The Panthers started in West Oakland in 1966. The closest court to my building, I have been playing there for three decades almost without incident. Going to shoot around a few days later, I was surprised to see a street memorial alongside the court, although the candles were scattered by then, and I couldn’t make out the name. I called the OPD to see if they knew the names of those two young men. They didn’t.

Six months earlier, in January, four miles from me, in East Oakland, Dinyal New lost both her teenage sons, Lee Weathersby (13) and Lamar Broussard (19), within three weeks of each other. Horrific tragedies by any measure, they were especially egregious since there was no apparent motive for either murder. There were no arrests, since community members are reluctant to “come forward,” i.e. snitch, and murders are hard to solve without motives or eyewitnesses, even by the best-funded police departments. Lee and Lamar did get street memorials, however, as part of the rituals enacted by the kids, families and communities to address the trauma of losing so many, so young.

Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who took over at the beginning of the crisis in 2021, is from West Oakland. photo: courtesy Oaklandside
It’s not just young men. On October 6th, a 15-year-old girl was riding with her uncle when he got into altercation with another motorist. He bullet-sprayed their vehicle. She died. On January 22nd, the same thing happened to the house of LeShawn Buffin, a 52-year-old grandmother. She died.

Many of Oakland’s young men are extremely angry, obviously. Not mature enough to control their rage, minor disputes often trigger arguments, which easily escalate into shootings, since so many are packing guns. Sure, they are casually taking a life and throwing away their own, if arrested and convicted, but they are desperate for what the killings provide: elevated status and self-expression. It gives voice to their own immense trauma. In this way, the inner-city killings parallel America’s increasingly frequent mass shootings, although those are perpetrated almost exclusively by angry white men.

“It’s like a war zone,” said Oakland’s Deputy Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong at LeShawn Buffin’s funeral, according to the San Francisco Chronicle article of February 2nd. “We’re seeing a huge increase in the number of high-powered firearms.” The killings don’t follow identifiable trends, Armstrong said, in terms of gang violence or victims’ race or age, which is another frightening new national trend.

Random killing also increased in Albuquerque, which has a 3% African American population, ruling out that subgroup’s cultural factors. The randomness also appears to be driven by the chaos of the pandemic and Trumpian times, plus the new availability of “ghost guns.” Assembled at home and with no serial numbers, they are impossible to trace.

“She was a loving mother to her daughters and grandchildren,” said Armstrong, also African American, who was a family friend of Buffin and called her his “god sister.” “She was a caring person in the community, who would open her home to help anyone. She will be truly missed.”

Armstrong was born and raised in West Oakland, where he lost a brother to gun violence. He attended McClymonds High School, six blocks from my building, and asked to be sworn in there, a nice nod to our hood, when he was appointed Chief of Police, shortly after Buffin’s funeral.

Since joining the OPD in 1999, Armstrong has had a stellar career, both as an officer and advocate of progressive policing. An early participant in Ceasefire, Oakland’s innovative violence intervention program, he led the Stop Data Collection Project, which cut police stops of African Americans by over half, and has participated in numerous national programs and classes, and taught some himself.

Chief LeRonne Armstrong and his predecessor, Anne Kirkpatrick, who came to Oakland in 2017 from heading Spokane's police force. photo: unknown
On April 8th, 2021, Chief Armstrong was invited to Washington D.C., for the announcement of new executive orders on gun control, and met with President Biden. Armstrong succeeded the three-year-tenure of Anne Kirkpatrick, who headed the Spokane, Washington, police department and is white but was way out of her league in Oakland—for perfectly understandable reasons.

“It’s just overwhelming,” said Guillermo Cespedes, the head of Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention, who has a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, according to the same SF Chronicle article. Cespedes was an anti-gang activist and city official with that portfolio in Los Angeles, which has many gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, the vicious El Salvadorian super-gang. “These have been the most difficult conditions I have ever worked under.”

For over a year, Oakland residents have been hearing—if not seeing, if they don’t live in the hood—their city descend into chaos: a lot more sirens, shots and helicopters. There were other indicators: stores not stocking shelves due to shoplifting, people running red lights, the respected 170-year-old Mills College, which borders on a tough hood, announcing it would close (it will continue in diminished capacity under Northeastern University, Boston), and increased attacks on Asians. For comic relief, Oakland’s entire school board was forced to resign after some members bitched out parents for pleading with them to open the schools, saying, “parents wanted their babysitters back” and “more time to smoke cannabis.”

Most Oaklanders see their city is in distress, although many are reluctant to discuss it. Why bring each other down with useless complaining? And the threat is comparatively small if you are white or if you don’t run with drug dealers or argue with road ragers. To add insult to injury, you never know where people stand on the intricate issues involved, meaning a discussion can easily slip into politically-incorrect territory.

On a few occasions, I have been criticized for opining on the affairs of my hood because I am white. Skin color, speech and other cultural attributes do form large parts of our first impressions of each other, but to privilege them above the overall relationship or our ethics or insights, or to value racial categories and histories more than shared humanity and equality is a big mistake, I feel.

I learned this philosophy from my neighbors growing up in New York City across the street from Grant Houses, one of the tougher projects in Harlem, and playing in the Harlem Little League, during the riots of the summer of 1964, and in the Pop Warner football league, where I was the only white kid. I have also called West Oakland home for almost half my life, which provided me some unique experiences: mostly fun, a few harrowing, many revealing.

Politically correct self-censorship proved problematic when Trump’s China-insulting and race-baiting triggered unprecedented attacks on Asians. Residents of Oakland’s large Chinatown endured a rash of robberies, beatings and a few murders.

A graffito in praise of Molotov cocktails by a member of Oakland's large anarchist community. photo: D. Blair
In July 2020, a 32-year-old Vietnamese-American man, Quoc Tran, was shot in neighboring “Vietnamtown” when his driving annoyed a handsome, 25-year-old Oaklander with a long rap sheet. Tran died from his injuries 16 months later. In March 2021, Pak Ho, a 75-year-old man originally from Hong Kong, died two days after being shoved down during a robbery by a man whose arrest record indicated he targeted elderly Asians.

Significantly stranger, Lai Dang, a 58-year-old man of Chinese heritage, was murdered in cold blood seven blocks from my house in broad daylight on January 11th for no apparent reason. Surveillance videos and witnesses indicate a father and son were driving through West Oakland, stopped to urinate, spotted Dang and shot at him, ran him down and killed him. Literally: Open season on Asians. They were arrested four days later in Tracy, 50 miles from Oakland, and held without bail.

That the anti-Asian assailants were almost entirely African American men was usually omitted from news reports or statements by representatives of the Asian community. Excluding racial descriptors is an understandable attempt to limit implicit bias or the fear some Asians have of African Americans, while allowing Asian spokespeople to maintain people-of-color solidarity. But it puts potential victims at a disadvantage doing threat assessments, everyone was already talking about the races of the individuals involved, and to pretend that is not an import fact is a fantasy. Some of the attackers also appear to have mental health issues.

Along with discussions about inadequate health care, institutional racism, endemic poverty, and pandemic-driven isolation, job loss and school-dropout rates, we need to broach the subject of Black Lives Matter. Considered the biggest activist movement in American history, Black Lives Matter helped inspire fantastic changes in corporate, media and overall culture, in America and around the world. In Oakland, most residents readily adopted its tenets, joined marches and posted BLM signs on their properties or vehicles. But there were also negative repercussions: reduced police services, the partial destruction of downtown, increased tribalism.

Focusing on racial justice issues, without fortifying it with democratic successes, in a mixed and egalitarian community like Oakland, pushes people to tribe up and displace their grievances onto the “other.” A problematic position in general, this is more dangerous in Trumpian times, given the racialized fearmongering of Trump and many Republicans. Moreover, once othering is established, it can be applied to internal divisions.

Othering people from different hoods, gangs, races and social classes is one factor fomenting Oakland’s murder spree. Another is: after a prosperous period diminished the need for gangsterism, a new generation of thugs are taking the opportunity to accrue power. Then throw in political upheaval, which put the police on their back foot and reduced their morale and leg work along with funding. Last but not least, a scofflaw spirit is sweeping America, from ex-president Trump on down.

“If multiculturalism can’t work in Oakland, with so many activists and artists of all races and mixed races, as well as the immense number of social services and political organizations, what hope is there?” I’ve heard a few Oaklanders say, or something like that. Indeed, Oakland has to take a leadership position in this regard, given it is one of the most racially-mixed cities on the planet, with a 29% Black, 27% white, and 21% Latinx population, according to the 2020 census, and it has so much talent and is comparatively wealthy.

Illegal dumping in front of Stay Gold Delicatessen, one of West Oakland's best as well as few beer/sandwich shops. photo: D. Blair
The 16% of Oaklanders who are Asian are disadvantaged by their large number of recent arrivals and English-limited elderly, and their lack of thugs or martial artists, who could help with community defense. Ad hoc accompaniment of old people shopping and patrols soon began, but Chief Armstrong asked them not to arm—one man was arrested for brandishing a weapon at attackers—and said the OPD could provide protection. Many Asians fear it can’t, however, and that “Oakland has become the wild West.”

Local newspapers with limited budgets, like The Oakland Post or The East Bay Times, were slow to cover Oakland’s civic collapse, although the latter has done excellent longform reporting on the OPD, as has Berkeley’s left-centric Pacifica Radio station, KPFA. Colorful crime stories out of Oakland have long made Bay Area or national news but the new, unprecedented levels were not emphasized until recently. When I began mentioning the rash of murders around my building, a few friends dismissed it as typical—“Oakland bats last against the gentrifiers,” as one put it—but some longtime neighbors said it is the worst they have ever seen.

In November, Rebecca Kaplan, a liberal council person and Oakland’s vice mayor, was talking up her initiative to cleanup illegal garbage dumping, which is a notorious blight across West Oakland. Then she moved on to the huge homeless crisis. While both are terrible, they hardly compare to the slaughter, although all three can be connected through the “Broken Windows Theory.”

Some progressive pundits and friends of mine blame the OPD for not doing enough to investigate crime in the hood, despite the 10% budget cuts, and for retaining bad officers. In fact, the OPD remains under the Federal supervision imposed in 2012, as part of the 2003 trial of a gang of corrupt cops. In 2016, the department was rocked by another massive scandal, when over a dozen officers were found exploiting a young, woman-of-color sex worker. That precipitated three police chiefs in one week.

Be that as it may, the primary person addressing Oakland’s killing crisis is Chief Armstrong, who now opens press conferences with over two minutes of silence, one second for each lost Oaklander. “We can be vocal about certain things, but I just don't understand why this community cannot be vocal about 100 lives lost," Armstrong said on September 21st, on the occasion of Oakland’s 100th killing in nine months, almost as many as the entire previous year.

"We can scream and yell about anything the police department does wrong but, in this time, we can't speak up about what's plaguing all of us—and that's gun violence.”

On July 10th, between 60 and 200 people joined the OPD’s march, “Stand Up for a Safe Oakland,” around Lake Merritt, the large lake which serves as the town’s centerpiece and site of its intercommunal Sunday promenade. The small march ended up at a lake front park, which became Black Oakland’s weekend gathering spot and street fair during the lockdown. It was also where seven people were shot, one fatally, three weeks earlier during Juneteenth, the celebration of liberation from slavery, which President Biden declared a federal holiday that day.

Also on July 10th and at the lake, the Anti-Police Terror Project had organized a car caravan and barbecue. Shouting ensued.

A family enjoys the weekend street fair favored by Black Oaklanders that emerged during the pandemic on Lake Merritt and featured minimal masking. photo: D. Blair
Oaklanders responded to the anti-Asian violence with a 1000-strong, mostly-Asian showing at a park near Chinatown on February 13th. Black activists joined with their Asian counterparts, especially after the March 16th mass murder of six of Asian women and two others by a white man in Atlanta, Georgia. But Asian and Black activists broke over whether to support or defund the police.

It is not lost on the kids or gangbangers as well as Chief Armstrong or many Asians that last year there were dozens of BLM marches, which attracted tens of thousands of people and crisscrossed Oakland, to protest the brutal police killing of George Floyd thousands of miles away.

The root cause of inner-community violence is institutional racism, poverty and poor services for kids of color, which can’t be solved by additional police, according to proponents of BLM tenets. Indeed, Albuquerque, Nashville and Oakland have one officer for every 550 to 625 residents, while Detroit, where the murder rate is three times Oakland’s, has twice that, one cop per 300. Hence, we have to switch our policing, education and social work, according to defund-the-police supporters, and accept some collateral damage until it takes effect.

Oakland’s murder rate will almost double in 2021, from its record low of 72 in 2019, a level only last seen from 1998 to 2001 or in the ‘70s. Although mortality peaked in 1992, with 165 killings, comparing the crack epidemic to today is like contrasting apples and oranges, given Oakland’s recent renaissance. The 2010s were probably the city’s most prosperous decade since the ‘40s, including for many low-income locals—if they weren't displaced by gentrification, of course.

Along with pushing up rents and homelessnes, gentrification brought hundreds of new businesses, many of them restaurants, which provided jobs as well as places to get a decent bite. There were also scores of new music venues and art galleries, welcome outlets for local artists, including those driven here by the much higher rents in San Francisco, which has been occupied by overpaid techies. The first Friday art crawl, started in 2006 by the Art Murmur gallery association, blew up over five years from a few hundred to over 20,000 attendees. The majority were Oaklanders enjoying each other’s company, but the bridge and tunnel crowd’s copious eating and drinking, if not art buying, turned it into a cash bonanza.

Gentrifiers can be disgusting and destructive, of course. Unscrupulous house-flippers preyed on impoverished families. High rents exacerbated the homeless crisis. Foodies drove up taco truck prices. Black families were forced out to distant suburbs, like Tracy or Vallejo, where they sometimes felt like foreigners. I had to bitch out white new home owners, on a couple of occasions, for whining about petty thievery which bordered on racism. Didn’t they look around before plunking down a half a million dollars, say? Other times, it’s tone deafness. Two blocks from me, in the opposite direction from the crack corner, is a brewery and pub called Ghost Town after the nearby neighborhood. Alas, Ghost Town didn’t earn its moniker by having a quaint, old graveyard (see cineSOURCE interview with a resident).

Oakland hasn’t become a hot art market, except for a couple established galleries, like the nationally-known Creative Growth, which features artists with developmental disabilities. But the galleries often have work by, and a few are run by, people of color. Ditto the scores of vendors with tables, booths or trucks that feature everything from art and handicrafts to fashion and food. There are also performers doing music, magic, juggling or “fire arts,” since Oakland is home to many organizers and enthusiasts of the world-famous desert festival, Burning Man.

Oakland's famous First Friday art crawl/street fair, which drew a diverse crowd of 20,000 before the pandemic, restarted in October, 2021. photo: D. Blair
A buddy of mine from art school, who is also a West Oakland neighbor, Richard Felix (white/Jewish), sets up large canvases and pots of paint, which attract Black middle schoolers from Ghost Town, only a few blocks away, alongside white suburbanites and tattooed-piercers. Indeed, those six blocks of Telegraph Avenue had become a fantastic monthly carnival, impressing even seasoned world travelers, until the pandemic shut it down.

In the last decade, West Oakland became imminently livable. Once a food desert, it now has Mandela Foods, a Black-owned, collectively-run, organic grocery store in its 12th year, and a new supermarket, Community Foods, started by Brahm Ahmadi, a street vendor turned food activist. There’s also haute cuisine, like Korean fusion or Middle Eastern or the unfortunately-named but airy and pleasant Ghost Town Brewing.

Oakland also has a burgeoning film scene, which I tried to cover and support in this magazine, cineSOURCE, which I started with some friends in 2008.

After Oakland’s decade-long boom, I assumed it could endure the pandemic. I was inspired walking around Lake Merritt on March 26, 2020, which I covered in a cineSOURCE article, "Oakland in the Time of Corona". My fellow strollers were Black, white, brown and even Asian, which is not always the case; they were straight and LGTB, bolstered by Oakland’s large lesbian community; some were even bridge-and-tunnelers. Surely, we were creative, resilient and tolerant enough to handle Covid-19, I thought. Alas, the Oakland promenade didn’t include a few critical groups.

Although the vast majority of Oaklanders masked up, helped their neighbors and eventually got vaccinated, the economic shutdown and switch to online teaching hit poor Black kids especially hard, feelings aggravated by political upheaval. As amazing as BLM’s achievements have been in white-dominated towns, industries or police departments, the combination of illness, poverty, protest and reduced police services proved catastrophic for Oakland.

Protests have been popular in Oakland since 1946, when a city-wide strike by 146 different unions, against discriminatory hiring of African Americans, shut the city down. By nightfall, however, it had become a party, with union officials getting bars to put their jukeboxes on the street, where interracial dancing ensued.

Oakland was long been known for its adventurous, artistic and activist working-class types, typified by its premiere native son, author and socialist Jack London. During the Depression and war, it attracted poor Blacks from Texas and Louisiana and poor whites from Oklahoma, a rugged and less-educated population, which fed the Black Panthers, on one hand, and the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, also based in Oakland, as well as the police force, on the other.

In the ‘60s, there were demonstrations against the draft and for Huey P. Newton, a co-founder of the Panthers, who was from West Oakland and convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing a cop a mile from my house. More recently there were large protests against the murder of Oscar Grant by a BART (subway) cop, in 2009, and during the Oakland Occupy, two years later. In addition to outraged activists and sympathetic liberals, recent demonstrations have attracted rowdy young men who are Black, and sometimes associated with gangs, or white, and sometimes associated with Black Bloc, an anarchist movement, or suburban hooliganism.

On May 29th, during Oakland’s first march protesting George Floyd’s murder, those two male cohorts and a smattering of women broke hundreds of windows and looted at least a hundred stores across downtown Oakland and in neighboring Emeryville, where the malls have more goodies. One of my radical friends was gleeful as she insisted it was a legitimate expression of rage, a minor inconvenience for shoppers, and an insurance write-off for stores. But the looters also broke into small, Black-owned businesses, according to my research and an article cowritten by my friend Aqueila M. Lewis-Ross for Oakland Voices, a respected site.

After one night of looting, on May 29, 2020, the dozens of other Oakland marches protesting George Floyd's killing were peaceful, even festive. photo: D. Blair
Some marchers tried to stop the looters, I was told by the Palestinian-American owner of The Twilight Zone, a large smoke shop on Broadway, Oakland’s main march route, who had over a $60,000 of glass cases and inventory smashed. Some marchers also came back the next day to help him clean up, he said.

Unfortunately, a year and half later, downtown Oakland, which the city has been struggling to revive for 30 years, remains partially boarded up. Those boards are covered with magnificent murals by local artists, which are sometimes toured by tourists, but many businesses are not coming back; some people have moved out; and that one night of destruction—almost all the other dozens of marches were completely peaceful—ended some much-needed jobs.

One Black Lives Matter march I attended was organized by the Oakland Black Officers Association, then headed by Armstrong. It consisted almost entirely of people of color, in contrast to most of Oakland’s other BLM marches, which were often largely white, and had elegantly-dressed women in front belting out gospel. Armstrong didn’t speak at the central police station on 7th and Broadway, where the marches often ended, but the officers who spoke did an artful job of explaining their competing concerns.

Alas, neither they nor other BLM spokespeople seem to find the sweet spot between aggressive activism and sophisticated civil society development, an error in the time of Trump, I believe. Indeed, the general discourse of the Black Lives Matter movement was suffused with talk of white people in blanket terms, without the balancing spirit of equality and goodwill established by King and Obama as well as Lincoln and Jefferson.

All humans are created equal; judge not by color of skin but content of character; there are not two Americas. In addition, defining people through DNA is a slippery slope; shame is not a stable motivator; and multiculturalism is about accepting people from groups you don’t like, not just allies.

“All Lives Matter” is considered racist for good reason. Who is to tell anyone what to call themselves? The BLM organization started in 2012, long before the national movement. And “All Lives Matter” was adopted by racists in a mimic-and-ridicule game.

But, of course, all lives do matter. And that would have been a better name for the movement by virtue of its emphasis, right in the name, on building a cooperative community instead of protecting one tribe. All lives matter would have better modeled equality, in contrast to fetishizing privilege or adjudicating racism. If organized by African Americans, it would have implicitly conveyed the message “Stop murdering Black people” and tacitly included Black-on-Black violence.

Most BLM activists do not mention, let alone emphasize, Black-on-Black violence, as far as I know. They seem to feel that broaching the subject in the same breath as state violence would be a copout, whataboutism or straight up racism. It is certainly true that everyone fights with their family and neighbors more than strangers, and those commonplace crimes need increased investigation and abatement by the police and community.

Nevertheless, Black-on-Black violence does kill massively more people than the police. And it has played a major role in traumatizing both African Americans, who have lost a horrific number of family and friends per capita, and police of all races, who fear a well-armed, trigger-happy citizenry. In 2009, an African American parolee, trying to evade arrest and automatic return to prison, killed four officers within as many hours in East Oakland, surely shocking even the most enlightened cops.

Speakers from a BLM march of Black police officers and their families, in front of the Oakland Police Department's central station. photo: D. Blair
The longstanding confrontation between police and African Americans is a direct result of slavery, systemic racism and endemic poverty, but it is often aggravated to an extreme by the need of both parties to obtain respect in the moment of confrontation. While policing is based on respect, so is the self-esteem of many men, and some women, who have little else.

Growing up as a white kid in Harlem, I have been mugged over a dozen times. Hitchhiking as a hippie through thousands of miles of redneck country, I was stopped by cops dozens of times and jailed a few. Along the way, I learned to respect the powerful players, be they muggers, cops, gangsters, border guards, convicts or rednecks, while maintaining a semblance of dignity. Groveling invites abuse from deranged machos of any profession or race.

Even a minor gesture can escalate an average traffic stop or thug encounter into suicide by cop or mugger. If we research the interactions leading to cop killings, I think we will often find some trigger of disrespect. Indeed, that is also what leads to most Black-on-Black murders. Yes, American laws and culture entitle us to speak our minds, but it is ill-advised to play disrespect chicken with deranged machos.

The flats of Oakland were thought to be pretty tough in the 1970s, when I was living in hippie San Francisco. But I knew and visited a couple there, an enormous, ripped Black guy named Wetback, who was from a California border town, favored red bandana headbands and had done time—although he didn’t mention it much and our chats were more about Buddhism, fitness and weed—and his young, white girlfriend, Donna, the daughter of a police officer. They seemed to accord both sides respect, while enjoying the already-developing, hipper side of Oakland.

If you treat people with basic respect, typified on the street by a glance and nod in passing, they will often return the courtesy. When confronted by thugs or muggers, if you honor them with warrior status, while remaining calm and respectful, as difficult as that might be, you usually get a pass. If not, just hand them your wallet, while politely asking for a few buck refund to get home or buy milk. One time, I stepped into my corner liquor store on a Saturday at midnight, a massive mistake, I realized upon seeing it was full of severe-looking Black men. When one said loudly, “How’s it going?” and I responded at a similar volume, “Slick as a dick,” I won a wry smile from him and some of his crew.

Oakland did have a corrupt white mayor in the early ‘60s, John Houlihan. A nationally-known expert on urban issues and a liberal Republican, he presided over the construction of the Oakland Museum and other major projects but had to resign during his second term for embezzling. He served two years in prison.

Oakland had a large Ku Klux Klan chapter until 1924, and racist sympathizers long after. In the ‘60s, the OPD was only 2% Black, notoriously harsh, and its officers often tormented and sometimes killed men of color, which inspired the formation of the Black Panthers in 1966.

Huey Newton’s innovative tactic of police monitoring consisted of following patrol cars, observing their stops at a legal distance, advising detainees of their rights, and standing by with legal long guns, in case problems arose. Until California repealed open-carry a year later, neither side fired a single shot. Respect.

There was a cabal of corrupt cops, the Riders, which preyed for years on West Oaklanders. After I moved here in 1989, I often saw Black men face-down and spread-eagle on the pavement during cop stops. As part of the OPD’s 2003 settlement for the Riders’ abuses against 119 plaintiffs, who received almost $11 million total, it was put under federal management.

BLM marchers listen to speakers at an amphitheater on the edge of Lake Merritt, Oakland lovely' centerpiece and intercommunal promenade. photo: D. Blair
Despite these correctives, some of my Oakland friends suspect there are still bad cops, the court-appointed monitor is benefiting somehow, and the nine-citizen police commission, which was established in 2016 and can discipline officers, direct policy or sack a chief, is still mired in Oakland’s old patronage political system.

On the other hand, Oakland is in Northern California, a center of progressive politics, environmental beauty and immense wealth. In addition to state assistance, Oakland has an enormous number of not-for-profits, faith-based social services, art organizations and political-activist groups. Although Oakland is the most income polarized of any Bay Area city, with a substantial number of hill dwellers in large houses with bay views, they often help with the philanthropies.

Indeed, Oakland is rich and talented enough to fix its problems, according to my neighbor Jermaine, who was raised in a Chicago hood by a drug-addicted mom. The gang war he witnessed from our loading dock comes from increasing lawlessness, he told me. Heading Jermaine’s fix-it list are the homeless encampments, which are common up and down the West Coast but over the top in Oakland, where they include fully 1% of the population. Although aggravated by gentrification, the homeless camps only started after the Occupy movement established that camping in public spaces would be tolerated and distributed tents.

The article continues here..

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jan 07, 2022 - 01:32 AM
Academy of Art’s Disastrous Loan Program
by Karl F. Cohen

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The Academy of Art provides a massive presence in downtown San Francisco, through its 32 properties. photo: courtesy the Academy of Art
THE SF CHRONICLE RAN A FRONT
page story on November 5th about how the Academy of Art, San Francisco’s largest art school, made millions off of convincing students—including some who were unqualified to attend the school—to take out government loans to fulfill their dreams of becoming successful artists.

The long article, about how the school finally settling the case that dragged on for 12 years, ended with: “Meanwhile, The Chronicle spoke with 17 former Academy of Art students who had independently contacted the paper after reading stories about the lawsuit. Students were not part of the suit, but protecting their interests is why the government regulates recruitment schemes.

Of those ex-students, 12 said they owed more than $50,000 in student loan debt, including eight above $100,000.

One of them was Shaun Dunn, a 2019 graduate who earned two degrees from the Academy of Art over many years, including a master’s degree in animation and visual effects. Unable to find a job in his field, Dunn, 40, owed more than $431,000 in student loans.

The Academy’s recruiters were egged on by school officials, who allegedly dangled Hawaii trips and pay hikes to get them to be more aggressive.

Dunn said he felt tricked by the school, which he described as persistently urging him to stay even though he couldn’t afford it and enticing him with promises of a lucrative career.

“’It’s ruined my life,’ Dunn said.”

Academy of Art officials declined to comment for that story.

Where’s a reputable, responsible and creative Bay Area art school when we need one?

Oh yeah, we let the Art Institute close last year.

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Jan 05, 2022 - 06:38 PM
SF Docmaker Takes Red Nation Feature Award
by Renée Alexander

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Humberto Concepción Pérez, a farmer from Oaxaca State, Mexico, in Gustavo Vazquez-Orozco's new doc 'Los Guardianes del Maíz'. photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-Orozco
SAN FRANCISCO FILMMAKER GUSTAVO
Vazquez-Orozco recently brought home the Best International Documentary Feature Film award from the 26th Annual Red Nation International Film Festival in Hollywood.

Having known him for years, I decided to call him up and ask him about the film, “Los Guardianes del Maíz” ("The Keepers of Corn"), which I was privileged to see an advance copy of. It combines scenic views of rural life in Southern Mexico's La Chinantla region with in-depth interviews of indigenous farming families, food sovereignty activists, agricultural organizers, and genetic scientists.

“Los Guardianes del Maíz” explores the resiliency of corn-growing communities and the fragile systems that secure their survival in the face of threats from corporate colonialism, toxic chemicals, climate change, and even Coca-Cola. Ultimately, it reveals the interdependent relationship between corn and humans, which have cultivated each another, as it were, over hundreds of generations.

The film will screen on April 9, 2022 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th Street, in San Francisco’s historic Mission District. It is a collaboration with Executive Producer Jonathan Barbieri, an artist and alcohol spirits producer Vazquez-Orozco met 45 years ago, while both were students at the San Francisco Art Institute. Vazquez-Orozco is a professor in the film and digital media department at UC Santa Cruz.

The film has shown in numerous festivals around the world, including the Seattle Latino Film Festival, International Multicultural Film Festival in Australia, Festival de Cine Amazonia del Plata in Argentina, SUNCINE Environmental Film Festival in Spain and Mexico, Sustainable Living Film Festival in Turkey, in Canadian festivals and elsewhere.

I caught up with Vazquez-Orozco recently by Zoom.

Vazquez-Orozco (center), Executive Producer Jonathan Barbieri (right) and Online Producer Yira Vallejo (left). photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-Orozco
cineSOURCE: Who would you say is the hero of this film?

Vazquez-Orozco: The heroes and heroines of the film are all the members of the traditional indigenous communities in Oaxaca [Mexico]. When I would ask a question, such as ‘What do you think about this or that...' consistently the answer was, ‘I don't speak for myself, I speak for my community.'

While the film surveys traditional indigenous agriculture, as a model that can be applied where industrial mono-cropping failed, it is also about people. It explores the cultural continuity that links today's corn farmers in Oaxaca [State, Mexico] to their pre-colonial ancestors.

In the course of our three-year journey, we learned that—even under the stress of bio-piracy, the aggressive promotion of glyphosates [fertilizers], natural disasters, broken promises and the incursion of Maruchan instant soups and Coca-Cola—traditional farming communities have been surprisingly resilient.

Two things make that resilience possible: ‘el tequio,’ and food sovereignty, which are secured by the collective ownership, preservation and diversification of seeds.

What is ‘tequio’?

‘El tequio’ is a term anthropologists use as an approximation for the French word, ‘corvée,’ a form of traditional labor. Westerners tend to think of ‘corvée,’ or statute labor, as some form of unpaid, involuntary conscription.

That could not be further from the truth in the indigenous communities of Oaxaca. Whether for public works such as clearing roads or forest management, or for planting and harvesting corn, ‘el tequio’ is essential to getting things done.

It is actually considered an honor to be called upon to help out, or provide some special skill for the sake of a cause greater than one's self. The practice is as old as agriculture itself and it is critical to the principle that, within the collective, the individual finds meaning.

Where was it shot?

We surveyed Mixtec, Zapotec and Chinantec families in the coastal Sierra Mixteca, Valles Centrales and the lower Chinantla regions [of Oaxaca State]. We got to know Chinanteco farmers and organizers who, for years, have struggled to build a community germplasm bank as a means of protection against chronic seed loss caused by flooding and high winds.

Poster for 'Los Guardianes del Maíz'. photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-Orozco
Various institutions have periodically dangled promises of grand projects, but the funding seems always to evaporate before a single stone is laid. Currently, the [seed] bank consists of the plastic storage drums you'll see in the film. The communities in San Mateo Yetla and Plan de las Flores have the land, the labor—el tequio—and, most importantly, the desire to build a model seed bank, if they could secure the necessary funding and access to certain technologies.

How long have those seed banks—

Seed banks in one form or another have been around as long as natural disasters—now, unnatural catastrophes [laughs].

In San Mateo Yetla and Plan de Flores, the destruction of crops by plague, wind or flood means not only the momentary disruption of food supply, but also the loss of the seeds a farmer will need to perpetuate a particular strain of corn, grain or legume. Through painstaking selection, year after year, they have been optimized not only to flourish in the conditions of a particular region, but for the particular wedge of land being cultivated.

It is widely accepted that in Mexico there are about 60 varieties of native corn. More than 35 of those known varieties, some 59% of the total diversity, are found in Oaxaca. But the real number is far greater. Just as Oaxaca's complex landscape has fragmented its 16 indigenous languages into more than 170 tongues, the state's convoluted topography translates into literally hundreds of distinct micro-ecosystems.

The altitude, seasonal rains, soil pH, direction that slope is facing—all of these and more play a part in the evolution of a strain of corn. But, a kernel of Native corn is more than just a package of genes that has evolved over time. It is the culture and history—the intellectual property—of the people who grow it.

The most important factor is the selection each year by the humans who are, to this day, co-evolving alongside that corn. I personally prefer to use words like Native, heritage, or ancestral corn for what has evolved over 350 generations.

Corn does not exist in nature. It cannot self-propagate. Its seeds do not fall naturally to the ground. Vigorous human intervention is required to free the seed from the husk and, through the selection process, humans perfect their corn. Those plastic drums you see in the film—with their limited capacity, sitting on a porch in San Mateo Yetla, Valle Nacional Chinantla—are the only thing standing in the way of the possible destruction of that great legacy.

In the spirit of the tequio, each farmer who wishes to participate in the seed bank makes a deposit of highly selected seeds into the community bank. The seeds are lent out with interest, the return being additional seed. For every kilo lent, two kilos are returned to the bank after the harvest.

Building a secure and operational seed bank in the rainforest conditions of the Chinantla will be no easy task. Heat, humidity, mildew, moisture, weevils, rats, snakes, scorpions, massive storms, earthquakes, power outages, spotty Internet, dengue [fever] and chikungunya [virus] represent just a few of the challenges.

Vazquez-Orozco with Mescalero Apache dancers at the Red Nations Film Festival in Los Angeles, 2021. photo: courtesy G. Vazquez-Orozco
The building will require sophisticated humidity and temperature control: at what cost? What would the ventilation system look like? How would the seed be stored, labeled and accounted for?

How about the farmers?

The farmers in these two communities are eager to take on these challenges. All they lack is funding and guidance. As filmmakers—as artists—we are adamant interventionists, friends of the people we filmed, advocates and fundraisers. By making the film, we became morally bound to the communities we studied.

Our goal in producing ‘Los Guardianes del Maíz’ is to raise outside awareness and bring these communities into a world conversation. We hope to leverage ‘Guardianes’ to attract state-of-the-art materials and technologies, along with the funding needed to create in the Chinantla a model of what a community seed bank can be. The will and the manpower are already there.

Renée Alexander is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist and travel bug collector who has published stories about food, booze, science, and culture from four continents. Her portfolio is here and email.

Posted on Jan 02, 2022 - 10:20 PM
What I Learned Making a Holocaust Movie
by Doniphan Blair

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Author Doniphan Blair filming his mother Tonia in Birkenau camp, during the making of 'Our Holocaust Vacation', a PBS-screened documentary co-created with his brother Nicholas. photo: N. Blair
This essay first appeared in the new book, "Love at the End of the World: Stories of War, Romance and Redemption" published by Austin Macauley. Composed of autobiographical stories by Blair's mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, it provides a fresh look on how people of goodwill, notably a romantic, loving teenage girl, survived WWII.

OURS WAS A FAMILY OF THREE
filmmakers and one Holocaust survivor, my mother Tonia, which obviously meant we had to make a movie about her. The time finally came in August 1997 when my younger brother Nicholas, his new wife Tania, our father Vachel, a retired cinematographer, and my sixteen-year-old daughter Irena as well as my mother and I boarded a plane to Poland. Midflight, my brother fiddled with his new video camera, the small size of which we hoped would help us tell a more intimate story, and I gave the family some directions.

“Just be yourselves,” I said, little imagining what making a Holocaust movie might mean personally, artistically, metaphysically even, or in terms of factual discovery.

A decade of editing later, that twenty-two-day trip became "Our Holocaust Vacation", an eighty-three-minute documentary shown over 500 times on Public Broadcast Service stations. It features my mother recalling her experiences, at or near where they occurred, our reactions — particularly my daughter’s, who is the same age in the film as her grandmother was in the middle of the war — and a family fight. Worried that audiences were tiring of “survivor return” stories, we added a half-dozen performance pieces, like the family walking through a German town wearing Jewish stars, which precipitated that fight, or the family handing out loaves of bread on a town square in the Czech Republic.

"Our Holocaust Vacation" was well received by viewers, according to their letters and emails — only one anti-Semitic comment on the film’s trailer on YouTube — but not so much Jewish film festivals, regular festivals or Holocaust survivor gatherings. This may have been due to its title, which suggested Nazis in need of a vacation from the Holocaust, according to the staff at the Cleveland International Film Festival. It could have been because my mother flirted with a German soldier, which is taboo in many circles. Then there was the story itself, a concern I shared.

How my mother lost her family at fourteen and endured Auschwitz is heart-breaking, and she relates it with verve, sometimes spitting out her words, but it involved little I considered heroic. She hid some children but only for an afternoon; she didn’t join the resistance or commit any sabotage; she was severely beaten but only once.

It took me years of studying my mother’s experiences, filming her recounting them, and reviewing the footage to finally realize that hers, too, was a hero’s journey. Working as a nurse in the Lodz ghetto with almost no medicine and little food, helping her friends and preserving not only her humanity but her female, even feminine, spirit in the middle of a masculine world at war was, in fact, a Herculean achievement.

The Blair family visits the memorial at Birkenau. photo: T. Prybyskli-Blair
Regardless of cinematic success, making "Our Holocaust Vacation" was cathartic for the family. Such a trip will be traumatic, warned some of my mother’s survivor friends, but she found recalling her experiences where they happened while the center of the family’s attention to be therapeutic, enjoyable even.

My daughter, on the other hand, was not overjoyed to be stuck with her family for so long. Still, she ended up learning and expressing a surprising amount. “Having a camera stuck in your face interrupts flow, dude,” she complained on a couple of occasions but making the movie eventually did inspire her. Indeed, it compelled us all to action, to express ourselves as best we could, and to make extraordinary requests of each other and the people we met, which also facilitated field research.

As we gathered the footage which became "Our Holocaust Vacation", we unearthed insights, facts, and documents crucial to our family history, history in general and, I have come to believe, hard science. Some of our discoveries we could not find a place for in the film; some we did not recognize until after the film was finished; others were immediately obvious.

When Antoni Róg, the mayor of Mszana Dolna, a town in southern Poland, gave us a handwritten list bearing over eight hundred names, including those of my grandmother Miriam, my aunt Irena, and my uncle Salek, my mother cried out — a loud, uncontrollable gasp.

Walking into Birkenau’s main building, the one with the train tracks running through it, that warm night in August, barely lit by a crescent moon, I had little idea what to expect. The sleepy guard waved us through nonchalantly, my brother, my daughter, then myself, but I flashed I was frog-marching them into the actual death camp. As we stepped out of the main building, the camp’s rows of long, low barracks faded into the dark ominously, to say the least.

We could get jumped by Polish skinheads was my first thought, so I snapped open my pocketknife and grabbed my daughter’s hand, to reassure her but also keep her close. We started fifty yards from the main building, my daughter peering through a barbed-wire fence, me raking her with a battery-powered light, my brother filming what we thought could become a provocative cutaway or an artistic montage.

Gradually growing accustomed, we wandered among the barracks, entered one and asked my daughter to climb onto the top of a two-tiered, rough-hewn bunk. When she obliged and I closed the barn-like door, so my brother could film it opening to reveal her on that tear-stained wood, I felt I was locking her in a charnel house. Those few seconds of pitch-black darkness and thick, musty smell were enough to last us both a lifetime.

We soldiered on, filmmakers fulfilling their shot list. Next up: the crematoria, a half-mile back into the bowels of Birkenau and far beyond the guard’s earshot. We walked in silence, my brother and daughter undoubtedly as fraught as me. When we filmed her sitting in the rubble of the destroyed gas chamber, looking around, staring blankly, I assumed I was scarring her for life.

Irena Blair, in a scene from 'Our Holocaust Vacation', filmed at in Birkenau. photo: N. Blair
Hiking back to the main building, however, I had time to reflect. Polish hooligans, good Catholics all, would probably be reluctant to enter Birkenau during the day and more so at night. On two earlier visits, I had seen almost no vandalism or graffiti. The ghosts they would fear were our relatives, I realized, and, while they might have cause for alarm, we didn’t. If spirits exist, I rationalized, they would know we were here to honor them; if they didn’t, we were just paying our respects, regardless of the hour.

In that light, Birkenau came to feel like my place, a Jewish place, a good place to contemplate life and love as well as death and the destruction of civilization, especially in the quiet of the night.

Returning to my worries about my daughter, I hoped she would come to appreciate this adventure as a way to engage the ineffable, the extreme, the totally terrorizing. Growing up in the 1960s, I learned only a vague outline of the Holocaust from my mother and eavesdropping on adult conversations and nothing from the largely Jewish, private high school I attended, which left a massive, mysterious wound. The reverse would be healthier for my daughter, I hoped.

“The trip helped me to feel close to my family, my dead one, and my alive one,” my daughter said about a week later, in an on-camera interview. Years later, she talked about that night specifically, “I felt something, a presence, but I wasn’t afraid. They were family, and I was with you and Uncle.”

Walking back from the crematoria, I also envisioned a white-domed building across the road from Birkenau or perhaps from Auschwitz, Birkenau’s work camp, which is a mile away and houses the museum and visitors’ center. Such a building, with a large, white and unadorned hall, would be a good place for post-camp contemplation or prayer, or meetings of ecumenical or world leaders. Even if it didn’t become an icon of world peace, such a building would be an appropriate architectural response to all that gray of barbed wire, barracks, and ash.

My own Holocaust studies had started fourteen years earlier with an actual vision, one of the few of my life. Until that time, which was when I was almost thirty, I had not read a single book, not even Anne Frank’s diary, nor had I viewed many movies, although I did feel informed enough to speak on the subject and would sometimes harangue people mercilessly. The Holocaust was a vast kingdom of crime, which killed almost half my family, severely injured my mother, and bequeathed me a sense of suffering but, aside from its burdensomeness, concerned me little.

Hence my surprise when I was meditating one sunny afternoon and saw, in the corner of my mind, what seemed like an electrical storm but with black lightning instead of white. What could that be? I wondered. “Your relatives,” a voice inside of me said.

Within days, I was driving to the Holocaust Library of Northern California, on 14th Avenue in San Francisco, and within months to Washington, D.C. with my family to attend an international gathering of 20,000 survivors in April 1983. For about a decade, my family became a de facto Holocaust study group fed by the avalanche of books and films, which started around 1980, many of which we saw together or read in tandem. Once, when driving around with my family and a high school chum, Stephen White, he exclaimed, “Is that all you ever talk about, the Holocaust?”

Sketch of a Contemplation Building proposed for the Auschwitz camp in Poland by Doniphan Blair. Illo: D. Blair
My mother joined a group of child survivors and grew comfortable recounting her experiences. I got involved with children of survivors and began collecting books: scholarly, bestseller, vanity, anything I could lay my hands on. Reading or talking about the Holocaust was comforting, oddly enough, a welcome relief from the anger and tension, which I only just realized I had been keeping concealed and bottled up.

But thinking about it is one thing and being there another. Flying to Poland on my first trip, a year before we made the movie, I also had a moment of panic. What if being in Auschwitz is categorically different from hearing about it from my mother or reading about it or seeing it in a movie?

Poland is both a normal nation — vibrant, ever-striving, recently right-wing-veering — and one big graveyard. In addition to Birkenau, there were five more German death camps, Treblinka, Chelmno, Majdanek, Bełżec, and Sobibor, hundreds of “regular” camps and thousands of a “small” mass graves. Pull off the road almost anywhere in Poland, throw a stone and you will probably hit a memorial to one. Touring those sites can be depressing, panic attack-triggering, a shamanic death ritual even, even for a typical tourist, whom you will sometimes see sitting in the shade of a camp structure, sobbing uncontrollably while a guide pats their back.

To avoid such ignominy, young Israelis often perform their Auschwitz pilgrimage draped in their national flag. The sight of them, almost always men, running through the camp, blue-and-white capes fluttering across the gray, while a group of Christians prays loudly next to the main building, say, is striking, totemic, almost sacramental.

The Holocaust was history’s biggest forbidden experiment I came to believe. Hence, within all that brutality, destruction, and death, there had to be hidden something meaningful which might serve as a modest recompense, something more profound than “Never again” or “Make love not war.” But am I smart or strong enough to uncover or endure those terrible truths, I worried until that night in Birkenau, walking with my brother and daughter.

It was 4:30 in the morning by the time we got back to the small hotel on the outskirts of Oświęcim, the Polish village for which Auschwitz is the Germanized name. My father, mother, and sister-in-law were still up, I was surprised to find, the women in states of high anxiety. It’s not easy to sleep, evidently, when your son, granddaughter, or husband is wandering around a death camp in the middle of the night.

We rose early and boarded a train west, following the same route my mother did in late September 1944. Next stop: Freiberg, a university town near the medieval, eastern German city of Dresden where she was a slave laborer in an airplane factory. In the hotel room the next morning, I took out a scissors, needles, a spool of thread, and a piece of yellow cloth.

“What are those for?” asked my sister-in-law.

“First, we’ll sew six stars, one for each of us and for one each of the six million,” I said, stating the obvious. “I got the measurements from an actual star at Berkeley’s Jewish Museum,” I added by way of explanation before dropping the bombshell. “Then we’ll put them on and walk through Freiberg,” which took my sister-in-law visibly aback.

Some of the Blairs wearing Jewish start, in a performance piece for the film 'Our Holocaust Vacation' in Freiberg, Germany. photo: N. Blair
The family enjoyed cutting and sewing the stars, an arts-and-crafts break from their death camp tour. But wearing them while walking around Germany would be a challenge for anyone, and springing it unannounced to get their unadulterated reaction naturally increased stress. My sister-in-law feared not only being attacked by neo-Nazis, of whom there were many in eastern Germany — one of their main towns, Chemnitz, was twenty miles away — but simply strangers staring. My daughter didn’t like being told what to do or wear, especially by her father and a large religious icon. When my father weighed in with, “It seems like a civics lesson for the people of Freiberg,” we were in a full-blown family argument.

My daughter and sister-in-law were just being themselves, of course, exactly as I had recommended. But my brother and I were, too, since we really wanted that shot. My brother would be filming, leaving five of us, but that was how the inmates were marched, five abreast. Indeed, the family walking with stars would nicely illustrate how my mother and 250 fellow slave laborers were marched twice a day between the barracks at the edge of Freiberg and the airplane factory near its center. We argued for almost two hours, my brother filming throughout until he handed me the camera, entered the scene, and attempted to convince my daughter to don her star.

“The Argument” and “The Walking with Stars” scenes were hard days on the "Our Holocaust Vacation" shoot. Months later, they became a nightmare for my brother who edited the film. Nevertheless, after many rough cuts, he fashioned a portrait of a family dealing with a difficult disagreement, ever so slightly like what so many families endured during the war. The two scenes even combined into what could have been a poignant climax if rain hadn’t compelled us to put away our camera.

About halfway through the walk, with just my mother, my father, my brother, and me wearing our stars, the socked-in skies over Freiberg began to sprinkle. As the drops grew, we sought shelter in a covered area near the road which happened to be in a graveyard. It also happened to be Sunday. As we carried on arguing, Germans darted through the drizzle or walked slowly with umbrellas, bearing bouquets of flowers to pay respects to their dead, undoubtedly including some Nazis.

“Please put on your star,” my brother begged his wife as an older couple walked by shooting him an admonitory glance, “Just one quick shot — please!”

“It would not be true to myself or to the movie,” my sister-in-law said, fighting back tears. “It would not be right because of my fears and the fact that I’m not Jewish. But I will keep walking with you in solidarity with the women — and with you!”

My father, also not Jewish, stood by silently, stoically, chagrined at the spectacle of a public argument, in a graveyard no less. But he continued to wear his star and accept his family’s and the movie’s unique needs. Somewhere in there, my daughter put on her star, using a safety pin. When the rain stopped and we resumed walking and filming, she took my hand, which became the scene’s last shot.

My mother wore her star without complaint, although she, too, expressed fears of neo-Nazis. She was probably comforted by having three six-foot-plus men in attendance, but she was also dedicated to making the movie. Indeed, she readily followed our more difficult directions, like lying down on a sidewalk in Lodz to show how she had been kicked down by a German soldier, or again in Birkenau to show how she spent a night on the ground, naked, in a pile of bodies. She said nothing about following our directions, however, to her daughter-in-law or granddaughter.

Stationmaster Antonin Pavlick (left, 1892-1960) and restauranteur Antonin Wirth (rt, 1901-1976), who defied the Nazis to feed Jewish inmates in April, 1945, in Pilsen, Czech Republic. photos: courtesy Wirth Family
For me, wearing a Jewish star in Germany brought it to life. Instead of the large stone or wooden Stars of David in synagogues or the small gold ones worn around the neck, that yellow cloth star became my star. I wore it until we left Germany two days later and would have liked to have continued, given the reactions of the Germans.

Walking in downtown Freiberg, a parked car appeared to be an aquarium full of tropical fish until they morphed into teenagers, crawling over each other to see the guy wearing a Jewish star. A large garden restaurant became a human sea after I passed through, waves of people popping up their heads to stare or comment furtively. I was mollified the next day, however, by a burly, working-class guy who walked out of a bar, noticed me and my star, looked me in the eye, and nodded slowly.

The day after “The Walking with Stars” scene, we filmed my mother in the basement of the ruined factory where she once worked. She told us about the air gun she used to put rivets into the wings of fighter planes, the loud and dusty conditions, her “master,” a decent German with a glass eye, and the Dutch “free” forced laborer who rolled her an apple across the factory floor, the first fruit she tasted in years. But the highlight was the pilot.

Romance and sex are not discussed much in the context of the Holocaust, especially that involving Germans. “We don’t support films about fraternizing with the enemy,” I was informed by the man from a Jewish funding group when I mentioned that chapter of my mother’s story.

But romantic issues are often of interest to young women, and my mother’s teenage years correspond almost exactly to World War II. She had already told us many anecdotes: going to the ghetto cemetery with boys, or with girls to talk about boys; the parents of one boy serving them a meager meal but with candles and a dessert flavored with coffee grinds, so they could experience a date once in their lives; meeting a young man named Stefan in the cattle cars, as the Lodz ghetto was being liquidated, and falling in love on the way to Auschwitz.

The Stefan story, which my mother told for the film as we rode in a regular train from Lodz to Oświęcim, was surreal, romantic, heartrending. But it was eclipsed by the pilot story.

“His work station was about thirty yards away,” my mother recalls in the film, her voice softening. He was about twenty years old, a member of the Luftwaffe, the German air force, and his training apparently included a few weeks working on airplanes.

A day or two after the pilot arrived, my mother continues, he called out to her master, “Send her over because something fell into the wing,” which he could not reach with his large hands. Soon the pilot was becoming quite clumsy and calling for my mother often, almost daily, and flirting, discreetly.

“Hey, what a wonderful war, isn’t it a great war?” he exclaimed one time, my mother recounts in the film. “‘Everyone is burned, burned — your mother, your father, your sister, your brother! Isn’t it a wonderful war?’ He didn’t talk so loud. He was looking away from me.”

“He even did a little dance,” she added off-camera, moving her feet and grinning at the absurdity. How else do you come on to a Jewish hottie in a concentration camp, I thought. “I had a crush on him,” she told us, in another interview.

The pilot brought her a gift once, which he hid in one of their dropped-tool spots: silk stockings. Utterly useless, since you cannot eat them, concentration camp inmates do not wear them, and discovery could mean death, silk stockings were the most romantic present a young man could give a young woman at that time. Evidently, the pilot wanted my mother to know exactly how he felt.

Good Samaritans bring food to starving Jewish inmates, Pilsen, Czech Republic, April, 1945. illo: D. Blair
Then there was the extra-long air raid. Instead of scurrying down to the basement bomb shelter with the other Germans, the pilot hid and joined my mother at the large factory window. They embraced, him holding her gently from behind, no kissing, although embracing was still a crime punishable by death, my mother notes in the film. Out the window, they were entertained by a fantastic pyrotechnical display: an entire city on fire. It was February 13th, 1945. Fifty miles away the American and British air forces were firebombing Dresden to hell.

“I feel very sad now,” my mother whispers in the film, “I feel like crying. I don’t know if it is for the lost time, the lost youth, for the pilot.” It was the only time on our twenty-two-day trip my mother cracked a tear.

I had heard the pilot story a few times before but hardly at this level of detail or emotion. Why would recalling the pilot be more moving than last seeing her family? I wondered, or standing naked in Birkenau, being poked with a stick by Mengele, or being beaten by the Unterscharfuhrer, Freiberg’s commanding officer? As usual, it took me a few years to figure out.

Survivors generally attribute their emergence from the maelstrom to luck, influenced to a degree by the determination needed to withstand such a dog-eat-dog world. The more I examined my mother’s experience, however, as a timid teenager afraid to speak up, let alone struggle for every scrap of food or spot on line, the more I saw something else. Her survival seemed to be about romantic dreams, both hers and those helping her, not only young men but often enough.

My mother was part of a cohort of young adults, the reproductive remnant of Lodz’s 130-year-old Jewish community, which the leader of the ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski, swore he would do anything to preserve. While he directed his Jewish police to brutally suppress dissent, to rip children from their parents’ arms, and to drive the elderly under blows to the deportation trains, he strove mightily to keep alive the teenagers and twenty-somethings until the end of August 1944 when the Lodz ghetto, the last of the Nazis’ large ghettos, was liquidated.

My mother sat on Rumkowski’s lap once, a troubling image, since he ran an orphanage before the war and was a known pedophile. As the youngest nurse on the hospital ward he was visiting, and rather comely, my mother must have been a picture of innocence and beauty amidst the annihilation of the Jewish people.

And that became her survival strategy. My mother and her girlfriends would finger-comb their hair and pinch their cheeks to make them rosy. In the camps, she folded and slept on her tattered dress to make it appear ironed; she sacrificed an occasional cup of watery, ersatz coffee to wash her face; and she fashioned a bra from a strip of cloth to hold her ample bosom, maintaining not just her dignity but her femaleness.

The pilot’s recognition of my mother not only as a human being but a woman worthy of ironic banter across their gulf in status and under the threat of death obviously touched her deeply. Perhaps the pilot proved love would survive the Holocaust, even among the perpetrators, and that she was worthy of it, even from a perpetrator. Perhaps returning to the airplane factory with her beloved husband, children, grandchild, and daughter-in-law honored the romantic quest the pilot had so valiantly kept aloft.

The next day, we boarded a train south to Pilsen, Czech Republic, home to the famous beer, where my mother’s cattle car had been sidetracked for three days near the end of the war. Jammed one on top of each other with no food or water, the one thousand women started to whimper, call out, expire.

After one night of such sepulchral lament, the stationmaster, Antonin Pavlicek, decided he had to do something. Enlisting a friend who owned a nearby restaurant, they gathered ingredients and assistants and cooked about a ton of soup and bread.

The family with the good Samaritans and their family members, (lf-rt) Vachel Blair, Yarka Sourkova, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, Jiri Sourkova, Vera, Vera's husband, Nick Blair, Irena Blair and Tania Prybylski-Blair, at the memorial to the Jewish women who died in the Pilsen train yard. photo: D. Blair
“It was the most wonderful food I ever ate in my life,” my mother told the mayor of Pilsen, Vdenék Prosek, as she presented him the first loaf in our performance piece, “The Bread Giveaway.”

My mother liked to tell my brother and me about the occasional positive events during the war, so I had heard this story many times. Indeed, when I was around thirteen, I remember thinking, I have to go to Pilsen someday and hand out soup and bread.

Soup seemed unwieldy so I got Roman, the lovely man helping us from the Pilsen-America Foundation, to recommend a bakery. There I ordered 225 loaves of bread packaged with a note which honored the Czechs and included a drawing of them handing out the food. We advertised “The Bread Giveaway” in local newspapers and on the radio, adding an appeal for information about the good Samaritans. Two showed up, Yarka Sourkova, whose father, Antonin Wirth, owned the restaurant, and Vera, her best friend since high school, who had also helped deliver the food.

“The Bread Giveaway” became the moment of reprieve all Holocaust films should feature at least once. My sister-in-law joined in joyfully, smiling at strangers and giving them bread. My daughter began a mad handing out of loaves with a “Thank you very much,” for which she learned the Czech, to all passersby. My mother talked openly and at length with the mayor, the people of Pilsen, of whom there were about a hundred, and the dozen reporters, mostly local but a few national.

“They gave me more than bread,” my mother told a woman radio reporter, “They gave me the spirit and the hope. Maybe there is still goodness in life, maybe there are other good people — not only evil and bad.”

The next day, Yarka, and her son, Jiri, who owned a van, took us all to the train yards on the outskirts of Pilsen. As Yarka recounted her experience of the event and we visited a memorial to the women who died during those three days, the fun faded from “The Bread Giveaway.” While the pilot was a daring, young man acting romantically in secret, the Czechs were average citizens expressing goodwill in public. Why they risked their lives during a total war when millions did nothing and thousands were shot for much less perplexed me. Yet, here they were: Yarka and Vera.

As Yarka and Vera became comprehensible, the Germans who permitted the food delivery turned unfathomable. Pavlicek and Wirth had bribed the officers with bottles of cognac, but is that all it took to interrupt the Holocaust? The soldiers at the train had stopped the kids pushing the wheelbarrows but insisted that they themselves would feed the starving women. Not believing them, Pavlicek stood his ground. From inside the cattle car, my mother was amazed to hear Pavlicek arguing with the Germans, given how they had cowed so many people for so long. Finally relenting, the soldiers slid open the cattle car’s large doors and Yarka, Vera, and their friends threaded their way in, passing out bowls of warm soup and chunks of fresh bread to all one thousand women.

This confused me. I had assumed the Nazis would want to win their war against the Jews at all cost, given they had already besmirched the German name with so many atrocities and lost the war on its two other fronts. If allowed to live, one thousand Jewish women could obviously birth a Jewish town. There was also the obvious evolutionary fact that if you subject people to such brutal treatment but keep selecting the healthiest among them, who go on to survive and reproduce, you will have bred a super-Jew. Instead of allowing the Jewish women a life-sustaining meal, why didn’t the Germans set up machine guns, drive them to the middle of the train yard and mow them down? This absence of bloodlust amid so much mass murder became my main Holocaust mystery for a few years until I finally heard, echoing down the generations, what the pilot was trying to tell me.

Germans are famous record keepers. In the course of six years of totalitarian rule and two years of total war, the Nazis researched mass murder and became its experts. Starting with machine guns and ditches, they soon graduated to “gas trucks,” which piped engine exhaust into the rear compartment, and in 1941 reached their masterpiece, the gas chamber. Using Zyklon-B gas, they could kill up to a thousand people in about fifteen minutes, disposing of the corpses conveniently in the nearby crematoria. Linked to rail lines and using slave labor, such industrialized slaughter not only saved time, money, and manpower, it solved a little known snag in their scheme to exterminate the Jews.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair, as a nurse taking care of children in Laganetska Hospital, Lodz, Poland, circa 1944. photo: Henryk Ross, Lodz Department of Statistics
It is not that hard to convince young men, particularly those indoctrinated since childhood in the Hitler Youth, to kill old people: simply explain that they are members of an “illegal group” and “useless eaters” and give the order. Nor was it that much more difficult to get such young men to murder middle-aged women if they had been starved and stripped of all dignity. Middle-aged or young men, meanwhile, could be enemy combatants, the slaughter of whom no explanation was necessary, while children would suffer grievously under total war conditions and may as well be put out of their misery.

It is hard, very hard, however, to get young men to murder young women, even “enemy women,” especially if they are good or innocent looking, qualities which carry special premiums on putrid battlefields. The proximity of so much death, in fact, increases opportunities to save life or foster grace if only occasionally or momentarily, which means wars are awash in inchoate dreams, especially among unconsummated youth. As it happens, the first poets of Europe’s powerful Romantic Movement were German. While their ideas were perverted by Wagner, Hitler, and others, their romantic ideals were not so easily obfuscated.

Indeed, when ordered to murder young women, many young German men would have preferred to flirt, fornicate, even marry. “Battlefield marriages” transpire surprisingly often in war but are rarely reported due to taboos against breaking tribal rank. Such unions happened in the camps, in a few instances, and in the ghettos but more so in hiding or on the death marches, where Jewish women were more accessible.

“A German from the factory who was in love with [a] girl had followed our column, and under the cover of darkness had snatched her quietly away,” Gerda Weissmann Klein writes in All But My Life (1957). Despite being beaten, Klein and her fellow death marchers did not divulge how that couple — the grandma and grandpa of what is probably now a large clan — got together and escaped. Whether that couple even told their own children is doubtful, the stigma being so severe.

Some of my mother’s guards were also susceptible to bouts of romanticism. Whenever you have a thousand young women in one place, some are bound to be pregnant and a few coming to term, as was the case in the Pilsen train yards. Within minutes of meeting Yarka in the town square, she blurted out one of her fondest memories from that time: a baby girl was born in a cattle car, completely healthy, a story my mother also told. Birth is a vivid symbol of life, especially in a land drowning in death, and even the German guards, especially the women, were not immune to its appeal. Indeed, they laughed and shouted the good news to their comrades.

After the war, my mother crossed the ruins of Eastern Europe, sometimes hitchhiking, and was not raped by Russian soldiers, who were notorious for that atrocity. Raping enemy women is a well-known spoil of war, considered fun by many soldiers, but raping victim women is not.

The German women suffered immeasurably, especially the young and good-looking, some enduring multiple attacks daily for weeks, even months, which is almost unimaginably traumatizing. Nevertheless, in an article in Germany’s Stern magazine around 1995, a German woman, who had been raped and impregnated by a Russian, said something like, “After so much death, I was happy to have a child and new life.”

As critical as killing is to war, particularly a war of attrition like World War II or a genocide like the Holocaust, some respect for life must be retained simply for societies to operate. After a war, humanity re-emerges, not in everyone — the sadists and suicides are legion — but a sufficient majority. While the eliminationist strategy of the Nazis suggested a massacre would be mandatory at Pilsen, the officers knew full well that if they forced their soldiers to pierce those Jewish women full of holes, until their blood ran like a river in that train yard, it could destroy their ability to become the healthy husbands, fathers, and citizens Germany would need for its own rebirth.

Tonia Blair during her first return to Auschwitz/Birkenau, with her husband in 1980. photo: Vachel Blair
The gas chamber was invented, therefore, to serve as a prophylactic, to protect the butcher from the abattoir, a distancing needed most by young men forced to murder young women. Hence, even during the German army’s chaotic collapse at the end of the war, as they raced troop trains full of adolescent and elderly conscripts into the maw of the Soviet and Western Allies’ armies, they were desperately trying to ship one thousand Jewish women 250 miles from Freiberg, Germany, to Linz, Austria, where Mauthausen concentration camp was still operating a single, small gas chamber.

Over the years, the good Samaritans of Pilsen expanded in my mind from a seemingly random miracle to something natural, inspired by human nature and achieved by regular people. Even the German soldiers who allowed the Jewish women to be fed crossed over to my column marked “good.” When this happened, I found the redemptive morsel for which I had long been searching. To my surprise, it involved Darwinism, a concept often bandied about by Nazis.

Indeed, Darwin’s theory of evolution was the main modern idea the Nazis used to rationalize their conquest of vast swaths of territory, their murder of millions of people, and their extermination of the Jews. After a decade of reading their references, it dawned on me I should review Darwin myself, and I located a used copy of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in a dilapidated bookstore in Oakland, California. First published in 1859, my reprint was from 1941, the first year of the Holocaust, suggesting the publisher had come to the same conclusion I had. On the Origin of Species can be overwhelming in its detail, but my edition also included Darwin’s second treatise, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), so when I got bogged down in the former, I skipped ahead to the latter.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection concerns killing or its avoidance and how excelling at those tasks drives evolution. Often simplified as “survival of the fittest,” it simply means the obvious truism: successful things tend to continue. In this case, successful individuals, genes, or groups (geneticists differ on exactly which or in what combination) pass beneficial traits to their descendants using the mechanism of D.N.A., which was discovered a century after Darwin, but more importantly through sex.

Sex has been recognized as central to the life cycle since prehistoric times, but Darwin elevated it to evolution’s second principle, sexual selection. From choosing a mate, hence the name, to copulation and nurturing offspring, until they are mature enough to repeat the process, sexual selection governs reproduction.

But “evolution is natural selection,” nothing more or less, according to Richard Dawkins, one of the premier evolutionary theorists of our day, in the opening pages of his bestseller, The Selfish Gene (1976). Of special interest to Dawkins is how natural selection drives altruism, notably a mother’s dedication to her children, which appears to contradict the survival principle. Nonetheless, he waits until the end of his book to mention Darwin’s second theory and then only in passing. This is because evolutionary theorists classify sexual selection as a subset of natural selection, even though they will occasionally note that success in the latter is irrelevant without accomplishment in the former. Indeed, no matter how successful or domineering an individual or group may be, if it doesn’t pass its D.N.A. to the next generation, it is nothing, evolutionarily speaking.

Evolution is one of the top two or three theorems of all science, yet its details are still being discovered and disputed, and not just by religious fundamentalists. Darwin waited decades to publish On the Origin of Species, until the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace corroborated his findings, to avoid committing a catastrophic scientific error or irresponsibly injuring the Christian sensibilities of his beloved wife, Emma. He waited another twelve years to publish The Descent of Man and held off to its last chapters — probably further than most Nazis read — to mention how completely sexual selection affects human romance, marriage, and birth.

Epigenetics, a field identified by geneticists in the 1940s, but which came of age in the 1990s, covers how genes turn on and off in response to the environment. This recalls the discredited theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, circa 1800, who postulated that giraffes got their long necks by stretching to eat leaves higher in the trees and passed that trait to their offspring. Food scarcity would be an epigenetic trigger and giraffe necks obviously evolved due to environmental pressures, but could there be another factor? What if giraffes were sexually attracted to Modigliani-like necks?

Tonia and Doniphan at the memorial for the 960 buried in a mass grave in Mzsana Dolna, Poland, where are also buried Tonia mother Miriam, sister Irena and brother Salek, in 1997. photo: Vachel Blair
Evolution’s big picture becomes clear when we look at the peacock, as Darwin does in The Descent of Man. While the peahen is little more than an overgrown pigeon, her mate is endowed with the animal kingdom’s most regal tail. Classified as a secondary sexual characteristic, its fantastic size and colors evolved over the eons by virtue of the peahen’s preference for fancy feathers, which turns out to be surprisingly strong. When the two peahens Darwin was observing were moved to a new farm and abstained from mating with the new farm’s peacocks, he was shocked. Why would a healthy female forgo reproduction for one entire season? Doesn’t that contradict natural selection?

Moreover, why would peacocks even have such exaggerated tails? It makes them easier to hunt by inhibiting escape through flight, for which show feathers are not suited, or on the ground, where they provide a convenient handle for grabbing. Darwin discovered, documented, and believed in sexual selection, which Wallace rejected out of hand, but he failed to fathom its full power.

In fact, having an enormous, psychedelic tail is a fantastic asset for both the peacocks, since the peahens like it, and the peahens themselves. Indeed, such a tail makes it easier for her to evaluate his health and age at a distance, without risking unwanted attention, and to decide whether to fornicate or flee. Since Darwin’s peahens preferred the cocks at their former farm, they hid at the new farm, leaving the new cocks to less discerning hens. The survival cost of fancy feathers is more than offset by the evolutionary benefits of choosey sexual selection at which peahens came to excel, probably more than any species on earth — except humans. We, too, are obsessed with beauty, reproduction, and romance, sometimes to the detriment of simple survival, as the pilot proved with his gift of silk stockings.

World War II, I came to believe, was a referendum on Darwinism and not simply which side was stronger. The fact that the Nazis proclaimed themselves determined Darwinists but didn’t force their soldiers to finish off my mother, or every last Jewish woman they had in their clutches, even though a rudimentary understanding of evolution indicates they must, means that they, too, realized sexual selection beats natural selection over the long term.

Aside from contradicting Dawkins and most neo-Darwinists, sexual selection’s supremacy has implications across many fields and arguments, notably the nurture- nature dialectic, which is the modern version of fate versus free will. Nurture-nature has become even more involved of late, given spectacular developments in genome sequencing, gene splicing, twin studies, gender identification, and more, all of which have produced oodles of data. Nevertheless, as many evolutionary theorists have noted, genetics proposes and the environment — or epigenetics or, when it comes to humans, culture — disposes. In this light, Darwinism will need a new summary, “evolution is natural and sexual selection,” or perhaps even “survival of the lovingest.”

My grandparents loved each other and their children dearly. My mother reveled in their love and observed similar in her community, read about it in literature and saw it on the silver screen, which provided a certain psychological stability and helped her to become a romantic Polish beauty as well as to survive the war. Despite the horror of the Holocaust and the harshness of its legacy, my mother was very loving to my brother and me, noticeably more than many of my friends’ mothers were to them.

Conversely, almost all major Nazis — Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and those are only the Hs — were brutalized by their fathers whom they came to hate, consciously or subconsciously, and felt abandoned by their mothers, who failed to protect them, a critical point pioneered by Alice Miller in For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1983). Growing up with Jewish neighbors, classmates, or even friends, as most Germans did in the early twentieth century, they could easily compare their own brutal upbringings to life in more loving families. This absence-of-affection trauma also pertains to many depressed or easy-to-anger people with seemingly decent parents or from privileged backgrounds who, nonetheless, feel they were not loved enough.

After about a decade accruing my findings, I outlined them to my mother. She laughed in my face. “What are you now, a Ph.D. in evolution?” she quipped.

While my mother remained a romantic — indeed, late in life, she wrote this collection of poignant and tragic but still-believing-in-love stories — she also became quite snarky. She would often crack wise or take the piss out of people, which could put off acquaintances, friends, even family members, especially grandchildren. Generations of Jews had used dark humor to maintain their wits in the face of the unspeakable, I would try to explain. In fact, that was the style of her “camp boyfriend,” the pilot; and now she had enough power and status to fully enjoy such kidding around. It was a healthy antidote, I concluded, to her childhood as the quiet sibling of an outgoing older sister, her teenage years under the Nazi jackboot, and her marriage to a tall, garrulous, and gentile American.

As if those three factors were not enough, my mother worked for almost three decades as the secretary for Harvey Hornstein, a nationally known social organizational psychologist, at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Hornstein specialized in psychological violence in the workplace and authored a number of books on the subject, notably Brutal Bosses (1996). As it happened, Hornstein himself was a brutal boss who would demean, criticize, or verbally attack my mother, sometimes on a weekly or even daily basis. She didn’t mention this at home, however, for the obvious reason that one, two, or all three of her immediate relatives would have immediately marched to her office and confronted Hornstein. Rather, she learned how to stand up to him in her own way, contradicting him as needed, or enjoying a good laugh at his expense with her co-workers.

Doniphan and mother Tonia in front of the stairs to her family's one room apartment in Lodz, Poland. photo: N. Blair
The last day of the "Our Holocaust Vacation" shoot found us in the foothills of the Austrian Alps, among the massive stone walls and buildings of Mauthausen concentration camp, which is where my mother was liberated by the Americans on May 5th, 1945. The weather was dark and rainy, but our mood was light. After filming one last, heartfelt testimonial, which my mother dutifully delivered, we repaired to a restaurant in the nearby town to enjoy a delicious meal and our favorite discussion, now featuring the insights of my sixteen-year-old daughter. She even took on her grandfather in the classic Holocaust studies debate, “Did the Nazis know they were being evil, or was genocide part of their morality?”, advocating for the latter. Kvelling at her granddaughter’s newfound knowledge, my mother looked on admiringly while enjoying a thick slice of warm strudel.

The film concludes with the sexual selection that inevitably follows natural selection: my mother’s journey halfway around the world to New York City where she met and fell in love with my father. A few nights after we finished shooting, something related transpired between my brother and sister-in-law. While enjoying a belated honeymoon in Budapest, Hungary, where my sister-in-law’s mother grew up, they conceived a son. They named him Stefan, for the young man my mother fell in love with on the train to Auschwitz.

The efforts of Stefan, the pilot, the Czech good Samaritans, my mother, and many others may seem small in the ocean of atrocity that was the Holocaust, but it was enough to keep the spirit of love alive. Slow to react, gather allies, and marshal its forces, love and sexual selection only beat hate and natural selection gradually, over time, person by person. But triumph they inevitably do as indicated by the survival of kindness and the fecundity of life.

“Some good things came from the Holocaust,” I told my mother once, during a phone call around 1995.

“Like what?” she demanded.

“Without the Holocaust, you probably would have continued to live in Poland and would not have come to the United States and met my father,” I explained.

“So what?” she retorted, “You would have still been your father’s son.”

Alas, that is not how the universe, not to mention sexual selection, reproduction, or love, work.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Nov 10, 2021 - 06:25 PM
Cutting Through the Crap
by Celik Kayalar

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'Also a painter, Kayalar sees the BS problem visually. image: C. Kayalar
BS DETECTORS, EVERYONE NEEDS A
good one. Mine works overtime. It starts beeping and getting louder and louder if what I’m reading or hearing is bullshit.

If it’s not, it quiets down… usually after I look into it further by some careful fact-checking and research.

I’m sure it happens to you too. But, it looks like it does not happen to everyone: maybe their BS BS Detector is not functioning. I hate to think that they do not have one.

Examples that trigger and make my BS Detector beep quite often are: politicians, especially some of the Republicans (Rep-reps is the term I coined for reprehensible Republicans); Trump-defenders in general; anti-vaxxers; race hustlers; some Evangelical Christians and other religious zealots; global-warming deniers; and Fox News for the loads of BS they broadcast.

Here, I’d like to elaborate on a specific but lesser-known case: The allegation of sexism in breast cancer funding by certain feminists. I don’t mean to pick on feminists—I am a staunch feminist myself—just to show how they, too, can overreach, sometimes. And, they end up misleading others and deluding themselves in the process.

Some years ago, I was watching Sheryl Crow (a revered musician and one of my favorites) on TV, talking about her battle with breast cancer. Felt very sorry for the lady, of course.
Among many relevant and true points, she also made this one: breast cancer would be better funded by the government (and Congress), if it wasn’t a predominantly women’s disease.

Therefore, according to her thinking, there was obvious sexism against women, perpetuated by men who populated the medical funding institutes such as NIH and NCI (and, the Congress).

I remember nodding in agreement as I listened to her. Yet, I suddently started hearing in my head, my BS Detector beeping and getting louder and louder. Hence, I had to do my own research and fact-checking on what she was alleging in regard to this funding bias.

I though a good starting-point would be to compare the funding level of breast cancer to that of an exclusively men’s disease: prostate cancer.

I discovered (very easily, from the public records) that the facts were not on Ms. Crow’s side. Breast cancer was more generously funded than prostate cancer by all the relevant Government agencies despite the fact that more men died of prostate cancer than women of breast cancer— every year, on a consistent basis.

Let’s fast forward to September 18th, 2019. The highly educated, accomplished and no-doubt, well-meaning journalist Ms. Linda Ellerbee made basically the same “sexism against women by men” claim on CNN, upon the death from breast cancer of her close friend and colleague, Ms. Cokie Roberts.

"Cokie Roberts is gone and I'm angry as hell,” (source here)

This time, I called Ms. Ellerbee on her false claim of “sexism” in my Facebook outlet “The Traffick”, on September 24, 2019. I cited the following facts which were one simple google-search away from anyone’s reach:

A) National Cancer Institute spends twice as much money on breast cancer than on prostate cancer, on a consistent basis. B) National Institutes of Health spends almost three times more research-money on breast cancer than prostate cancer.

Sexism in funding? Maybe, but it is in the opposite directions these ladies, Ms. Crow and Ms.Ellerbee (feminist icons in their own right) have been claiming.

It’s psychologically hard to even be skeptical about the claims of such admirable women, let alone to go ahead and do the research and the fact-checking on their claims. Yet, if you happen to have a good BS Detector, and an honest interest in the truth (not in political correctness), you just might do it. And, everyone will be better off for it.
Because truth matters!

For further clarification, my point here is not to argue that the Federal funding should not be more for cancer research. On the contrary, I’d personally prefer to spend more money on medical research of any kind, including breast cancer. And, perhaps less on “defense” via Pentagon and on building weapons.

I’m simply pointing out the falsehood that’s believed in and promoted by some that there is sexism against women in the funding of medical research by the government agencies such as NIH and NCI (as approved by the US Congress).

How about the BS Generators? Some well-known individuals who possess great BS Generators are Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Laura Ingraham (Fox News), and Marjorie Taylor Green (Republican Congresswoman) among many other—watch out for them!

Thank you for your interest and please continue to listen to your BS Detector in good health.

Celik Kayalar is a PhD. bioscientist as well as filmmaker, painter and educator, who runs Film Acting Bay Area in Berkeley, California. You can learn more about him here or reach him .
Posted on Nov 10, 2021 - 06:17 PM
A Low-Budget Film That Almost Cost Me My Life
by Eric “Protein” Moseley

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Unhoused filmmaker Eric Moseley hard at work in downtown Los Angeles. image: E. Moseley
AS AN ADOLESCENT, I WAS ALWAYS
fascinated by footage captured from wars. I was attracted to film of historical combat but the most devastating stories to me would come from what was going on at that time, mainly the footage and photos from the unexplainable Vietnam War.

For some reason, I was fascinated by the raw footage of reality captured on the battlefield by photojournalists risking their lives to bring those stories, that hadn't been regularly reported before on local broadcasting, directly into our living rooms. Through a 19-inch, black-and-white television, I had the opportunity to witness how the reporters put their lives alongside soldiers trained to kill.

The war correspondents' position carried them to the most devastating areas of the planet. Once there, they endeavored to draw near enough to the activity to give composed records, photographs or films. Accordingly, this is commonly viewed as the riskiest type of news coverage. The risk alone is what made it so exciting.

No one who likes raw footage will ever say to a risk-taking documentary filmmaker, "I liked your film, but only if the lighting would have been a little bit better when the lion attempted to attack the local villagers.” Or, "If you could have just held the camera still when you were filming the shootout between the LAPD and the bank robbers.”

But it doesn't matter. You can get away with low-quality production when you know your content is what the audience is in search of. The riskier it is, the more compelling it will be.

Several years later, I became a single parent of my daughter Erica. I also developed an addiction to the powerful drug of crack cocaine, a complex descent which took us on travels from coast to coast and caused us to be unhoused in many different regions of the country.

By the grace of God, however, I was able to turn my life around, give Erica good education (she is a media worker and activist for the homeless in San Francisco) and become a social impact documentary filmmaker. Like the Vietnam war photojournalists, I found myself filming in a warzone that was somewhat different but had some similarities, what has been called “the war on homelessness.”

I have always been a risktaker. I believe that it is crucial in in documentary filmmaking but also many lines of work. Of course, the soldiers in the Vietnam war were courageous risktakers. As the soldiers shot each other with rifles, the journalist shot at both parties with a camera.

Those risks were responsible for me becoming known for what I do in different regions of the world. That led to me becoming part of the book “Unsung Hero: 25 Inspiring Stories of Kindness During the Covid-19 Pandemic", one of people covered for their extra kindness during the Covid-19 pandemic which was created by Story Terrace (a leading memoir writing service), which came out in 2020.

Moseley with the new book 'Unsung Heroes', which features his story. image: E. Moseley
In reality, it almost cost me my life. Sure, I could have strived to become a documentary filmmaker who covers stories such as how Disneyland makes their cotton candy, or how blue jays fly south to escape the winter. No disrespect to those types of documentary filmmakers, but for myself, I had to be a little more adventurous.

Hence, I have produced several documentaries concerning raising awareness of homelessness. As a filmmaker, I, too, found myself in some dangerous areas alongside some dangerous individuals.

I have been taking a risk ever since I first picked up a camera and began shooting. My first experience with that process happened while making my debut documentary, “Skid Row Journey” (which was supposed to be a pilot for a reality show). The underground documentary was shot on location in skid row Los Angeles, New York, and Georgetown, South Carolina.

My life was on the line almost constantly while shooting in LA and New York, but not so much in Georgetown. Not only the conditions were much better, in comparison to the big cities, but I knew many people there. Thanks to Grandma Thompson (R.I.P.) and Barbara Thomson for providing me a safe place to shoot inside their home on Duke St.

Also, I would like to thank my ‘Li’l’” brother from another mother, Antonio “L.I.F.E.” Thompson for appearing in the film’s dream sequences.

Just being in LA at times can become risky. But if you add being surrounded by people who have nothing to lose and were accustomed to using violence to survive, that can pretty regularly put you into harm's way. Not to mention my camera was a Hi-8 video camera, the top of the line for homemade productions.

Even though I knew many people among the unhoused who line the streets of downtown LA, that was not cushion enough in such a teeming metropolis. Nevertheless I got about 2 1/2 hours' worth of raw footage of compelling homeless stories.

I soon after traveled to New York and found myself living in the back of Port Authority, near 42nd St and 8th Avenue. My daughter and I had done the Big Apple a couple of times before, but this time around, it was just me, God, and my camera,

I recall standing on a corner looking for someone who I could trust to hold my camera as I did an introduction. The man who I asked to assist me looked at me strangely said. "Do you know where you're at?” I said, “Yes, I do, but do you know where I've been?”

I then showed him the footage that I had previously captured from skid rows across the country. Fascinated, he gave me a “hood pass.” I knew that I had to complete what I had started and I was willing to do it by all means necessary.

Later, I produced several other documentaries. Some of the films had higher production values but with no comparison to my three latest films as far as notoriety. While it was bad enough dealing with the lonely and forgotten, I was faced with an even deadlier situation, Covid-19.

At the end of filming my latest documentary “In Correspondence With Eric Protein Moseley”, I began to feel ill. I immediately took a Covid test and tested positive. I cannot say for sure exactly where I contracted it from because I deal with all walks of life. To me Covid-19 was comparable to seven days of death, while still being alive.

Nevertheless, when making a documentary, you have to put it all on the line in order to get a good story, perhaps even putting your life in harm's way.

Ultimately, you are the storyteller. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how big your crew is. According the director Ron Howard, "It doesn't matter how much money you have to spend, it`s what you're capturing inside frame lines that going to have an impact on the audience or not."

Eric “Protein” Moseley is a filmmaker, actor and homeless consultant who lives in Los Angeles and can be reached

Posted on Oct 24, 2021 - 02:53 PM
Filmmaking from Greece to New York: Interview with Stavroula Toska
by Don Schwartz

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Greek filmmaker and innovator Stavroula Toska. image: courtesy S. Toska
FILMMAKER STAVROULA TOSKA WAS
born and bred in the small town of Sindos, Greece. She spent her childhood and schooling there. By the time she was 21, she was in drama school pursuing a career in acting. She worked in Greek television, playing in soap operas.

Although Toska feels a strong connection with Greece and her family, America called. She was in Manhattan by the age of 23. A few years into her time in New York, Toska met Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Olympia Dukakis, the daughter of Greek immigrants, at an event. The two connected as friends and soon collaborated on Toska’s award-winning feature documentary ‘Beneath the Olive Tree.”

Toska has directed three films so far:

‘Switch’: a TV series based on true events that takes place in the world of professional domination (BS/DM) in New York City.

‘In The Vice’: a glimpse into the world of a high-powered Wall Street woman who resorts to an unorthodox way of enhancing her work performance, while trying to keep up with the challenging demands of the corporate world.

‘Beneath the Olive Tree’: a documentary covering the hidden atrocities perpetrated on Greek women caught up in the Greek Civil War in 1946-1949. This war was much longer than three years. It went far into the 1970s and was backed by the US and British governments.

Mysterious circumstances and my simple curiosity about the title, ‘Beneath The Olive Tree’, brought me to Toska. When the film stunned me to my core, I reached out to her and luckily connected.

Stavroula Toska working on the documentary 'Beneath the Olive Tree' at the Parthenon in Athens . image: courtesy S. Toska
cineSOURCE: Stavroula, how were things like for you when you first arrived in the US?

You’re taking me all the way back, Don. I arrived in New York in September of 2000, with about $400 in my pocket, which was the most money I ever had in my life at that point.

That was a lot of money back then in Greece and I expected to rent an apartment, sign up for school, start paying my tuition, and then I’d find a job. I quickly learned that $400. won’t take you far in New York.

So, I stayed at the American Youth Hostel which was charging about $20. a night, on the upper west side. Within a month or so I started working as a waitress in a diner in Manhattan, and began putting money aside to pay for school.

Looking back now I might not have taken the chance if I knew how hard things would have been. But, I was young, and I thought, oh, whatever, I will go to America, if something doesn’t work out within a year or two, I’ll just go back to Greece, or I’ll go to London, whatever, the world is my oyster—but, I stayed in America. and I’m very glad I did.

What part of New York did you settle down in?

Soon after the American Youth Hostel I found a room to rent at an apartment on the Upper West Side. I got really lucky because I had an amazing roommate, an American girl, who was extremely supportive and understanding of my circumstances. She and I are dear friends to this day, we’re more like sisters, actually.

Then I started working and attending acting classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, I did a little bit of acting in off-off Broadway plays, and then I got my work papers. I started working for corporate America because I wanted and needed to make some real money. I didn’t want to be a struggling artist.

A few years later, when I decided to quit my corporate job and make my first film I moved to Riverdale, a residential neighborhood in the northwest portion of the New York City borough of the Bronx.

Did you always know you wanted to be a filmmaker?

Not at all. I actually started out wanting to pursue a career in acting. I was a little girl, in a small town, watching movies that came to Greek television from America. I remember watching ‘Coming to America’ and thinking ‘I’m going to grow up, go to America, and work at McDonalds!’.

Toska won the Most Innovative Filmmaker Van Vlahakis Award at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. image: courtesy S. Toska
This was like a dream of mine, Don (with a big smile). We didn’t even have McDonald’s in Greece at that time. But, it was images of big cities, and the type of people I would see in the movies that called me.

Fast forward to a few years later, I had graduated from school with a degree in Marketing and Public Relations, and then went on to study acting in Athens. I worked on Greek television doing a couple of soap operas and some guest appearances on shows but I quickly decided that I wanted to come to the States and have a career here.

I look back now at the things I wanted to do, and the career I was hoping to have 20 years ago—I was a girl with a really heavy accent from Greece, my English wasn’t so good, had no connections, didn’t know anybody in America, let alone trying to find an agent or a talent manager, trying to get auditions and build a career as an actress.

I’d say I was pretty naïve about it all. The truth is it’s been a long journey full of adventures, good and bad experiences, life changing moments and countless lessons. Things started changing for me when I realized that I needed to create my own opportunities and build my career step by step; that was what led me to getting behind the camera to tell my own stories, what brought meaning into my life and what I truly feel more aligned with.

Tell me about your encounter with your distant relative Olympia Dukakis.

I went to an event where Olympia Dukakis was speaking, and she was talking about how she never really sat around waiting for Hollywood or anybody to knock on her door and give her the opportunities to play the big roles that she wanted to play. So, she started her own theater company in New Jersey, and she decided what were the big productions that they were going to put on.

And that really spoke to me, it made me feel like ‘OK, I can totally take control of the stories I want to tell, and make it all happen.’ The woman had so much passion and conviction. She was beyond inspiring and I got high just from hearing her speak! Needless to say that before the event was even over I ran after Olympia to introduce myself and asked her for advice. I had no idea at the time how my life was about to change because of that one encounter.

Tell me how ‘Beneath the Olive Tree’ came about in the first place.

Well, I approached Olympia that night at the event and told her I had started writing, that I was taking writing classes, and that I wanted to find my voice as a storyteller, as a woman, as a Greek woman in particular, as an immigrant. We just hit it off, and that was the beginning of a very special friendship and mentorship.

What led me to my first directing job was Olympia handing me a book one evening as I was leaving her home; the book was called ‘Greek Women in Resistance’. This was the first time I was reading about Greek women fighting in the resistance movement during World War II against the Germans. Soon after the war was over these same women were being persecuted and accused of being Communists, enemies of the state.

I was in quite a shock because I had grown up in Greece, went to school in Greece, and yet I knew nothing about the Greek Civil War and the stories of these women. I had no idea that Greek women who had fought in the Resistance were later persecuted by their own people, their own government. I became fascinated with this story and started doing research.

Toska with well-known actress Olympia Dukakis (with white hair on her left) and cast and crew during the filming of 'Switch' the series. image: courtesy S. Toska
At some point I didn’t go to sleep for three nights in a row, was completely taken by this story and couldn’t get away from the computer, reading everything I could find online about that period in Greece. That led me to go back to Greece to make my first documentary ‘Beneath the Olive Tree’ which Olympia executive produced and narrated.

And then you went on to direct a short fiction film and a series. Tell me about that.

Soon after ‘Beneath the Olive Tree’ was completed I wanted to try my hand at directing fiction. That’s when ‘In the Vice’ came along. I was looking for something to direct, but I didn’t want it to be something that I had written. I wanted to find a story I was interested in, something that another person had written and would trust me to direct, take it from the page and make it come alive on screen.

A woman I’d known for a while and I met at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. We were catching up at an event when she mentioned a script she had written—a short film. She was looking for a director, and I said ‘I’m looking to direct something. Let me read the script, see if I’m a good fit for it.’ I went back to her a few days later with ideas about how I wanted to shoot it. She agreed and that’s how ‘In The Vice’ came about.

What is ‘In the Vice’ about?

‘In the Vice’ is inspired by a true story that has to do with a woman who is very successful in the world of finance, Wall Street, and the stock market. The film is about what she does behind closed doors in order to be able to cope with all the pressures of that world. The film is about addiction, about the face we show to the world, who we really are behind closed doors, and what it takes to survive in New York City when you’re really hungry for money.

And ‘Switch’?

‘Switch’ started out as a documentary project. I had gone out for dinner with a friend, and we started out talking about different projects, and he brought up the word ‘dominatrix.’ We had just gone by a place downtown, and he said, ‘that used to be a BDSM establishment.’ I had no idea what any of that meant. To be honest, I thought he was talking about prostitution. I did not have a clue about the world of professional domination and that it’s all legal because there is no sex involved.

I became fascinated with finding out who are these women who do this work for a living, and what type of men go to them as clients. What is the psychological turn-on, the appeal? What are these men looking for if they are not looking for sex? What is it that draws a woman to become a professional dominatrix, and what is it that makes a man a regular client? I thought this was going to be my next documentary.

Toska at the Santa Fe Film Festival, where she won the Best Narrative Award for 'The Sounding'. image: courtesy S. Toska
I had discussed this with Olympia at some point. She knew nothing about this world, but the idea was fascinating to her as well. Everyone I spoke to about this project was genuinely curious and wanted to know more. I was determined to do some research, find a few professional dominatrices and their clients, put them on camera, and explore the psychology behind all of this.

Well, it sounded easier than it was…I wasn’t able at the time to find people who’d allow me to follow them with my camera inside their work environment, and also when they go home, pick up their kids from school, attend a family gathering. So, I decided to sort of go undercover and experience this mysterious and stimulating world for myself.

I began training and then working as a dominatrix for a couple weeks to see where it’d take me. The plan was to make some contacts, build some friendships so that people could trust me, and allow me to put them on camera for the documentary. After my first week of training and working I was completely hooked, and I did this job for about five and a half years.

I took those experiences, and turned them into a scripted series called ‘Switch’ which became my third project as director. We got to work with an incredible cast, including Olympia Dukakis, and the series has found an audience around the world and has won 17 awards and honors in the US and abroad.

I want to go back to ‘Beneath the Olive Tree’, which blew me away.

Thank you, Don. That means a lot to me, and I appreciate you taking the time to watch it twice—there’s a lot of information in the film for someone who doesn’t know this part of history at all.

The very first time you learned about the Greek women and the horrors and deaths they suffered. What was that point?

That was when Olympia handed me the book called Greek Women in Resistance. That was early in 2010. By June of 2010, within a few months after Olympia and I were talking about this project, and what we could do with this story, my business partner, Sophia Antonini and I took our first script to Greece to meet with the women, and start filming interviews.

Mind you, these were the same women who as teenagers were sent to concentration camps and accused of committing all sorts of crimes that the government was never able to prove they committed, but that was the excuse for keeping them in the camps; torturing them and teaching them how to love their country again.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I really hope that people will watch ‘Beneath the Olive Tree’ so they can understand the propaganda that was used by the Greek, US and British governments in order to keep these women exiled in the camps or even imprisoned in various prisons around Greece.

Stavroula Toska speaking on a Zoom interview. image: courtesy S. Toska
So, I found myself reading about these women, and on one hand feeling so proud and inspired by the stories of these young women who dared to speak up for what they believed to be right and fair, for justice, for equality and on the other hand feeling completely heartbroken about how the Greek government punished them, destroyed their lives and took away their best years. I was in disbelief for a while…I honestly could not believe that all this had taken place in my country just a few decades before I was born.

‘Beneath the Olive Tree’ is a very important film and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a lover of history or interested in social and justice issues, women’s issues and history.

Thank you so much, Don. We had a very successful festival run in the United States. For close to four years we had festivals reaching out, asking to set up screenings for the film. It was overwhelming at first, but then it was really incredible to see people who are not of Greek background to come out and watch the film, and then come up to me at the end with tears in their eyes—talking about the women and what they had to endure, how moved they were, and that they knew nothing about this part of Greek history, and how blown-away they were by it all.

You can imagine how much it meant to me and the whole team to experience the film through other people’s eyes.

What’s on the horizon for your work?

This is an interesting time for me as I am ready to take my work to the next level. At the end of 2019, and then into 2020, I was going back and forth to LA frequently because I was interested in getting into the networks and the studio system.

I no longer want to work as an independent filmmaker. I am ready to get into the studio system and work on bigger productions where I can put my skills and talents to even better use, create projects for the networks, and be able to reach a wider audience. This is the reason why I started my own production company, The Toska Matrix, and have been developing IP [intellectual property] through it, but also producing other people’s works under the company.

Now, as I started to make this transition, Covid hit. I was in LA last in March of 2020 looking at apartments, and they put us into lockdown. It was like, ‘oh my god, what am I going to do now?!’

But, long-story-short, I got back to New York and focused on staying healthy and developing various projects. I have a couple of documentaries I want to produce because I love documentary filmmaking, and I have some scripted and reality shows I’m working on. And, I just optioned a book that I want to adapt into a series; I can’t say more about it at this time, but I’m very excited about this project as well.

Are there any specific projects you wish to mention?

I’m under contract with a well-known production company in Hollywood. We have a development deal for a show that explores human nature, human sexuality, and all that. I can’t say anything more about it until we get the green light, but I will say that this has been a really great experience for me and one that shows me I’m on the right path.

I absolutely love creating, developing, producing and I’m blessed to be doing that with a great team of people by my side.

I imagine that a narrative version for ‘Beneath the Olive Tree’ will be high on your list.

Yes! It’s on my to-do list. Olympia, soon after receiving her Oscar for ‘Moonstruck,’ was approached by studios asking what she would like to do next. She wanted to work a narrative about the Greek women, based on true events. They hired a scriptwriter, and it turned out to be very Hollywood. They wanted to leave out the politics, the fact that these women were brutally tortured or killed.

Olympia was disappointed, and that was the end of that project. She, Sophia and I agreed, though, that we should produce the narrative film. Olympia is no longer with us, but I am determined to produce this project in her honor and for all the incredible Greek women featured in ‘Beneath the Olive Tree.’

Thank you, Stavroula, for sharing your life and work with me. I’m in awe of your work, and for all that’s coming next in your career.

If you’re interested in learning more and viewing Stavroula’s work, visit these links:

See her documentary 'Beneath the Olive Tree'
See another interview
See her site or a related site

Don Schwartz is an actor and reviewer living in Marin County who can be reached .

Posted on Oct 01, 2021 - 02:18 AM
October Festival Report
by Karl F. Cohen

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A scene from the imaginative new French animated feature 'The Bears’ Famous Invasion'. image: courtesy L. Mattotti
What’s Up at This Year’s Mill Valley, Oct 7-17

“The Bears’ Famous Invasion” (France, 2019, 82 minutes, dir. Lorenzo Mattotti) is a colorful and innovatively designed animated film based on the 1945 Italian children’s book by Dino Buzzati. In it, the Bear King Leonzio gathers his clan to a uniquely creative war against the land of man to save his son from a human circus. In French with English subtitles. Recommended for Ages 10+.

“The Bears’ Famous Invasion” uses bold colors, angular shapes, and reaches an exceptionally high bar with its creativity. Narratively constructed around a fictitious war between humans and members of the animal kingdom, the film has fighting but is free of bloodshed and generally gentle in its presentation of the fantastical encounters with ghosts, charging boars, a sea monster, and more.

The film is framed with a wandering storyteller who awakens an old bear in a cave and relays to him the tale of Bear King Leonzio whose son, Tonino, is swept downriver while fishing and becomes a performer in the human circus. Moving beyond his anguish, Leonzio calls the bears to arms with a surreal bear dance that wondrously opens an imaginary door to where anything can and will happen.

How will the conflict between man and animal resolve? What additional perspective may the older bear provide to the storyteller? This is the type of animated film that doesn’t get made anymore: a fairytale that is visually enrapturing yet also explores complex themes for young audiences around the function of storytelling and how humans relate to nature.

The film’s director is Lorenzo Mattotti, an Italian comics artist and illustrator whose work has been published in numerous magazines such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Le Monde. He won an Eisner Award in 2003 for his graphic novel “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” The Bears’ Famous Invasion is his first feature film. US Distributor: Pathe International

Rakel, the cartoonist character in 'Ninjababy', encounters an 'uninvited tenant. image: courtesy Y. Flikke
A Norwegian Feature

"Ninjababy" (Norway, narrative feature, 2020, dir. Yngvild Sve Flikke), Rakel is a 23-year-old cartoonist with an irreverent sense of humor and an unexpected baby on the way. Wanting nothing more than to evict her uninvited tenant, yet forced to carry it along, she finds herself joined in her schemes, exploits, and romances by an increasingly (and literally) animated Ninjababy. In Norwegian with English subtitles, this is its West Coast premiere.

Shorts

“Are You Okay?” (Ryan Cannon, US 2021, 9 mins) Addresses the rampant problem of cyber-bullying, highlighting the positive impact bystanders can have by simply reaching out to support their peers. Age 9+

“Blanket” (Marina Moshkova, Russia 2020, 6 mins) When a grumpy polar bear gets an unexpected visit from a perky brown bear, he gets an unexpected lesson in friendship and simple pleasures. Age 5+ Nonverbal

“Blue Cooler” (Laura Margulies, US 2021, 8 mins) A playful spirit and local color bring Hawaii to life through beautiful watercolor-style animation.

“Cinema Rex” (Mayan Engelman & Eliran Peled, Israel, 2020, 7 mins) In Jerusalem in 1938 a Jewish boy and Arab girl transcend language to find a common love for film. Age 5+ In Arabic, Hebrew, and English with English subtitles

“Distanced” (Cassy Callari, US, 2021, 1 min) “I made this animated short film during quarantine to express my feelings about the current situation. I felt that this rotoscope animation process of past memories of hanging out with my friends, helped shed my voice on the current events.”

“Golden Age Karate” (Sindha Agha, US, 2021, 5 mins) Jeff Wall is a teenage martial-arts pro excited to share his passion for the dojo with an unlikely group of students: senior citizens.

“Louis’s Shoes” (Marion Philippe, Kayu Leung, Théo Jamin, & Jean-Géraud Blanc, France, 2020, 5 mins) The first day at a new school presents unique challenges to autistic eight-year-old Louis. For ages 5+, in French with English subtitles.

A moment from the French Nina Bisiarina's 'A Lynx in the Town'. image: courtesy N. Bisiarina
“A Lynx in the Town” (Nina Bisiarina, France/Switzerland 2019, 7 mins) When a curious lynx ventures out of its forest lair, the locals don’t quite know what to make of the colossal cat. Age 5+ Nonverbal.

“Matilda and the Spare Head” (Ignas Meilūnas, Lithuania, 2020, 13 mins) A drive to be the smartest person in the world leads Matilda and her mom to the misguided conclusion that two heads would actually be better than one. Age 9+ In Lithuanian with English subtitles

“Shooom’s Odyssey” (Julien Bisaro, France/Belgium, 2019, 26 mins) When a baby owl hatches amidst a fierce storm, she embarks on a determined quest to find her mother. Age 5+ In French with English Subtitles.

My friend Nancy Phelps has seen “Shooom’s Odyssey” several times at festivals in Europe and says:

“It is a wonderful film. Meant for children, but has been equally loved by adults here in Europe. Beautifully animated! It is about a little bird and his unmatched baby brother in a terrible storm trying to find their mother. Don’t want to ruin the story for you because it is so charming. It has won many awards here in Europe and not just in the Best Children’s category. It is one of my top films of the year.”

Marty McNamara saw Shooom’s Odyssey at Stuttgart and considers it a five-star winner. See trailer at here.

Star Bound” (Richard O’Connor, US, 2021, 3 mins) NASA engineer and his outer space-obsessed six-year-old nephew have an animated chat about why space is so darn cool. Age 5+

“Try to Fly” (The Affolter Brothers, Canada, 2020, 8 mins.) When a baby owl gets pushed from her nest it triggers a darkly comic existential crisis that takes her from anxiety to ambition in rapid succession. Age 9+

“Tulip” (Andrea Love & Phoebe Wahl, US, 2020, 9 mins) A miniature garden world comes to life as a tiny flower child tries to find her community. Age 5+

Dance comes alive in the mythical and beautiful 'Coppelia', based on a comic ballet from 1870. image: courtesy unknown
Coppelia Premieres at SF Dance Film Festival

The film's imaginative adaptation of the classic ballet focuses on the cosmetic surgeon Dr. Coppelius (Mazzeo), whose lure of superficial beauty poisons a town. Swan (DePrince) must uncover the truth about this newcomer and save her community from his deception. As Swan and the townspeople come to learn, in the age of social media and an increasingly image-conscious culture, it’s never been more important to be yourself.

“Coppelia” will have its U.S. theatrical premiere at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival (SFDFF), on Saturday, October 16 at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s Cowell Theater, The film’s innovative combination of animation and ballet make it ideal for families as well as serious dance fans.

“Coppelia”’s themes of self-acceptance, alongside its “Disney-esque charms” (Screen Daily), will be sure to inspire dance aficionados and future generations of dancers alike at this family-friendly screening.

“As a mother of two children myself, I look forward to sharing this film with fellow families,” says Greta Schoenberg, SFDFF’s Founder/Director of Programming. “After so much virtual programming, it will be a treat to safely gather at the Cowell, watch this sumptuous film together, and be inspired by DePrince.”

Prior to the premiere screening, SFDFF will be posting a virtual Q&A with the filmmakers and Ralph Guggenheim, the San Francisco-based founding member of Pixar who says of the film: “this modern retelling blends dance and animation, using to good advantage their common roots in pose and pantomime."

SFDFF will also release an episode of its podcast, Dancing Through the Lens”, featuring Coppelia” producer Adrienne Liron. Both of these interviews will be available for free on SFDFF’s website. Coppelia will be released in a Blu-ray TM+DVD combo from Shout! Factory on October 19, ensuring that those who love it at the screening can rewatch it at home.

The Cowell screening will open with “Fly me to the Moon”, a short dance film by Bay Area filmmaker Kate Duhamel.

“Coppella” screening details: Saturday, Oct. 16 - 5:00–7:00pm Location: Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture’s Cowell Theater 2 Marina Blvd, San Francisco CA 94123 Tickets: $15 general admission, $75 VIP ticket (includes private reception with guest artists).

Contact Website, info: or call 844.567.3333
Social Media: @SFDanceFilmFest @TheCoppeliaFilm #SFDFF2021 #CoppeliaFilm

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Sep 30, 2021 - 06:16 PM
In Praise of Evolutionary Psychology
by Celik Kayalar

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'The Naturalist' by the scientist Edward O. Wilson, who helped develop Evolutionary Psychology in the '70s. image: E.O. Wilson estate
WHY DO VERY FEW PEOPLE UNDER-
stand social developments? Because they don’t have the right scientific paradigm (basis, method) for it. For example: If you think the underlying cause or driving force in sociology is the “class struggle” only (like Karl Marx did), you will miss what’s been going on.

Another example: if you think every current conflict in America stems exclusively from racism or “white privilege,” you will overlook other causes and inevitably miss out on some possible remedies.

A useful analogy from the hard sciences:

Can one understand modern biology, especially Molecular Biology: that is how DNA, RNA, proteins (enzymes) work; how living cells function; how the immune system works, with the new mRNA vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and on and on… unless one knows and understands Organic Chemistry?

No, one cannot.

Organic Chemistry is, of course, a more complex form of basic chemistry: atoms, chemical bonds, molecules, and reactions between them. Without knowing and accepting the atomic basis for matter, the whole cellular life-processes will be a total mystery. Any speculation about them will be wrong. For instance, no practical results in medicine, such as vaccines (mRNA-based or otherwise) will be possible.

Isaac Newton was the greatest physicist of his time (1642-1726), but he couldn’t make any progress in chemistry. Not that he didn’t dabble in it as an “alchemist”. He failed because he didn’t know nor could he come up with the atomic basis of matter: The essence of chemistry.

A painting by this article's author Celik Kayalar symbolizing the importance of science. illo: C. Kayalar
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was even worse in “chemistry” of course, with his simple, naive and inevitably wrong notions of what matter consisted of: fire, air, water, earth.

This is not surprising: scientific knowledge takes time to develop and advances incrementally, as it builds on prior scientific knowledge (as opposed to “revealed” knowledge).

It took Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) and John Dalton (1766-1844) and their meticulous laboratory research to start establishing the correct atomic-basis of chemistry, in the 18th Century.

So, what is the correct scientific basis of paradigm for sociology and the ongoing social developments in human history?

In my opinion, it is Evolutionary Psychology.

Another painting by Celik Kayalar ttitled 'Ascent', is a 'Layerist Painting' done on 4 layers of canvas. and depicting the evolution of species from from frog to human. iillo: C. Kayalar
It was originally called Sociobiology by the great Edward O. Wilson (around 1975). The term was quickly dropped by him and others, cause it was deemed to be rather inflammatory and “politically incorrect”. More on that at a later essay.

Without a clear appreciation of Evolutionary Psychology and its principles, most sociologists and like (political scientists, political philosophers, social economists, pundits, politicians…) will be at a loss, whether they realize it or not. They will capture an aspect of social reality, here and there, but never the complete picture.

The complete picture is difficult to capture anyway, but without the paradigm of Evolutionary Psychology, it is impossible to really understand and make true advances in Sociology. It will be akin to an Alchemist tying to explain how the Living-Cells actually work.

I will elaborate on this in a future essay, and thank you for your time and attention.

Celik Kayalar is a PhD. bioscientist as well as filmmaker, painter and educator, who runs Film Acting Bay Area in Berkeley, California. You can learn more about him here or reach him .
Posted on Sep 27, 2021 - 06:19 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Oct 2021
by Karl F. Cohen

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Poster for Bill Plympton's new short 'Demi's Panic'. image: courtesy B. Plymptom
Plympton Rock’s the Roxie

Bill Plympton's new short "Demi's Panic" will be shown at the Roxie for a week starting Friday Sept. 24th, ant it’s not what you expect from him. Instead of a comedy, it is a mature, sophisticated study of Demi's fears that arise from living in a world threatened by an epidemic.

Touching on feelings most of us have experienced since March, 2020, it is an impressive work. It drew me into Demi’s subconscious feelings, an unexpected and unusual experience I wasn't expecting. I highly recommend it.

The short will show with "Prisoner of the Ghostland" starring Nicolas Cage. It’s about "a ruthless bank robber sprung from jail by a wealthy warlord whose adopted granddaughter has gone missing,” according to its description. “Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct in five days, the bandit [played by Cage] sets off on a journey to find the young woman—and his own path to redemption."

This last-minute, week-long run has been added so it can qualify for consideration by the Academy Awards. Please check it out to help the Roxie as well as Plympton.

San Jose State Film Class Completes Big Film

Professor David Chai and his San Jose State students have completed ‘CMYK (Colors You May Know)".

Image from San Jose State's new film 'CMYK'. image: courtesy D. Chai
“It's our friendly reminder to love one another and embrace our differences, inspired by all of the killing, hatred, and division that was such a big part of 2020,” Chai wrote me.

Once again his projects take us in a new and unexpected direction. Indeed, they are quite varied in look and content, and there are 14 different ones awaiting you here.

Pixar’s Surprising New Short

Pixar has released ‘Twenty Something”, a short about the insecurities of millennials becoming adults. Aphton Corbin, who worked on “Soul” and “Toy Story 4” and is one of Pixar’s rising Black female story artists, was motivated by professional insecurity to make her debut Spark Short on Disney+.

“Twenty Something” is a clever, funny 2D short about Gia, who imagines herself as a stack of kids hiding in a trench coat during a frantic 21st birthday celebration at a club.

Scene from Twenty Something”, a short by Aphton Corbin from Pixar. image: courtesy A. Corbin
“The original idea stems from me being a 20-something entering the workforce for the first time at Pixar and feeling all of the inadequacies that are coming at you all at once,” Corbin said. “Am I a successful adult, or am I bunch of kids running around to make it work? This was fun to visualize as a short.”

Steve Segal’s New Animation

Steve Segal has been animating for years. The trailer for “Misfit”, his latest film, can be seen here, where it is followed by some of his historic film moments.

A pioneer of computer animation, Segal made “Dance of the Stumblers” in 1987 using the Amiga 1000 computer and Aegis animator, and rendered it by aiming a 35mm camera at the screen and shooting one frame per second.

There is also a behind-the-scenes, hand-held video he made on the making of the “Brave Little Toaster” (1987) in Taiwan. It shows life inside a studio where people actually drew and flipped pages of paper. There are brief shots of a young Joe Ranft, who went on to help Henry Selick develop “Nightmare Before Christmas” and on to Pixar, where he worked on of their classics.

Also in the short are Kevin Lima who directed “Tarzan” and “Enchanted”, Brian McEntee, art director for “Beauty and the Beast”, Steve Moore, who got an Oscar nomination for directing “Redux Riding Hood”, Chris Wahl supervising animator in “Beauty and the Beast”, Rebecca Rees. a writer on “Aladdin”, Randy Cartwright, who supervised the magic carpet in “Aladdin”, Ann Telnaes, a highly regarded political cartoonist, and director Jerry Rees, who has supervised building many of the most popular theme park attractions.

Steve has also created an interactive performance piece, “Outside the Box”, that is fun. See it here.

Brad Uyeda puppet for his stop-action horror movie. image: courtesy B. Uyeda
Japanese Internment Story Coming

Brad Uyeda is developing an animated feature about his grandfather, who was in a WWII Japanese internment camp.

“My next project underway is a personal one for me about my grandfather, from whom I get my artistic talent,” Uyeda emailed me recently. “He was one of the Japanese Americans that were relocated into internment camps in 1943 following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”

“I will be hiring artists in the winter for pre-production work.” If anyone has questions and or would like to submit their portfolio, they can send it to .

“They did more than defend America,” said President Bill Clinton about the 442nd Infantry Regiment composed of Japanese-Americans, many of whom volunteered from the deportation camps. “They helped define America at its best... Rarely has a nation been so well served by people it has so ill-treated.”

Uyeda Finishes Horror Film

Brad Uyeda is also finishing up his stop-motion horror film. Although he spent the long year of Covid doing non-stop freelance work, he found time to finish the animation of his powerful, evil-looking creature, a puppet created with Midnight Studio FX in Scottsdale, Arizona.

He says he is very pleased with the results as well as the quality of the animation, noting, “It really comes alive on the screen.” Uyeda is a graduate of SF State’s animation program went on to work as an animator on a series of projects for other directors and on personal projects.

Shot from Tippet's new work, 'Mad God'. image: courtesy P. Tippet
Tippett Premiers Life Work Film

Phil Tippett premiered “Mad God” at the Locarno Film Festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland, since 1946.

Tippet’s experimental feature set in the “ghost world of mankind,” took him 30 years to make. Individuals descend in a corroded diving bell into a ruined city where they explore a labyrinth of bizarre landscapes inhabited by freakish monsters, mad scientists, and “war pigs.” Tippet made it in segments over a 30-year period and funded parts of it with Kickstarter campaigns.

He premiered the final cut at Locarno in August with two other films he did special effects for, “RoboCop” and “Starship Troopers”. The festival also gave him a lifetime achievement award.

Tippet says much of it is based on his subconscious. He kept notes of his dreams and found many had beginnings, middles and resolutions. In Variety he said that “not everything gets resolved.” He adds that the visuals somehow make sense to him, but they might not make sense to everybody.

He admitted he can’t clearly define the film’s premise. But he is pleased that, at a work-in-progress screening years ago, a few people walked out and they told him it gave them anxiety attacks.

“I wanted to make something that grabs people’s attention and takes you some place where you had never been before, and you have no idea where it’s going. That’s very clear to some people. Others who are in it for a more conventional theatrical experience are going to be disappointed. I’ve moved through these different environments before, and I’m thinking what’s next.”

A review in Film Stage says, “The world is at various times an industrial nightmare, a psychedelic C.S. Lewis mushroom garden, a scene from a torture movie, and a pseudo-WW1 battlefield.”

“If there is an arc, it involves those unfortunate explorers being harvested by psychotic surgeons who relieve them of a strange cargo that is then offered as a sacrifice to a nightmarish alchemist who might be the devil—or something else,” the reviewer continues, concluding, “It is a unique achievement; a mad opus from one of American cinema’s liveliest minds.”

The High on Film.com website calls it, “A bizarre, surrealist cinematic experience [which] squarely falls in the league of the rare posse of films that redefine and stretch the bounds of filmmaking. It would not be amiss to put it in the same breath as “2001 Odyssey”, or even “Koyaanisqatsi”.

He thinks his next project will be something “I could complete in a couple years. It’s designed to be a lot more audience friendly with characters and plot. In vibe, it’s like a 1940s Warner Bros. color cartoon. It has that savage insanity to how the energy flows. I spent a good chunk of COVID time writing a narrative, I’ve designed all the characters, drawn all the storyboards, so it’s just sitting there in case I get any traction.” For more info go here.

From the new short from Art We Trust Fund. image: courtesy Art We Trust
Mind Bending Special Effects Work

A strange, surreal video was made for the In Art We Trust Fund campaign. I hope you enjoy seeing this and the next work or two that shows up on the internet after it.

Smith Tells Computer Graphics History

Alvy Ray Smith talks about the history of computer graphics, an hour-long talk on the subject of his new book about the history of the pixel. The last 10 or 15 minutes of it focuses on his pioneering work for George Lucas and a little company he helped found, Pixar. When they needed major funding they brought on Steve Jobs, who arranged it for them. It ends with the release of their first feature, "Toy Story".

Cartoon Art Museum

First of all, there are lots of cartooning classes for kids online after school and on weekends at the Cartoon Art Museum, see their website.

The "Wonder Woman" comic from DC is highlighted in a great Cartoon Museum Show. image: courtesy Cartoon Museum
Secondly, the museum, located in San Francisco, proudly presents “The Legend of Wonder Woman”, an exhibition celebrating 80 years of DC Comics’ iconic amazon.

“The Legend of Wonder Woman” features comic books, merchandise, and original illustrations by many of Wonder Woman’s most prominent artists, including H.G. Peter, who co-created the character in 1941, alongside writer William Moulton Marston; Trina Robbins, legendary underground comix artist and herstorian; George Pérez, who revitalized and redefined Wonder Woman for the 1980s; Robyn Smith, artist of the critically acclaimed YA graphic novel “Nubia: Real One”; and fan favorites including Colleen Doran, Phil Jimenez, and Liam Sharp; as well as costumes by The Bronze Armory.

The exhibit runs till the end of December 2021. Galleries opened daily (except Wed).

Another of their shows is “A Treasury of Animation”. From the earliest hand-drawn cartoons to today’s blockbuster CGI films, all animation begins with an artist and an idea, “A Treasury of Animation” showcases original production art following the evolution of animation from the 1920s onward from the Cartoon Art Museum's permanent collection.

Jantz Celebrates 25 Years

Michael Jantz is celebrating the 25th anniversary of his comic strip “The Norm”. He posts his “daily sanity” here. Or you can see what his first strip was like here.

Plus he has cool stuff for sale here.

New political cartoon from Mark Fiore. image: courtesy M. Fiore
Fiore’s New Stuff

Mark Fiore has new Covid-19 and withdrawal from Afghanistan cartoons online that are excellent. You might enjoy seeing his latest critical comments about anti-vaxxers and work about our withdrawal from our 20-year war on his website. Lots of animated work to contemplate here.

Fantastic Flip Book

See a video of what may be the world’s most expensive flipbook, part of a deluxe limited edition of Gogol’s “The Nose” published by Arion Press, illustrated by William Kentridge. He has created sets for the opera “The Nose”. See it here or buy it here.

Disneyland Gets Sued

Twenty-five thousand Disneyland employees sued for better pay which is obviously needed given reports of homelessness and food insecurity.

While working at the Disneyland Hotel for 15 years as a valet, Gabriel Sarracino earned only minimum wage while supplementing his income with tips. Considering himself fortunate since his wife and two children have affordable housing, not every cast member (as employees are called by Disneyland) can say the same.

According to a 2018 survey, 11% reported experiencing homelessness in prior two years, 68% were food insecure, and 73% said they do not earn enough for basic expenses, which the recent pandemic and gentrified real estate market made worse.

According to SF Gate (9/21/2021), “Sarracino is one of the 25,000 cast members who are participating in a class action lawsuit that alleges Disneyland is legally obligated to pay a living wage.”

Karl F. Cohen—who added his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Sep 23, 2021 - 04:50 PM
Indigenous Brazilians Territory Threatened
by Brazilian activists

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Brazilian Natives protest new laws. image: Counsel for Indigenous Mission
OUR PROBLEMS ARE MANY, AND OUR
pain is deep. We have surpassed 500,000 deaths from COVID in our country. Our government, led by the Trump-like Jair Bolsonaro, has been obstinately ineffective against the pandemic and only 13% of us have been vaccinated. Having turned totally right wing, it is also supporting the attempt of agrarian, industrial and financial elites to seize Native land.

The destruction of indigenous people, who are dedicated to using the forests responsibly, also harms the environment. Since they have the right to a sustainable way of life, these actions resemble Nazism.

The ethnic and cultural diversity of Brazil is being threatened by several actions in the Brazilian Congress and Judiciary, but most notably bill PL 490. Its purpose is to take away rights to land marked as part of Native people's territories.

A legal loophole called “Marco Temporal,” which means “time frame,” could legalize theft of their lands unless the Brazilian Supreme Court stops it. If they can’t prove they occupied those territories in 1988, when Brazil’s constitution was ratified, the so-called time frame, the areas will be open to agriculture, mining or other extractive industries.

There have been many protests, see more information here.

PL 490 would violate their ability to sustain life and future generations. The bill also violates Brazil’s Constitution and mocks Brazil’s signature to international treaties, like the Convention 169 of the ILO (International Labor Organization) on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, the UN International Indigenous Rights Declaration and the UN International Human Rights Declaration.

Brazilian Natives protest new laws. image: Counsel for Indigenous Mission
There are two crucial actions taking place in the judiciary at this moment, which are about to go before the Supreme Court. On June 30th, 2021, a key process concerning the demarcation of the territory of the Xokleng, will be judged. The Xokleng, who live in the southern, more European-settled part of Brazil, experienced an extremely violent colonization, which continued up through the dictatorial governments that ended in 1988.

If the bill against the Xokleng passes, all Native Peoples who have been violently expelled from their territories during national colonization will be threatened with complete extinction. For more on this story, see the Greenpeace article.

The national institutions which should protect them, like the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) or the Ministry of Environment, act against their interests. In this context, death is not only physical, but also cultural.

The attack of their basic rights and human dignity invested from the executive power is already being consolidated in other ways. In some places, this degradation is supported by evangelical Christian missionaries, who promote the division of the communities by criticizing their shamans and healers. Unfortunately, they get support and motivation from the federal administrative structure.

It’s urgent, that authorities and people of the world protest or at least do not compound these ecocides and genocides. Your help is of great relevance.

One way to help is send an email to the following email addresses, saying “No to PL 490 and No to the Marco Temporal.”

President of the Chamber of Deputies/Presidente da Câmara dos Deputados:
President of the Federal Senate/Presidente do Senado Federal:
President of the Supreme Court/Presidente da Suprema Corte:
Minister of Agriculture/Ministra da Agricultura:

Or you can express yourself in any way you find suitable for the cause. Singing, dancing and blessing with the fraternal love Tupã, God in the native Brazilian Guarani language, is also appropriate.

We are very grateful for any kind of positive contribution. Thank you!!
Posted on Jul 06, 2021 - 10:27 AM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corner: Jun 2021
by Karl F. Cohen

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From Ben Ridgeway's 'Formless Form', 2019. image: courtesy B. Ridgeway
Ridgway Next Masterpiece

Ben Ridgway has completed another exquisite work of animated art. Ben, who teaches animation at San Francisco State University, has been creating visionary animated films and sculptures for many years.

He recently finished "Formless Form", and he says he hopes you enjoy watching it here..

Poster from Geoff Clark’s 'Tragic Magic', 2019. image: courtesy G. Clark
Local Animator Makes Good at Festivals

Local animator Geoff Clark’s “Tragic Magic”, a stop-motion film that was completed in 2019, is doing well at film festivals. It tells the story of Greygaunt the wizard and his apprentice and when their day is interrupted by the arrival of Death. Will their combined magic skills be enough to defeat him? Geoff made the film in his home studio and it has been shown in ten festivals.

“The most notable being Montreal’s Animaze International Film Festival,” he said. It has won awards at the New York Animated Film Awards and the Los Angeles Animation Festival. It was shown in May at FilmQuest in Provo, UT. “The film showed at Animation Chico in 2019. I had a blast at that show. The organizers are really great.” See it here.

Poster from ‘Pepito’ the animated dog opera from Muttville. image: courtesy E. Guevara
Pepito the Delightful Cartoon Dog

‘Pepito’ is a delightful, animated dog opera made for Muttville, a nonprofit dedicated to rescuing and caring for senior dogs in San Francisco. This heart-warming work features cutout animation directed by Espranza Guevara, who is a graduate of University of Southern California. The music was composed by Nicolas Lell Benavides and the libretto was by Marella Martin Koch for New Opera West, a LA area group. The opera was commissioned by Emily Thebaut, a co-founder of Muttville. It really is a delightful film and can be seen here 🐩 🐕

From Fluffy White Clouds new short about the Yellowstone Fire of 1988. image: courtesy LFC
Fluffy Clouds At It Again

"Yellowstone 88: Song of Fire " is a short by Little Fluffy Clouds is a 2D hand drawn animated short that tells the story of the devastating fires that engulfed Yellowstone Park for five months in 1988. The fires didn’t end until winter storms extinguished them. Despite the horror and devastation, life returned and continues for the plants and animals of the area.

It is a handsome work with a soft-spoken poem by Betsy de Fries read by Peter Coyote. Song of Fire was created by Betsy de Fries Little Fluffy Clouds’ director/producer and co-founder and her co-founder and director/animator Jerry van de Beek. The music was composed and performed by Mark Murphy, who is part of the Irish rock and roll band The Devlins, and recorded at Secrets and Machines in Dublin.

Martha Gorzycki. image: courtesy M. Gorzycki
The art in the film was first drawn using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and cleaned up using Illustrator. Then each illustration was split up into hundreds of flat elements and recompiled in After Effects, carefully placing each element in a different depth layer to create a multiplane effect when there is camera motion. It can be viewed here.

After viewing the film scroll down as it provides all kinds of facts about the fires (costs to put it out, numbers and kinds of mammals killed, number of fires caused by man, by lightening, etc.). Here is a link to an informative article about the production in Stash Magazine.

Martha Gorzycki Featured Burma Fest

Martha Gorzycki’s “Voices from Kaw Thoo Lei’ was part of the Burma Spring Benefit Film Festival. This powerful film experience has won 20 film festivals awards and most recently it was part of a major online fund raiser to raise money and awareness of the bleak situation happening in Burma. The benefit featured over a dozen speaking events and over 30 films (shorts, features).

Martha heads San Francisco State’s animation program. You can see this powerful work here.

Phil Tippett. image: courtesy P. Tippett
Locaron Festival Honors Phil Tippett

The Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland) will honor U.S. animator and visual effects artist Phil Tippett, with a lifetime achievement award. The festival is honoring him for his work behind the scenes that has “has extended the horizons of filmic iconography.” Phil, whose studio is in the East Bay, won two Oscars for his work on “The Return of the Jedi” and “Jurassic Park”. The upcoming festival (August 4-14) will host the world premiere of Tippett’s experimental stop-motion film “Mad God”, that has been in development for years. It is set in a world of monsters, mad scientists and war pigs, and was funded by fans through Kickstarter. Locarno will fete Tippett with its Vision Award.

Hank Azaria and Apu are getting divorced. image: courtesy M. Groenig
Azaria Apologizes for Playing Apu in Simpsons

He has been paid well for playing that role since 1989, but now that he is being criticized for being politically incorrect Hank Azaria says he is sorry—not to you but to people who are from India who watch the show. The Guardian reports the actor has apologized “to every single Indian person” for his portrayal of Apu in The Simpsons. Azaria, who is white, voiced the role of Apu, an Indian-American shopkeeper. The character has now been terminated from the show amid criticism of racial stereotyping. Azaria accepts being accountable for any “negative consequences.” He also said that, although he believed the show was founded on good intentions, it contributed to “structural racism” in the US.

When he accepted the role, “I really didn’t know any better, I didn’t think about it. I was unaware how much relative advantage I had received in this country as a white kid from Queens. Just because there were good intentions it doesn’t mean there weren’t real negative consequences to the thing that I am accountable for.”

Awareness that the character was an insensitive and offensive portrayal was stressed in the 2017 documentary, “The Problem with Apu”, made by the Indian American comedian Hari Kondabolu as a look at “how western culture depicts south-east Asian communities.”

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons”, told the BBC the show was striving for inclusivity. Last year he announced that non-white characters would no longer be voiced by white actors, and in February he said the Black actor Kevin Michael Richardson would assume the role of Julius Hibbert, an African American doctor, from Harry Shearer, who voices characters including Mr Burns.

“Bigotry and racism are still an incredible problem and it’s good to finally go for more equality and representation,” says Groening. “There was no intention to sideline or offend ethnic minorities.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Jun 19, 2021 - 09:50 AM
Bay Area Voices at SF International Film Fest
by Jay Randy Gordon, The MARINsider

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With a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, the SF International's Fort Mason drive-in is arguably the most glorious in the country.. photo: Tommy Lau
THE LONGEST-RUNNING FILM FESTIVAL
in the Americas, the San Francisco International, also called SFFilm, is back for its 64th installment, a treasure trove of new cinema discoveries both online and in-person, with live music and film events at the Fort Mason Flix drive-in theater and elsewhere in San Francisco.

“We are thrilled to bring together some of the most daring and unique filmmaking from across the country and around the world," I was told by Anne Lai, who became executive director after the departure of Noah Cowan in May of 2019, although this is her first festival, since it was cancelled last year.

“I’m thrilled and honored to be joining SFFilm,” she wrote back then. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity to build upon a strong legacy and amplify not only the voices of its supported films and artists, but deepen the organization’s commitment to community.” Indeed, this year’s festival boasts over half its films directed by women or BIPOC, which stands for black, indigenous, and people of color.

With the Bay Area largely in the orange—i.e. moderate Covid spread, meaning two to six cases per every 100,000 residents (see SF Chronicle article)—movie theaters and other indoor venues are gradually reopening.

Delivering much of the energy and spark of a traditional festival, this year’s 100-plus program includes 42 features, 56 shorts, and five so-called “mid-lengths,” a new category Lai and her colleagues felt was needed to keep 30 to 60 minute-long pieces from slipping through the cracks, see Spotlights.

Scene from 'Homeroom' from acclaimed Oakland filmmaker Peter Nicks. photo courtesy: P Nicks
There are also thirteen world and fifteen North American premieres and films from 40-plus countries, including some we rarely hear from like Qatar, Ghana, Iceland, and Saudi Arabia.

As usual, there will be juried awards, cash prizes, film parties, industry networking events and a roster of exciting filmmaker guests, albeit mostly handled through Zoom.

With screenings and events open to viewers from across the world, this provides a new way for audiences to connect with artists and fellow attendees. A good way to enjoy the festival and special events in my opinion is through the SFFilm Festival Streaming Pass for $75 ($50 for SFFS members) , see the festival's site.

"Our filmmakers, our community, and our country are all under enormous pressure right now,” noted Jessie Fairbanks, the festival’s head programmer. “We were continuously amazed and inspired by the original and provocative work being produced around the world under incredibly challenging circumstances.”

Although SFFilm always gets great openers and closers, we at cineSOURCE suggest looking at the less laureled offerings of the April 10-17th run. While the festival always celebrates its namesake city—indeed, it did a spectacular job for its 60th anniversary four years ago—Oakland is taking the lead this year.

Oakland filmmaker Peter Nicks will receive the George Gund III Craft of Cinema Award, which was established in 2011 to recognize distinguished service to cinema as art. The creator of the great “Waiting Room” (2014), about the city’s central hospital, Nicks celebrates the resilience and grit of an Oakland high school class during the challenging pandemic year in his immersive documentary, “Homeroom”. The award with a Q&A will be presented on April 9th, while the film, with a Q&A including students , will stream during the festival; and screen April 16th at the Fort Mason Flix Drive-in.

Meanwhile, another Oaklander, Dash Shaw, has created “Cryptozoo”, a hand-drawn animated feature. Called “funny, sexy, and ambitious,” “Cryptozoo” concerns mythological creatures in the San Francisco Zoo and the brave souls trying to protect them. Shaw will receive the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision, or POV, Award honoring artists working outside the realm of narrative feature filmmaking. Topics of biodiversity and acceptance of the strange and wonderful underpin Shaw’s “Cryptozoo”, which won the Adobe's NEXT Innovator Prize at Sundance this January.

Dash Shaw's 'Cryptozoo' concerns mythological creatures in the San Francisco Zoo. photo courtesy: D Shaw
A marquee Fort Mason Drive-In event on April 15th is Oakland-based, three-time Grammy-winner Fantastic Negrito performing a new “live” score for Rick Prelinger’s 70-minute collage documentary,, re-cut by Oakland co-creator alex cruse. Called “Lost Landscapes of Oakland”, it showcases surprising images of the somewhat forgotten history of Oakland. Born Xavier Dphrepaulezz, and self-taught in guitar, piano and drums, Fantastic Negrito re-emerged after a 1999, near-fatal car accident and developed a musical style he calls “black roots music for everyone.”

Indeed, there’s quite a bit of Bay Area talent this year. “After Antarctica”, a documentary about explorers, was directed by Tasha Van Zandt, who lives in San Francisco's Richmond/Laurel Heights neighborhood. The main subject of “Cuban Dancer’, by Roberto Salinas, also lives in The City. while “Language Lessons”, by Natalie Morales, is set in Oakland.

SFFilm’s “Bay Area Voices” series focuses on work set in the Bay or made by local filmmakers and often SFFilm-supported projects. Here is a partial list:

• “Ale Libre” , Maya Cueva (Shorts 3), the director is based in Berkeley.
• “Freezerburn”, Sarah Rattay-Maloney (Shorts 2), the director resides in Richmond.
• “If You Hum at the Right Frequency” , Daniel Freeman (Shorts 3), the director is based in Berkeley.
• “Last Days at Paradise High”, Derek Knowles/Emily Thomas (Shorts 4), filmmakers are based in Oakland.
• “Since you arrived, my heart stopped belonging to me”, Erin Semine Kökdil (Shorts 3), director is Oakland-based.
• “Tehachapi”, JR/Tasha Van Zandt (Shorts 4), director lives in SF.
• “Wavelengths”, Jesse Zinn (Shorts 3), the director is a Stanford student who lives in Palo Alto.

Then there’s the long-awaited “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It”, by Mariem Pérez Riera, whose subject is a glorious almost 90 and still lives in the Berkeley Hills, not far from where she was raised. Puerto Rican-born and with a career spanning 70 years,, Moreno is one of the few performers to become an EGOT, ie win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, see the film trailer.

West Oakland's, three-time Grammy-winner, Fantastic Negrito performs at the Fort Mason Drive-In April 15th. photo courtesy: F. Negrito
With remarkable candor, Mareno spills all about her life, loves and career, including how she was horrifically raped by her first agent. Film clips galore tell the dramatic, topsy-turvy story of this hugely entertaining documentary.

The SFFilm lineup will also include four features and two short films supported by SFFilm’s development branch, which provides significant grants, residencies, and professional development opportunities (for more info here.

A lot of this is thanks to Anne Lai, who began her career over 20 years ago at Scott Free Productions, the company founded by the brothers Sir Ridley and Tony Scott, giving her deep production and development experience.

A big believer in balancing expertise, pragmatism and humor, Lai served as the Sundance Institute's founding Director of Creative Producing and Artist Support, ultimately working with over 300 screenwriters, directors, and producers to produce and distribute a bold collection of films.

Of course, opening night on April 9th will be superb with the world premiere of “Naked Singularity”, directed by Chase Palmer. In this suspense thriller, it feels like actor John Boyega (who played Finn in various “Star Wars” episodes) cements his leading-man status. An impassioned public defender, he stumbles into and exposes a drug heist even as his own life is collapsing all around him.

The closing night film on April 17th is the idiosyncratic “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street” from director Marilyn Agrelo. A fascinating doc, it delves into the origins of the beloved children’s show with humor, never-before-seen footage, and special guests from the kids’ series.

John Boyega in SFFilm's Opening Night 'Naked Singularity', directed by Chase Palmer. photo courtesy: C Palmer
Indeed, SFFilm provides something for everyone including us sports fanatics. In its North American premiere, “Captains of Zaatari", the first film by Egyptian director Ali El Arabi, is a documentary delving into a deep friendship between Syrian teens Fawzi and Mahmoud, whose passion and talent for soccer provides their escape from a Jordanian refugee camp.

One of the biggest pre-festival buzzes concerns the Centerpiece Film, which tent-poles the SFFilm lineup. Called “Socks on Fire”, from Alabama filmmaker Bo McGuire, and about alternative gender folk in the South, it won the Best Documentary Feature Jury Award at Tribeca Film Festival. Pre-screening at the April 10th drive-in will feature a drag show headlined by Rock M. Sakura, a fan-favorite from RuPaul's Drag Race, and Oakland-based, gender-fluid performer “Freddie”—a do-not-miss event!

Will you still love SFFilm, when it’s 64?

Twitter: @SFFILM
Instagram: @sffilm
Facebook: facebook.com/SFFILM

Jay “Randy” Gordon, The MARINsider, is a marketing expert, film writer and author of 'BusiBUZZ: Business Buzzwords for Survivin’ and Thrivin’ in The Big City' and can be reached .
Posted on Apr 08, 2021 - 02:28 PM
Fascinating Films From Sonoma, Virtually
by Jay Randy Gordon, The MARINsider

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The iconic 'Sonomawood' sign that greets you as you drive into the Sonoma Square. photo courtesy: SIFF
AFTER WATCHING THE RECENT GOLDEN
Globes and Grammys, it became evident to me that Covid-19 has temporarily changed the entertainment event landscape. Nevertheless, the 24th Sonoma International Film Festival, which features over 110 streamed examples of new independent cinema from around the world, plus some live drive-ins, and runs March 24-28th, has plenty of creative energy and star power to bridge the Covid gap. See their site here.

“An advantage of a virtual film festival is one can see far more films—and can see them any time over the five-day period,” the festival’s artistic director Kevin W. McNeely told me. Tall, cool and gregarious, McNeeley has been at the helm of SIFF curation for over a dozen years.

“SIFF will take you around the world and expose you to different cultures, customs, languages and lifestyles,” he added. Indeed, there are films from Russia, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, England, Ireland, Mexico and beyond, plus over 20 premieres, with subjects ranging from social justice and the environment to culinary delights and gripping drama. There are also multiple shorts programs.

(from lf-rt) Program Director Steve Shor, Beth Schnitzer (SpritzSF), Artistic Director Kevin W. McNeely, Blaine Transue and Raghu Shivaram (SpritzSF). photo: J. R. Gordon
In fact, this year is a special ramp-up to SIFF’s 25th anniversary next year, with the spectacular opening night presentation of “Six Minutes to Midnight”, directed by Andy Goddard and featuring comedian, crossdresser, and consummate actor and writer Eddie Izzard taking on his most serious role. The film is set during WWII, trailer

The closing film, meanwhile, is “The Comeback Trail” starring Robert De Niro, Zach Braff and Tommy Lee Jones. Set in Los Angeles in the ‘70s, two movie producers who owe money to a mobster, played by Morgan Freeman, set up their aging movie star client for an untimely death and an insurance scam.

Although those films will be viewable in the theater and on streaming services, film festivals are critical for films and filmmakers to get screenings and recognition. One excellent example of this is “Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me”, the new project from Abby Ginzberg, a member of Berkeley's ad hoc documentary collective in the Fantasy Building’s Saul Zaentz Media Center, which cineSOURCE has covered for over a decade.

“I was impressed by this documentary,” I was told by Steve Shor, the SIFF’s program director, who has been with the festival for 19 years and program director for ten. An industry veteran, he also advises the Newport Beach Film Festival. “Barbara Lee's background, experiences and training make her a wonderful legislator," as well as film subject.

The poster for 'Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me'. photo courtesy: A. Ginzberg
Of note, almost one-fifth of the films are making their Premieres with at least 50% made by, for or about women.

A single mother who raised her children on food stamps, Lee is the highest-ranking African American woman in Congress and the only representative to vote against the ill-fated, conspiracy-driven Iraq War of 2003. The film also stars politicians Cory Booker, the late John Lewis and AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), CNN’s—and Oakland’s—Van Jones, and the San Francisco actor and activist-supreme Danny Glover. See the trailer or website.

I am a fan of pre-1950s history and sports, so I am especially looking forward to “Uppity: The Willy T. Ribbs Story” directed by Nate Adams and produced by Adam Carolla. Ribbs is the Jackie Robinson of auto racing, who shattered the color barrier in the all-white sport. Referred to as "uppity" behind his back by mechanics and other racers, he overcame death threats, unwarranted suspensions and engine sabotage to beat the haters and become the first Black driver to win a Trans-Am race and race in the Indy 500, in 1991.

"This true story uncovers how race and prejudice hindered the promising career of one of the first African American Nascar and Formula 1 drivers,” Shor said. See the trailer.

Another film that touched my interests was “Adventures of A Mathematician” about a Polish-Jewish math whiz who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Directed by Thor Klein and beautifully shot on location, it tells the warmhearted story of Stanislav Ulam played by Philippe Tlokinski. The film deals with his difficult losses of family and friends, while he helps create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer, giving birth to modern era, see trailer.

'Uppity: The Willy T Ribbs Story'' striking poster. photo courtesy: N. Adams
“Just like ‘Hidden Figures’ and ‘The Imitation Game’, this film tells the real story of the development of the H-bomb,” Shor told me. “The production values, acting and subject matter bring to life history that shouldn’t be forgotten.”

In addition to the virtual festival, SIFF is hosting three live drive-ins: opening night, March 24, and Friday and Saturday evenings, March 26-27, at the Sonoma Skypark, 21870 Eighth Street East. Friday’s show will feature Russia’s “Spacewalker”, and Saturday’s will have the closing night feature “The Comeback Trail”.

During the five-day event, SIFF is also offering online cooking demonstrations, virtual wine tastings, filmmaker Q&As and panel discussions on Zoom. All films are eligible for SIFF Audience Awards, from the Stolman Award for Best Feature to the A3 Award for Best Documentary, voted online by viewers and announced on March 28th.

People with full passes have access to the “”Devour!cooking series, featuring chefs Jacques Pépin, Martin Ruiz Salvador and others, produced by longtime SIFF collaborators Michael Howell and Lia Rinaldo, who also do the perennially popular SIFF Chefs & Shorts dinner. There will also be other cooking shows and events like the SIFF wine tastings series with virtual tastings from wineries Anaba, Gloria Ferrer, Lorenza, Meadowcroft, Muscardini, Wine Access and Women Owned Wineries.

Sonoma's classical drive ins feature prominently in this year's festival. photo courtesy: SIFF
Opening and closing night titles are $15 per screening, all other films are $12 or if they are shorts, $5, or the shorts category show for $12, and drive-in tickets are $75/per vehicle. SIFF pass holders have access to all titles at no extra charge as part of their festival pass.

You can also follow SIFF on social media:
FB: @sonomafilmfestival
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Jay “Randy” Gordon, The MARINsider, is a marketing expert, film writer and author of 'BusiBUZZ: Business Buzzwords for Survivin’ and Thrivin’ in The Big City' and can be reached .

Posted on Mar 23, 2021 - 06:11 PM
Planting a Tree with Ferlinghetti
by d’Arci Bruno

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti, circa 1955, put his money where his mouth was in terms of literature, law and love. Photo: courtesy City Lights
With Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s passing, on February 22nd, 2021, when he was 101 years of age, the last of the big beats passed into history. Arguably not the movement’s greatest writer or painter, he was one of its greatest individuals, its strongest stand-up guy and its most responsible organizer.

Ferlinghetti started City Lights Bookstore in 1953, legally defended Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” from censorship prosecution in ’57, and helped hundreds of other authors, artists, friends and causes. While Jack Kerouac died at 47 from alcohol poisoning and bitterness, the Italian-Jewish American Ferlinghetti, who was orphaned as a child and raised by relatives in Europe, where he studied the classics and became a poet and painter, lived a long, lovely life, exemplifying the best of humanism as well as beat culture.

cineSOURCE has covered Ferlinghetti before, here and here. We’re honored to have the Bay Area artist d’Arci Bruno tell her story of how Ferlinghetti touched her life.

Author d'Arci Bruno beneath the famous Bixbee Bridge which marks the entrance to 'the real' Big Sur and is near the property of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Photo: courtesy d. Bruno
IN 2005, I WAS LIVING WITH MY THEN BOY-
friend, Al, an Italian musician and designer, in the carriage house behind a famous musician, who knew quite a lot of artists, musicians and literati of note in the San Francisco Bay Area. The house was located in Bernal Heights and had a large, lovely garden, in which many parties were thrown, and it was there that we were lucky enough to meet many special and talented people.

I am not exactly sure on how Al met Mr. Lawrence Ferlinghetti or the subject of carpentry at his Big Sur cabin came up, but I do know that a work deal was sealed when it was discovered that Al and Lawrence’s son shared a name: Lorenzo. Kismet!

As Italians go, this was all that was needed to ensure all would be well. I was added to the mix as the “helper,” a good cook and organized camper, with many useful skills listed on my growing resume. I am also Italian, so there you go—perfetto!

At the time, I was the overworked manager and merchandiser of a popular women’s clothing store in Half Moon Bay owned by one of my best friends, Danette Pugliese, the bedraggled new mother of twin boys. I was also taking care of another best friend, Diane, who was losing her year-long battle with ovarian cancer. Hence, the prospect of spending two weeks of solitude in Big Sur sounded very appealing.

A plan was made to go to Lawrence’s property to scope out the needed work on May 7th—the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend, 2005—and meet Lawrence there on Sunday.

The drive down to Big Sur is a beautiful one, and it was a glorious sunny day when we set out down the coast. We stopped at the Carmel Highlands General Store for some snacks and a bit more gas—the Coast Highway is a bit desolate between the little settlements—and, by the time we got to the turnoff at the Bixby Bridge, we were ready for a beer and a snack.

After our refrishments, we had a gate code to figure out, halfway down the dusty dirt road, and another one at the property gate. Al was always nervous with codes and alarms, since he tends to set them off, but these went without a hitch. We were let into a sunny clearing surrounded by trees, with two darling, slightly rundown cabins sitting right next to each other.

Ferlinghetti circa 1987. Photo: courtesy City Lights

I had to pee, so I went looking for the outhouse, down a short path through some trees. It was old, and the wood had turned dark and silver over time from the elements—a classic! I swung open the door and scanned for spiders and critters and installed the TP roll I brought. I left the door open to take in the view, which was peaceful, sunny and full of spring.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark inside, I began to notice visitor’s names carved into the wooden walls. Suddenly, one stood out—Jack Kerouac. Before that moment, I must confess, I had not really made the connection to where I was. But sitting there, with my pants pulled down, I was hit by a lightning bolt of historical awareness.

My mouth hung open in awe. I reached out and touched the name with my finger. I don’t know if it was actually carved by him, or done in homage or as a joke, but still—this WAS the place he stayed! It WAS here he wrote the book “Big Sur” (1962).

I ran back up the path to tell Al what I had found, and we began to explore the rest of the property. There were three structures in the compound: the Old West Hotel, which was Lawrence’s cabin, the Kerouac Cabin, located about 15 feet to the right, and another cabin across the clearing and up a short path, the Meditation Cabin. We were there to work on the Old West Hotel and the Meditation cabin.

The Old West Hotel is a two-story structure designed to look like the Old West, with a bedroom with a balcony on the top floor and a fireplace and main room on the bottom, with a wrap-around porch perfect for staying cool when the sun is high and playing guitar and drinking wine/whiskey when it gets low.

It was very charming on the outside, but bare-plywood, cold-bachelor, anti-chic on the inside. No heat, insulation or running water—rustica, molto rustica!

The Kerouac Cabin, on the other hand, was the opposite: very plain and square on the outside, but extremely charming—though completely rundown—on the inside. It had been overrun by mice and other crawly creatures over the years and had that musty, unmistakable rodent urine smell as soon as I opened the door.

Ferlinghetti in front of the 'cabin' he called the Old West Hotel, circa 1998. Photo: courtesy City Lights

It was dark and slightly damp (foggy, wet coastal air) but there was a stone fireplace, a little bed, dresser, some shelves and table and chair. The romantic me imagined living there: chopping wood for the fire, gathering berries for a pie, drinking tea by candlelight, while reading a good book in the evening—a little like Steinbeck’s Doc in “Cannery Row”.

I fell in love with it, but it was way beyond any modest help that I could give it, so I shut the door. But I could not for one minute imagine the surly, drunk writer who had made it famous ever living there, or loving it for what it was.

We unloaded the rest of our stuff from the truck and decided to go and find the beach while the sun was still out, shoving a couple of beers and the bag of chips into a backpack. We found a little path to Bixby Creek, where we could get water, and followed Lawrence’s directions to the beach by walking along the path at the end of the gated road, and then going down under the Bixby Bridge.

The first house directly behind Lawrence was a giant, modern concrete-and-glass monstrosity, with fancy landscaping going out to the surrounding poison oak, coastal trees and scrubby plants. It looked way out of place amidst the old vacation cabins and small older houses.

The path started off in the dark canopy of trees, surrounded by lush ivy and sloped gently downward, nestled next to the creek and winding through the canyon under the bridge to the beach. There was a funny, little altar near the end of the trail, a place where people tied and propped up things that they found on the beach. It was a fun and whimsical art gallery of sorts, and I enjoyed looking at all of the treasures.

Just after the “Treasure Tree,” the path opened up to the beach and view of the ocean right underneath the beauty of the bridge. Al and I poked around the whole area, skipped rocks, took off our shoes and sat on a log and drank the beers in the afternoon sunshine—heaven!

As the sun began to fade, we wandered back up the path and set about getting some food ready and sorting out our sleeping gear. The cabin was cozy warm from the fire we built, and the bottle of wine we shared did not hurt.

Bruno hard at work on the Old West Hotel. Photo: courtesy d/ Bruno
I slept great, a heavy, dreamy sleep that you only get with crickets and fresh air. In the morning, I made some good strong coffee on my camp stove and we got ready to meet our host, who was due to arrive at 11 am.

I had never met Lawrence before, so I was a bit excited. I set about tidying stuff up, while Al got out his measuring tape and began to take notes regarding the job: insulating and covering the walls of the Old West Hotel with cedar tongue-and-groove—a live-in cigar box, I thought!

Mr. Ferlinghetti arrived right on time, with a big tree sticking out of his truck. He got out, waved and smiled and shouted, "Hello!" He grabbed a couple of Trader Joe’s shopping bags from his passenger seat and set them on the porch: tins of black beans, some tortillas and a few bottles of Two Buck Chuck Cabernet Sauvignon.

He was very spry for his age, which I guessed to be mid-80s. His eyes were pale and a bit watery, but they held a mischievous sparkle and you could tell that he liked to laugh and have a good time. He was tall and in good shape, which I think he must have owed to his spartan diet of beans, tortillas and wine. His handshake was firm and warm and he grabbed my offered hand with both of his at once.

This is going to be OK, I thought. I asked him if he wanted any lunch, and I fixed us all something while he and Al went over the details of what he wanted done. I called them over when lunch was ready and Lawrence opened a bottle of Chuck and began to tell us stories and tales about all the happenings in Bixby Canyon.

And then he asked me if I would like to help him plant a tree.

“The tree in your truck?” I asked. That was the only time I saw him vexed, as he began to talk about the changes happening in his backyard: the big modern concrete house, the noise, the trucks, the dust, the monstrosity of it all—progress in all of its ugly glory.

Ferlinghetti (rt) and Jack Kerouac in San Francisco, circa 1957. Photo: courtesy City Lights

He wanted to plant a quick growing, bushy tree to block the view of the big, ugly house. He had bought a buckeye, and he told me a story about why this particular tree, but I can’t remember it now.

At the spot where he wanted to plant it, all I saw was fountains of poison oak spurting out of the ground and spilling off of the bushes. I asked him if he owned any dishwashing gloves, and lo-and-behold he scrounged a pair up. I began to gingerly snip and chop a clearing so we could dig a big hole. I was snipping away, using pruners with the long handles, to remove each offending piece. My only goal from that point on was TO NOT GET Poison Oak.

Al, in the meantime, was on the phone ordering supplies and finding out where to get what in the area, and making lists of lists, and more lists, of stuff we would need. Lawrence also wanted some work done on the Mediation Cabin—mouse proofing and stair fixing—so that had to be measured, too. Lawrence opened a second bottle of Charles Shaw’s finest and got a shovel.

Lawrence began to ask me questions about myself and offered me a glass of wine, which I declined until Operation Poison Oak was finished. He pulled up a stool and told me about his son and his friend’s visit to the cabin. I had noticed two surfboards at the Old West Hotel, one yellow and one purple. I imagined the boys carrying them through the woods on the windy trail to the sea for some fun on hot days.

I asked him about running the book store and we chatted a lot about that. I had been a customer for many years and told him that City Lights was always one of my SF Tour highlights when anybody came to town. We talked about the city changing and both got a little wistful.

I began to dig, mainly because I liked hearing his stories, and I wanted him to keep talking. I took him up on the offer of a glass of vino and we spent a good two hours chatting and flirting (thanks Chuck!) and taking turns digging. When the hole was big enough, Al helped him get the tree, and they put it into place. We replaced the dirt and went to the creek and got a couple buckets of water and gave it a good drink. I often wonder if the tree grew big and bushy enough to hide that awful house from his view.

After we were done planting the tree, we made a plan to begin work the following week, and we all left to go back home to the city. I never met Mr. Ferlinghetti again.

Ferlinghetti's guitar in the Wild West Hotel after Bruno and her boyfriend Al toungue-and-grooved the walls. Photo: d. Bruno
Al and I worked hard for two weeks on the property. I removed quite a bit of poison oak but never got itchy once. We did a really nice job on the cabins, and I heard afterwards that Lawrence was very pleased with the result.

Every morning that I was there, I touched the name Jack Kerouac in the outhouse like a ritual. It was like touching history, and I am part of this history, even though hardly anybody will ever even know I was there.

Maybe the Buckeye remembers.

d’Arci Leigh Bruno Rhine is an artist, educator and all-around adventurer taking a break from the Bay Area in Seattle, who can be reached .

Posted on Mar 14, 2021 - 11:50 AM
Far Out Films from a Century Ago
by Karl F. Cohen

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Scene from Georges Méliès's 'Trip to the Moon', 1902. image: courtesy Animation Museum
LONG BEFORE TIM LEARY WAS
encouraging people to “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” animators were turning on their creative minds and taking audiences on amazing trips. Perhaps the most wonderful were voyages into outer space and into secret worlds inside our planet. Now you too can take those adventures, thanks to websites like YouTube and Vimeo. When you are ready to relax and enjoy some mind traveling, click onto a few of these animated gems below.

The first great visionary adventurer was Georges Méliès, a stage magician who fell in love with the magic of cinema. His “Trip to the Moon” from 1902 is still a delightful work that showed what was possible before animation was even invented. A hand-colored restored print of his classic film can be seen here.

Like Méliès but in America, James Stewart Blackton was a part-time stage magician. But his day job was reporter and when he was assigned to write an article on Edison’s latest invention, the movie projector, he fell in love with movies. After Edison invited him to his studio and made a film of Blackton drawing a fast sketch, Blackton not only bought a camera and projector.

He ended up opening the Vitagraph in Brooklyn in 1898, a company which grew to become America’s first major film producer of live action films of all kinds, including newsreels.

Around 1900 Blackton made a film of himself doing “The Enchanted Drawings”. It included him drawing, in fast motion, a bottle of wine and a glass, putting his hand over the drawing and removing a real bottle of wine, from which he pours some into a real glass. But he didn’t do actual drawn animation until “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces”, in 1906.

It is the first known example of a film that includes full animation, where the drawing moves by itself and we do not see the artist drawing it. Blackton experimented a little further with animation, but while the films are of historical interest, they are not great. He had a company to run so he didn’t have time to become America’s first great animator.

Gertie the Dinosaur from Winsor McCay, 1914. image: courtesy Animation Museum
The man earning that honor was Winsor McCay, a successful and very well-paid newspaper illustrator, who did elaborately drawn comic strips and editorial cartoons. McCay’s fascination with doing wild stories led him to animated in 1911 and, the following year, his work was shown as part of an act he did in vaudeville theatres. They were minor hits, but in 1914 he created what we now consider a milestone in animation, “Gertie the Dinosaur”.

To prove his work was drawn and not a fancy, live-action magic trick, he created an enormous extinct creature. The film opens with a live action prologue, filmed at Blackton’s Brooklyn studio, where he explains how he created Gertie. Then we see a drawn landscape and him coaxing Gertie to come out of her cave to do a few tricks.

She not only shows off her skills, she also expresses emotions when she cries. We also learn she is tame enough to give Winsor a ride seen here

McCays realized that to captivate and excite an audience, he needed to continue telling outrageous tall tales. His subsequent films included a topless female mythological centaur and a four-legged pet that grows into a monster which begins to destroy New York City before the military attacks it.

Felix the Cat by Otto Messmer, circa 1924. image: courtesy Animation Museum
Then there is “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend”, which started as a cartoon strip by McCay in 1904, became a silent film by Edwin S. Porter in 1906, and re-emerged as McCay's animated film “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend: The Pet” (1921), viewable here.

McCay’s last film was “The Flying House”, 1921. In it a man turns his house into a flying machine and heads off to… well, that would be a spoiler wouldn’t it. Expect the unexpected, is all I can say, as it can and will happen. See it here.The next great explorer of the medium was Otto Messmer, from New Jersey, who created Felix the Cat. He was the silent screen’s greatest star and one of his adventures is “Astronomeous”, 1928, a wonderful adventure into space, viewable here.

Part of Felix’s charm was his ability to express his thoughts and feelings. Before creating Felix, Otto did a dozen authorized Charlie Chaplin cartoons. Chaplin had sent Messmer’s studio photos of key poses expressed different emotions so Otto became an expert in showing his characters emoting what they were thinking.

The arty Felix from Messmer. image: courtesy Animation Museum
In the early 1930s, a few cartoons were full of mind-blowing images. Two Betty Boop cartoons, “Minnie the Moocher”, 1932, and “Snow White”, 1933, will take you into a different kind of world, cinema caves full of mysterious goings on, set to Cab Calloway’s music.

Cab’s world included mentions of cocaine in his lyrics, on two different occasions. When I was interviewing two former Fleischer directors, over two decades ago, I asked if the animators had much knowledge of the use of drugs. Both Shamus Culhane and Myron Waldman told me that, when these cartoons were made, they had no understanding of the drug reference in the lyrics.

Shamus said when he was at the studio during the last days of Prohibition, they were daring if they drank bootleg alcohol. Myron depicted the average studio employee as a young, talented guy fresh out of high school, who was making enough money to dress well, including wearing spats on their shoes, and send money to help their family’s get by the Great Depression.

On weekends they drank and played cards with their girlfriends. Myron also made a point to let me know that he was more mature, had been to college and didn’t hang out with the young guys.

A drug dream from Betty Boop, circa 1934. image: courtesy Animation Museum
As you watch “Minnie the Moocher” (1932) there are several subtle details to look out for. We know Betty Boop’s father is an Orthodox Jew, as he is a wearing a skullcap (known as “kippah” in Hebrew or “yarmulke” in Yiddish). There is a nude woman in the film, a statue on the last post of the stairway, whom you barely notice her until she pulls up her costume—a subtle pre-Hayes Code touch.

The walrus that dances is based on live action footage of Cab Calloway dancing. The footage was traced over on a Rotoscope machine, a system Max Fleisher invented and applied for a patent in 1915.

One verse of Minnie tells us “She messed around with a bloke named Smokey. She loved him though he was cokey [cocaine]. He took her down to Chinatown, and he showed her how to kick the gong around [smoke opium].”

Betty Boop, who happened to be Jewish, gets high with Cab Calloway. during the Swinging '20s. image: courtesy Animation Museum
“Minnie the Moocher” was rated as number 20 in Jerry Beck’s book “The World’s Greatest Cartoons” (1994), here. The second Betty Boop has her cast as the star of “Snow White”, 1933. It was rated as number 19 by Beck and can be seen here.

As wonderful as Betty Boop’s two films made with Cab Calloway’s music are, there is another that may be even be greater, “Bimbo’s Initiation”, 1931, animated by Grim Natwick. In 1994, it was voted #37 in Jerry Beck’s book. Check it out here.

This article will continue next month with works by Walt Disney, Harmon-Ising, Bob Clampett, Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. The third part will highlight more recent animators including films by Sally Cruickshank and Vince Collins.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Feb 18, 2021 - 02:36 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: Mar 2021
by Karl F. Cohen

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Vince Foster with his Bolex, circa 1972. image: courtesy V. Collins
In lieu of Karl's regular Cartoon Corner, he's providing some fun movies, scenes and websites for your viewing pleasure.

Tour Collins’s Animation Shop

Take a tour of Vince Collins’s "The Old Animation Shop” here. It is full of amazing things not sold anywhere, I guarantee it!

From Vince’s "Unofficial Reality", 2005, “A frank and unflinching look at the debauched and depraved aspects of modern life.”

Happy New Year

Although I am running a bit late, here's a fun, happy new year animation by Gary Schwartz and there is more of his work after it. Gary teaches animation in Detroit.

New from Animacracker

Animacracker’s delightful new short “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is now online. Director Mark West says, “It is our fond homage to ‘Fractured Fairytales’,” and it certainly captures the fun spirit of J. Ward’s classic series.

The team behind Animacracker. image: courtesy Animacracker
It was created by Mark West and Barbara Bayne who have been active members of San Francisco’s animation community for several decades. Contact them at (415) 695-9105 or animacrackers.com or see their work here

Their short "Chicken Little" can be seen on Apple Books.

Kimmel’s Late Show Has Hot Animation

Did you see “Good-bye Donald Trump” that was made for “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” and wonder how was it done?

I asked Steve Segal, who replied, “This looks like it uses a variety of techniques, some motion capture, some keyframe animation (like Pixar) and a fair amount of bones on lattice (to make a painting or drawing move around). Pretty impressive for a show that's on every night. But obviously they knew it was coming and felt it was worth the extra effort. Plus, they have a reasonable expectation it will go viral.”

If you missed it, go here.

Segal Soars

Steve Seagal’s “Misfits” was in the prestigious Bash-bash Program is the Bay Area Short Film Festival 2020, which actually showed online January 22nd. Congrats!

Enjoy Exploring Zippy Frames

The Zippy Frames website features a rich variety of short films by independent animators from Europe and worldwide. Several categories are on view here (including 2D, 3D, stop-motion, music videos, children, etc.), as well as festival information, news and a lot more.

Here’s Another Site Worth Exploring

Hand Drawn Films.

Bill Plympton's Trump and Putin piece was part of the Show of Show. image: courtesy B. Plympton
Ron Diamond’s Animation Show Of Shows

Lots of really great animated films from the past are for sale on DVDs at reasonable prices here. When you visit Ron’s website click on the DVD covers to see a short clip of the film. Box sets are available. There are 3 films on each DVD and each disc is only $7.95, shipping is free! Also these are excellent quality prints.

Kickstart to Restore Rare Silent

Tommy Stathes, who restores and shows rare silent cartoons, has a new Kickstarter campaign to fund the restoration of 15 early Walter Lantz films from the Bray Studio. The stars include Dinky Doodle, Hot Dog and Pete the Pup. There are also some "Unnatural History" titles thrown in.

The films feature a young Lantz acting with his animated characters. The promo video is quite interesting as are the promos for his other videos he has completed on DVD and Blu-Ray. Contribute to his Kickstarter fundraiser here

SF Indie Fest

Ten animated shorts were featured in the 23rd annual San Francisco Independent Film Festival. The virtual event ran every day from February 4 to the 21st and the shorts are part of the “SHORTS 1: In My Secret Life” program.

The shorts include “Metro6” by Geoff Hecht, from the Bay Area; GNT by Sara Hirner from Australia; Sad Beauty by Arjan Brentjes, Netherlands; “Each and Every Night” by Julie Roberts, France; “The Parrot Lady” by Michalis Kalopaidos, Cyprus; The Wind by Miranda Javid, U.S; Disappearing Pathways” by Michael Covetto and three more films from the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Excellent Australian Animated Feature

An animated TV feature out of Australia—see the trailer here—starred “President Trumphorn” who was as evil as you know who. The film is “The Island on Nevawuz” directed Paul Williams who died last year.

“Here is a film made in 1978 that features a ‘President Trumphorn’ who goes about the task of destroying the world at the same time as he promotes his Trumpburgers and more,” wrote the Melbourne International Animation Festival in 2017.

“Screened around the world, “The Island of Nevawuz” portrays an overblown American tycoon, J.B. Trumphorn, who takes over a lost, medieval island. He beguiles the locals with promises of ‘economic reforms’ but, from his skyscraper penthouse, destroys their environment all the while marketing Trump Oil, Trump Metal, Trump Marts and Trumpburgers."

Williams’s other features are “The Black Planet” (1982), “The Phantom Treehouse” (1984) and “The Steam Driven Adventures of Riverboat Bill” (1986).

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Feb 18, 2021 - 02:36 PM
For-Profit Colleges Rebound
by Karl F. Cohen

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The first college graduate in a family is important celebration. image: unknown
FOR-PROFIT-COLLEGES ARE SLOWLY
gaining in enrollment again.

Their enrollment surged in the first decade of this century due to major advertising and marketing campaigns that promoted deceptive claims, enrollment policies that accepted anybody who could pay or get a government loan, plus there was lax federal oversight. Indeed, between 2006 and 2010, enrollment shot up by 76%.

Then government hearings and the media exposed the rip-offs that were occurring. That resulted in lawsuits by former students, employees and the government, most of which were won. Schools paid out millions and several educational chains went bankrupt, forcing them to close, notably the many “Art Institutes.”

Some of the investors in such schools turned out to be some of our finest Republican leaders, including Senator Susan Collins from Maine and Mitt Romney, now of Utah. He even praised Full Sail University in Florida, which teaches game animation, in two speeches when he was running for president in 2012 (no wonder, they donated over half a million dollars to his campaign).

And don’t forget that our not-so-brilliant outgoing president, who had to close his Trump University. (A judge ordered him to pay $25 million to settle lawsuits against him—whether he ever will is another question.)

Now the Brookings Institute reports that the National Student Clearinghouse has published financial details from for-profit colleges. Enrollment figures show that they have gone up by 13% among first-time students, aged 21-24, during the pandemic. And they rose even more, 15%, among those aged 25-29.

Meanwhile community college enrollment has declined by 9%.

In light of extensive evidence that for-profit institutions yield both lower earnings and higher debt for students than other institutions, policymakers, students, taxpayers, and voters should be very concerned about this trend.

Beginning in 2010, there were investigations by the Government Accountability Office and the Senate, followed by regulations and sanctions by the Obama Administration, which led to school closures and enrollment declines in the for-profit sector.

That included several for-profit schools that had well-advertised computer animation and game courses and majors.

In addition to individual lawsuits against specific colleges, the Obama Administration put into place restrictions on aggressive recruiting, streamlined the Borrower Defense process for loan forgiveness (when colleges defraud students), created the College Scorecard to disseminate information on student outcomes, and established the Gainful Employment rule to hold colleges accountable for the debt and earnings of their graduates.

These improved student protections led to a decline in for-profit enrollment and the closure of several large for-profit chains between 2010 and 2016.

Of course, this was all reversed by the Trump Administration. It weakened the Borrower Defense rule, completely rescinded the Gainful Employment regulation, and has done little to enforce restrictions on predatory recruitment practices.

Despite adding some data to the College Scorecard, this administration has also reorganized and deleted key pieces of information in ways that seem to favor for-profit institutions. Even before the current recession and pandemic, for-profits were making a comeback.

Data from the National Student Clearinghouse shows this recession has been markedly different. Most campus-based institutions are seeing enrollment decline and only the for-profit sector has managed to attract more students. Why?

Without having to close campuses, budgets have remained relatively stable, allowing them to continue to out-spend public institutions on advertising. Pre-pandemic, for-profits spent about $400 per student on advertising, compared to a mere $14 by public institutions. Why should a respectable college have to advertise for students?

Students PAY MORE and BENEFIT LESS from for-profit education than education in other sectors. Over the last two decades, a number of economists have analyzed student outcomes in the for-profit sector: their results are remarkably consistent. The majority of studies on employment and earning gains find worse outcomes for for-profit students relative to similar students in other sectors.

A major concern is the amount of student debt students who attend for-profit schools rack up. About 74% of students attending for-profit colleges take out student loans compared to just 21% at community colleges and 47% in four-year public schools. Among those who borrow, for-profit students also take on more debt.

And to make matters worse, if you get a government loan it must be paid back, even if you declare yourself bankrupt. Some think the student debt crisis may end up worse than the toxic housing mortgage crisis of 2008.

A study shows that 12 years after entering college, nearly half of for-profit students have defaulted on their student loans, compared to just 13% for students at a community college. Defaults are higher for students of color and those who leave for-profits before completing degrees or certificates.

As it happens, more than two-thirds of Black students who attended a for-profit college without graduating defaulted on their student loans within 12 years.

The ugliest part of the growing student loan crisis is that some people are asking if it is worth going to college. Yes, go, by all means. But, considering the current labor market, AVOID for-profit colleges no matter what Betsy de Vos, Trump and other Republicans say. (Remember, several of them have invested heavily in such institutions a few years ago, and Trump even owned one that went bankrupt.)

As for Betsy de Vos, The Washington Post reported suspicions that she had a financial stake in a company that until recently, held a lucrative contract from the U.S. Department of Education to pursue the loans of defaulted student borrowers.

“Some may argue that a for-profit college education may be better than no college at all,” the Brookings article said, “but research calls this into question. Several comparisons of the labor market outcomes of for-profit students to those of individuals with only a high school diploma find no differences in outcomes. Students may even incur net loss from for-profit attendance when debt is factored in.”

In the current climate of regulatory rollbacks, a recession, and a pandemic that’s driving students online, the increase in for-profit enrollment is perhaps not surprising. Add to this the disproportionate share of stimulus funding granted to for-profit colleges in the CARES Act, and it is no wonder that for-profit enrollment is surging, while enrollment in other sectors contracts.

We have been down this road before. We have seen a massive expansion in for-profit college enrollment, and we have seen the subsequent harm it caused. The difference this time is that we have the evidence to predict what will happen.

Wondering who makes the most income after graduating from college? The Brookings article tells us that The Department of Education’s College Scorecard is a unique source of data from institutions. It indicates which programs Americans have borrowed to attend and how borrowers from those programs fare in the workforce after graduation.

The Scorecard shows in general figures which student loans are a good investment and for whom they are not. This evidence is important as policymakers examine ways to reduce the burden of student debt on those who struggle.

The list suggests the high-paying professions today includes nurses, lawyers, pharmacists, dentists and diagnostic health professionals who like MDs earn modest salaries when they are in residency, but whose incomes rise rapidly once they are fully certified.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/business/coronavirus-for-profit-colleges.html for more information.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Jan 04, 2021 - 03:41 AM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: Jan 2021
by Karl F. Cohen

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Scene from 'Wear a Mask', a Disney parody created by Noah Lindquist. image: courtesy Disney
Disney Parody a Hit on YouTube

“Wear a Mask”, a song, is a hit on YouTube with almost three million views. It was created by Noah Lindquist, a recent theatre graduate from Kansas, after he saw Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” on TV and couldn’t get a song sung by the candle character out of his mind.

He ended up creating new lyrics and did a mash up using Disney footage for his visuals. In an interview online Lindquist says he didn’t get permission from the corporate giant to use the footage, but they haven’t gone after him. See it here.

It is clearly an excellent parody, he probably isn’t making money from it and I assume Disney would not like a lot of press saying they cracked down on a bright and cheerful parody reminding people they should wear a mask. Lindquist acknowledged he is a fan of the famous parodist Randy Rainbow.

What’s Up at Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum?

Trying to end the tough year on a fun note, the Fremont museum is doing Covid-minded projects December 19th-20th. It is running some classic circus films, which will make you wish you were there watching in person, and doing a Zoom lecture with two wonderful historians: Sam Gill and Richard Roberts. See their site.

They've also got some holiday fun with the Chaplin family, awesome 3-D footage, and Winter cartoons from our friend Tommy Stathes.

Moreover, their theater is also undergoing a major renovation, so if you would like to help defray the costs, please click here.

From the Spike & Mike documentary 'Animation Outlaws'. image: courtesy Spike and Mike
Impressive Animation about Dictator

"Fidelio" is an impressive animated surprise about an evil dictator (not Trump) set to Beethoven. The music is from Beethoven’s “Fidelio” and finale to his 9th Symphony.

It appears the story is set in the present and the results are quite impressive. A young couple dreams of a better world, but is confronted with bitter reality when the man is imprisoned for his ideals. If she wants to see her lover alive again, she will have to find a way to free him.

In this animated version of “Fidelio”, the cliché of the Beauty waiting to be rescued by Prince Charming is seriously debunked. Leonore herself braves a thousand dangers to free her imprisoned lover.

Commissioned by OperaVision and the Belgian artist collective WALPURGIS to celebrate the Beethoven anniversary and World Opera Day, director Judith Vindevogel and animator Roman Khochkov have condensed Beethoven’s masterpiece into a 15-minute film for young audiences. This is a “lifesaving opera’ about humanity and love.

See it here. There is also a version on YouTube with French subtitles.

Image from Ben Ridgway’s ;Time Trance'. image: courtesy B. Ridgway
Ridgway Featured in the Animaze Fest

Ben Ridgway’s “Time Trance” was a featured film in the animaze festival It was originally planned to be shown in a theatre in Montreal in May, but it was moved online to November. Ben teaches animation at San Francisco State University. See it here.

Plympton’s New Animation

Bill Plympton has just animated Matt Jaffe’s “Voodoo Doll,’ a not-so-romantic music video. Jaffe, who lives in the Bay Area, wrote us, “The song ‘Voodoo Doll’ explores a relationship gone awry in which happiness and sadness are expressions of the same feeling. Love and angst, while opposites on the surface, are closer together than we know.” One line is, "She has got my voodoo doll, she'll throw it off a waterfall, it's the only way she knows at all to say she loves me."

“The song skews towards a subtler indie pop, distinct from my power trio rock roots. Accented by vibraphone and violin, the song is angular and angry, but plays it a little closer to the vest. More of an Imperial Bedroom Elvis Costello than a This Year's Model Elvis Costello.”

“Additionally, the music video marks my second collaboration with Bill Plympton, best known for his Academy Award-nominated short Your Face. Following his video for my 2019 track Wicked World, the new video is even richer with Bill's signature style and twisted imagery.”

“Voodoo Doll”, which launched December 4th, can be seen here.
See Matt’s first video, his “Wicked World Video”, also with animation by Plympton, here.

Animation Outlaws’ is now on Amazon Prime

This Spike & Mike documentary is a journey told through the stories of those they impacted - people like Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Nick Park and many others. If you have fee time to enjoy a film check it out. One person wrote, “I have never been to any of the Spike and Mike events but after watching this documentary I sure wish I had been a part of it all! I loved all the little stories and interviews! The director does a great job of tying everything together and giving credit to the making of animation as it is today! You've gotta see it!!”

Mark Fiore's Trump. image: courtesy M. Fiore
Fiore’s ‘Let’s Give Trump a Little Help’

For a nice laugh, enjoy Mark Fiore’s “Let’s Give Trump a Little Help” here.

Fiore, who is syndicated nationally to websites across our nation, writes, “Poor President Trump, we really need to help him out. And I do mean ‘out!’ If he plays his cards right, he’ll remain president of something.

Segal Wins Amsterdam Award

Steve Segal’s new release “Misfits” just won a prestigious festival award. He wrote me, “I just received notice that my film ‘Misfit’ got an Honorable Mention at the Amsterdam Filmmaker Festival.” It was also shown recently as part of the Animaze festival. Steve lives in Albany, CA and was an animator on the first “Toy Story” feature from Pixar.

Looking for Gifts?

Give the Norm Books by a long time local animator and cartoonist Michael Jantze. He will even throw in a second book free or buy two and get four and he will sign them too with a doodle. See his here, studio site, or here.

Great Cartoonist Shines

“Session with Stan [Lee]” by Aaron Fromm is a fun two-minute exercise in acting, but not your typical lip synch experience. Stan was Marvel Comic’s driving force and the father of Spider Man and other super heroes. See it here.

Sundance Film Skirts Pandemic

Entire Sundance Film Festival show will be available in the bay area for the first time Jan. 28 The Roxie in SF will be the regional host from Jan. 28 to Feb 3, 2021. No details yet about their upcoming programs.

100 Sequences Shaping Animation

Watch the 100 sequences that shaped animation from Charles-Émile Reynaud and illusionist Georges Méliès to the South Park Kids and Spider Man here. This is a fascinating collection of shorts and clips covering the evolution of the medium. It was put together by Vulture.com and went online in October 2020.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .

Posted on Dec 21, 2020 - 12:04 PM
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Borat Bombs But SNL Suggests a Future
by Doniphan Blair

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Sasha Baron Cohen as Borat and his daughter, played by the Rumanian actress Maria Bakalova, in 'Borat 2'. photo: courtesy S. B. Cohen
'BORAT 2' (2020) SUCKED I AM SORRY TO
say, since I love Sasha Baron Cohen, both “Borat 1” (2006) and its innovative cinema techniques and Cohen’s strident stance against social media’s fake news.

If Goebbels were alive today he’d be advertising on Facebook, he has said, among much else on the topic (see cineSOURCE article.

“Borat 1” I saw with my daughter, who was laughing hysterically, and my mother, who wasn’t. Hard of hearing, she got very few of the jokes, except the anti-Semitic ones. Being an elderly Jew, she’s familiar with the humor.

The way Cohen severely satirizes everything, including the Holocaust, but through the simple, heartfelt character of Borat—a schmegege, as he would be called in Yiddish—worked. Borat’s naïve insensitivity, blended with his good nature, offended and assuaged in equal proportion.

Not so with “Borat 2”. Although Cohen reprises his brilliant formula of inserting Borat into elaborate setups, perpetrated on unsuspecting people, and filming them documentary style, which produces highly realistic performances, he can’t recapture the magic.

First of all, Borat has changed, as acknowledged by Cohen, who co-wrote with seven others (“Borat 1” needed only three additional writers). Now famous, Borat can’t do his traditional shtick, except in elaborate costumes.

More importantly, the United States has changed. In fact, it has been Boratted.

Can you satirize a farce? Yes, by going even further over the top, Cohen seems to think. By diving daringly into current affairs, like crashing a Mike Pence rally (dressed in Klu Klux Klan robes) or moving in with some conspiracy theorists, he tries his damnedest.

Amazingly, he was able to lure Rudy Giuliani into a room full of cameras, and capture him coming on to a woman he thought was Borat’s 15-year-old daughter. But aside from the obvious—that Rudy is a cad—it doesn’t reveal much meaningful.

Even the pandemic comes off as a minor player, un-mined for its full absurdist possibilities.

Alec Baldin (lft) as Trump and Jim Carrey as Biden on SNL, October 24th. photo: courtesy NBC
Sure, Cohen could have cut the scenes longer, or attempted to show how Borat endeared himself his victims, or tried to dig for more insightful cracks. But the heart would have still been missing.

There were strong moments, often involving Borat’s daughter, masterfully played by the Rumanian actress Maria Bakalova, like when she flipped a few times from submissive, old-school daughter to bitching Borat out. Or when they were discussing breast implants with a plastic surgeon and suddenly switched to Jewish noses.

The most absurd but also heartfelt scene occurs when Borat invades a synagogue, dressed as the medieval caricature of a Jew, with long nose and fingernails, and is confronted by two sympathetic, elderly women, one a Holocaust survivor.

According to the very interesting, actual documentary, “The Untold Truth Of Borat 2” (see it on YouTube , that was one of the only times Cohen, in his long career of foisting strange characters—Borat, Ali G, Bruno, the Dictator—on the unsuspecting people, broke character.

After he explained to the women what he was doing, he befriended the survivor and even helped her make a website telling her story. Sadly, she died shortly before the film was released.

Perhaps "Borat 2" would have worked better if Cohen’s opening up to the Jewish women had been included, flipping the film into real documentary and taking Borat to the next cinema level.

The bottom line is farce in the time of Trump is redundant and new modes of humor are needed.

Saturday Night Live seems to get this. In October 24th edition, where Alec Baldwin and Jim Carrey faced off as as Trump and Baldwin, they were more introspective and exploratory than vicious parodies.

The skit on everyone missing Trump in the boring new Biden world honestly exposed the inner workings of the liberal cast and audience.

I enjoy Stephan Colbert, the George Clooney of comedy, and his masterful skewering of Trump’s morality and Seth Meyers, the Tom Hanks of Jewish comedians, who builds his astute eviscerations through political analysis. But I remain concerned that they are not innovative enough lead us out of our hysterical but humorless a morass.

Louis CK probably could find a way in, by marrying his fallen angel and everyman perspective, but he is still in the doghouse working small clubs.

SNL’s highly multicultural writers room seems to be able to simultaneously self-efface and skewer in a fair enough balance, while exploring the full complexity of our times. They did a lot with racial humor, surely they can for Trumpism, which will persist whether he wins or loses.

Shame, harsh ridicule or annihilating your opponent intellectually has rarely worked on demagogues and narcissists, save Joseph McCarthy. With more average folks, it raises defenses and increases isolation.

To get people’s neurons jiggling from giggling, enough to shift their ideological moorings, we have to entrance them with brilliant art which our reveals our shared humanity and takes it to a new perspective.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Nov 03, 2020 - 04:31 PM
Can We Convince Americans to Reject Conspiracies?
by Doniphan Blair

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WHY IS CONSPIRACY SO CENTRAL TODAY,
right now, this second, three days before America’s presidential election?

As hard as it is to believe—as hard as everything is to believe in our golden age of conspiracies—the facts are quite straight-forward:

Donald Trump’s America started with the Obama-was-born-in-Kenya conspiracy and it will end with conspiracy. The only question is which conspiracy.

If he wins it will be: “You see, QAnon was correct. Saint Donald was sent to lead us for four more fabulous years of cleaning the swamp and attacking our Satanist overlords.” If he loses, it will be: “The Deep State stole the election.”

Or it could be the Conspiracy of Love.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world,” as the great Margaret Mead noted. “Indeed, it is the ONLY thing that ever has.”

Throughout humanity’s very difficult history, more than 51% of the people have always come to believe in doing good enough that they joined the Conspiracy of Lovers, good Samaritans, people of good will. If they hadn’t, simple math proves we would still be in the caves controlled by bullies.

Indeed, confrontations such as elections, civic strife or world wars, as terrible, tragic and traumatic as they are, are our school. They are the step-by-step process whereby we refashion good enough that it is able to defeat the new evil, although we can’t use those terms when talking to conspiracists in person.

Indeed, we have to be respectful, maintain the universal human rights and freedom of thought that are standard to all people. As soon as we start talking down to people, we lose the basic equality of person-to-person dialogue.

Indeed, I attempt to do this in my Conspiracy of Love performances (see Facebook: Conspiracy of Love). A combination conversation, rant and song, it features stories about the Holocaust by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, from her new book, “Love at the End of the World.”

It has to be entertaining because minds only change on their own volition.

Yes, I start somewhat heavy, walking on set singing, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” and emphasizing the line, “Though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death I shall fear no evil.”

My point is two-fold. The conspiracists are saying, “We should fear evil. The Lord is not our shepherd. Satan and his minions are conspiring.” But secondly poets have been singing about peace and love for thousands of years and why stop now?

If you call that naïve, I refer to my mother’s stories about the Holocaust, when luck and good will were her only tools for survival.

Of course, my mother doesn’t use the phrase Conspiracy of Love, let alone the term conspiracy, even though she spent her entire teen years in the Nazi's vast conspiracy kingdom. Indeed, it took me weeks to explain that some of my friends believe the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by the American government.

Conversely, it took me much longer to realize that her stories were referencing a conspiracy of love—although she didn’t use the phrase—a secret cabal of people who, even in hell on earth, even in the asshole of history, remained dedicated to kindness, caring and romance.

When I first read my mother’s stories 20 years ago, I didn’t comprehend their secret messages and powers. But after editing them for five years (her book is supposed to be released commercially by Austin Macauley in January), I realized how radical they are: a female view of the Holocaust, a visionary interpretation of hope and romance in the middle of horror.

In my performance, I read one of her stories, “Stefan", about meeting a young man in the cattle cars and falling in love on the way Auschwitz. It is annihilating.

My mother bet on the Conspiracy of Love. We must as well. And we have only three days to convince at least 51% of Americans to do likewise. We have to get cracking.

It will be close. But we will prevail, eventually.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Oct 31, 2020 - 04:50 PM
Pre-Election Report from the American Road
by Doniphan Blair

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A scrap metal Brontosaurus from the Rusty Kingdom, outside of Barstow, California, one of the many examples of local arts in unexpected places. photo D. Blair
VERY FEW TRUMP SIGNS WAS ONE OF
the many surprises on my 1800-mile drive from Oakland to Oklahoma and Texas, presumably Trump country (it gets really gorgeous, by the way, when you enter Arizona). Biden bumper stickers were even more absent, which may indicate fears of broken windows or sheer exhaustion.

Black Lives Matters signs were similarly limited, although there were many more Black people than in 2007, when I last drove Route 40. That people-of-color paucity was more than made up for, however, by large Latinx and Native American populations. The latter has an enormous presence in Arizona, New Mexico and, to my surprise, Oklahoma.

Another revelation was the increasing number of cities and towns with flourishing cultural communities (at least pre-Covid).

In Bakersfield, California, after dropping by a beautiful hot spring an hour north of town, I visited two music halls, one country, the other everything else, Buck Owen’s Crystal Palace and World Records, respectively. Both were shuttered by the pandemic, but their large theaters and accompanying restaurants and shops still testified to a vibrant music scene.

It started with Owens’s “Nashville West” but blew up with Meryl Haggard’s “outlaw” style, I was told by Pat Evans, the genial owner of World Records, where I bought some CDs (delivered curbside).

I assumed there would be some Trump fans when I caught the second Trump-Biden debate at the Roadkill Café in Seligman, Arizona, named for a 19th century Jewish railroad tycoon, Jesse Seligman. (Arizona has a few famous Jews, notably senator and presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.) The waitress turned the debate on at my request but neither she nor the bar’s good ol’ boys paid much heed—perhaps that exhaustion again.

In Oklahoma City, I toured two heavily cuisined, art-galleried AND marijuana-shopped neighborhoods. Despite Oklahoma’s Republican super-majority—the governor, both senators, over three quarters of Congressional representative and both state houses—its citizens voted 57% to 43% to legalize medical cannabis in 2018.

The National Memorial for the Oklahoma City Bombing serves as a grim reminder of horror of white supremacist terrorism. photo D. Blair
The city also features the artistic, moving and tolerance-professing National Memorial, featuring 168 chairs for those murdered in the 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrow building. American’s worst terrorist attack in modern times other than 9/11 and only 25 years ago, the Oklahoma City Bombing appears to dampen the ardor of local white supremacists.

Tulsa, another Oklahoma city with elevated arts, recently received Bob Dylan’s archives, unfortunately only open to researchers. Evidently, Dylan wanted to be near his hero, the folksinger and anti-fascist Woody Guthrie, who was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, and is also archived in Tulsa.

In Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee nation, I was generously hosted by Kellyquah Anquoe, co-director of Tahlequah Creates, a local art gallery. A devoted intellectual and rationalist, as well as painter, musician and Cherokee activist, Anquoe is a fantastic font of unbiased Cherokee lore.

While Arizona is almost half Navajo Reservation and New Mexico’s 22 tribes are world famous, I had forgotten Oklahoma’s story from high school history and didn’t realize how Native American it is.

Oklahoma’s indigenous population is 9.3%, just under New Mexico’s 10.6%, according to Wikipedia, although the CDC puts it at 14.5% and 6.5%, respectively, while my quick crunch of the 2010 census numbers comes up with 12.5% and 11% (evidently, Native people are hard to quantify).

In fact, Oklahoma was designated the Native American homeland state in the early 1800s, with many tribes either located or maintaining headquarters there to this day.

Of course, “located” meant “relocated” for the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and other tribes who endured the Trail of Tears,” the various forced marches of up to 1000 miles, which killed over 5,000 people, about a quarter of those who endured it.

President Jackson, a populist hothead not unlike the current office holder, ignored the Supreme Court ruling against deportation as well as the fact that those were the “Five Civilized Tribes” and advanced multiculturalists. Indeed, they had integrated their traditions with white technology and behavior, from guns and horses to writing and square houses as well as becoming Christian, intermarrying and, since they were in the South, owning slaves.

Early Cherokee assimilation of Southern society is why there are so many conservative and even Republican Cherokee today. Nevertheless, most remain very much Native, replete with pow-wows, councils and other practices, as explained to me by Anquoe, who grew up traveling to pow-wows all over the country as a musician.

Painter, musician, gallery director and Cherokee activist Kellyquah Anquoe (rt) generously hosted the author in the interesting cultural center of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. photo D. Blair
Another testament to Cherokee multiculturalism is the many intermarriages, starting in the 18th century, mostly Cherokee women with Scottish-Irish men, considered the hardiest of the colonists. Such social integration indicates how matriarchs, who were conquered by patriarchs, retake power through relationships. Moreover, a matriarchal society means children with Cherokee mothers were fully accepted by the tribe and often remained with it.

The most famous Scottish-Irish Cherokee was John Ross (1790-1866), who became one of their greatest chiefs, although only one-eighth Cherokee. After a bi-cultural education, he rose rapidly into leadership, captained a Cherokee brigade under Andrew Jackson (fighting the French, English and other Natives), and became a tobacco plantation owner and merchant. A leader during the Trail of Tears tragedy, his wife died en route, but he helped rebuild Cherokee society in Oklahoma.

Another advanced cultural integrator was the full Cherokee Nancy Ward (1738-1834). A fierce warrior, who fought alongside her first husband, she became a powerful leader and the only woman to sit on the Cherokee council. She advocated for co-existence and her second and third husbands were white.

Much of the intermarriage was with Blacks, since some 2,000 hiked the Trail of Tears as slaves of Native “masters.” Others fled to the region before and during the Civil War, despite incursions by Confederate raiders, while others arrived after the Civil War, thinking it was the promising place of a diverse, new America.

In 2019, the Cherokee Nation was highly criticized for expelling some 2800 African American members, perhaps because their mothers were not Cherokee. As critical today as ever, tribal membership entitles one to full health care from the Indian Health Services.

The young, seemingly African American man running a cannabis pharmacy in Tahlequah told me he was part Cherokee but didn’t have to deal with expulsion issues since he was certified Seminole through his mother. Another one of the Civilized Tribes, the Seminole of Florida had long intermarried with runaway Blacks but also runaway whites, pirates and other rebels.

The history of Native Americans, Oklahoma and America is riddled with broken treaties, vicious killings and outright wars, slavery and genocide, but there were also many romances, cooperative projects and cultural integration (as noted in my article “Radical Multiculturalism to the Rescue”), which should inspire us in this difficult time.

The Black Live Matter movement has been revisiting Tulsa’s notorious 1921 pogrom, when a white mob slaughtered between 50 and 200 African Americans and destroyed the flourishing business district called Black Wall Street. It is also worth recalling, however, that four years earlier, Black, Native and poor white Oklahomans joined to protest the World War I draft, leading to the Green Corn Rebellion (only three killed, thankfully).

And Oklahoma is about to enter a new chapter. On July 8, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that half the state is a Native American reservation. No land will change hands, but this will “have major consequences for both past and future criminal and civil cases.”

Just south of Oklahoma is the vast land of Texas, 800 miles across and 29 million people, making it second only to California’s 39 million citizens and fully deserving of the appellation “Third Coast.” Alas, Natives number just 1.1% of the population, since Texans drove the Apache, Comanche and other tribes into Oklahoma.

Not one Trump or Biden sign at the Kennedy Memorial in Dallas. photo D. Blair
Texas is famously Republican. But it, too, is filled with creative communities and famous liberals, from Lyndon Johnson to Ann Richards. In fact, Texas has been waxing Democratic ever since Congressman Beto O’Rourke almost took down Ur-conservative Ted Cruz in the Senate race of 2018.

There remains so much hope for a surprise Democratic sweep that vice-president candidate Kamala Harris showed up for a speech earlier this week, with another push by O’Rourke and others tomorrow. As in Oklahoma, Texan people of color have a large conservative wing. If they shift a notch or two bluer, the state might flip—so call any Texan relatives you might have!

I crossed into Texas at night, in the rain, a series of red lights blinking in unison across the landscape. It was rather spooky, until I realized they were the wind turbines of liberal Texans investing in the future.

After stopping at Dallas’s National Memorial to John F. Kennedy—a pop-art, 30-foot-square, white cube, containing a small reflecting pool (by famed architect Philip Johnson), but strangely moving in the rain—I headed for Austin, naturally.

Texas’s intellectual as well as political capital, Austin emerged as a culture center starting with music in the 1970s.

Willie Nelson, the great musical artist as well as staunch Democrat and weed activist, grew up 100 miles from Austin. In the early-'70s, he came out of retirement, from his success with a string of country and jazz hits, to foster another Bakersfield-like scene, in opposition to Nashville's corporate country. Nelson’s Outlaws attracted Stevie Ray Vaughan, among other greats, and generated “Austin City Limits”, a musical show premiering on PBS in 1975.

In 1987, music and television was seconded by film: the South By South West Festival. It also blew up and now lasts over ten days, although this year it was just five and virtual.

Austin’s downtown is booming, with plenty of tall buildings and cranes as well as nightclubs, hipster hangouts and homeless, under the popular mayor Steve Adler, one of Texas’ many Jews. (Interestingly, the most prominent member of the community is probably Kinky Freedman, musician, Willie Nelson friend and one-time gubernatorial candidate).

Austin also has fantastic Tex-Mex food, a relief for me after so much bad American fare (although in the Texas Panhandle, I did find a truck stop featuring an East Indian buffet—testament to another rapidly expanding middle American community, indeed, one running a candidate for Vice President).

As with all the other cultural businesses, Austin’s music scene has taken a tremendous hit from the pandemic. But, according to a musician I talked to, it has inspired people to buy guitars and take Zoom lessons, suggesting the next musical generation is woodshedding and on its way.

Like the rest of the country, Texas is in the final throws of a hard fought election, with lots of local offices up for grabs and the airwaves full of attack ads, often featuring the latest video techniques of quick cuts, heavy music and arty coloration.

Of course, Texas has a lot of gun-toters and can be famously tough. But there were no open signs of anger, animosity or unrest. I suspect their diverse politics and neighbors has prepared them to weather even this most controversial of elections, despite the fears Fox News and talk radio are stoking.

The author in West Texas Hill Country, not far from Lyndon Johnson's birthplace: poor, flat and surprisingly multicultural with many Latinx and Natives as well as 'cowboys.' photo D. Blair
In the Mexican border town of Del Rio, I finally saw a significant number of Trump signs, but also tattooed white girls, long-haired Latinos and skater-types happily hanging out.

I did meet a Trumper who proudly claimed he had yet to wear a mask once. As I backed away, I reminded myself that practicing radical tolerance means of idiots as well. Indeed, there was nothing to be done until the passage of a nationwide mask mandate, hopefully after this guy’s neighbors flip Texas.

That will of course be the biggest surprise of all, which I will celebrate, perhaps at Texas’s single hot spring, located at Big Bend National Park. It is not that I fear the gun toters—in fact, my last 3,000 miles of America has reinforced my basic belief in our general decency. It is just that after so much noise, conflict and close calls, some nature would be nice.

To find out more about my American "Twilight of the Trumpians" adventure, see my Facebook page or Instagram

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Oct 30, 2020 - 03:55 PM
Alt-Doc ‘Irmi’ About Holocaust Survivor
by Karl F. Cohen

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Poster for 'Irmi' by local filmmakers Veronica Selver and Susan Fanshal. image: Catherine Margerin
I ESPECIALLY WANTED TO WATCH THE
70-minute documentary “Irmi” to see what a friend from the past, Catherine Margerin, contributed (she did wonderful, award-winning animation at Colossal Pictures in the last century).

I found it to be a rich, emotionally-moving film experience, which mixes animation, archival and contemporary interviews. It presents the life of Irmi Selver, the mother of Veronica Selver who co directed along with Susan Fanshal, who was born in 1906 into an affluent German Jewish family.

The film, as you might guess, is an uplifting personal story built around tragedy, survival and redemption. From family photos we know Irmi came from a progressive family with German Expressionist paintings on the walls and impressive modern furniture. Prior to the rise of Hitler, her life was quite comfortable. She was well educated and she had a successful marriage.

Then the film explores what happened. It isn’t a heroic story of being in the underground or the tragic story of concentration camps. Instead it is the less familiar story, at least to me, of escape from several countries, the loss of several family members and close friends, severe mental depression and, most importantly, finding yourself and rebuilding your life.

There are dramatic moments including the escape from Germany and then a disastrous escape from Holland. There are other tragic moments including the loss of loved ones. While Irmi has moments of deep depression, what impressed me was her having the strength to rebuild her life, to find new purposes to her life, to help others and to create a new circle of family and friends.

'Irmi' features lovely animation by Catherine Margerin. image: C. Margerin
This deeply personal documentary by her daughter Veronica is based on Irmi Selver’s memoir. It is set for theatrical release on November 13. Locally there will be a virtual opening at the Roxie. It is also going to be shown at the Pacific Film Archive. It was shown locally as part of the Jewish Film Institute’s Cinegogue Summer Days.

The film is a collaboration between Bay Area based filmmaker Veronica Selver and Susan Fanshal. Both Veronica and Susan have specialized in social issue documentaries and have strong ties to the Bay Area. They previously collaborated on “KPFA On Air”, exploring the history of the Berkeley based radio station. Veronica is based in the Bay Area and Susan is a graduate of UC Berkeley, was based in the Bay Area for many years and now resides in New York.

“Irmi” Opens on November 13th in Roxie Virtual Cinema, San Francisco.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Oct 22, 2020 - 05:17 PM
Radical Multiculturalism to the Rescue
by Doniphan Blair

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'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction' is Isaac Newton's third law of motion. photo courtesy: Perpetual Motion Pendulum
THE PROBLEM WITH REVOLUTIONS IS
that people rarely do as you say, but they often do as you do.

Hence, a common reaction to a revolution is counterrevolution, unless the previous regime was totally tyrannical. That is why revolutions, no matter how progressive, are obliged to be repressive.

The same is true when it comes to emphasizing tribe, profession, politics or other identifying factors. Your opponents pay you the highest compliment by doing not as you say but as you do—albeit from their perspective.

The truly brilliant revolutionary, therefore, is the radical centrist who resists the temptation to idealism, self-aggrandizement or score settling and is tolerant, generous and understanding of this normative feature of human nature. They fight for the most radical change possible, through a strategy of sophisticated moderation, while avoiding counterproductive counterrevolutions.

Which brings us into the teeth of America’s current catastrophe.

As Americans stagger through the quadruple threat of pandemic, social unrest, economic collapse and the most fraught election in memory, if not our history, we have a vast array of communities both at each other’s throats and arming themselves, sometimes literally, for escalated conflict, perhaps sanguineous.

But there is another story behind this narrative. For all America’s past slavery and genocide and ongoing prejudice and oppression, now inflamed by President Trump, it remains the most multicultural society on the planet.

How many Blacks, Jews, Italians, Irish or Mexicans does China have?

Even if China evolves beyond its repression of counterrevolutions, actual or perceived—like the Uighurs, over a million of whom are now in concentration camps—can it become a functional nation, let alone a super power, without the capacity to tolerate and integrate difference?

Considered an 'Uncle Tom' by some radicals, Louis Armstrong largely invented modern jazz, was close friends with whites and Jews and smoked weed everyday of his adult life. image: The Louis Armstrong House Museum
Have you ever visited Ur-liberal Holland and observed how they ghettoize their immigrants and then retreat to their neighborhood bars, where even full fluency in Dutch won’t earn you acceptance?

For a multicultural society to work, to efficiently organize the cooperation of people with different worldviews and practices, it requires a lot of radical centerists.

Yes, America seems like one long bloodbath to its immigrants, its forced immigrants and its first people—for good reason, of course—but not quite so grotesquely after we compare America to other nations.

For a really long and vicious conflict try Islam, which is still fighting its civil war between the Sunnis and Shia, which started in the 7th century.

The Europeans had the Hundred Years War, the Eighty Years War, the Thirty Years War, the Seven Years War, and finally their magnum opus: the First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust, in which almost every European nation participated, to some extent.

That three-part, 90-million-people, grave-digging contest only ended with American military intervention, including troops from all of our races, tribes and genders, and our financial generosity.

Sure, such comparisons are small comfort for people who have endured endless massacres, Jim Crow lynchings and other atrocities, many ongoing, if somewhat diminished.

Nevertheless, between America’s butchery and brutality, there was also a lot of assistance, cooperation, radical centerism and multiculturalism.

We know this from Frederick Douglas learning to read from white people or Louis Armstrong receiving his first trumpet from the warden of his juvenile prison or from the fact that free people are often curious people. Regardless of social standards or laws, they will explore their interests, be they intellectual or financial, emotional or sexual.

Indeed, along with our legal and political structure, the foundation of American society is its robust multiculturalism.

In addition to America’s open civic society—if only a work in progress AND currently under serious threat—America’s highest high culture and multicultural achievement is undoubtedly jazz.

Still, our immense interpenetration also produced humor, sports, fashion, art and religion as well as ever more music, from country, which borrowed extensively from Blacks, to rap.

For those who think rap is only Black, check out Run DMC’s “Walk This Way”, based on a riff from white rockers Aerosmith. Meanwhile, one of the biggest country hits of 2019 was “Old Town Road" by rapper Lil Nas X—20 years old, Black AND gay.

American multiculturalism has created not just culture but people.

Some 'cowbooys' and 'Indians' married each other; shown here a buffalo hunter with his perhaps Sioux wife and daughter or son. image: unknown
While only 2.9% of Americans identified as multiracial in the 2010 US census, many more will do so in the 2020 census. Moreover, DNA tests would probably show that over 10 or even 20% of Americans have more than 50% different racial roots. If we switch from multi-racial to multi-ethnic, we would probably surpass the half- or even two-thirds- way mark.

Indeed, many racists or neo-Nazis, if they were to take a DNA test, would be chagrined to note significant percentages not only of southern European heritage, which is hardly so-called Aryan stock, but Jewish and Black blood.

In the Black community, which is obviously very mixed, with European heritage sometimes exceeding African, some people feel the miscegenation was mostly due to rape. That may be true, but there also must have been some cooperation and love.

We know this because the cooperation and love we have today must have grown from somewhere and because women are not weak. Indeed, they often struggle mightily—generally using radical centrist strategies—to benefit themselves and their children, including sometimes accepting oppressors as mates AND giving them love.

I have seen this phenomena between Jews and Germans during World War II through my research into my mother’s, her friend’s and other women’s experiences in the Holocaust.

As it happens, in addition to having 50% Jewish blood, DNA tests indicate that I have about .5% Native American heritage.

Admittedly, one two hundredths is not much to hang an identity on, but it does confirm family lore about an “Uncle Tomahawk.” As reprehensible as the nickname Uncle Tomahawk might be, it is notable that a Native man was accepted into a Scottish-Irish family as the husband of one of their womenfolk eight generations ago, in 18th century Ohio.

Women are a different story, of course, given they were often taken as captive concubines, forced into marriage or raped, as was openly practiced in early slave days and continued clandestinely throughout the South, in violation of both human norms and claims of white superiority, which implies an abhorrence of congress with non-white women.

Nevertheless, the laws of attraction, the powers of seduction, the benefits of a powerful woman’s ability to comfort, comprehend and heal still applied, regardless. Indeed, those “female powers” often wore down dominant or abusive men over decades of relationship—just as they do today in some power-imbalanced unions.

“Proper” social mores a century or two ago meant that intermarriages or mixed relationships were down played or completely hidden. Nevertheless, some of those women of color—who ranged from Black and Native in the South to Native, Latina AND Chinese in the West—came to exert enormous influence over “white” husbands, children, families and communities, notably because they brought to bear expertise in different skills than typical white women.

Indeed, their hard work, their enormous hearts and their capacious courage should not be dismissed or forgotten. In point of fact, those women of color helped build the multicultural and mixed race society that many—dare I say most—of us enjoy—to some degree or another—today. Moreover, for some of us, they are our beloved grandmothers.

Hence, my suggestion to my fellow Americans:

Instead of focusing on our vast history of slavery, genocide, racism, privilege and ongoing oppression—as we have for the last four months, which is essential, of course, but we can easily get back to at any time— for the next month, let us turn to our equally significant heritage of multiculturalism and mixed marriages. It just might help us get through this difficult time and stave off a period of inter-communal strife, if not a second civil war.

Even if we are not from a mixed marriage or mixed community, as I am—I had the privilege of growing up Jewish-gentile, across the street from Harlem, with Black, Latinx, Asian and southern European friends and I have lived in West Oakland, another very mixed community, for 31 years—we have friends and enjoy culture from those communities.

Moreover, we can look to “the better angels of our nature,” as was noted by our great radical centrist president, Abraham Lincoln, in his first inagurral address, one month before South Carolina started the Civil War.

Indeed, I suggest that we grab hold of our multicultural ideals, we increase our multicultural actions, we honor our multicultural grandmothers (and grandfathers), and we swing that spirit of mixing, tolerance and generosity as hard as we can.

The odds are about fifty-fifty, but if we swing hard enough, we just might make it. I wish us all good luck.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Oct 07, 2020 - 05:48 PM
Why Rational People Believe Conspiracies
by Doniphan Blair

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The Hindu goddess of prosperity and love, Lakshmi, AKA Maya, also the name of the Buddha's mother. image: 15th C Hindu artist
IN THE BEGINNING WAS 'MAYA.'

Not the Hindu goddess Maya but the Sanskrit word for “illusion” or “magic.” Three millennia ago, Indian philosophers recognized that our understanding of the world is essentially maya, an illusion we construct from our culture, life, dreams and even language.

A Japanese bookkeeper once sent my check in an envelope addressed “2200 Aderine Street, Oakrand, California.” She was probably tired, but for whatever reason my address’s two “l”s, a sound which doesn’t exist in Japanese, didn’t translate from her reading it off my invoice to her fingers.

We interpret reality through what we know or can recall, at any given moment.

No one questions why the French call their neighbor’s capital “Londres,” adding an “r” sound, while the English say “Paris,” vocalizing their ancient frenemy’s unspoken “s.” Such variations in interpretation of reality are common, everyday maya.

But there is also radical maya. While mystics and artists always have always used prayer, abstinence and vision to customize their consciousness, an 11th century Persian scholar, Hassan ibn Sabbah, took it a step further.

“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” he concluded.

To defend his fellow Shi’a Muslims from the oppressive Sunni Muslim shahs, Sabbah used his discovery to create a cult of adept suicide attackers, called Hashasheen, from where we get the word “assassin.”

First he convinced his followers they would go straight to heaven when they died; second, he used sophisticated disguise and subterfuge to sneak them into his enemies' palaces or camps; finally, he mastered rumor and conspiracy theory.

The Hashasheen lasted for a few centuries, assassinated hundreds of soldiers, statesmen and religious figures and even fought the Crusaders with their Lebanese franchise.

Sabbah proved that with proper doctrine and brainwashing humans were capable of astounding feats of belief and action. His supercharging of how we use maya so impressed as well as frightened his fellow Persians, they wrote documented it (his own writings don’t survive), and the assassin story reached Europe, where it became a metaphor for passion.

A Hashasheen (3nd fr lft) stabs the Persian Vizier, Nazim al-Mulk, in the 11th C.illo: 14th C Persian miniature
There have been many revolutionary thinkers since Sabbah, but only a handful have equally rejiggered our gilded cages of maya.

The 17th century René Descartes identified something similar in his pronouncement, “I think therefore I am,” which helped usher in the Enlightenment’s freedom, intellectualism and science.

But the Enlightenment was only completed the Renaissance’s resurrection of classicism. The big revolution in Western thinking came with Romanticism, according to the philosophers Ayn Rand and Isaiah Berlin, an arch-conservative and Ur-liberal, respectively.

Romanticism grabbed maya making back from the academy and ancients and placed it firmly in the minds of the individual, where it always resides regardless and who is ultimately responsible.

Romanticism produced great poetry but also the Declaration of the Independence, the back to nature movement, sexual freedom, women’s rights, art, exploration and political revolutions. But it also had a downside, a tendency to degenerate into fantasy, obsession, nihilism and blaming others to solve your own problems.

Balanced romantics like Mary Shelley, Henry David Thoreau and Charles Darwin used it to empower invention and exploration. Even though mystics, artists and many regular folk have fantastic inner lives, they still maintained a balance with rationalism and community consensus.

Indeed, this marriage—between flighty, independent imagination and solid, shared culture—have been central to human existence since the invention of language. Once we agreed on the meaning of made-up words, we could create agreements, relationships, culture and science.

Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, was also an avid alchemist, proving the truism: We humans are both fantastic fabulists and pragmatic realists.

Science had a good run, from the 18th through the 20th century, when religion, mysticism and magic was obliged to retreat to a private, spiritual or abstract, non-physical, domain.

But science became domineering and helped foster the "isms," communism, fascism and modernism. As our reality gets more fact based, mechanical and artificially-intelligence driven, we naturally turn to greater romance and illusion.

Ironically, the biggest blow to our collective civil consciousness came from science itself, in the 1960s: pharmaceuticals and philosophies.

In August, 2020, QAnoners on in Los Angeles, protested child slavery but also more outrageous accusations. photo: Kyle Grillot
LSD, invented by chemists and originally distributed by doctors, proved the mind was malleable, with all sorts of previously unimaginable elements, facets and abilities.

Around the same time, philosophers of deconstruction and post-modernism proposed that everything—all books, art, culture, even science—was in fact what the ancient Hindus called maya. Based more on culture and biases than "hard facts," it was open to interpretation.

Interestingly, these philosophies were in keeping what physics went through thirty years earlier with the Uncertainty Principle and particle/wave controversy of quantum physics.

Psychedelic drugs triggered an immediate earthquake across society, but the second adjustment to our understanding of reality was a slow burn. It seeped into academia, avant authors and finally college kids, manifesting as the multicultural revolution of the ‘80s.

And now science has hammer yet another shattering blow to our shared social maya.

By converting everything to pixals, digits and data, deliciously displayed, it has enabled communication at a distance and access to fantastic amounts of fact, art, culture and commerce. Along with such empowerment, however, it aggravates our emotions and fantasies.

Although the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube algorithms fanned the flames, humans were already going through an existential revolution from computers, a reality only three decades old.

Given digitization and mechanization also accelerated globalism, corporate control and government surveillance, they would naturally rebel, either by voting out the old or inventing stories, in attempts to retake control of their lives.

Add to this a global pandemic and economic collapse.

People need a fantasy quest , a "Game of Thrones" come to life, an alternate reality game (ARG), which is the technical name for games which use regular life as its platform, and what could be more perfect than QAnon, dedicated to stopping Satanist cannibals.

Having to be rationalists most of the day, people in need of visionary relief. Those who have suffered setbacks or injuries, can let their imaginations finally run wild. And they can join a privileged community, where they can feel camaraderie and support, providing understandable emotional benefit, even as a conspiracy theory is being cynically exploited by the Sabbahs of our day.

We all live in our own maya. Hence, shame, ridicule and even exposing the lies of leaders will have little effect. Recognizing their injuries, understanding their maya and making available a convenient bridge to a more functional interpretation of reality, may work better.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Oct 07, 2020 - 08:36 AM
The Art of the Streets
by Doniphan Blair

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The homeless cineaste Eric Protein Moseley and his daughter, Erica. photo: courtesy E. Moseley
MAKING FILMS IS NOT EASY UNDER ANY
circumstances—imagine doing it while homeless.

Ten years ago, cineSOURCE published a story about someone doing exactly that, see “Homeless Cineaste Eric Moseley” . Indeed, despite being homeless, Eric Protein Moseley had notable success getting his story and work out, including airing scenes on PBS.

A decade later, we wanted to see how he was faring.

Guess what? Moseley and his daughter, Erica, who he raised on the streets, as a single father no less, have been hard a work, both on media projects, homeless activism AND their own lifestyles.

Both off the streets for almost a decade—Eric now working as a temp server (sometimes for Wolfgang Puck) in Los Angeles and doing some acting, Erica as a homeless advocate in San Francisco, where she recently published a book and is hosting a cable television show—they continue to give back, in a big way.

Indeed, Eric recently produced arguably his best documentary short, “Homeless Corona Virus Outreach”, which stars both himself and his daughter, features artistic camera and editing work, and joins his interests in film, outreach and philanthropy. It shows how he and Erica set out to bring Corona virus information to San Francisco’s homeless, 50% of whom didn’t know about it, he learned as he worked with them.

“I got a gift from God to do it,” Eric told me in our recent phone conversation. “We didn’t know about the dangers either. When we first went out, we didn’t have mask or gloves. No one was prepared for Corona. I educated myself by watching the news.”

As detailed in “Homeless Corona Virus Outreach”, featuring music generously provided by Eastside Tiggy, Erica and Eric give out public safety information and gift bags with hand sanitizer and some masks, some of which they put together and paid for themselves.

Moseley is a big believer in getting and giving good information—his top picks for California shelters and assistance are at the end of this article—honed by his own years on the street and his intense hustle. Indeed, he sometimes goes by Protein.

“I forget if a woman called me that or if it is just a positive element that everyone in their life needs. People don’t use real names out on the street. Everyone calls me that.”

Another aspect of Protein’s outreach is into regular society.

Moseley recording narration for his film. photo: courtesy E. Moseley
“I am trying to educate people about the three classes of homelessness,” he told me, “The upper, middle and lower. Not everyone is poor person pushing a ‘buggy’ [shopping cart]. An upper class [homeless] person tries to maintain their hygiene. Going to shelters is more like couch surfing for them, as they try to make it back into society.”

“The lower class is content living out on the street. They feel it is not that bad, most have been living there a long time, and they don’t see themselves coming out.”

“The ones on drugs are the ones who mostly like living out on streets, because it is more convenient,” Eric explained. “I think we need counseling to find out what they really want to do before we put them into a shelter.”

“If they want to live on the streets, there is not much [councilors] can do, until they get into mind frame that they need help. They need to get that first.”

The Corona situation “was so bad before we went out on the streets. No one was talking about what happening. At the time we were out, a lot of people weren’t tested. After we went on the news, things improved. London Brie [San Francisco’s mayor, who is Black] waited a while before she took action.”

“I think there was outbreak on Bryant Street Shelter. There were 75 confirmed deaths. After that the city officials got on it. They put the people into the hotels.”

“My daughter and I had hand sanitizer and some masks. We were also helping with the census, with the city of San Francisco. They didn’t even have a system to get the info sheets about the Corona or the census out there.’

“There should be different programs to assist the different needs.”

“I started a program called Each One Teach One Infrastructure to educate people to help hire them. The tech companies didn’t want a bum with body odor to come their office, but there are homeless walking around with nice thrift store clothes. There are regular people who are homeless.”

“My daddy always told me, ‘You could be a productive citizen even if you were homeless,’” Eric’s daughter Erica told me in a recent phone call.

“I had to do volunteer work, after school work. While we were walking down the street, he would be saying, ‘What are you going to do? What are you going to be?’”

“Even the time I was on drugs,” which was crack, for 18 years, Eric said, “I would work on my craft. I knew I would come out of it, eventually.”

Erica's appearance in this billboard provides welcome realism to the Catholic Charities campaign. photo: courtesy E. Moseley
“I would write songs as a kid,” while growing up in Detroit and attending North Western High, the same school as The Temptations. “I always wanted to be on TV and tell people the news.”

And now he does, through his films. He is also getting gigs as an independent model and actor, recently doing scenes or walk-ons for Visit Burbank, a tourist agency, a couple of restaurants and a video about how to talk with substance abusers.

“I am my own agent,” he explained. “I book my own things, by looking at different sites that cast people. They do online auditions. It is a hard game. Out of every 100 applications, you might get one or two jobs.”

“Every time we got a new place, first thing he did was put me in the school,” Erica told me. “By the time I was in the sixth grade I was getting all As, and I graduated high school in 11th grade. I became an A student at school AND in homelessness.”

“Because everyone always considered me the new girl, I had to try to blend in. But I didn’t fit in. No one understood me. I was not only homeless but I didn’t have a mother… I didn’t gossip on the phone like other girls.”

Erica’s mother was with her and Eric until she was fou. Alas, also a drug addict, she left them to pursue her powerful street dreams.

“I started to notice kids getting jealous of me, because I had a father but I didn’t have a mother,” Erica elaborated. “It would have been easier to be homeless with a mother—we could have gotten into shelters faster. Even today, there is no shelter for men with children, because some women have domesticate violence issues and are scared of men.”

“We had to sleep under bridges because there was no place. My father would tie a shirt to my and his arm and, if someone moved me, he would know.”

The entire time, she would have her bag with books and, in the morning, go to school.

“Every night it was: ‘Where am I going to go? Did my dad come up with something?’ My dad was a hustler, always selling T-shirts or something. He would often come up with a hotel room or something.”

Eric’s homeless period was off and on for 20 years, sometimes living with people, sometimes in shelters, but always as an “upperclass” homeless. In the end, he was on street for six solid years. He finally got an apartment four years ago.

“We would travel to different cities,” Eric recalled. “In the South, they would put her in an advanced grade. I helped her with schoolwork. I was a father but I was still addicted.”

“‘She was like a military brat but with a crackhead father,’ was how I explained it on the Ricky Lake Show, in 2013. We were also on the Robert Irvine Show [2016], telling our story.”

Eric's portfolio shots, with which he obrtains acting and modeling gigs. photo: courtesy E. Moseley
Indeed, Eric brilliantly translated his street hustle skills to both his current careers and to raising his daughter.

Each One Teach One Infrastructure, his organization, is growing and looking to get a fiscal sponsor. He lives in downtown LA, in an older building but refurbished.

Meanwhile, his daughter has a show in San Francisco on Community Television Channel 29 called “The Homeless Diary” and has an apartment downtown in a nice neighborhood.

“I got to SF because my friends told me to come back,” Erica explained. “First, I was staying with a person with Section 8 [welfare housing], so I had to go back on the streets. But I am a homeless resource master.”

“I ended applying for all sorts of apartments and ended up winning a two-bedroom apartment in SOMA out 10,000 people. They said, ‘You can’t get it but I did out of 10,000! These are not low income but low market value.”

“I was working for the city and country of San Francisco at $15 an hour. I didn’t qualify, so I went to Hamilton Family Shelter, where I work sometimes, which provides umbrella social services. I begged them and they went on my side and helped me. After two years, I ended being a case worker and outreach advisor.”

“My clients didn’t believe I was homeless. I always looked like a professional. So I decided to write a book to my clients, ‘Trapped in the Homeless Hustle’ [available on Amazon].”

“It is about how I could motivate them and how to overcome battles and to get resources in SF but also around the world. I went to speak at Sales Force for Hamilton and helped them raise $400,000. I was the only speaker with a rabbi, real popular Jewish homeless advocate.”

“You never get over homeless,” Erica said. “God directed me to that path and now I serve homeless people and tech companies doing diversity inclusion. I feel their pain. There are 10,000 people homeless in SF.”

“Now with Covid, you get all sorts of people: nurses, CEOs, people from tech—people are losing their houses, their apartments. Now it is called ‘room checking.’ If you don’t have a lease, you are considered homeless. Those people are asking me, ‘Where can I get a roommate?’ No one can afford $3,000-5,000 a month.”

“On my TV show at first I was interviewing homeless. Now my email is flooded with professionals, trying to get information about services, about housing. I always wonder if they went to The Tenderloin,” the traditional prostitution and drugs neighborhood, near downtown San Francisco. “That is the choice, either you go all the way down or go to friends and family.”

Erica Moseley and her 12-year old daughter, KaMya McCrea. photo: courtesy Erica Moseley
“There are no resources in the City. It is challenging and humbling. We went out and advised over 100 people. Half didn’t know about the Covid. We gave them bags and masks but we were just a Bandaid, paying out of our own pocket.”

“We don’t want be a Bandaid. I am a problem solver. I am an incredible resource for non-profs to strategize, to diversify their platform.”

“I want to give you the pathway for your success. If I can do it, everyone can. That is what I believe during this time of Covid.”

“You have to be creative. Right now they are SIP,” sheltering in place, “but they are going to start kicking them out. They are getting angry at mayor and governor because they don’t have anywhere to go.”

“People think housing is the end result. They don’t have a strategy or a way to start their own business. You need to give them a strategy and motives.”

“This is the reason why the cycle continues. I want to end the cycle. I have a 12-year-old daughter, she does art and she also codes. I am trying to end the generational curse with children, to help my child and her friends to bridge the gap. Homeless kids are just running all over the place because their parents are stressed out, they are traumatized.’

“I want to instill in my kids what my dad instilled in me,” Erica said, and she has been very successful with her daughter. While she aspires to be an architect, KaMya is currently learning to code and planning to teach kids experiencing homeless or non-traditional lifestyles coding at the shelters.

“My dad was on crack. He didn’t hide that from me. But I didn’t see the actual drugs. He always told me, ‘Don’t do drugs, don’t be like me.”

“I never did drugs.”

“He always respected me but one day he almost overdosed. He did it in the bathroom and he came out and I knew he was high because he would kneel every five seconds. One day I asked him, ‘Why do you kneel?’"

"He said, ‘God punished me and I kneel and pray. God told me that he is going to kill me if I didn't turn my life around.'"

“He said when my mother did [drugs], she would be gone for days. He was different. He would do it and still take care off me.”

“For my day job, I work at PRC, which is for mental health and substance abuse. I am learning more and more. My main goal is to partner with nonprofs and tech companies to bridge the gaps in resources and diversity. They are taking care to make sure we are all taken care of,” Erica concluded.

“People often take to me,” Eric told me in his summing up.

“I encourage them to stay off of drugs and to work on their craft. If you don’t have a job you can work on your craft, go to a library, study what ever you dreamed of as young girl or boy and never give up. I have a whole list of resources: you go here to get a shower, here for a counseling. I am like the resource king.”

I know a lot of cities, New York, Florida, because I have travelled across the country.”

“Homeless resources in Los Angeles? The city of LA gives the homeless $ 221 and $194 in food stamps. They have a program call a pilot program, where they will pay up to $400 for a shared living apartment where there are at least two to a room in neighborhood such as South Central.”

“My favorite shelter in Los Angeles is The Union Gospel Mission run by Andy Bales. Reason being is that Mr. Bales is known for having a compassion for the homeless. He is a hands-on type of guy, who used to go out on the streets of Skid Row to uplift and console the homeless. He discontinue doing so when he lost a portion of his leg that some believe came from something he contracted while going out on the streets.”

“San Francisco provides the homeless with $66 and put individuals on a (SRO) Single Room Occupancy waiting list.”

San Diego gets a failing grade for how they assist their homeless. To my understanding, they have a wonderful program but in order to get into it, one must jump through many hoops. But they do have a wonderful day shelter called San Diego Day Center. Great place. They also help with showers, lockers, housing assistance, a day room and much, much more.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Sep 26, 2020 - 03:49 AM
Books Still Matter Says ‘The Book Makers’
by Susan Hellman

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Director James Kennard filming 'The Book Makers' at CODEX, a premier book fair in Richmond. image: courtesy InCA Productions)
"THE BOOK IS DEAD. LONG LIVE THE
book!” That’s the battle cry of the engaging one-hour documentary “The Book Makers” (2020).

By the Mill Valley documentarians behind the wine trilogy “A Year in Burgundy/Champagne/Port” (2014-16), who also produced “California Typewriter” (2016) and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018), “The Book Makers” asks the question, “What should books become in the digital age?”

The answer comes from an eclectic group of artists, authors, and historians, many in the Bay Area. They explore what books are and can be in modern times and make the case for why they are more important than ever. See the film’s web site here, or trailer here.

Director James Kennard, who spent his childhood watching his father David at work making award-winning documentaries at InCA Productions in the 1980s, began his film apprenticeship in earnest on InCA’s wine trilogy. While working on that series, he ended up helping on a short film, “Arion Press: Creating the 100th”, which documented a San Francisco book making cultural icon, (2014). It inspired his feature directorial debut.

Indeed, Kennard has rounded up some of the brightest stars of the book art world. There’s the eminently quotable Berkeley-based fine press printer Peter Koch, who leads the battle to make books “meaner and tougher,” including a 30-pound book made entirely of lead.

Veteran book artist Julie Chen, an alumni-turned-professor at the Mills College of Book Arts in Oakland proves why screens have actually freed up the physical book to do what it does best: be a tactile-intellectual interface. Artist Karen Bleitz, another Mills College alum, employs novel mechanisms to surprise her readers and communicate linguistic and scientific ideas.

Poster for 'The Book Makers', which makes the case for why books still matter. image: courtesy InCA Productions)
Typographic artist Sam Winston, for his part, upends traditional linear narratives with his visually striking books which actually transfer digital ideas back to the physical page. Meanwhile, the award-winning children’s author and illustrator Christian Robinson underscores the importance of representation in the stories he depicts.

The film’s personal narratives and intimate artist interviews are balanced by the high-tech future of the book, which is on full display in Brewster Kahle’s mammoth undertaking: to preserve every book ever written in the digital library of his Internet Archive in San Francisco.

Then the film travels to New York, London, and Germany to give a broad view of the book maker scene, culminating at the CODEX Book Fair (co-produced by Berkeley’s Peter Koch) back in the Bay Area town of Richmond, which happens to be the book arts’ world most important event.

Throughout the film, we follow the young book maker Mark Sarigianis, who Kennard first met at Arion Press but has since set out on his own and started the Prototype Press in West Oakland.

Indeed, we are there for every major hurdle in his painstaking, 621-day process of printing a deluxe edition of Charles Bukowski’s “Ham on Rye”, from the start of this passion project, uses hand-set type, through the logistics of sourcing, production, binding, and finally celebrating its completion—typo-free!

For good measure, San Francisco-based authors Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s) and Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket (“A Series of Unfortunate Events”) add marquee value for those not familiar with the legends of the book art world, offering their take on the traditional reading experience as still essential despite our screen-obsessed society.

Kennard’s film about the intimacies of making books by hand and the relationship between books and readers has benefitted from the home setting for the suddenly virtual film festival circuit where it made its debut this spring. This lent an additional closeness to visiting authors and artists in the previously unseen places they do their work.

This extends to InCA’s pre-pandemic decision to also release the film through a less conventional route on public television, where you can see it during National Book Month beginning October 12th on PBS stations.

It airs locally Saturday, October 17th, 8 pm on Northern California Public Media (KPJK); Tuesday, October 27th, 4 pm on KQED WORLD; Friday, November 13th, 8 pm on KQED’s main channel; and nationwide on WORLD, public television’s premier news, science and documentary channel, on October 27th (to find the channel locally, go here).

If this film is any indication, the second generation of filmmaking Kennards in Mill Valley is in a good position to start its fourth decade of award-winning documentaries with James’s first feature. Indeed, his Oxford education in modern history should make for an interesting list of future projects.

On the horizon? More films focused on what Kennard considers the “unsung oddities” of popular culture, like the Italian Disco uprising of the 1980s.

Susan Hellman is a freelance writer based in New York. She can be reached . Posted on Sep 24, 2020 - 03:46 PM
Disney Facing Attacks on Multiple Fronts
by Karl F. Cohen

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Uighur men interred in a Chinese concentration camp. image: unknown
DISNEY IS IN HOT WATER OVER
shooting part of “Mulan”, their big September release, in an area of China where over a million Muslim Uighurs, a minority population, have been interred in concentration camps.

While the film is about a society in need of a hero to deliver them from a villain, that villain has become China, to people sympathetic towards the plight of the Uighurs.

One critic is a woman, now living in the US, who told The Washington Post she has been trying to reach her mother, a retired doctor, who has gone missing, disappeared into China’s concentration camps.

She believes those camps are part of a campaign of genocide against the Uighurs and that the success of the film will benefit the corporation and China but not the Uighurs, who are suffering immensely.

In her mind, Disney is a villain for working with the oppressors. “The villain is now rewarded with money, fame and power,” she notes, and the film is a “whitewash” of what is really happening in that region of China.

The issue has been covered extensively on National Public Radio and other media outlets including The Washington Post (go here),

The production already faced controversy over lack of diversity in production team and statements against the Hong Kong protests by Yifei Liu, the film’s leading lady.

Hong Kongers protest 'Mulan''s support of China. image: unknown
The #boycottmulan movement, based on China’s human rights violations, is building strength and hurting the film’s box office. During the film’s opening weekend the first viewers of “Mulan” on Disney+ noted the "special thanks" in the film's credits to various government entities in Xinjiang Provence, precisely where China has been accused of gross human rights abuses against the Uighurs.

China is extremely upset over the growing criticism and the negative press they are getting, especially as they try to improve their image with the Belt and Road Initiative and other outreach. Indeed, authorities have ordered a media blackout on even mentioning let alone reviewing the film, even though it is currently playing in their local theatres!

“Beijing authorities ordered local media not to provide any coverage of the $200 million tentpole,” a Hollywood Reporter article begins, “after international outcry over reports that Disney shot portions of the film in Xinjiang Provence, where Beijing is accused of human rights abuses.”

"Mulan was primarily shot in, almost the entirety, in New Zealand,” a spokesperson for Disney told CNN. But, “in an effort to accurately depict some of the unique landscape and geography of the country of China for this historically period piece drama, we filmed scenery in 20 different locations in China."

The spokesperson added its standard practice to "acknowledge in the film's credits the national and local governments that allowed you to film there," so "in our credits, that was recognized." But she admitted that the backlash has ultimately "generated a lot of issues for us."

If #boycottmulan weren’t bad enough, the conspiracy fanatics of QAnon are claiming Disney is coding evil into their movies.

According to conspiracists, 'The Little Mermaid' brainwashes children. image: courtesy Disney
The Guardian, which has been watching QAnon closely, recently had an article noting, “Today, much of the original Facebook content relating to QAnon consists of videos posted by mothers — visibly furious, sometimes in tears — about the alleged sinister messages used to ‘brainwash’ their children through toys or Disney movies.”

Who makes this fake news up? Why?

There is no truth to it. Nor did the Walt Disney Co. acquire the pornographic video website Pornhub, which is the largest on planet and accounts for about one quarter of ALL internet traffic. (“30 percent of all data transferred across the Internet is porn,” HuffPost, 5/4/13.)

Snopes.com, “the definitive Internet reference source for researching urban legends,” confirms that the latter is a fake rumor.

Admittedly, Disney entrances kids, much like Kaa the snake in their masterpiece "Jungle Book", (1964). And the characters sometimes evince "unattainable standards" and "stereotypical norms,” as in all commercial art.

Nevertheless, seeing the popular "Little Mermaid" (1989) as a radical agit-prop, advocating disobedience and libertine love—c'mon! When it comes to sexy cartoons from Disney, we have to look back to the halcyon liberal times of the 1920s.

And, in the end, how is "Mulan" doing?

The Hollywood Rerporter says, ”'Mulan' earned just $6.5 million in its second weekend, a 72 percent slide from its opening," which is abysmal.

"Despite being set in China, based on a Chinese legend and packed with Chinese stars," The Reporter continues, "'Mulan' has brought in just $36.3 million in the Middle Kingdom. The film's worldwide theatrical results—$57 million—are even more dismal, considering that the picture cost an estimated $200 million to make."

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Sep 20, 2020 - 06:21 PM
Creativity in Chinatown and Catching Up with Clara Hsu
by Doniphan Blair

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The City Lights Bookstore block party, in 2019, was enjoyed by a graphic designer, one of the few Asians in attendance, even though Chinatown was literally next door. photo: D. Blair
I WAS PARTYING WITH HANSON LEE, A
Chinese-American electrician, art enthusiast and hippie, on Columbus Avenue, in the middle of San Francisco’s Italian neighborhood, North Beach.

We were attending the 100th birthday of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a Jewish-Italian-American poet, publisher and beatnik, at City Lights, the bookstore he founded in 1955. It was quite the party: 500 attendees and plenty of food, poetry, music, and, of course, wine (see story here).

As Hanson and I toasted plastic cups of Italian wine, however, I looked back at City Lights and noticed that right behind it—looming over it, surrounding it, in fact—was Chinatown.

Founded in 1848, it is the oldest Chinese community in the western hemisphere and the second largest, after New York’s. But having occupied the center of San Francisco for so long, it seems to have almost been forgotten.

Long gone are the 1920s, when intellectuals would explore Chinatown, looking for opium dens or Buddhist scholars, according to journalist Emily Freidkin, a friend of this author, or trying to meet Chinese women, as illustrated in “The Chinese Nightingale”, a poem by Vachel Lindsay, my great-uncle.

By the time I hit San Francisco in the ‘70s, Chinatown was mostly known for restaurants and cheap consumer goods. It was where my commune purchased crates of oranges.

Chinatown and one of its first new year's parades, circa 1955. photo: courtesy SF Chronicle
True, there were also dusty old herb shops with great ginseng and the Buddha Lounge, where you could meet colorful characters like Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow.

A tough, short guy, who liked to date Caucasian women, Chow immigrated from Hong Kong, took over a “tong”—which means fraternal association but can also be a mafia family—and ended up having a couple of competitors killed. Chow’s story captivated San Francisco and the famous Black Panther lawyer and native son hippie, Tony Serra, mounted a determined defense, but he got life in 2016.

For out-of-control tongs, however, you had to go back to 1977 and the notorious Golden Dragon massacre, which killed five and injured eleven, at the eponymous Washington Street restaurant, three blocks from where Hanson and I were standing.

Across Columbus Avenue from City Lights, we could see Chinatown's main drag, Grant Street, down the alley next to the bookstore; to our right, the last Chinese restaurant, the New Sun Hong Kong, before Little Italy took over, and to our left, Francis Ford Coppola’s elegant, eight-story, triangle building and Café Zoetrope, also surrounded by Chinatown.

A bit tipsy, I became entranced and suddenly fancied myself an explorer surveying a new world. Chinatown must have some fascinating filmmakers and artists, I thought.

Although that realization was followed by fears that I would be accused of cultural colonialism, someone had to offset the general absence of awareness; I had spent five years traveling and living in Asia and South America, almost always welcomed by locals; and I didn’t see why Chinatown would be any different.

Hanson Lee (rt) and Doniphan Blair 'explore' Chinatown. photo: D. Blair
Plus I just met Hanson.

Growing up in the highly cultured Shanghai, albeit during the Cultural Revolution, Hanson retained a fondness for Mao, who cancelled classes for all his high school years. Making his way to New York and then San Francisco, where hipster life was a little easier, he became active in the electrician trade—in fact, he has worked all over Chinatown.

He also became a dedicated devotee of the arts, notably San Francisco’s renown John Coltrane Church, where he sits on the board and which I hoped would make him amenable to my scheme.

Hanson was, and our first encounter with contemporary Chinatown culture was with Leland Wong, a personal friend of his, whom we met over dinner at the New Sun Hong Kong Restaurant.

A prolific artist and illustrator but also silk-screener, photographer and multi-media maker, Wong was raised in Chinatown and helped pop-ify its identity with colorful, cartoon-like imagery, among many other styles and projects. In 2014, he was the artist-in-residence at the Chinese Historical Society (see Wong's page), a large, well-developed institution on Clay Street.

Wong also provided a peak into the Chinatown of the 1960s. Although not many of his contemporaries made it across town to the Haight-Ashbury, they, too, were in rebel mode. “They liked amphetamines,” Wong told me.

Chinatown artist Leland Wong's 'Kois at Dragon Gate Mural', 2013. photo: courtesy L. Wang
Hanson and I began frequenting the two local libraries, going so far as to collaborate with the North Beach branch on a monthly poetry presentation, tellingly titled “Beat Poets East-West”.

From my first awakening at City Lights, I had wondered how much rapport there was between Chinatown and the bookstore, or North Beach in general. Not much, it turned out, a paucity Hanson and I hoped to ameliorate.

One poetry night we looked at Le Bai, an innovative and romantic bohemian from the 8th century, who became the Tang Dynasty’s most revered poet; another at Gary Synder, a poet, beatnik and esteemed environmentalist who became a Buddhist monk in Japan for some years and integrated those ideas into his work (see that story here).

As we explored Chinatown, however, I came to realize it was somewhat frozen in the 19th century, although I doubt there are any opium dens left.

Well aware of this, the doyens of Chinatown gave it a massive make-over in the ‘50s, with the initiation of the still-popular new year’s festival and parade, which comes in February and includes the crowning of Miss Chinatown. The parade allowed Chinese lesbians and gays to march under their own banner in 1994, a notable achievement, considering the even later opening up of other ethnic parades.

Li Bai poster from Lee and Blair's 'Beat Poets East West' at the North Beach Library. image: D. Blair
Indeed, by the 1990s, Chinatown had become an object of renewed fascination. The massive bestseller “The Joy Luck Club” (1989) was set there, although author Amy Tan was born and raised in Oakland’s Chinatown, America’s eighth biggest. Oakland was also home during his college years (CCA) to Wayne Wang, originally from Hong Kong, the lauded filmmaker who turned the book into a well-received movie, four years later.

The monumental movie innovator and star Bruce Lee (1940–73) was born in Chinatown, before his family moved back to Hong Kong, and lived there upon his return in 1958. But he soon moved to Seattle, which had a tiny Chinatown, and, of course, Hollywood.

Chinatown remains rather medieval today because it is controlled by antique money and inhabited largely by the elderly, who get subsidized housing, and impoverished new immigrants, who work the restaurants and are often in-debt to people smugglers. The families of earlier immigrants have long since joined San Francisco’s middle class and decamped to the Sunset neighborhood or the suburbs.

Moreover, there is little evidence of the vibrant, ambitious and hyper-new China of today, in the form of fancy new stores, cultural centers or the consulate. Although renovated on the inside, the Historical Society is in a cultural heritage building, while the consulate general of the People's Republic of China sits a few miles away, in Japantown, as it happens. That building is so nondescript, in fact, it suggests the PRC is boycotting San Francisco’s Chinese community for being reactionary.

In sum, Chinatown evidences little of the highly artistic and mystical side of China—except in a few select locations.

The opening of Clarion Music Center in Chinatown, 1982. photo: courtesy C. Hsu
One of those is Clarion Performing Arts Center. A lovely space with a stage and seats for 60, it is located in the heart of Chinatown on Waverly Place at Sacramento Street, three tiny blocks from the famous Portsmouth Square.

Clarion is owned and directed by Clara Hsu, who also came from Hong Kong as a teen, albeit to the East Coast. Although born into a musical family and musically trained, she didn’t discover her muse until her 40s and an awakening to the power of poetry.

So profound was Hsu’s mystical and artistic revelation, she eventually converted Clarion from the music shop, started by her father, James Ma, into a performing arts center in 2016. It now produces everything from children’s theater to a monthly Thursday night open mic, an all Asian burlesque show or a Chinese tea ceremony with poetry.

One event, “Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts” produced by Daniel Yaryan, was a poetry and music night examining the beats.

After my year of sniffing around Chinatown, I realized Hsu’s story was an incredible one: How an ancient, overcrowded and feudal neighborhood could embark on creative renewal.

She graciously agreed to an interview.

Clara Hsu at the Clarion Performing Arts Center. photo: D. Blair
cineSOURCE: Have you been opening up Clarion?

Clara Hsu: No, we are closed [due to Covid].

But we have been opening up once in a while, for example, the production of the children’s theater. The kids have been coming in one at a time. They sit against the blue screen and I film them individually. Then we put it together. Last night, I was at the editor’s.

Didn’t you just have a performance?

The night before last [August 25th], we had a performance of ’Love on the Magpie Bridge’ on YouTube, last year’s performance that was filmed. We just taped it for archive’s sake, but I am really glad we did. Who knows when we can do that performance again.

It has been getting good reviews, comments from people who have seen it. The viewership is climbing—over 360 already—and that makes me happy. The kids were lovely and it was really a fun performance.

The whole idea is to spread the arts.

Were most of the kids from Chinatown?

Yes, and all students of Clarion. Last year’s group had eight kids. This year we had ten [for the new play, ‘The Piano’].

At first, I didn’t think we would be able to do a performance, since we can’t meet, and I didn’t know how the kids would feel. So I had a Zoom meeting, and they said they wanted to do it. We did all the rehearsals on Zoom, which was not easy.

Then came the point when we had to film. At first I thought, ‘Why don’t the kids film themselves?’ But it is not easy, so we set up a [green] screen here. Everyone came in one at a time, and we filmed them.

The kids—as one comes in and the other is leaving—they wanted to hug each other. They wanted to stay and play: it was bittersweet. For them, having that community, doing things together, is so important.

I am really glad we did the filming, and now we are editing. It is not the same as a play. I call it a ‘play movie.’ It is a play, but it is really is a movie. I am very excited about it.

The child actors playing the Cow God and the Cowherd in 'Love on the Magpie Bridge', a Clarion play of 2019. photo: courtesy C. Hsu
When did you write the play?

‘The Piano’ I have been thinking about for a couple of years. My father was a piano manufacturer in Hong Kong. He was probably the only [piano] builder who had his own design, his own factory, his own market.

How did he learn? Did he apprentice?

He basically learned it by himself. He was in Singapore during the Second World War.

There was a lot of fighting there.

Yes. He got out just after the Japanese invasion; he was very lucky.

In Singapore, he worked as a radio repairman. But the radio repair shop was inside a piano shop, and he saw people putting pianos together. He was fascinated by that. I think that was his only hands-on experience. But I don’t know how much hands-on he really did, because he only saw it.

A self-taught piano maker?

Yes.

At the height of his career, how many pianos did he produce?

Umm. I don’t really remember the figures but I think he was able to produce 50-75 units a month.

A month! That is incredible.

He had a local market in Hong Kong but also Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia.

Were you living with him then?

Yes, I was a little kid. I was able to spend some time in the factory, also the first workshop he had, which was in the basement of a church.

Hsu's entire life it threaded through her Clarion project. photo: D. Blair
I remember—I was probably about four years old—I walked into this room that was very dark and dusty and walked into something that was really soft. It was sawdust. I was playing with the sawdust. That was my playground.

Amazing. Did he immigrate with you to the States?

No, I came first. I came to school, the last two years of high school, at a private school in New Jersey, called Pennington. Then he came over. He got remarried to a woman who lived in San Francisco.

[A school teacher, Hsu’s mother passed from brain cancer when she was 39 and Clara was nine.]

My grades were really bad. There was no chance of me going to college in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was very competitive. I was very lucky. I had an uncle, who was a professor at Princeton University [New Jersey]. So he made a connection for me to go to this private school.

They said, ‘Well, your grades are really poor. So you can’t graduate in one year. See if you can do in two years.’ Then I went to Westminster Choir College, also in New Jersey, a music school.

Did you connect to the Chinatown in New York?

Yes, I did actually, after I graduated. I worked in Chinatown in a shop that was very similar to Clarion. Have you been downstairs? We have these tiny [rehearsal] rooms, which are exactly like the shop in New York’s Chinatown. I taught there for a year and half. Then I got married and moved to the Bay Area… 1981.

Did you become involved in [San Francisco’s] Chinatown or—

I was living with my husband in Livermore. I didn’t have anything to do and didn’t know what to do.

My dad had just immigrated to the Bay Area. He decided to make a piano kit. He heard about American hobbyists, who like to make kits. ‘People like to make harpsichords,’ he said, ‘so why can’t they make a piano?’ So he and my step-brother Richard designed a piano kit. And he imported the kit to San Francisco.

Clara Hsu, her father, James Ma, and some of the instruments of Clarion Music Center, circa 1982. photo: Jim Block
Manufactured in Hong Kong?

Yes, at that time he still had his factory.

Unfortunately, this was about the time that Chinese pianos started to come into the market—flooded the market, in fact. If you think of the famous [Asian] pianos like Yamaha, they have always been around. You could say Yamaha was my father’s competitor in Hong Kong. But, because he made [his pianos] in the factory there, he was competitive. Yamaha was an import, more expensive.

But when he brought his kit over here, you could buy a Chinese piano for $1200. Who would buy a kit, which you have to put together, for $1500? It doesn’t make any sense. Also, it is not so easy. A harpsichord [which also comes in kits] is a relatively light instrument and not so complicated.

It didn’t go well. He managed to sell a few pieces but not a lot. [Ultimately,] what he did was put all the pianos together and we put them downstairs [at Clarion] to use for rehearsal and giving music lessons.

My dad was really a genius. I was just tagging along because I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life.

But you did know you wanted to study music?

Umm. I think I studied music partially because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Music didn’t come easy for me. It is very difficult. I have to practice A LOT to be able to play. I was a good student, so I did well in [music] school, because I worked very hard.

But it didn’t give me joy and pleasure—it was work. I am not good enough, technically, to go anywhere with it. It was very difficult for me: to have this genius father who could do almost anything.

He also played the piano?

He played the organ, and he played the cello. I just tagged along. Opening the shop was his idea. He said, ‘You should have your own shop, but I will help you.’

I said, ‘Sure, whatever you think.’ So we went on like that until he had a stroke. So he said, ‘I am going to sell my business to you, and you keep going.’

Hsu, her father, James Ma, and younger sister, Gloria, Hong Kong, circa 1968. photo: courtesy C. Hsu
I said, ‘OK.’ For lack of a better thing to do, I bought his business and kept going until I was 44, and I discovered poetry.

You are not a typical Chinese ‘striver’, you know what I mean?

I think that is from Chinese culture, especially in Hong Kong. You try, you strive. I was, too, but I didn’t think I had any ability, you know.

I didn’t have any passion for anything, until I found poetry. Then I said ‘Wow, this is something I really want to do.’ I had no training, no background, but I didn’t feel intimidated.

I think that is very important: You cannot feel intimidated! For example, when I was a musician, I felt intimidated by other musicians. [With poetry] I didn’t feel intimidated, even though I didn’t know anything.

You work and it didn’t feel like work—it feels like play! It is so exciting! Without these two ingredients [no intimidation, work as play], you can’t strive. You work very hard and you are not happy.

I thought, ‘Wow, I found this when I was 44. I am going to do something about it. I am not just going to sit around.’

But I have this shop, which is a huge burden on my shoulders. Everyday there is a disaster—everyday there is a crisis—if you go into retail and run a shop. So I sold it to my associates.

But then you took it back?

I took it back, not as business but as a performing arts center, because the space is so precious. They didn’t want to run it any more because retail is dead, because of the internet—you can’t survive.

I bought the space back, but I said, ‘You have to sell all the instruments, because I am not doing retail. I will build a stage; I am going to do poetry; I am going to do art; I am going to do theatre.

When you were 44, what poetry were you inspired by: ancient Chinese, modern American?

No. It really came from the heart.

'The Call', a fully feminist but also ancient-evocative poem by Clara Hsu. photo: D. Blair
I would say I liked poetry but I didn’t really read it. I read it sometimes. I would say, ‘I like Chinese poetry,’ like someone said, ‘I like wonton soup.’ There was no emotional connection.

It came from within. One day, during a very bad time, when my marriage was not working, I sat down, and it came. I started to write. It came out as poem, and I said, ‘This is interesting.’

And after it came out, I felt a lot better: ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ Writing seemed to be very therapeutic. I later heard that many people started writing like that. It came from a very deep and painful place. It’s a healing process.

At some point, after I wrote for about year, I looked back at all the things I had written. They were so painful and so dark and so sad, I said, ‘I am not gong to live like that. I am going to write something happy.’

And so you start to change and hone in on your art and start to question, ‘Oh, how can I make a poem interesting?’ That is when I started to read other people’s poems, when I felt there is a need to get better at it.

Any particular poems you liked at that time?

Not really. There were online poetry groups; they critiqued each other; they posted their own poems.

I was a lurker for a long time—nearly a year. I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I was scared to death because they were going to critique me—some people are not very kind. But, at some point, I did. It was OK.

I felt there had to be poetry readings that you can go to, so I looked around. In the East Bay, at that time, there was nothing. You can go to Walnut Creek; you can go to Barnes and Nobles—few and far between.

Then I discovered Sacred Grounds at Cole and Hayes, right near the Panhandle [the longest running open mic in Bay Area.]

They have it every Wednesday, and they had about 30 poets every time. So I stayed there for many, many years. That was my home.

That was your workshop?

Yeah!

And the poets were so kind, very supportive, and that is what I needed at that time. Someone to say, ‘Oh, that was good.’ A little encouragement is precious.

Hanson Lee encountering a couple of Academy of Art film student's availing themself of a set with lovely light. photo: D. Blair
You know, it is like a child. A child needs this kind of encouragement. It doesn’t mean you are great, but they appreciate your effort. And that is very important.

When did you start this place [Clarion], the performance side of it?

2016.

As you recall I was going around with Hanson and we were researching Chinatown and we didn’t find very much. First, we were looking for filmmakers, then we branched out and talked to some visual artists.

Generally speaking, however, it seems Chinatown became a place of mostly older people. The young, vibrant people have integrated and moved out to the Richmond or Sunset neighborhoods.

It is true and not just in San Francisco Chinatown. If you look at New York or Los Angeles, what do you see when you walk into Chinatown? It is food.

No one is thinking, ‘I am going to Chinatown and see a show.’ That is not going to happen, because it is not there.

But I feel that is a real need in the community. They are not waking up to it at this point, but they will, if we keep doing it. Then the community will say, ‘Oh, let’s see what is happening at Clarion.’

It was really hard for me to get the kids to do the plays. It is not the kids who are unwilling, it is the parents. They don’t know what I am talking about, what I am trying to do with their children.

These kids are mostly kids of recent immigrants?

Some of them are but not all. Most are born here. But the culture is not in the arts, the culture is in the food, that is what they grow up knowing.

The incredible thing about Chinese food: It was the first ethnic food, AND it conquered the whole world.

Yes. But there are other things, too.

Poetry has such a long history; it is so much a part of Chinese culture. Ordinary people, when they speak, they use ancient expressions. They don’t know where it came from—they wouldn’t even question—but it all came from poetry.

Who is interested in Chinese poetry right now? Not the younger generation but the older. So I have a group of seniors in their 80s and 90s. We have poetry on the phone.

A spirited performance at Clarion's open mic, which transpired on monthly on Thursdays (pre-Covid). photo: D. Blair
A conference call? .

We have a conference call, and we recite Chinese poetry. They are very interested, because that is what they grew up with.

Hanson and I came to a performance here, about eight months ago.

Oh that’s right, I remember, but what were we doing? ‘Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts’?

It was a variety, one guy sang, another played the piano, an amazing variety of performances.

Oh, it was open mic.

When Hanson and I met at City Lights, I was joking with Hanson when he said he was from China, ‘If you broke through the wall in the back of City Lights, you would be in China.’

[Clara laughs.]

And he said, ‘Yes, and you would need a visa to go through.’

That is when I realized Chinatown was a mystery, right here in the middle of San Francisco. I have been here for 40 years, but it was still a mystery.

We made it our project to go around and discover some stuff. We came about ten times and had a meal and met some people, artists, librarians. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any filmmakers, except one night, some [white] kids from the Academy of Art, shooting a street scene—beautiful light.

Obviously, Chinatown has been here for many years, and it has been through many changes. I think it could have another change. Especially since China today is a very important part of our culture.

Yes.

There are a lot of possibilities. There are Chinese-American artists—they are everywhere—but we are not connected. We have the space and I want to preserve that until we can meet again [after Covid] and make it into a movement.

Any thought of bringing over guest poets or something from China?

No. I worked with one. I translated some of his poems, and they ended up in the Jung Journal. But I didn’t invite him, the Chinese Culture Center invited him. I don’t have a whole lot of connections with China.

Let’s get back to ‘The Piano’, the play.

The full cast of 'Love on the Magpie Bridge'. photo: courtesy C. Hsu
I thought about it for a couple of years, and I sketched out the outline. After we did ‘The Magpie Bridge’ last year, the kids came up to me and said, ‘What are we doing next year?’

[‘Love on the Magpie Bridge’, professionally presented and nicely acted, can be seen here.]

I said, ‘I don’t know but I have something cooking, let me pull it out: ‘The Piano’.’

Because of my experience with my dad in Hong Kong in the factory—a unique experience—I incorporated that. I made him into a character.

Three piano students are waiting to be picked up after their lessons. They gossip about their teacher, Ms Clara, whose father was a piano maker. One of them warns that they should be careful, as Ms Clara said if they don’t sit up, with proper posture, they might get sucked into the piano. They laugh at the absurdity of the idea, not realizing that the piano has suddenly grown in size and two of them get sucked in.

Inside the piano, they meet Mr. Hammer, Ms Strings and Mr. Ma, the piano maker. They are taken on a tour of his factory in 1970s Hong Kong. A philosophical discussion follows during which they figure out how to get back—that is the basis of the story.

I felt it was a good thing to do. It was a way to honor my dad, using my own art. Finally his experience, my poetry—we could put it together. I don’t feel like someone who just tagged along, who was not able to do anything with my life.

To me, it is a very important play. I worked on it, and we were going to do it this year.

But I didn’t write any music, since I thought, ‘There is such a rich repertoire of classical piano music.’ But, because of Covid, I was stuck at home. So I thought, ‘Why don’t I write some music for the play?’ So now we have original music to go with the play, which I am really pleased about.

Sounds good. My big question is: Is there an art scene in Chinatown or is it mostly right here [at Clarion]?

I have to say there are a lot of artists in Chinatown, we just don’t know each other. It is not centrally located. You can’t find a group of people gathering together.

There are some artists but we don’t come together and show each other stuff. I am hoping that Clarion could be that kind of place, where people can come together. We aren’t right now but eventually it could be. If we generate enough different types of performance, then it will happen.

Hsu studied and taught piano and also composes. photo: D. Blair
We have some filmmakers. I can give you Felicia Lowe’s info, she has done documentaries, and she is doing a workshop to show people how to do documentaries. There is also Arthur Dong, although he is now in Los Angeles.

We just installed a screen and projector, a few months ago, so we can show films. We can do poetry; we can do multimedia; we can do dance—limited [since the stage is only 18 x 12 feet]—but it can be done.

There are also younger Asian poets. I have not met them but I have heard them in poetry readings.

I think they just go to the regular poetry slams, as would any other person of color, doing their own thing.

Yes. I think there is a lot to learn if you come together. We all have different styles, different ways of doing things. The more we can come together and see what each other is doing, the more we get better at what we are doing.

A lot of times it is not that easy. Sometimes people feel it is a threat. They don’t want other people to see what they are doing. You have to break down these barriers. ‘Hey, you know it is OK. Your ideas won’t be stolen. And what if it is stolen? You will have another idea.’ (laughs)

The appropriation problem?

It is not just the Chinese community; it is everywhere; it is artists.

Everyone appropriates. Everyone borrows. Picasso said, ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal.’ They hide it in their stuff so well, you don’t know they stole it.

Exactly. Because it is all built on something. Words are build on words, you can’t say, ‘This is my word.’

Generally speaking, words are about talking to someone else, which requires you understand them. I often say, ‘All culture is multi-culture.’

Absolutely, it is a process. We do it as much as we can. I really believe in having the community come together.

Obviously, you have done a lot of work for that, and this is a great place.

Clara Hsu in front of the Clarion Performing Arts Center. photo: D. Blair
I felt we were just beginning, just beginning to have an audience, just beginning to have people recognize Clarion. But then Covid hit.

But hey, we’ll do it online and have a bigger audience. We had 360 views of ‘The Magpie Bridge’ in two days. We did three [live] performances here: each performance is only 60 people. If you think about that, if we can put something meaningful on the web, we can generate a much bigger viewership.

And that is OK—that is really fantastic, actually. And when we come back [post-Covid], we will have something already there. We have that platform, and we will continue. So it is OK.

It is a big change but we have to go with it.

We will get through it.

Today, before I came, I was having this poetry group with the seniors and we read this Chinese poem. It talks about this child who was really, really poor, and the family couldn’t afford to have light, to have oil, to buy a lamp, to study.

But next door was a rich man. Every day the lights were on and he was having parties. So this little, poor kid decided to drill a hole in the wall so that he could read with the next door’s light.

So we were reading this and they were saying, ‘We don’t have to worry about it now because everyone has light and electricity.’ But it tells you about the resilience of people: it is not just the boy trying to steal the light.

We are locked in, but we pick up the phone and talk to each other. It is the same idea.

It also reminds us that culture comes from poor people.

Un hunh.

There are artists in every strata of society. Sometimes we forget that when we talk all about privilege and Ivy League education.

You won’t have that if you don’t have the base to support you. The mountain is built from the bottom up. There is no peak, if you don’t have the bottom. So the bottom is incredibly important.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Sep 11, 2020 - 07:17 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: Sept 2020
by Karl F. Cohen

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Poster for 'Animation Outlaws' by local filmmaker Kat Alioshin. image: K. Alioshin
SF Doc Fest

San Francisco’s Doc Fest 2020 will show “Animation Outlaws” online plus two other features that use some animation. The festival runs from Sept. 3 to Sept. 20 and details will be found here.

“Animation Outlaws”, by local filmmaker Kat Alioshin, uses lots of short interviews with animators to tell the story of the Spike and Mile animation festivals, which introduced thousands of people to the world of independent animation.

The interviews include the creative talents behind “Beavis and Butthead”, “Wallace and Gromit”, “Happy Tree Friends”, and dozens of other memorable films. Spike and Mike were two hippies in college who promoted rock shows until they discovered they could make a living by producing and promoting their one-of-a-kind animation programs.

There had been other animation festivals before they got their start, but they added the element of playful fun. They got their audiences to hit giant balls around the theatre and did silly things on the stage. One hit was "Scottie, the Wonderful, Shredding Dog". They also presented many animation stars as guests on stage, including voice actress June Foray and British animator Nick Park. Indeed, their festivals helped launched the careers of today’s animation legends.

“Animation Outlaws” (68 min) is a finely crafted documentary that shows wonderful moments of excellent films and a few clips from weird works. The DVD is $11.34 and the Blu-ray $13.29 from Amazon. For a TV news story about the feature, go here.

“A Place to Breathe” is by local filmmaker, as well as subject of the film, Michelle Steinberg, who is from Oakland. Said by colleagues of mine to be a powerful documentary, it explores the universality of trauma and resilience through the eyes of health care practitioners and patients from the immigrant and refugee community.

Combining cinema vérité portraits of different personal journeys and animation, “A Place to Breathe” (87 min) highlights the creative strategies by which immigrant communities in the U.S. survive and thrive.

“Roy's World: Barry Gifford's Chicago” by Rob Christopher concerns the Bay Area’s Barry Gifford, sometimes hailed as the “William Faulkner of the film noir, B-movie.” Gifford is also a writer of torrid paperbacks and a poet. Gifford has given the world more than forty works including the “Sailor and Lula” novels that inspired David Lynch’s “Wild At Heart”.

Indeed, director Rob Christopher brilliantly brings to life Gifford’s autobiographical collection, “The Roy Stories” (75 min). It captures his childhood during a now-vanished 1950s Chicago through a jazzy, impressionistic combination of beguiling archive footage, animation and spoken word, with voices by Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon, and Lili Taylor.

General Information about DocFest: The 19th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest) will take place online via Eventive. Tickets are available at sfindie.com. Regular tickets are $10. The DocPass, good for all screenings and parties at the Film Festival, is $150. For more info, contact DocFest at 415-662-FEST or .

Actor Peter Coyote provides narration for 'Yellowstone 88: Song of Fire'. image: B. de Fries
Little Fluffy Clouds

Little Fluffy Clouds animation studio completes “Yellowstone 88: Song of Fire", a five-minute short about the fire that engulfed sections of the park in 1988. The picture is now locked.

Actor Peter Coyote reads the narrative poem that Betsy de Fries wrote. He recorded it remotely via Stephen Barncard's studio in Sebastopol. Stephen was a recording engineer for The Dead, CSN&Y, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell etc., back in the day. Little Fluffy Clouds is a local animation studio run by Betsy de Fries and Jerry van de Beek.

Yosemite Sam Jewish?

You may have seen Trump say “Yo Semite” on TV instead of the park’s real name. Although he obviously didn’t mean to address the Jewish community, this apparently has led to a discussion asking: Is Yosemite Sam Jewish?

Yosemite Sam was a big star for Looney Tunes in the '50s. image: Looney Tunes
Plympton Stars on Criterion

Bill Plympton has been called “The King of Indie Animation.” That tag is based on his long record of successes since "Your Face”, his first independent short was given an Oscar nomination in 1987. His wonderfully weird creations are unmistakable: the wriggly, hand-sketched style, his warped humor, and endlessly shape-shifting, transmogrifying images that are the hallmarks of his singularly bizarre and brilliant imagination.

He started his professional career as a newspaper and magazine cartoonist, but when he discover animation and there was audience for his twisted shorts, he was hooked on a new career. Since then he has created dozens of shorts and features and has gained a worldwide cult following.

A self-described “blend of Magritte and R. Crumb,” Plympton is a one-of-a-kind auteur of the absurd, an underground animation hero whose films hold a funhouse mirror up to the innate strangeness of everyday reality.

Animation acme Bill Plympton, now featured on Criterion, in a self-portrait from 2007. image: B. Plympton
Criterion plans to show his features “The Tune” (1992), “I Married a Strange Person!” (1997), “Mutant Aliens” (2001), “Hair High” (2004), “Idiots and Angels” (2008), “Cheatin’” (2013), “Revengeance” (2016). They also will show his shorts “Your Face” (1987), “One of Those Days” (1988), “25 Ways to Quit Smoking” (1989), “How to Kiss" (1988), “Push Comes to Shove” (1991), “The Wiseman” (1991), “How to Make Love to a Woman” (1996), “Sex and Violence” (1997), “Guard Dog” (2004), “The Fan and The Flower” (2005), “Guide Dog” (2006), “Hot Dog" (2008), “Santa, the Fascist Years” (2008), “Horn Dog” (2009), and, last but not least, “The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger” (2010).

The first screening of Bill’s work was on Aug. 30. Future screening dates have not yet been posted yet.

The Criterion Channel's other August highlights were 21 films from the Australia’s New Wave, four documentaries by Ron Mann, three films from director Bill Gunn, 11 films from Wim Wenders, and 16 documentaries from Berkeley's own Les Blank! Criterion's full August line-up was posted here. To sign up and get a 14-day free trial, head over here.

Learn About New Stop Motion Feature

They launched a Kickstarter on August 25 for the stop-motion feature “The Inventor”. The film is about Leonardo Da Vinci, written and directed by Jim Capobianco (“Ratatouille, “Mary Poppins” 2D part) who received an Oscar nomination for writing on “Ratatouille”. The crew has worked on “Nightmare Before Christmas”, “Coraline, “Isle of Dogs” and “Frankenweenie”. The film’s Kickstarter page is here.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .
Posted on Aug 23, 2020 - 05:52 AM
SF Elite Wakes Up to Loss of Art Institute
by Doniphan Blair

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The steep hill, striking views and interesting gate welcomed all comers both to the San Francisco Art Institute's magnificent Moorish building and it’s ambitious art endeavors. photo: courtesy SFAI
SINCE THEY REFUSE TO TAKE CINE-
SOURCE’s calls, we have to take the word of Sam Whiting of the SF Chronicle who reported on July 22, 2020 that “In a dramatic reversal, the San Francisco Art Institute announced Tuesday, July 21, that it has invited all students within a year of their degrees to re-enroll,” albeit online classes only.

That is because, in March, they had been required to quit or transfer due to the fact the esteemed art school was closing its doors just shy of its 150th birthday, a catastrophic combination of Covid 19 and long and short term mismanagement (see cineSOURCE's April article here)

One egregious error was investing $14 million in a satellite campus in Fort Mason, which was used only three years before closing last semester.

According to Whitings, this, “was made possible by a combination of government pandemic aid, a successful fundraiser, cuts to staff and operations, and an agreement between the Board of Trustees and tenured faculty.”

While the agreement saves 15 full-time faculty, it throws under the bus 69 adjunct faculty who had already been fired in June.

“There has been an outpouring of support from around the world,” said Faculty Union president Robin Balliger, also Whitings's reportage. “We are all working toward keeping the Art Institute open.”

One can only hope that "all of those working" included some of the Bay Area's dot com trillionaires who finally awoke from their scientific slumber to realize that humanity's great achievements in language, community and culture were powered first by art, even though fire and arrow technology were there since the pre-Paleolithic era.

To cover the in-arrears institution’s existing and ongoing costs, obviously at least some dot-commers stepped forward and cineSOURCE, for one, applauds them, given the obvious fact that, "Industry without art is brutality."

Apparently SFAI authorities apologized profusely for what they forced the students, often foreign (and often Chinese), to endure: Please come home, no hard feelings.

Putting their money where their mouth is, the school—which has suffered endemic enrollment hemorrhaging, from 700 undergraduates five years ago to 280 or so last semester—reduced tuition by half, to $25,000!

“People realized that something very precious and unique was in serious jeopardy,” noted Pam Rorke Levy, SFAI Board Chair (again according to Whitings). “This time everyone realized that they had to step forward now or there would not be another opportunity.”

Of course, there are all sorts of kinks, confusions and still-impending catastrophes, but this is great news for one of the Bay Area’s most elevated art scenes and we wish them luck (and putting our money where our mouth is offer them a free ad for six months).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached Posted on Aug 04, 2020 - 12:00 AM
Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love
by Doniphan Blair

Tonia Rotkopf Blair in front of Birkenau, Auschwitz’s death camp, where she was incarcerated for three weeks in 1944, 1980. photo: V. Blair
THE HOLOCAUST AROSE FROM A
collision of various political, social and psychological forces, a major one of which was conspiracies.

Although Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people was no secret, the Nazis attempted to conceal their extermination conspiracy. They used euphemisms and lies, like claims that the camps were just for labor. They concealed facilities in back woods and through threats of death, and they dolled one up, Terezin in the Czech Republic, with food, schools and cultural facilities. Then they forced the inmates to perform for visiting officials before shipping them to Auschwitz.

In fact, the Third Reich was the ultimate conspiracy kingdom, with almost everyone conspiring against each other.

In standard conspiratorial mirroring, Hitler accused the Jews of conspiring to control not just Germany but all of socialism and capitalism. The latter claim was often bolstered by references to a popular conspiracy theory of the 1930s, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a document which appeared to show that Jews ran international banking (it is still popular today among anti-Semites).

By 1922, however, journalists had proved “The Protocols” was a forgery by the Russian Tsar’s secret police in 1903. Although those supporting “The Protocols” claimed it was the journalists who were conspiring, the Tsar’s conspirators gave themselves away. Not being writers, nor very intelligent, they plagiarized “The Protocols” from a 30-year-old French political satire, inserting the words Jew, Jewish and Hebrew where appropriate.

“The Protocols” conspiracy theory was readily believed due to the long association of Jews with moneylending. While those accusations were not themselves a conspiracy theory, since a few Jews had started lending money in the 11th century and continued through the Middle Ages, as well as to today, what remains little known is the actual conspiracy perpetrated by Christian authorities against Jews.

Indeed, both the Christian clerics of the 11th century and the Nazis built their actual conspiracies against the Jews by using conspiracy theories about non-existent Jewish conspiracies.

Lending at interest has been central to almost all civilizations, and Europe was no exception. Although it has been abused as debt slavery, lending at interest more often incentivized the sharing of wealth, enabling poorer people to build businesses, buildings, ships, etc.

Tribes, on the other hand, encourage lending only through the provision of gifts and favors on top of repaying the principal. As a tribal people, the Jews outlawed lending at interest.

Although European Christians inherited that law from “The Bible”, in practice they were building a civilization and had to have moneylending, which was provided by the bishops, princes and merchants.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in addition to working as a nurse in Poland during the war, worked as one after (shown here) in Lansburg Am Lech, Germany, 1947. photo: unknown
But when Christ neglected to return for the millennia, Christian thinkers assumed it must be due to the sin of usury and conspired to foist moneylending on to the Jews. Since the Jews were condemned to Hell anyway, lending at interest to them would be no sin. In this way, a few Jews became retail lenders, while the wealthy Christians became their secret central bank, a conspiracy so successful, it remains little known to this day.

The Jews were also attacked with the “blood libel” conspiracy theory, which claimed they used the blood of Christian children to make their high holy days’ matzo, the Christ-killer accusations and other calumnies. (For more on this, see the cineSOURCE article, "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained".)

With all these conspiracy theories rattling around the European brain, explicitly or through implicit bias, it was amazingly easy not just for Germany but most European countries to pass increasingly severe anti-Semitic laws. First they excluded Jewish people from society, then forced them into ghettos, finally deported them to death camps.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair was 13 when the Germans invaded her hometown of Lodz, Poland, and she turned 19 in Auschwitz, which means she spent the entirety of World War II as a teenager.

While the Nazis mounted the biggest killing machine in history, conspiring to kill as many as possible—leftists, Russians, Slavs, Roma and queers as well as Jews—she attempted to save as many as possible, both working as a nurse and through love, kindness and romance.

In fact, seven of the 37 stories in her book, “Love at the End of the World”, concern actual or aspirational romantic relationships. In reference to Gustav Freulich, whom she tended as he was dying of tuberculosis—therefore, although they held hands, they never kissed—she wrote, “Life had become meaningful again during those desperate times.”

Indeed, the first story she wrote, after enrolling in a writing class and dedicating herself to the task, was “Stefan” (read it here). She met Stefan at the deportation trains and they fell in love, reciting poetry and kissing while crammed in the back of a cattle car on route to Auschwitz.

Many people might say that such romanticism was misguided, given the existential threat. Perhaps she should have wriggled out the cattle car’s tiny window and leapt to freedom, albeit in the middle of Nazi territory, or foraged a piece of metal and stabbed a Nazi. But she was an undernourished teenager unschooled in those skills.

She had, however, learned about love from her adoring parents, and she had studied romanticism, like most teenage girls, which even a total war could not interrupt. Au contraire, it inspired her to rise to the occasion and fight to preserve love, to maintain romantic traditions, to appreciate poetry—even inside the greatest killing machine ever assembled.

In fact, my mother became brief friends with a decent German officer and was allowed a life-saving meal by another, suggesting that the Conspiracy of Love also lived on in their hearts, despite the decades of Nazi propaganda and brutality and the years of training and war.

Why didn’t she give into conspiracy thinking, that the world is run by an evil cabal of haters out to exploit, abuse or kill regular people—particularly since she was under the boot of Hitler for those five-and-a-half years? If anyone was entitled to conspiracism it was her.

Yes, humanity has produced horrors—genocides, conquests, enslavements and all manner of brutalities—but that has not been the majority of the human experience. And we are able to heal from it. While we have used religion, psychotherapy, art and volunteerism to regain our balance, perhaps the most powerful force of all is love, including romantic love and romanticism.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair handing out bread to the people of Plsen, Czech Republic, during the filming of 'Our Holocaust Vacation', to honor the war-time meal they gave her, 1997. photo: N. Blair
An advanced level of the latter would be the Conspiracy of Love, the actual conspiracy of humans doing the right thing, often after doing everything else but still eventually doing it.

Despite claims that might is right, that only the fittest will survive or that hate runs the world, in point of fact the Conspiracy of Love is the dominant force. Obviously, it conceived most of the people on the planet, since a majority are not the product of rapes, and most of the good we enjoy. Indeed, sexual selection begot mating dances, romantic rituals and romanticism, which powers a lot of art, faith and dreams.

Hence, if we are open, tolerant and loving, we can more easily join with like-minded—but not identical—people, communities and tribes, and foster a faster, easier and less violent evolution.

'Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love' has three companion pieces which together make up the full essay 'Our Golden Age of Conspiracies': 'A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies', 'The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto', a rehabilitation regimen in 13 steps; and 'An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich', an attempt to reach one person by reminding him of his brilliant and loving former self.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 08, 2020 - 01:41 AM
An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich
by Doniphan Blair

John Edmiston Milich became a prodigious traveller, talker, astrologer, investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist as well as close friend of this author, shown here in Guanajuato, Mexico, 2019. photo: J. Milich
Introduction: John and I became close friends after meeting in Istanbul in 1972, when I was 17, and he was 28. I used to say, only half-jokingly, he was my guru. Although we had a falling out over 9/11, we reconnected because our community consensus, at that time, was that 9/11 Theorists were just followers of an alternative religion. With conspiracies reaching one of their highest saturation points in history, however, I feel obliged to address John publicly and forthrightly, to tell him that he taught me a lot about the Conspiracy of Love, that I still have love for him and that a conspiracy course correction is both possible and desperately needed.

My Dearest John,

It has been a few decades since we talked openly, but it is never too late to start again, I believe.

It’s never too late to turn towards the light. Although we may not get to enlightenment physically, since the hour is late and the road long, we can still arrive symbolically, which will show our support for love, evolution and civilization.

Indeed, you and I come from a community where, once we truly love, we always love. That is because love is about our ideals, which are eternal.

For the same reason, we don’t abandon our wounded on the battlefield. While they may die physically, their symbols can live on, as we can see with George Floyd, who was martyred in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020.

My Dearest John, do you remember your dreams back in September 1972 on the roof of Istanbul’s Utopia Hotel, where a bed could be had for a buck? You just might, given your phenomenal memory, but I don’t. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I dreamt of love, adventure and art—and that you did, too.

How can I make such a claim? As you undoubtedly recall, after our two-week stint on the roof of the Utopia, I had already heard hours, perhaps even a full day, of your ideas. If that sounds hyperbolic, here’s our mutual friend David Winterburn:

“The main topic on our minds… was the journey east. In this regard, the biggest source of information was a 28 year old from Philadelphia named John Milich, whom I remember sitting cross-legged on a rug up on the roof… surrounded by an attentive group of travelers, espousing on a great number of subjects, including his trip to India in 1970.”

“John loved to talk and… [h]is storytelling was inter-spliced with tidbits of erudition about philosophy, culture and religion that I had never encountered in all my travels… Half sage, half raconteur, he was truly the most fascinating character I had ever met at that point in my life.”

(From left) David Winterburn and this author Doniphan Blair (Americans), Darko Radonovich (Croatian) and Jimmy (Canadian) in Iran, 1972. photo: J. Milich
Largely inspired by your wisdom, I decided to make the long, arduous journey to the east, a spiritual as well as a physical peregrination, of course. Indeed, the former lasts a lifetime, which is why I’m writing you.

To make the trip, I joined with you and David, the Yugoslavians and the Dutchmen (notably Darko Radonovich and Hans Van Loo, with whom I’m also still in touch), and fifteen others Europeans and Americans. We each paid $35 to Dolphin, from Berkeley’s Hog Farm Commune, for a ticket on his old Bedford sightseeing bus, which he dubbed the Rainbow Express.

For 23 days, the Rainbow Express took us on a 2,700 mile adventure across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to Kabul. There were harrowing moments, like when its brakes blew out on a mountain pass and the assistant driver had to surf the rocky shoulders to slow us down, or when we were chased from a bath house back to the bus by a passel of boys bombing us with rocks and tomatoes, both in Turkey.

Of course, there were also inspirational events, like when a policeman surprised us at our roadside campfire but then welcomed us and broke out his hashish (also Turkey).

One of the most transcendent moments for me, however, concerns you. It transpired on our very first day, within hours of crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, going from Europe to Asia, since the bridge only opened the following year.

We passed under a double rainbow. Given the name of the bus and that we were young romantic hippies, we naturally took it as a magnificent omen. But it only acquired actual insight in my mind when you began reciting, in your deep, sonorous voice, a poem from the book you dug out of my pack (where you were rummaging for some unexplained reason):

“Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all wines flowed and all hearts opened,” you boomed over the Rainbow Express’ 50-mile-per-hour rattle.

It was “A Season in Hell” (1873), one of Arthur Rimbaud’s, if not history’s, greatest poems. In it, he details the loss of innocence, collapse into cynicism and embrace of the Devil, which turns out to be a spot-on profile of a conspiracy enthusiast.

My Dearest John, my question to you is this: where were all the conspiracies back then? If there are so many today, surely there must have been some in 1972.

Indeed, we were nine and three years after Kennedy’s assassination and the supposed moon landings, respectively. The Watergate break-in had just happened (June 17, 1972), and the Vietnam War was raging, as was the Cold War. In fact, India and Pakistan just fought a proxy war in 1971, and we were headed toward that battlefield.

Arthur Rimbaud, the teen titan of poetry, considered romanticism civilization’s great idea, although he was from the French, succeed-through-failure school and went down to spiritual defeat. image: unknown
Given your powers of observation and analysis, your prodigious travels and conversations, not to mention your study of astrology, why didn’t you mention any conspiracies back then?

As you recall, the Rainbow Express broke down north of Tehran in the middle of the Alborz Mountains. As it happens, that was not far from Alamut Castle, ancestral home of the Hashashins, one of history’s most notorious actual conspiratorial groups.

Perpetrators of hundreds of assassinations across the Middle East in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Hashashins gifted us not only the word “assassin” and the strategy of the suicide strike, which al-Qaeda updated for 9/11, but the cynicism and nihilism needed to operate in the realm of conspiracy consciousness.

“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” claimed the Hashashin patriarch Hassan ibn Sabbah.

But as we wandered away from the stalled Rainbow Express and started exploring the canyon and its rushing river, as well as dropping acid (some of us: David, the Yugoslavians and me, but perhaps you as well), secret cabals and demonic forces were the farthest thing from our minds.

Despite being stranded on a barren mountain, in a foreign land, a few miles from the Soviet border, not far from Alamut—and tripping—our prevailing feelings were enjoyment, acceptance and trust.

Indeed, we felt love for each other, for the people of Iran—be it the banker, who helped us score opium the night before and was now partying in the back of the bus with his two young daughters on his knees, or the mechanics working frantically on its engine with only hand tools—and most of the people of the world.

My Dearest John, were you conspiring against us back then? Were you playing the part of an optimistic, loving visionary, while secretly believing we were doomed to drown in a sea of nefarious schemes, groups and governments?

From your demeanor and everything you said, I have to conclude a resounding no, which means your conspiracy interests came upon you later.

Milich, in a photo titled 'I love myself', on Crete 1972 shortly before his second journey to India. photo: J. Milich
Many of us are wounded, some severely. Naturally, we repress the trauma to buy the time needed to solve our injury’s riddle.

Some injuries heal easier than others. As deadly or devastating as an accident, attack or disease can be, its causes are usually not shrouded in mystery.

Alas, other insults are more complex. Indeed, those of bourgeois life—being mollycoddled by tolerant but unloving parents, being excluded from in-crowds, relinquishing bohemia to get a straight job—are insidious. They seem minimal but scar deep.

Whatever our injury, if we come of age without achieving the inner strength to tackle the wisdom worker’s first job—“Know thyself”—we naturally look for a way to scab over our wounds.

Conspiracy fanaticism to the rescue.

Instead of challenging us to improve our thoughts and deeds, or those of our community, we distract ourselves and our community by decrying mysterious forces out to destroy us. The severity of the threat entitles us to attack it with all our public hate and private angst, while appearing to remain dedicated to our community.

Conspiracists often bond into loving, supportive groups, but to do so they must cast out the other, presenting a problem. Accepting the other, the stranger—even the criminal or enemy—is a core concept of almost all faith traditions.

My Dearest John, you’ve had decades to experiment with conspiracy consciousness and delve deeper than anyone I know. Surely by now, you can see the fruit of your labors and can guess what I am about to say:

Conspiracy consciousness stands in exact opposition to the spiritual path you outlined so eloquently on the roof of the Utopia, almost fifty years ago.

Although you may profusely protest this pronouncement, hurling heaping helpings of hurtful hate, I’m pretty sure that, in your bones, you know what I am saying.

Conspiracy consciousness is not the way of the Buddha or the shaman. Conspiracy consciousness will never lead to big love or enlightenment or even becoming a functional adult.

The psychological trick of conspiracy consciousness, of directing one’s anger towards an unknown entity, in lieu of looking within to its true origins, will not heal our wounds.

I am reaching out to you today not only to tell you the simple truth about conspiracies and remind you of your brilliance back in the day, but to note a secret revealed to me by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair.

You met my mother many times, of course, but she was reserved back then. Since you undoubtedly did most of the talking, you may not have percieved her views on love, kindness and romance.

From John Milich's India diary, 1972, showing his traveling companions, Barbara (lft) and Daniela (rt), and this author in the lower corner. photo: J. Milich
Fortunately, she has written a book about her experiences during the Holocaust, “Love at the End of the World”, which illustrates how a teenage orphan surmounted a tsunami of suffering, hate and trauma. Although she doesn’t use the term, I call it the Conspiracy of Love both to evoke its radical ideas and to make them crystal clear for you.

During World War II, in the belly of history’s biggest beast, my mother joined a secret society of decent people working diligently, desperately—often until their dying breath—for healing, redemption and love, especially romantic love.

Despite the immensity of the injury and suffering, although she often became deeply depressed, she didn’t descend into cynicism, bitterness and hate. She simply kept hewing as hard as she could to truth, beauty, justice and love.

My Dearest John, given that both your former self and my mother reject conspiracism, shouldn’t you reconsider your position?

The hour is getting late. There are computer conglomerates controlling much of the world, not by virtue of a conspiracy but by people voluntarily participating and providing their secrets.

Trump is president, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging and there are demonstrations in the streets. The earth’s ecosystem and its people’s physical, economic and political well being are under dire threat.

As such, there will be many unhappy people happy to leverage the chaos with conspiracy consciousness, in the hope that greater confusion will bring, if not a revolution, at least a leveling, a bringing down of everyone to their level.

Yes, the forces of good are also rising, from the peaceful protestors to the helpful neighbors or conservatives breaking rank to denounce Trump.

Nevertheless, there is a significant chance we are entering an epoch of darkness—not one created by imaginary puppet masters but by us, through our inactions and erroneous analysis.

Although it is not the end times, which is essentially a conspiracy concept, we are obviously in a period of elevated death, economic hardship and political turmoil.

My Dearest John, Won’t you rejoin me in fighting for the love and cooperation you convinced me of on the roof of the Utopia?

I realize you’re petrified of your inner demons, which undoubtedly involve your father and your sources of income. I realize you have taken up with some very dark energies, as indicated by your Facebook page. I realize change is hard at 76 years of age, and that it might seem like a betrayal of your conspiracy confreres.

But the time for petty differences and denials is done. We must get to work, immediately. Don't tarry another instant in coming back over to the right side of dream, romance and enlightenment, as well as history.

Once you get rolling, once you get back on the Rainbow Express, as it were, I think you will find that all the distrust, lying and hate required by conspiracies is hard, while love, honesty and forgiveness is actually pretty easy. That is because it is the way; it is the way of all flesh; and it is your true self.

'An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich' has three companion pieces which together make up the full essay 'Our Golden Age of Conspiracies': 'A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies', 'The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto', a rehabilitation regimen in 13 steps; and 'Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love', a review of conspiracies committed AGAINST the Jewish people and the efforts of many people to do the right thing, which are based on the Holocaust experiences of Tonia Rotkopf Blair and detailed in her upcoming book “Love at the End of the World” (Fall 2020, Austin Macauley).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Jul 08, 2020 - 01:38 AM
The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto
by Doniphan Blair

The Satanists, essentially inverted Catholics, were another late-medieval secret society which influenced conspiracists. photo: traditional
1. Actual conspiracies do exist, but they are rare, and extraordinary claims require verifiable evidence.
2. Once we accept one extraordinary claim without verifiable evidence, we are predisposed to accept many extraordinary claims without verifiable evidence.
3. By rejecting such conspiracy tolerance, while remaining vigilant for verifiable evidence about actual conspiracies, we may still let slip through one or two conspiracies.
4. But one or two conspiracies is healthier than the devastating damage inflicted by all the fraudulent conspiracies, which inflame prejudice, confusion and fear, can foster attacks, killings and even genocides, and waste colossal amounts of time better used to research actual conspiracies or to enjoy life.
5. Call this the Conspiracy of Love, the proposition that we are significantly better off rejecting unverified conspiracies, which are false alarms over 98% of the time, and assuming that people of good will, even if hidden or unrecognized, will do the right thing at least 51% of the time.
6. Differentiating between good and evil is difficult, especially now that propaganda is rampant, secret agendas are common and mirroring ones opponents is standard, which means conspiracists invariably claim that their opponents are conspiring against them.
7. Nevertheless, over time, the truth almost always comes out. To accelerate this analysis, try this formula: Good is long-term benefit for the many; evil is short-term benefit for the few.
8. By virtue of this maxim, the Conspiracy of Love always beats the conspiracies of hate over time. If it did not, there would be no evolution, and we would still be living in caves ruled by bullies.
9. Love has been increasing. Indeed, the love accumulation of today is significantly more than it was 1000 years ago.
10. But many of us still suffer from lack of love. Indeed, insufficient love from our patriarchal entities is a primary driver of conspiracy psychology.
11. Being insufficiently loved by your father is hard to experience and heartbreaking to watch. Nevertheless, if your overall love accumulation exceeds 51%, you are in Conspiracy of Love territory. If your love accumulation was less than 49%, your father would have killed your mother before she could give birth, or some such conspiracy of hate horror.
12. Admittedly, 51% is a slim win for love, given we would all prefer the true love, til-death-do-we-part variant. Nevertheless, 51% is enough to win in sports, elections and war. By virtue of simple math, 51% of love keeps love growing into the undying love we see in some families, friendships and communities, as well as in religion and art.
13. Welcome to the Conspiracy of Love. You can join at any time by turning towards the light, by asking and giving forgiveness and by starting to do something to help heal all the hate. Admittedly, many of those who hated you or whom you have hated may decline to join the forgiveness project, since they, too, are human. Nevertheless, over time, we—you, I and many of them—will cross the 51% threshold and help grow the Conspiracy of Love.

'The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto' has three companion pieces which together make up the full essay 'Our Golden Age of Conspiracies': 'A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies', 'The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto', a rehabilitation regimen in 13 steps; 'An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich', an attempt to reach one person by reminding him of his brilliant and loving former self; and 'Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love', a review of conspiracies committed AGAINST the Jewish people and the efforts of many people to do the right thing, which are based on the Holocaust experiences of Tonia Rotkopf Blair and detailed in her upcoming book “Love at the End of the World” (Fall 2020, Austin Macauley).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 08, 2020 - 01:36 AM
A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies
by Doniphan Blair

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The planes piloted by al-Qaeda operatives, which flew into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, are said by some conspiracy theorists to be an American self-attack. photo: unknown
BACK IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS, A COUPLE
of years ago, people routinely dismissed conspiracy theorists as something akin to stamp collectors: slightly kooky aficionados of an odd discipline. But that’s getting very hard to do today, as they attract ever greater numbers, seize the spotlight and push us all towards a surreal tipping point.

They became a major fringe phenomena about eighteen years ago when Theorists, or Truthers, as they prefer to be called, researched the 9/11 attacks and discovered they were an inside job. Although most Theorists decline to be definitive, the al-Qaeda operatives who flew the planes were evidently agents working for either the CIA or a more clandestine American entity.

These forces are so powerful, according to Theorists, they are able to perpetrate enormous crimes while leaving little or no trace or witnesses.

It was Donald Trump, however, who ushered conspiracies into the mainstream when he became the most prominent backer of “Birtherism,” the notion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Then he kicked off his presidential bid with his theory that Mexicans were sneaking across the border, not to work hard at low pay but to rob and rape Americans.

Now Trump is trumpeting new conspiracies almost daily. Obviously, his strategy is to promote manipulative, half-believable stories, sow the suspicion needed to render everything a form of fake news and rule as the greatest faker.

Donald J. Trump's long involvement with glitz, fakery and cheating as well as his emotional intelligence drew him directly to conspiracy theory. photo: courtesy Vanity Fair
Naturally, having a conspiracy king in the White House enfranchised the conspiracists, as well as the ambidextrous extremists out to exploit them. But over the last four months they have become even more addled by the historical fluke of quarantine isolation, economic collapse and, starting at the end of May, street demonstrations.

Welcome to our golden age of conspiracies, one so glitteringly grotesque it makes the 19th century Illuminati look like children’s theater.

Of course, there are conspiracies by corporate criminals, corrupt officials and criminal enterprises, as well as foreign agents, which warrant investigation—indeed, we need to allocate our resources there.

And sure, there are dilettante conspiracists who are hardly hurting anyone by googling “Federal Reserve” or “contrails,” say, for a few hours a week—just keeping an open mind, they explain.

But they have been overshadowed and outgunned by the many disciples of QAnon (an anonymous leaker supposedly high up in the intelligence services), who scour the news for signals concerning Trump’s impending declaration of martial law, arrest of leading liberals and break up of what they claim is a massive international ring of Satanists, who also are cannibals and pedophiles.

Indeed, some Republicans are now running as QAnon candidates, and Trump’s disgraced and indicted former national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, recently showed his QAnon colors. (See that story here, a new piece on QAnon in The New Republic, an older one in The Atlantic or one with more psychological perspective from Behavioral Scientist.)

Then there’s Alex Jones’s Infowarriors or the followers of the London Real show, who claim Covid-19 is a lab-engineered bio-weapon or a by-product of the new 5G network. And then there's—and this is no joke—the Boogaloo Bois (boys), an actual conspiratorial group.

To get our terminology straight, that means they are plotting or doing unlawful or harmful actions and can be properly called conspirators. Then there are their schemes, the conspiracies. Finally, there are the conspiracy theorists, who sift the runic sands for traces of plots, often in the land of make believe.

The Boogalooers, however, are all too real. Known for their mixed metaphors—old movie and dance references and Hawaiian shirts combined with large arsenals—their romantic dream for America is to foment riots, kill police and be agent provocateurs—though they’d never use a French term—for a “white revolution.”

One mile from where I sit in Oakland, a Boogalooer murdered Patrick David Underwood, a Black, 53-year-old security guard, on May 29th, the first night of Oakland's George Floyd protests. He was captured within a week but only after killing another policeman, Damon Gutzwiller (white that time).

As the Boogalooers illustrate, there are some very active, aggressive and dangerous conspiracies, which should be sleuthed, tracked and stopped. But there are also a lot of fabricated conspiracies accusing innocent people. Even conspiracy-lite feeds conspiracism, which increases prejudices against minorities, especially Jewish people, given all of the ancient accusations against them, as we will examine in the fourth part of this essay.

The Kennedy killing on November 22th, 1963 is probably the largest major event studied by conspiracy theorists that stands a reasonable chance of being associated with an actual conspiracy. photo: unknown
There has always been conspiratorial thinking—not people plotting, which there has also always been, rather people looking for plots. But it was largely confined to the FBI’s Mafia task force, paranoid schizophrenics or demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who claimed to have uncovered dozens of communists in the upper echelons of the US government and military. (A direct heir to McCarthy, Trump is connected through his lawyer, Roy Cohn, who became Trump’s mentor as well as councilor.)

Modern conspiratorial thinking started with the Kennedy assassination and the obvious inconsistencies in the official reports (although why such sophisticated conspirators would enlist Lee Harvey Oswald, a nutcase just back from defecting to the Soviet Union, is also hard to explain).

Conspiratorial thinking jumped a level with the arrival of the internet, which opened vast forums for free speech just in time for 9/11. A decade later, emerging social media companies doubled down on those proclivities when they developed algorithms to stimulate interest and ad revenue by favoring viewers’ prejudices.

Post-9/11 increases in state and corporate surveillance didn’t help, either.

Then there’s humanity’s periodic production of a person of exceptional quality. In troubled times, people understandably either hope for such a messiah or decry their opposite: evil masterminds.

More fundamental, I believe, is how the conspiracists themselves feel aggrieved. Obviously, they derive substantial self-esteem and status from attacking hidden enemies and purveying secret information. As in any espionage situation, the more tightly held the secret, the more valuable. Even in casual settings, like shoptalk or gossip, people love to control information.

Among conspiracists, if you challenge their evidence, you enter a funhouse debate of dubious indicators, diverging levels of science and full-on fabrications. Plus, once one conspiracy has been revealed, to retain the dominant information spot, they have to up the ante.

Moreover, hidden enemies are just that. They rarely rebut claims, let alone strike back (although bin Laden was said to have been incensed by how conspiracists erased his efforts). That is why, a few years after 9/11, Theorists had to stop proclaiming their bravery on Pacifica Radio, say, since everyone knew no one would ever be coming for them.

The US dollar's eye on the pyramid was derived from the private, if not always secret, Free Masons and referenced the Egyptians and their prodigious knowledge. photo: courtesy US Treasury
But that insult to their humanity is minimal. The big injury, according to my ad hoc research among conspiracist friends and acquaintances in the US, Brazil, Germany, Poland and Mexico, is that their fathers did not treat them right. Unable to simply reject their patriarch, which would be standard for the empowered adult but risky for the injured adolescent, they craft a psychological work-around.

The little patriarch—be it Dad, the employer, the nation—would have done more for them, or so their subconscious speculates, had it not been for the big patriarch—the capitalists, the CIA, the deep state—which they are now free to attack without alienating their community, although family and friends often become sick of their endless theorizing.

In fact, the new book, “Too Much and Never Enough”, by Trump's niece, Mary Trump, evidently documents that he was abused by his father, which would give him a classical conspiracist's childhood (see article). Released on July 16th, it broke records with almost a million copies sold on its first day.

Conspiracism may be related to paranoid schizophrenia, which induces its sufferers to hear people talking about them or voices in their head, essentially the universe communicating with them. A more moderate malaise seems to afflict conspiracists, to whom the universe is talking through bits of news, shreds of evidence or other signs which, when pieced together, express their desires and politics.

I’m especially chagrined by how conspiracism bewitched so many of my old friends and has its modern roots in the ‘60s. Rejecting authority and embracing new ideas are essential, but for the transition to work efficiently it requires rationalism, proportionality and tolerance.

In fact, many conspiracists have taken up the ‘60s mantle of accepting new paradigms, coming together and seeing the truth.

Unfortunately, underneath their new age cant, the truth they want us to see is a fallen, evil world. Humanity is controlled by puppet masters or reptilian underworld beings, according to one of the most asinine but powerful purveyors of conspira-crap, David Icke, an English former sportswriter. Indeed, a lot of conspiracism smacks of leftovers from a bygone era, Satanism, which, true to form, the conspiracies have returned to in force.

We will all be one, they proclaim, albeit only after eliminating the evildoers, the reverse of a Kumbaya moment. Most religious and shamanic traditions are unified by the basic tenets of responsibility, helping others and tolerance, which is often defined as “Do onto others as you would want to be done unto you.”

It is known as the Golden Rule not simply due to citings by patriarchal monotheists but because it is a precise and functional formula for becoming a conscious adult. To become fully human, we have to recognize the humanity of others—not just our friends, but our opponents.

That is because we were all created by one god, according to monotheists, or one evolutionary process, according to science. Alas, conspiracists doubt such unity and see the world as dominated by devils, with no hope in sight.

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830), the liberal scholar who founded the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society whose deeds were mostly scholarly or advocacy, but which became a scapegoat and then a myth. photo: courtesy Bavarian Museum
Indeed, few conspiracists, as far as I know, have retracted their claims or admitted error, let alone abandon conspiratorial thinking. Naturally, they can always muddle through, given the details of a conspiracy are fuzzy, fungible or fabricated. The hard facts of their injuries and grievances, however, remain unchanged and impossible to deny.

Making up secret cabals and scapegoats used to require its own secret cabal, replete with spies, forgers and printing presses. Nowadays, however, QAnon, London Real and Boogaloo are Facebook groups, YouTube channels or 4chan threads, easily weaponized by trolls and bots, domestic and foreign, as well as by their registered users.

Even newcomer Tiktok, the biggest social medium to emerge outside the US (it is from China) and a source of charming entertainment for sheltering-in-place (see cineSOURCE article), is dragging a new generation—the millennials, who were too young to enjoy 9/11 conspiracy theory—down that mirror-lined rabbit hole.

Indeed, Tiktok has logged millions of views of posts about PizzaGate—arguably the most disgusting and absurd of all the conspiracy theories, given its odd combination of child abuse and innocuous locations, which were discovered by deciphering references in the emails of John Podesta, the former Democratic National Committee director.

Although Podesta’s emails were hacked by the Russians of Fancy Bear, one of Putin’s cyber spy groups, they were published by WikiLeaks, directed by Julian Assange, who is currently doing a year in an English prison. Assange uploaded them on October 7th, 2016, just weeks before Trump's election, suggesting an actual conspiracy.

With so many people of the left and right, white collar and working class, fixated on the deep state, vaccine poisoning—amid an actual pandemic, no less—and the hundreds of other conspiracies, not to forget the foreign politicians who spout conspiracy theories while organizing actual conspiracies to interfere in the American elections—only four months away—it’s a four-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck, person-the-barricades situation.

I haven’t completely cracked the conpiracist’s code, which would require well-funded research, big data and extensive psychological surveys. But I have had many discussions—OK, often arguments—with a wide variety of conspiracists since 2002; I have observed ample evidence of the actual internal object of their anger; and I am petrified.

Perhaps the only thing worse then an uptight, square, stuck-in-the-mud person is a loose cannon, with no real interest in coming to grips with complex situations or their own psychology, but who is ready, willing and able to feed the rising tide of confusion, chaos and fear.

'A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies' has three companion pieces which together make up the full essay 'Our Golden Age of Conspiracies': 'The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto', a rehabilitation regimen in 13 steps; 'An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich', an attempt to reach one person by reminding him of his brilliant and loving former self; and 'Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love', a review of conspiracies committed AGAINST the Jewish people and the efforts of many people to do the right thing, which are based on the Holocaust experiences of Tonia Rotkopf Blair and detailed in her upcoming book “Love at the End of the World” (Fall 2020, Austin Macauley).

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 08, 2020 - 01:25 AM
Black Lives Matter and Oakland
by Doniphan Blair

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This George Floyd march through downtown Oakland in early June was titled 'Support People of Color' but was almost entirely white. photo: D. Blair
OAKLAND HAS HELPED PRODUCE YET
another massive social change, nothing less then the political miracle now sweeping the United States, the world and, perhaps, the American presidency.

While only one of Black Lives Matter’s three founders, Alicia Garza—they are all women, incidentally—is from Oakland, the city’s Black Panther history, its large activist community and its take-it-to-the-streets politics obviously influenced the group. Oakland, in turn, readily adopted BLM.

It has been just over a month since the public execution by cop of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Wisconsin, on May 25th, and what a month it has been—unique in the annals of American history.

Although Floyd’s killing ignited demonstrations and riots in Minneapolis and to a lesser degree in Oakland and other cities, there have now been largely peaceful protests in all fifty states and almost six hundred communities. Some of those towns, like Bend, Oregon, have no Black residents.

The demonstrations seized the headlines from the Covid-19 pandemic, which had killed over 100,000 America by then, and held our attention for a month, until the failure to address the former brought it crashing back.

Regardless, there has been a fantastic flurry of change and related developments, a true revolution. Confederate flags and monuments have been banned, toppled or taken down across the South, but also the North. Racist names and logos are being removed, like for Aunt Jamima’s pancakes and the Washington Redskins football team.

This June 14th march through Oakland was almost entirely Black, featured singing gospel hymns and ended at the Oakland Police headquarters, where there was a speech by a Black cop. photo: D. Blair
There are efforts to switch funding from the police to social services and help social justice groups and Black-owned banks, although that may be limited by the impending big recession.

Corporate America has done an about face, with hundreds endorsing Black Lives Matter, dozens providing funding, and most realizing they are going to have to diversify not just rank and file but leadership.

Meanwhile the demonstration are showing no sign of abating. Over a dozen transpired in or near Oakland on the weekend of June 27th, over a dozen around the Bay on Sunday, July 5th and hundreds nation-wide, with plenty being planned for the entire month of July.

This is truly a miracle, especially considering there has been only around thirty related deaths, self-inflicted by protesters or by counter-protesters but only a few by police, although they have caused many injuries. This is minimal compared to the Rodney King riots in 1992, when 49 were killed.

Yes, there have been some frightening confrontations, like when a heavily armed group of Oregonians, inflamed by false rumors about the anti-fascist group Antifa, faced off against a handful of peaceful protestors. But it was resolved without violence.

Indeed, this is purely a people-powered revolution, save for some organizing by Black Lives Matter and other groups. While such a show of activist force harkens back to 1968 in the US, the speed of developments parallels the 1989 toppling of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu.

Three days after an audience turned on Ceausescu in the middle of a speech, he and his wife were tried and executed, and the Romanian communist experiment was over.

Ending racism in America will not be so easy, of course, considering complex questions like reparations for 400 years of chattel slavery or creating a multicultural society through a unicultural movement.

Then there is the issue of limiting violence while defunding police, some of whom may get demoralized and start holding off protective duties.

This George Floyd mural was one of many to spring up within days of the demos, although its notably quality on a fancy downtown office building suggests official sanction. photo: D. Blair
As we all know, Americans are armed to the teeth. While the greatest arsenals are held by white conservatives, some of whom are white supremacists (see cineSOURCE article), there is ample weaponry among people of color, whose number does include some violent gang members, criminals and political radicals—a lethal competition without an umpire.

Fortunately, the George Floyd protests evinced yet another miracle. They dodged the bullet of destructive riots—except on the first night in many places or in Minneapolis, where a combined eight miles of two business streets were looted for almost a week and hundreds of buildings burned.

While the Black Panthers—who were extremely influential in Oakland, even running a mayoral candidate in 1971—saved the city from riots in the 1960s, Black Lives Matter was unable do the same when Oakland’s demonstrations started on Friday, May 29th.

“A few hours after the peaceful march passed by my store,” the Palestinian-American owner of The Twilight Zone, a smoke shop downtown, told me, “it was looted by what looked like suburban young men.” Evidently opportunists, they may have been Black Blok aficionados, who often commute into Oakland for its well-known riots, Elsewhere, however, young men of color were involved.

He estimates his damages at over $75,000; city-wide, it will be in the tens of millions.

Not only did the demonstrators not participate, they returned Saturday morning to help him clean up the dozen cases filled with glass ware, which were tipped over, The Twilight Zone's manager told me. City workers only arrived two days later.

In many cities, there were reports of protestors pleading with looters, standing in front of stores and otherwise trying to restrain destructive proclivities.

The James A. Watson Wellness Center, at 5709 Market Street in Oakland (not far from an early Panther office), was vandalized by young men of color, according to The Oakland Post (6/3/20). The Center is a front-line provider of Corona testing as well as standard medical services, according to Dr. Watson, who is Black.

Because Black-owned businesses are near Black neighborhoods they inevitably bear the brunt of riot culture.

Happily working away one Sunday, this Asian mural artist titled her piece 'Yellow Peril for Black Power'. photo: D. Blair
While some people consider such acts an unfortunate side effect of unleashing people power, others see it as necessary to prove a movement’s resolve and to inflict enough pain on the establishment to inspire change. Indeed, a good riot renders some radicals almost giddy.

One female friend of mine, who was overjoyed to be in attendance when the new Target in Oakland was destroyed, told me that the people were only looting big corporations and repairing the damage will, in fact, create much needed jobs.

I suppose it was for women like her that a graffitier—undoubtedly a young man—inscribed on Telegraph Avenue: “I will burn cities for you.”

As romantic as it may seem, however, wanton destruction can discredit a movement and destroy neighborhoods. Harlem didn’t recover from its 1960s’ riots for thirty years and Minneapolis may suffer a similar fate.

Nevertheless, the under-three-dozen deaths associated with the demonstrations is nothing less than a miracle, given the thousands of marches and enumerable confrontations with police, counter-demonstrators or rogue thugs. That casualty figure includes two shot by civilians in Seattle’s so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, which prompted the clearing by police, after one month, on July 1st.

Indeed, the vast majority of Americans—many of whom, admittedly, live a long way from the inner cities where the looting happened—accepted it as part of the process and moved on, while the vast majority of demonstrations were completely peaceful.

In Oakland, as in most places experiencing looting, not only did the demonstrators help clean up the next day but they brought arts supplies. With in days, in fact, the entire downtown, as well as some outlying locations, had been transformed into a gallery of great, inspirational and occasionally visionary murals, with work ongoing.

Hence, the Black Lives Matter movement, despite a slight stumble at its start, has raced across America and produced what can be technically called a miraculous awakening, a stupendous reevaluation and change.

Oakland many marches varied from long, snaking around town, to down and dirty from City Hall to the police headquarters eight blocks away. photo: D. Blair
Indeed, the NY Times recently accessed it as the largest movement in US history (see story here).

Even more incredibly, it has travelled around the world, inspiring similar protests against racism and extrajudicial police killings in England, France and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in Canada, Australia and now even Africa.

One notable achievement was the jumpstarting of pride and activism in India, where the caste system was outlawed almost 80 years ago but lives on. Colorism, somewhat associated with caste, is explicit. Indeed, India has an enormous skin-whiting business; color is coded into matchmaking; and there is lots of privilege, racism and outright abuse.

Why did the BLM movement happen in reaction to George Floyd’s execution, as opposed to any number of other cop killings or during the Obama Administration? Although that will be parsed endlessly by historians, it appears to have been a perfect storm.

The overt or covert racism of Trump and his administration demanded a schooling. The Covid-19 pandemic provided frustration, free time and a longing for community. And, in addition to the decades of unabated police brutality and impunity, there is the growing empowerment of a large cohort of educated and middleclass people of color.

What this movement will be called has not yet been decided, but a good candidate is the Black Lives Matter movement, named after the group, which, in a fascinating new development, has restyled itself a global network, see their site.

BLM began in 2013, in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who murdered Trayvon Martin in Florida, and is dedicated to using only non-violent civil disobedience to protest police brutality.

One cofounder, Patrisse Cullors, an artist and organizer, is from LA. Another, Opal Tometi, is a community organizer and writer of Nigerian parentage who grew up in Phoenix, Arizona,

(lf-rt) Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi co-found Black Lives Matter in 2013. photo: courtesy BLM
Although the third, writer and activist Alicia Garza, grew up in middleclass Marin County, in a mixed race family (her stepfather is Jewish), and attended the University of California in San Diego, she was born and now lives in Oakland.

Indeed, the Black Lives Matter movement was readily adopted in Oakland, given the protests of the killing of Oscar Grant in 2009 by a BART policeman. Although Oakland has also had other police abuses, notably “The Riders” group which terrorized West Oakland in the 1990s, the police has been notably benevolent of late.

There have been very few dubious police killings and a group of officers took a knee with protesters on June 1st, early in the protests.

Oakland has had some concerning incidents, notably what seemed to be nooses hanging off a tree near Lake Merritt on June 16th, and, a day later, what definitely was a fake body found hanging from a noose. Classified as a hate crimes, many Oaklanders objected to the police handling of the matter, although there has been little mention since, and it is apparently not part of wider trend.

In the end, it is truly the miracle that many of us have been waiting for, both as a national protest against police violence but also the presidency of Donald Trump.

He began his presidential campaign with a racist diatribe against immigrants; he sided with white supremacists in Charlotte in 2017; and his only real political program is to dismantle the many achievements of the first Black president.

Fortunately, his attempt to throw out the undocumented immigrant children’s “Dreamer Act” was rejected by the Supreme Court on June 18th, one of many indicators the Americans are turning away from his malignant administration and towards the people in the streets.

In a truly beautiful manner, the BLM-George Floyd protests have channeled the pent up rage from the constant racial profiling and prejudiced police as well as outright violence from bad cops, but also of the frustration of sheltering in place or losing ones job. Hopefully it will continue to evolve and innovative and redeem a truly tragic period in American history.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 06, 2020 - 08:20 PM
Report from the Hot Spring Heartland
by Doniphan Blair

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The Great Basin Desert.
AFTER GETTING RAINED OUT OF MY
"ditch camp” in a highway pull-out, I recuperated in Idaho City, a two-horse town about an hour north of Boise.

First, I had an all-American breakfast, which is often the only decent meal available in the heartland: two eggs, toast, hash browns, coffee and orange juice.

Then I grabbed some free wi-fi off the visitors’ center, the only place where they were wearing masks. Finally, my recovery was completed by Dee McClennon, a fifty-something native.

Upon seeing my gear-crammed trunk, Dee asked, ““On the road? From where?”

When I said Oakland, he responded with a broad grin, “I was there once.”

“Had a blowout on an overpass and was saved by two black girls. They parked behind me, turned on their flashers and even helped me with the jack.”

“It was pretty incredible, since they were in heels. They were working and they invited me to a motel. I told them I was honored but they would be way too much for me. I was just a 26 year-old country boy.”

The beautiful buttes of southern Idaho.
After thanking Dee for his insight into the magic of travel and cross-cultural kindness, I headed up Highway 21. It goes right by the Sawtooth Mountains, a great name for one of Idaho's many, if often not that long, mountain ranges.

Actually, I was looking for what was in the valleys since, I could see from my guide book, the area was fly-specked with hot springs. Indeed, Idaho has 94 hot springs listed, almost three times as many as California.

As I drove, I listened to Boise State Public Radio, not a mean feat, considering all the wattage or repeating towers needed to get signal through those mountains. Sounded a lot like Bay Area public radio—yet another cross-cultural indicator.

It was such a relief to get out of my studio, the endless chores and the sheltering-in-place, which evaporated as soon as I loaded my gear and drove out of the parking lot. Not only was the road invigorating, I was fascinated to find out what was actually going on outside of Oakland (although what is going on in Oakland is also fascinating, see cineSOURCE article).

The more divided and rancorous this country becomes, the more people like Dee are polevaulting the gap. Of course we'll need millions more vaulters to clear the looming year(s) of medical, political and economic distress.

Wilbur Hot Springs Resort.
But having just driven 1000 miles across America, I am encouraged.

My first night out was at the venerable old Wilbur Hot Springs, where a sweet, multicultural crew was readying that elite Northern California resort for their first guests, since the pandemic started, on July 1st.

A day later I was cooling off in an egalitarian swimming hole on the Yuba River's Middle Fork, a tenth less crowded than the South Fork—which the cops had to close due to social distancing scofflaws. It was filled with frolicking Latinx, Black, Israeli and Caucasian kids and their families.

I had a great swim, especially after getting some form pointers from Oriah, a voluble eight-year-old Israeli-American, who reminded me of my daughter and our swims at that very spot.

Then I went north on Highway 49, a drive I'd long been wanting to do. Downieville I found to be a fantastically quaint, little river town, with a playhouse and great eats, like La Cocina de Oro.

After a ditch camp—on a gorgeous mountain overlook that time—I headed for the little known Great Basin Desert of Northern Nevada, which also covers parts of ‎Utah‎, ‎California‎, ‎Idaho‎ and Washington. "The great empty quarter" is what my mountain-climbing Uncle Harrison, who crossed it often, used to call it. Saudi Arabia also has a region by that name.

Very green this time of year—indeed, it was raining as I drove through—the Great Basin seems to have plenty of arable land. “Don’t let any one know," a guy I mentioned this to responded.

Cooling off in the Middle Fork of the Yuba.
One of my big questions, before starting my trip, was what would be the reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic.

99% of the people don't wear masks, given the boonies have built-in socially distancing. Some stores and information booths require them but in most restaurants, it was only me, while the tables were barely social distanced.

“I haven’t seen bodies in the streets,” Oriah's father Uri responded, when I asked him about it. Indeed, infection rates are very low in the area.

At La Cocina de Oro, where I had fabulous fish tacos, masks were required to enter. “Some people get angry and storm out," the inked-and-pierced waitress told me, "Probably because we’ve had only had one case in the entire county.”

In Idaho there is virtually no masking, except at state offices and in some town centers.

That may seem understandable, given the state has only some 5000 cases and a hundred deaths for its 1.5 million people. Alas, that puts them on a statistical par with the similarly-populated Alameda County (which includes Oakland), where most of us mask.

Indeed, Grangeville, in south-east Idaho, has seen an outbreak; Boise just endured 400 new cases in one day and is being upgraded to a hot spot; the governor is re-instituting closures.

Despite the occasional untoward glances, I wear my mask religiously.

Meanwhile, regarding the other fraught issue of our day—the Black Lives Matter movement—right wing talk radio, often the only station with the wattage to reach the boonies—along with Christian and Latinx—rails against it, incessantly.

A Boise mural.
Nevertheless, Boise had many marches for BLM—though that's a confusing acronym, given the city is surrounded by Bureau of Land Management country. They were totally peaceful, one participant told me.

On my drive through the town, I did notice the Whole Foods, murals and coffee shops that a universal markers of a hipster quarter.

Even the small town of Salmon (population 3,000) had a BLM protest. It was attended by about a dozen people, holding signs and chanting, none of them Black, although there are about six living in Salmon.

I was informed of this by a very friendly twenty year old in an American flag camisole—it was the Fourth of July—who also mentioned she was Native American.

"We welcome everyone here," she added, drawing nods from the Goth-tatted towheads behind her. "We depend on the Latinos to harvest our crops."

In fact, there were very few indicators of public counter-protests, aside from one store selling the bumpersticker “All Beards Matter.” I have seen under a dozen Trump signs and bumperstickers thus far, which is not bad for over 1000 miles of boonies, although the one hanging off the front of one of my motels was a cause for concern.

Indeed, Idaho has come a long way from when it was known for neo-Nazis, centered around Hayden Lake, which was a bit of a media exaggeration. When they tried to mount a 100-Nazi march in 1992, they got only 60, while nearby University of Idaho at Coeur d'Alene held a teach-in attended by over 5000.

About 50 miles north of Idaho City, I finally entered hot spring heaven.

Kirkham hot springs, Lowman, Idaho.
It starts at the entrance to the Sawtooth National Forest and goes for about 175 miles, along Routes 21 and 93, following the Payette and Salmon Rivers, respectively.

Given it features hundreds of pools, some right on the highway, others a few miles drive in, a handful a hike in, and doesn’t have a catchy tourist name, I will take the liberty of dubbing it "The Hot Spring Highway."

As I was relaxing in a shallow, muddy one—right on the edge of the Salmon River, with a breathtaking view—a couple of hipsters appeared.

"How is it?" the woman asked. "Not too hot," I said. "Forget it then," she responded, spinning on her heels. "We're checking out all the springs," her bearded male associate explained, "but just trying the good ones."

Admittedly some pools are just rough circles of stones in the river, keeping the hot water in and the cold out, often unsuccessfully. But if you take an hour or two piling up the stones and caulking them with mud, you just might earn yourself a world-class soak.

The Hot Spring Highway featured all sorts of folks, aside from the ubiquitous, camper-truck-driving senior couples, who can be cute to watch working things out in their own eccentric ways.

There were plenty of Latinx, including at the hot springs—picnicking, hanging out, taking a soak—in bathing suits, as is the community custom in Idaho.

There were even a few African-Americans and slightly more Asians, although the biggest tribe in evidence, other then the seniors, was the bikers, mostly of weekend warrior variant.

Biking is big in Idaho, with innumerable real-dealers, tattoos, piercings, beards, pumped men and gorgeous women, both in tight Ts, as well as big bikes, some fully saddlebagged for actual camping.

A cooler Kirkham pool.
There were even some bicyclists, peacefully plodding away.

One immigrant from Spain, with two very hippie-looking young sons, told me she was having a fabulous time, driving around almost all the Western states, although she did miss her homeland’s cuisine—I’ll bet!

Generally speaking the North-West wreaks of the westerner vibe. What that means is they won’t draw their six-guns without ample cause; they make their own decisions independently, even of talk radio; and they are usually happy to interact with outsiders, unlike more parochial places in the US and the world.

But like those more isolated places, it is best to make an obvious gesture towards the local culture, be it looking them in the eyes and nodding, wearing a beat-up hat, or easing into conversations—not leaping in aggressively, a la New Yorker which I am.

Yes, there is some conservative backlash.

At one of the Hot Spring Highway's best—Bonneville, with ten pools and an almost-boiling waterfall, I met Bill from Bend (Oregon), luxuriating the next pool over. He said he thought Black Lives Matter was creating more racial tension than it solved. Bend had one Black, but he recently moved away, Bill said.

Bonneville hot springs, Idaho.
“You can not bring people together by advocating tribalism,” he said. When I asked what he’d recommend, he responded, “Give everyone LSD.”

But other hotspringers, also from Bend, seemed more understanding.

So was the gang intervention counselor, whom I met on the pass into the Hot Springs Highway, checking his trailer's tires.

"Don't want these babies to go with baby on board," he explained.

A Latinx, originally from outside Oakland, he moved to Boise about 15 years ago and was currently working with the police, which he said was a pretty good force. The Boise Police did kill a woman last year, who was "acting erratically" and pointed a BB gun at them (she was white, see story)

"Boise was pretty sleepy when I arrived," he said, "but now it has some typical big city gang and drug problems, mostly methamphetamines." Although Idaho is a red state, Boise has a democratic mayor. “She has been pushing them fast into the future,” he said.

Boise is becoming quite the getaway place, especially popular with Californians, with developers and others finding it ripe for the picking. Many people fear an even greater gentrification, although the pandemic recession will put that on temporary hold.

Crop patterns near Salmon, Idaho.
The state is certainly is a woods-person’s paradise, from the kayaker to the mountain climber and hiker as well hot springer.

Indeed, the Hot Springs Highway has literally thousands of campgrounds. Some are developed, for which you have to pay $15 for the night or $5 for the day, especially at ones associated with hot springs. Others are just a fire circle and a fantastic view, found by following teepee markers along the road.

Plus there are dozens of toilets and hundreds of pull outs—showing a real care for the camper and traveller, much more than California.

Hence, the hinterland situation, far from the ravages of pandemics or street demonstrations, is doing pretty well. Although they suffered from the collapse of tourism, they are back to fully booked, as of the July 4th weekend, the manager of the nice Sourdough Lodge in Lowman told me.

Salmon, where I spent the Fourth, is a real gem, not quite Montana's Whitefish but closing in. Indeed, it has TWO health food stores—one featuring raw milk at $5.50 a gallon, compared to $17 in Cali—and some great motels.

At the River Inn, run by the hard-working and infectious-laughing Christy, I got a room looking out at the lovely, rushing Salmon River. It also has the fantastic Steele Memorial Hospital, with its efficient and friendly emergency room, as I learned the hard way (story for another day).

Fourth of July celebration on the Salmon River in Salmon, Idaho.
At any rate, Idaho is enjoying its independence far from the hub-bub, especially on the Fourth.

Nevertheless, everyone's news dosage is elevated enough to be aware of what is happening elsewhere. Hence, underneath the enjoyment and camaraderie is a feeling of trepidation, wait and see and hope for the best.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 05, 2020 - 04:55 PM
Sunken Narratives: David Lynch’s FiRE
by D Swan

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Protagonist Henry Spencer unnerved by tendril. image: D. Lynch
This is D Swan's second 'Sunken Narratives' column, see first here.

IN "FiRE (PoZaR)" (2015), A SHORT
written, drawn and directed by David Lynch, he latently addresses the title "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" (1992). Formulaically, he operates on an edge of aesthetics in which "the sublime" predominates.

This designation has been tracked back to Century One AD, however specifics are murky. During the 18th century, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, and John Dennis, along with Joseph Addison, wrote of the Sublime as being connected with aspects of the natural world that could be threatening and aberrant.

Shaftesbury believed the Sublime was a characteristic surpassing pulchritude, whereas the latter considered it to be aesthetically discrete from beauty, while noting "an agreeable kind of horror".

Edmund Burke in 1757 produced a monograph, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. He claimed the binary effect, physiologically, of Sublimity was the cognitive qualities of fright and allure. He contrasted "negative pain" with positive pleasure, with the baleful quality being more vivid.

In the year 1764, Immanuel Kant declared that the Sublime was of three forms, the noble, the splendid and the terrifying.

Lynch understands that there's much in our subconscious and at the back of our consciousness that's horrifying; it could be the Sublime.

The bulk of "Eraserhead" (1977) qualifies as Sublime which may make it his "Citizen Kane" (1941) or "Pulp Fiction" (1994). Surely the sum of its beauteous horrour, as the term was once evocatively represented, ain't easy to beat, within his body of work or elsewhere.

Stage hand as Shiva. image: D. Lynch
The entirety of this first of his features is surrealist, as the protag navigates a ghastly bargain-basement phantasma. Henry Spencer's paramour's parents upstage almost any fabrication of any imaginable eerie movie; and then there's the baby(?) . .

The mystery and trepidation connected to entities of the past, and their inherent decay is key. Gothic exploitative filmmaking hinges to a great extent on such, however Lynch's exploitation is of that which is barely conscious.

It has been said that the basis of his vision is the magical fear one feels while transitioning from confused ignorance to grasping an understanding of the world sufficiently to function. Likewise the line between animate and otherwise is very blurry to a tot, both horribly and wonderfully so.

This perspective tends to dry up as we're whipped into shape to become a good consumer and worker for the benefit of our betters.

Lynch hasn't forgotten. He seemingly recalls specific cut-rate thrills found during this stage, watching perhaps one's parents' friends along with distant relatives, in all of their corny and passé ugliness, particularly as they come too close or grab ya.

We personally recall a kind of penultimate fear the very young attach to all things medical, especially to one's "insides" and the process of an "operation". Once we imagined a verbal warning from a strawberry plant of its Hannibal Lector-type intentions, to our violent disgruntlement.

His triumph is evident when Lynch psychoanalytically returns the viewer to a mainly neglected, naive state in which true, delicious and meaningful terror is accessible.

The question of what it is to be human and what is other constitutes a concern. To stand or walk is to, possibly unconsciously, insinuate that one is an Earthborn personage. Sitting, for our director would be an activity typical of our species, although he considers it to be a fascinating absurdity.

Is there an interim homo Sapiens and perhaps creatures that are either less advanced or macabre hideosities? His 2018 short "Ants Head" aptly asks us to ponder such a thing as does "Twin Peaks: The Return" (2017).

The Eternal Ganglion arises. image: D. Lynch
"The Elephant Man" (1980) wrestles with the puzzle while usefully adding heart or subjectivity. Though we watch Henry Spenser and could identify with, if not his everyman quality, then his plight - he maintains risibility; whereas, one is inclined to develop an emotional attachment to John Merrick.

Lynch is a filmmaker in which creative evolution is readily visible and this marks his first feature-film metamorphosis.

It's the obverse of our director's perversity. He's always shooting for the Most Improved award, because he's sincerely kind and digs bright Americana, which locates him squarely in the New Wave realm, although via Punk Rock.

"Blue Velvet" (1986) signified Lynch discovering a way to translate his vintage-based obsession into contemporary, on-location practicality. The "Twin Peaks" (1990-91) television series and much, later work couldn't have been, sans this growth.

"Mulholland Drive" (2001), a fiendishly lovely, rather diachronic postcard to Hollywood and the director's own career among other things, indicated yet another evolution, regarding data interpretation. "Inland Empire" (2006) emerged as a further progression not only for himself but film language and production, as has "The Return".

Projects including "The Straight Story" (1999) and "Wild At Heart" (1990) feature simple plots with objective truth. However, minimally, "Lost Highway" (1997), "Mulholland Drive" along with "Inland Empire" must be accessed subjectively, and will be different for each viewer. No Hollywood feature director, and few Europeans save for mainly Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-Luc Godard have been able to methodically use their filmic tools in such an open-ended use of cinematic lingo.

As with Hitchcock, he will also provide indication of a hand holding the photographic instrument, and in Lynch's case, it is exactly that as opposed to a camera.

Which brings us back to "Eraserhead". Of all the fascinating aspects of this once-in-a-decade masterpiece, is the lively frame, as if the tripod is moving slightly, concomitantly with sinister breathing. FiRE also features a fluctuating vista, here as a component of the ostensibly naive context.

The fly in the ointment, would be that a cross-media wizard of nearly unimaginable stature, may not have anyone nearby with the position of being a No Man; therefore this master of most media will digress without warning into useless absurdity.

Why does woman cry? image: D. Lynch
Mutual agreement throughout Lynch's fan base as to which moments would qualify as unnecessary at the least, and mood-destroying maximally, is unlikely.

However, we'll venture that, for all of its transcendence, "Lost Highway" (1997) cannot reach its stupendous conclusion without a long trip through extra footage, apparently found on the editor's floor.

There are those, including pop-culture maven, Heather McCollom, who'd have it that "Wild At Heart" loses the glory found inside any particular scene, when considered as an entirety. We concur.

What a spectacular, gorgeous vision of a particular potential Hell, is exhibited in "FiRE (PoZaR)".

A theater interior is presented. It could be an image from a future similar to that of "Dune" (1984), and not dissimilar to an enclosure inside "The Return", being dingily Victorian by way of the Elizabethan era, partially here, because of the unsteady light source.

Inside the proscenium a cut-to-black indicates a film-within-a-film. To remind that we're watching a less-technologically adept construct, a very primitively executed arch is then utilized. A scribbled drawing appears and the score refers to banging on bones.

There is a basic quality, suggesting various potential circumstances. The continuity could consist of very fundamental hand-drawn animation achieved simply via rapidly covering each image with the following one, lighting would obviously be incendiary. A mood of quaintness, if not redolent of the primordial, prevails.

Conceivably some kind of technological loss could've ensued. If there existed a Moon colony and a particular apocalyptic event occurred on Earth, the outpost could be cut off and generationally regress into a primitive state. Storytelling would then be influenced by the far reminiscences of the inhabitants and might desperately attempt to recreate a near-cinematic format, similar to that of FiRE.

Alfred Hitchcock received beaucoup grief over his use of a so-called false flashback featuring prominently within "Stage Fright" (1950). Why couldn't these complainers notice the motion picture began with the raising of a theater's safety curtain? As if they were unaware the full production was, as Norman Bates might reckon, "a fa-fa-falsity"?

Hitch's philosophical musings in that case, flew over his guileless audiences' head. Yet Lynch's stage-bound obscurity is frequently relatively accessible.

Theatricality as a component of his productions has been commented on often. "The Man In The Planet" could be "Eraserhead"'s nearly-Hadean puppet-string puller, existing in a dreadful netherworld. His presence tells us the following fiction could be considered camp spectacle by a spiteful deity.

A man clumsily strikes a match as a deus ex machina counterpart here. Possibly he's supplying the light we need to view the forthcoming imagery.

There's an implication that the house, which had to be built and the tree that had to be planted, that we next are shown would be unviable without the civilizing influence of combustion.

What would Danté say? Bosch?. image: D. Lynch
Enigmatic is Lynch's interest in the improbability that is fire. Beyond any Shiva-like ability to destroy, cleanse, and invite the new, it apparently has the allure of the inexplicable, cacodemonic; as if it is a mutation readily supplying damnable excitement.

This could relate to the Lynchian realization that our absurd epitome of a human form, necessary chiefly as transport for the brain, is at best barely maintainable and that flames are hungry for the fuel flesh contains.

The flame from the struck match flickers as does the apparent projector bulb that lights "David Lynch Theater". Possibly, here it's simply an answer to a prominent question asked within "The Return", "Got a light?"

Throughout his work, the director appears to find bodily apertures and that which extrudes from 'em - words & noise, tears, children, blood, vomitus, spice, etc. - to be of great interest.

Likewise, there exists an exquisite nexus of eroticism and horrour, utilized by most of Lynch's projects. As with Hitchcockian protags, and those of noir, our director's characters are forced into situations in which their terror is assuaged with love, and unfortunately, vice versa.

"Blue Velvet"'s underside becomes the setting for psychosexual pleasure and personal unease with a voyeuristic twist. Jeffrey breaks into Dorothy Vallen's empty apartment, only to be discovered upon her return. She then has him return to his hideaway while he watches her being forced into a grim sado-masochistic session with the exceedingly threatening Frank Booth. The former eventually finds himself violently satisfying her masochistic supplications, which, being a naif, causes him great consternation.

With extreme subtlety, as if we cannot be sure of how such a thing could materialize, a very dimensional organic hole comes into view atop the flat tableau containing the house and tree. However, this Freudian entity is evidently in no way eroticized.

Soon a forceful worm-like entity exits the womb. It has a barely connected, odious head that one hopes will not enter the foreground.

Could this be our director's Eternal Ganglion, that he'd imagine manifests early evolved consciousness, that manifests Henry Spencer's dancing worm, that manifests his baby? The nerve-tangle at the very basis of Lynch's earliest retrievable thoughts?

Of course human beginnings would be horrific as envisioned by even a cub David Lynch.

The visage, such as it is, appears to have voids as eye, nose and mouth receptacles. Out of the top two gashes, ghoulish hands sprout. From the digits further wormish forms burgeon with eyes, and Lynchian dangling neurology.

The hand of who or whatever is driving this tableau begins to melodramatically and violently shake the drawing. Rather than negating our suspension of disbelief, it creates a realistic immediacy, as the epithet, post-modern, proves inadequate.

After the raining of, one could guess, rocks, unusually unnourishing rabbit pellets, eggs or gruesome conceptualizations, two huge torches appear with childishly-drawn flame-trees.

A finely-sculptured object ponderously budges across the frame. Is it a primitive, magical icon? Through the one eye opening, fragmentary movement behind is visible, catalyzing a living, abstract artwork. As the object continues its trajectory, a misshapen mouth and ear appear, the latter of which comes close to being burned by the flame-tree.

A disembodied head comes into view - is she a living woman, her surviving spirit or another type of creature? The eyeholes are reminiscent of "The Birds"' (1963) unlucky chicken farmer, whose missing eyeballs are replaced by a closure of dried blood. Except she's bleeding from the openings - surely this could not be a dig at fellow independent Martin Scorsese, in connection with his cocaine-induced, bleeding eye-socket necessitated emergency room visit?

Hands with nervous-system inspired wrists cover the eyes. Behind the unhappy head, is a relatively contemporary vista, a plowed field and a multi-story building. The noggin in question fades away.

Abhorrent stick creatures, perhaps related to "The Return's" arm, envisioned as a sapling therein, which is emblematic of that ubiquitous tendril of nerves, move across the screen via unsettling choreography. Then it becomes wickedly obvious - they all have Boschian bird-beaks.

The score, by Marek Zebrowski, with no input from Lynch, is the final component making this one of the director's preeminent projects. The often abstracted accompaniment is elegant and yet evocative of elemental society. The purposely lumbering animation was performed by Noriko Miyakawa.

Everything on-screen communicates much, without the debilitation inherent in unnecessary dialogue.

We could be viewing a variation of early scenes from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968); or are witnessing a moral fable regarding our planet as a mother and a mother as central to everything.

Do we see the baby found inside "Eraserhead" in a more viable form? Or maybe an ancestor of the balletically adept worm Henry ponders? Could we be experiencing a reinterpretation of "The Elephant Man" or Episode 8 of "The Return"? Common to all is a coming into existence of monstrosity.

It should be said that the largest disparity between our director and a large influence, the Master of Suspense, is that within the latter's work, other than rare exceptions, the universe is defined by science; whereas the former's enterprise inhabits one of proprietary and unending, multifaceted metaphysical evil.

Fortunately, Lynch sublimated arbitrary over-the-top demons, while sustaining his finest Sublimity for the sans pareil horrour of FiRE.

FIRE is available in a large screen format on YouTube or a small screen version Pitchfork.

Special thanks for help on this essay go out to Alan Diede, Maryann Huk and Joseph Jordan.

D Swan is a culture observer and creator, specializing in punk, Hitchcock, seedy glory and more, who can be reached . Posted on Jul 05, 2020 - 12:38 AM
Our Golden Age of Conspiracies
by Doniphan Blair

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The planes piloted by al-Qaeda operatives, which flew into the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, are said by some conspiracy theorists to be an American self-attack. photo: unknown
In this four-part essay, I present “A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies”; “The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto”, a rehabilitation regimen in 13 easy steps; “An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich”, an attempt to reach one person by reminding him of his brilliant and loving former self; and “Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love”, a review of conspiracies committed AGAINST the Jewish people and the efforts of many to do the right thing. The Conspiracy of Love I developed from the Holocaust experiences of my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, which are detailed in her upcoming book “Love at the End of the World” (Fall 2020, Austin Macauley).

Part 1: A Brief Introduction to Conspiracies

Back in the good old days, a couple of years ago, people routinely dismissed conspiracy theorists as something akin to stamp collectors: slightly kooky aficionados of an odd discipline. But that’s getting very hard to do today as they attract ever greater numbers, seize the spotlight and push us all towards a surreal tipping point.

They became a major fringe phenomena about eighteen years ago when Theorists, or Truthers, as they prefer to be called, researched the 9/11 attacks and discovered they were an inside job. Although most Theorists decline to be definitive, the al-Qaeda operatives who flew the planes were supposedly agents working for either the CIA or a more clandestine American entity.

These forces are so powerful, according to Theorists, they are able to perpetrate enormous crimes while leaving little or no trace or witnesses.

It was Donald Trump, however, who ushered conspiracies into the mainstream when he became the most prominent backer of “Birtherism,” the notion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Then he kicked off his presidential bid with his theory that Mexicans were sneaking across the border, not to work hard at low pay but to rob and rape Americans.

Now Trump is trumpeting new conspiracies almost daily. Obviously, his strategy is to promote manipulative, half-believable stories, sow the suspicion needed to render everything a form of fake news and rule as the greatest faker.

Donald J. Trump's long involvement with glitz, fakery and cheating as well as his emotional intelligence drew him directly to conspiracy theory. photo: courtesy Vanity Fair
Naturally, having a conspiracy king in the White House enfranchised the conspiracists, as well as the ambidextrous extremists out to exploit them. But over the last four months they have become even more addled by the historical fluke of quarantine isolation, economic collapse and, starting at the end of May, street demonstrations.

Welcome to our golden age of conspiracies, one so glitteringly grotesque it makes the 19th century Illuminati look like children’s theater.

Of course, there are conspiracies by corporate criminals, corrupt officials and criminal enterprises, as well as foreign agents, which warrant investigation—indeed, we need to allocate even more resources there.

And sure, there are dilettante conspiracists who are hardly hurting anyone by googling “Federal Reserve” or “contrails,” say, for a few hours a week—just keeping an open mind, they explain, or indulging in harmless entertainment.

But they have been overshadowed and outgunned by the many disciples of QAnon (an anonymous leaker allegedly high up in the intelligence services), who scour the news for signals concerning Trump’s impending declaration of martial law, arrest of leading liberals and break up of what they claim is a massive international ring of Satanists, who also happen to be cannibals and pedophiles.

As if this weren't odd enough, some Republicans are now running as QAnon candidates, while Trump’s disgraced and indicted former national security advisor, General Michael Flynn, recently showed his QAnon colors. (See that story here, a new piece on QAnon in The New Republic, an older one in The Atlantic or one with more psychological perspective from Behavioral Scientist.)

Then there’s Alex Jones’s Infowarriors or the followers of the London Real show, who claim Covid-19 is a lab-engineered bio-weapon or a by-product of the new 5G microwave communication network. And then there's—and this is no joke—the Boogaloo Bois (boys), an actual conspiratorial group.

To get our terminology straight, that means the Boogaloo Bois are not only plotting unlawful or harmful schemes—the so-called conspiracies—but carrying them out and can be properly called conspirators. Last but not least are the conspiracy theorists, who sift the runic sands for traces of plots, often in the land of make believe.

The Boogalooers, however, are all too real. Known for their mixed metaphors—old movie and dance references and Hawaiian shirts combined with large arsenals—their romantic dream for America is to foment riots, kill police and be agent provocateurs—though they’d never use a French term—for a “white revolution.”

One mile from where I sit in Oakland, a Boogalooer murdered Patrick David Underwood, a Black, 53-year-old security guard, on May 29th, the first night of Oakland's George Floyd protests. He was captured within a week but only after killing another policeman, Damon Gutzwiller (white that time).

As the Boogalooers illustrate, there are some very active, aggressive and dangerous conspiracies, which should be sleuthed, tracked and stopped. But there are also a lot of fabricated conspiracies accusing innocent people. Even conspiracy-lite feeds conspiracism, which increases prejudices against minorities, especially Jewish people, given all of the ancient accusations against them, as we will examine in the fourth part of this essay.

The Kennedy killing on November 22th, 1963 is probably the largest major event studied by conspiracy theorists that stands a reasonable chance of being associated with an actual conspiracy. photo: unknown
There has always been conspiratorial thinking—not people plotting, which there has also always been, rather people looking for plots. But it was largely confined to the FBI’s Mafia task force, paranoid schizophrenics or demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy, who claimed to have uncovered dozens of communists in the upper echelons of the US government and military. (Trump is a direct heir to McCarthy, connected through the latter's close associate, Roy Cohn, who became both Trump’s mentor in skulduggery AND his personal lawyer.)

Modern conspiratorial thinking started with the Kennedy assassination and the obvious inconsistencies in the official reports (although why such sophisticated conspirators would enlist Lee Harvey Oswald, a nutcase just back from defecting to the Soviet Union, would also be hard to explain).

Conspiratorial thinking jumped a level with the arrival of the internet, which opened vast forums for free speech just in time for 9/11. A decade later, emerging social media companies doubled down on those proclivities when they developed algorithms to stimulate interest and ad revenue by favoring viewers’ prejudices.

Post-9/11 increases in state and corporate surveillance didn’t help, either.

Then there’s humanity’s periodic production of a person of exceptional quality. In troubled times, people understandably either hope for such a messiah or decry their opposite: evil masterminds.

More fundamental, I believe, is how the conspiracists themselves feel aggrieved. Obviously, they derive substantial self-esteem and status from attacking hidden enemies and purveying secret information. As in any espionage situation, the more tightly held the secret, the more valuable. And, even in casual settings like shoptalk or gossip, people love to control the information flow.

Information domination is paramount among conspiracists. But they achieve such supposed superiority through tricks and sleight of hand. Indeed, if you dare challenge their evidence, be forewarned. You will soon enter a funhouse debate of dubious indicators, diverging levels of science, full-on fabrications and "plausible deniability."

And, if that didn't establish a shaky enough ground on which to build their confrontation with the entire existing order, once one conspiracy has been revealed, to retain the dominant information spot, they have to keep upping the ante with more spectacular suppositions. This is the reason why QAnon has essentially absorbed all precursing conspiracies, including the ancient, medieval “blood libel” against the Jewish people, making it the conspiracy to end all conspiracies.

Of course, hidden enemies are just that. They rarely rebut claims, let alone strike back (although bin Laden was said to have been incensed by how conspiracists erased his efforts). That is why, a few years after 9/11, Theorists had to stop lauding themselves for bravely "speaking of truth to power," on Pacifica Radio, say, since everyone knew no one would ever bother to come for them.

The US dollar's eye on the pyramid was derived from the private, if not always secret, Free Masons and referenced the Egyptians and their prodigious knowledge. photo: courtesy US Treasury
But that insult to their humanity is minimal. The big injury, according to my ad hoc research among conspiracist friends and acquaintances in the US, Brazil, Germany, Poland and Mexico, is that their fathers did not treat them right. Unable to simply reject their patriarch, which would be standard for the empowered adult but risky for the injured adolescent, they craft a psychological work-around.

The little patriarch—be it Dad, the employer, the nation—would have done more for them, or so their subconscious speculates, had it not been for the big patriarch—the capitalists, the CIA, the deep state—which they are now free to attack without alienating their community, although family and friends often become sick of their endless theorizing.

In fact, the new book, “Too Much and Never Enough”, by Trump's niece, Mary Trump, documents that he was abused by his father, which would give him a classical conspiracist's childhood (see article). Released on July 16th, it broke records with almost a million copies sold on its first day.

Conspiracism may be related to paranoid schizophrenia, which induces its sufferers to hear people talking about them or voices in their head, essentially the universe communicating with them. A more moderate malaise seems to afflict conspiracists, to whom the universe is also talking but through bits of news, shreds of evidence or other signs, which, when puzzle-pieced together, expresses their desires and politics.

I’m especially chagrined by how conspiracism bewitched so many of my old friends and has its modern roots in the ‘60s. Rejecting authority and embracing new ideas are essential, but for the transition to work efficiently it requires rationalism, proportionality and tolerance.

In fact, many conspiracists have taken up the ‘60s mantle of accepting new paradigms, coming together and seeing the truth.

Unfortunately, underneath their new age cant, the truth they want us to see is a fallen, evil world. Humanity is controlled by puppet masters or reptilian underworld beings, according to one of the most asinine but powerful purveyors of conspira-crap, David Icke, an English former sportswriter. Indeed, a lot of conspiracism smacks of leftovers from a bygone era, Satanism, which, true to form, the conspiracists have returned to in force.

We will all be one, they proclaim, albeit only after eliminating the evildoers, the reverse of a Kumbaya moment. Most religious and shamanic traditions are unified by the basic tenets of responsibility, helping others and tolerance, which is often defined as “Do onto others as you would want to be done unto you.”

It is known as the Golden Rule not simply due to citings by patriarchal monotheists but because it is a functional formula for becoming a conscious adult. To become fully human, we have to recognize the humanity of others—not just our friends, but our opponents.

That is because we were all created by one god, according to monotheists, or one evolutionary process, according to science. Alas, conspiracists doubt such unity and see the world as dominated by devils, with no hope in sight.

Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830), the liberal scholar who founded the Bavarian Illuminati, a secret society whose deeds were mostly scholarly or advocacy, but which became a scapegoat and then a myth. photo: courtesy Bavarian Museum
Indeed, few conspiracists, as far as I know, have retracted their claims or admitted error, let alone abandoned conspiratorial thinking. Although some disavow it, they do so on equivocal terms. Indeed, when the attraction of rejoining the conspiracist community and its easy stimulation of dopamine becomes too great, they inevitably backslide. They can always muddle through, given how the details of a conspiracy are fuzzy, fungible or fabricated, while the hard facts of their grievances remain unchanged and impossible to deny.

Another workaround conspiracists rely on is that their conspiracy speculations—that there was no moon landing, that Western Civilization is controlled by cannibal pederasts, that Trump is our secret savior—is but a benign form of recreation and amusement.

Indeed, one of America's top conspiracists, Alex Jones, is just “a performance artist... playing a character," according to his attorney Randall Wilhite, during his 2017 custody battle with Jones's ex-wife Kelly Jones. She claimed that hearing all of Jones's hate and fabrication all day—his radio studio is in his house—was not healthy for their three children. This renders Jones even more evil, someone with no core beliefs but who would happily destroy not just his own children but our shared cultural commons simply for the attention and money.

Making up secret cabals and scapegoats used to require its own secret cabal, replete with spies, forgers, printing presses and the like. Nowadays, however, QAnon, London Real and Boogaloo are Facebook groups, YouTube channels or 4chan threads, easily weaponized by trolls and bots, domestic and foreign, as well as by their registered users.

Even newcomer Tiktok, the biggest social medium to emerge outside the US (it is from China) and a source of charming entertainment for sheltering-in-place (see cineSOURCE article), is dragging a new generation—the millennials, who were too young to enjoy 9/11 conspiracy theory—down that mirror-lined rabbit hole.

Indeed, Tiktok has logged millions of views of posts about PizzaGate—arguably the most disgusting and absurd of all the conspiracy theories pre-QAnon, given its odd combination of child abuse and innocuous locations. PizzaGate was "discovered" by deciphering references in the emails of John Podesta, the former director of the Democratic National Committee.

Although Podesta’s emails were hacked by the Russian trolls of Fancy Bear, one of Putin’s cyber spy groups, they were published by WikiLeaks, directed by Julian Assange, who is currently doing a year in an English prison. Assange uploaded them on October 7th, 2016, just weeks before Trump's election, suggesting an actual conspiracy.

With so many people of the left and right, white collar and working class, fixated on the deep state, vaccine poisoning—amid an actual pandemic, no less—and the hundreds of other conspiracies, not to forget the foreign politicians who spout conspiracy theories while organizing actual conspiracies to interfere in the American elections—only four months away—it’s a four-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck, person-the-barricades situation.

I haven’t completely cracked the conpiracist’s code, which would require well-funded research, big data and extensive psychological surveys. But I have had many discussions—OK, often arguments—with a wide variety of conspiracists since 2002; I have observed ample evidence of the actual internal object of their anger (their fathers); and I am petrified.

Perhaps the only thing worse then an uptight, square, stuck-in-the-mud person is a loose cannon, with no real interest in coming to grips with complex situations or their own psychology, but who is ready, willing and able to feed the rising tide of confusion, chaos and fear.

We are now entering the culmination of our Golden Age of Conspiracies, what future historians may call the "Conspiracy Wars," as various factions vie for the attention of an increasingly confused public with ever more outrageous claims. To be sure, it will become quite a cauldron of hysteria, especially at the end of October as Trump, Putin, Jones, Icke and their robotic minions pull ever more outrageous claims out of their demonic hindquarters.

Fortunately, rising up against them is an immense army of rational, loving and decent people of every possible persuasion and creed.

The Satanists, essentially inverted Catholics, were another late-medieval secret society which influenced conspiracists. photo: traditional
Part 2: The Anti-Conspiracy Manifesto

1. Actual conspiracies do exist, but they are rare, and extraordinary claims require verifiable evidence.
2. Once we accept one extraordinary claim without verifiable evidence, we are predisposed to accept many extraordinary claims without verifiable evidence.
3. By rejecting such conspiracy tolerance, while remaining vigilant for verifiable evidence about actual conspiracies, we may still let slip through one or two conspiracies.
4. But one or two conspiracies is healthier than the devastating damage inflicted by all the fraudulent conspiracies, which inflame prejudice, confusion and fear, which can foster attacks, killings and even genocides, and which waste colossal amounts of time better used to research actual conspiracies or to enjoy life.
5. Call this the Conspiracy of Love, the proposition that we are significantly better off rejecting unverified conspiracies, which are false alarms over 98% of the time, and assuming that people of good will, even if hidden or unrecognized, will do the right thing at least 51% of the time.
6. Differentiating between good and evil is difficult, especially now that propaganda is rampant, secret agendas are common and mirroring ones opponents is standard, which means conspiracists invariably claim that their opponents are conspiring against them.
7. Nevertheless, over time, the truth almost always comes out. To accelerate this analysis, try this formula: Good is long-term benefit for the many; evil is short-term benefit for the few.
8. By virtue of this maxim, the Conspiracy of Love always beats the conspiracies of hate over time. If it did not, there would be no evolution, and we would still be living in caves ruled by bullies.
9. Love has been increasing. Indeed, the love accumulation of today is significantly more than it was 1000 years ago.
10. But many of us still suffer from lack of love. Indeed, insufficient love from our patriarchal entities is a primary driver of conspiracy psychology.
11. Being insufficiently loved by your father is hard to experience and heartbreaking to watch. Nevertheless, if your overall love accumulation exceeds 51%, you are in Conspiracy of Love territory. If your love accumulation was less than 49%, your father would have killed your mother before she could give birth, or some such conspiracy of hate horror.
12. Admittedly, 51% is a slim win for love, given we would all prefer the true love, til-death-do-we-part variant. Nevertheless, 51% is enough to win in sports, elections and war. By virtue of simple math, 51% of love keeps love growing into the undying love we see in some families, friendships and communities, as well as in religion and art.
13. Welcome to the Conspiracy of Love. You can join at any time by turning towards the light, by asking and giving forgiveness and by starting to do something to help heal all the hate. Admittedly, many of those who hated you or whom you have hated may decline to join the forgiveness project, since they, too, are human. Nevertheless, over time, we—you, I and many of them—will cross the 51% threshold and help grow the Conspiracy of Love.

John Edmiston Milich became a prodigious traveller, talker, astrologer, investigative reporter and conspiracy theorist as well as close friend of this author, shown here in Guanajuato, Mexico, 2019. photo: J. Milich
Part 3: An Open Letter to My Dear Friend John Edmiston Milich

Introduction: John and I became close friends after meeting in Istanbul in 1972, when I was 17, and he was 28. I used to say, only half jokingly, he was my guru. Although we had a falling out over 9/11, we reconnected because our community consensus, at that time, was that 9/11 Theorists were just followers of an alternative religion. With conspiracy theorizing reaching one of its highest points in history, however, I feel obliged to address John publicly and forthrightly, to tell him that he taught me a lot about the Conspiracy of Love, that I still have love for him and that a conspiracy course correction is both possible and desperately needed.

My Dearest John,

It has been a few decades since we talked openly, but it is never too late to start again, I believe.

It’s never too late to turn towards the light. Although we may not reach enlightenment physically, since the hour is late and the road long, we can still arrive symbolically, which will show our support for love, evolution and civilization.

Indeed, you and I come from a community where, once we truly love, we always love. That is because love is about our ideals, which are eternal.

For the same reason, we don’t abandon our wounded on the battlefield. While they may die physically, their symbols can live on, as we can see with George Floyd, who was martyred in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020.

My Dearest John, do you remember your dreams back in September 1972 on the roof of Istanbul’s Utopia Hotel, where a bed could be had for a buck? You just might, given your phenomenal memory, but I don’t. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure I dreamt of love, enlightenment, adventure and art—and that you did, too.

How can I make such a claim? As you undoubtedly recall, after our two-week stint on the roof of the Utopia, I had already heard hours, perhaps even a full day, of your ideas. If that sounds hyperbolic, here’s our mutual friend David Winterburn:

“The main topic on our minds… was the journey east. In this regard, the biggest source of information was a 28 year old from Philadelphia named John Milich, whom I remember sitting cross-legged on a rug up on the roof… surrounded by an attentive group of travelers, espousing on a great number of subjects, including his trip to India in 1970.”

“John loved to talk and… [h]is storytelling was inter-spliced with tidbits of erudition about philosophy, culture and religion that I had never encountered in all my travels… Half sage, half raconteur, he was truly the most fascinating character I had ever met at that point in my life.”

(From left) David Winterburn and this author Doniphan Blair (Americans), Darko Radonovich (Croatian) and Jimmy (Canadian) in Iran, 1972. photo: J. Milich
Largely inspired by your wisdom, John, I decided to make the long, arduous journey to the east, a spiritual as well as a physical peregrination, of course. Indeed, the former lasts a lifetime, which is why I’m writing you.

To make the trip, I joined with you and David, the Yugoslavians and the Dutchmen (notably Darko Radonovich and Hans Van Loo, with whom I’m also still in touch), and fifteen others Europeans and Americans. We each paid $35 to Dolphin, from Berkeley’s Hog Farm Commune, for a ticket on his old Bedford sightseeing bus, which he dubbed the Rainbow Express.

For 23 days, the Rainbow Express took us on a 2,700 mile adventure across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to Kabul. There were harrowing moments, like when its brakes blew out on a mountain pass and the assistant driver had to surf the rocky shoulders to slow us down, or when we were chased from a bath house back to the bus by a passel of boys bombing us with rocks and tomatoes, both in Turkey.

Of course, there were also inspirational events, like when a policeman surprised us at our roadside campfire but then welcomed us and broke out his hashish (also Turkey).

One of the most transcendent moments for me, however, concerns you, John. It transpired on our very first day, within hours of crossing the Bosphorus by ferry, going from Europe to Asia, since the bridge only opened the following year.

We passed under a double rainbow. Given the name of the bus and that we were young romantic hippies, we naturally took it as a magnificent omen. But it only acquired actual insight in my mind when you began reciting, in your deep, sonorous voice, a poem from the book you dug out of my pack (where you were rummaging for some unexplained reason):

“Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all wines flowed and all hearts opened,” you boomed over the Rainbow Express’ 50-mile-per-hour, cruising speed rattle.

It was “A Season in Hell” (1873), one of Arthur Rimbaud’s, if not history’s, greatest poems. In it, he details the loss of innocence, collapse into cynicism and embrace of the Devil, which turns out to be a spot-on profile of a conspiracy enthusiast.

My Dearest John, my question to you is this: Where were all the conspiracies back then? If there are so many conspiracies today, surely there must have been some in 1972.

Indeed, we were nine and three years after Kennedy’s assassination and the supposed moon landings, respectively. The Watergate break-in had just happened (June 17, 1972), and the Vietnam War was raging, as was the Cold War. In fact, India and Pakistan just fought a proxy war in 1971, and we were headed toward that battlefield.

Arthur Rimbaud, the teen titan of poetry, considered romanticism civilization’s great idea, although he was from the French, succeed-through-failure school and went down to spiritual defeat. image: unknown
Given your powers of observation and analysis, your prodigious travels and conversations, not to mention your study of astrology, why didn’t you mention any conspiracies back then?

As you recall, the Rainbow Express broke down north of Tehran in the middle of the Alborz Mountains. As it happens, that was not far from Alamut Castle, ancestral home of the Hashashins, one of history’s most notorious actual conspiratorial groups.

Perpetrators of hundreds of assassinations across the Middle East in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Hashashins gifted us not only the word “assassin” and the strategy of the suicide strike, which al-Qaeda updated for 9/11, but the cynicism and nihilism needed to operate in the realm of conspiracy consciousness.

“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” claimed the Hashashin patriarch Hassan ibn Sabbah.

But as we wandered away from the stalled Rainbow Express and started exploring the canyon and its rushing river, as well as dropping acid (some of us: David, the Yugoslavians and me, but perhaps you as well), secret cabals and demonic forces were the farthest thing from our minds.

Despite being stranded on a barren mountain, in a foreign land, a few miles from the Soviet border, not far from Alamut—and tripping—our prevailing feelings were enjoyment, acceptance and trust.

Indeed, we felt love for each other, for the people of Iran—be it the banker, who helped us score opium the night before and was now partying in the back of the bus with his two young daughters on his knees, or the mechanics working frantically on its engine with only hand tools—and most of the people of the world.

My Dearest John, were you conspiring against us back then? Were you playing the part of an optimistic, loving visionary while secretly believing we were doomed to drown in a sea of nefarious schemes, groups and governments?

From your demeanor and everything you said, I have to conclude a resounding no, which means your conspiracy interests came upon you later.

Milich, in a photo titled 'I love myself', on Crete 1972 shortly before his second journey to India. photo: J. Milich
Many of us are wounded, some severely. Naturally, we repress the trauma to buy the time needed to solve our injury’s riddle.

Some injuries heal easier than others. As deadly or devastating as an accident, attack or disease can be, its causes are usually not shrouded in mystery.

Alas, other insults are more complex. Indeed, those of bourgeois life—being mollycoddled by tolerant but unloving parents, being excluded from in-crowds, relinquishing bohemia to get a straight job—are insidious. To the outside observer, they seem minimal but, because they are perpetrated by family and friends not by enemies or bad luck, they scar deeply and intricately.

Whatever our injury, if we come of age without achieving the inner strength or knowledge to tackle the wisdom worker’s first job—“Know thyself”—we naturally look for a way to scab over our wounds.

Conspiracy fanaticism to the rescue.

Instead of challenging us to improve our thoughts and deeds, or those of our community, we distract ourselves and our community by decrying mysterious forces out to destroy us. The severity of the threat entitles us to attack it with all our public hate and private angst, while appearing to remain dedicated to our community.

Indeed, conspiracists often bond into loving, supportive groups, but to do so they must cast out the other, presenting a problem. Accepting the other, the stranger—even the criminal or enemy—is a core concept of almost all faith traditions.

My Dearest John, you’ve had decades to experiment with conspiracy consciousness and delve deeper than anyone I know. Surely by now, you can see the fruit of your labors and can guess what I am about to say:

Conspiracy consciousness stands in exact opposition to the spiritual path you outlined so eloquently on the roof of the Utopia Hotel, almost fifty years ago.

Although you may profusely protest this pronouncement, hurling heaping helpings of hurtful hate, I’m pretty sure that, in your bones, you know what I am saying.

Conspiracy consciousness is not the way of the Buddha or the shaman. Conspiracy consciousness will never lead to big love or enlightenment or even becoming a functional adult.

The psychological trick of conspiracy consciousness, of directing one’s anger towards an unknown entity, in lieu of looking within to its true origins, will not heal our wounds.

I am reaching out to you today not only to tell you the simple truth about conspiracies and remind you of your brilliance back in the day, but to note a secret revealed to me by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair.

You met my mother many times, of course, but she was reserved back then. Since you undoubtedly did most of the talking, you may not have percieved her views on love, kindness and romance.

From John Milich's India diary, 1972, showing his traveling companions, Barbara (lft) and Daniela (rt), and this author in the lower corner. photo: J. Milich
Fortunately, she has written a book about her experiences during the Holocaust, “Love at the End of the World”, which illustrates how a teenage orphan surmounted a tsunami of suffering, hate and trauma. Although she doesn’t use the term, I call it the Conspiracy of Love both to evoke its radical ideas and to make them crystal clear for you.

During World War II, in the belly of history’s biggest beast, my mother joined a secret society of decent people working diligently, desperately—often until their dying breath—for healing, redemption and love, especially romantic love.

Despite the immensity of the injury and suffering, although she often became deeply depressed, she didn’t descend into cynicism, bitterness and hate. She simply kept hewing as hard as she could to truth, beauty, justice and love.

My Dearest John, given that both your former self and my mother reject conspiracism, shouldn’t you reconsider your position?

The hour is getting late. There are computer conglomerates controlling much of the world, not by virtue of a conspiracy but by people voluntarily participating and providing their secrets.

Trump is president, the Covid-19 pandemic is raging and there are demonstrations in the streets. The earth’s ecosystem and its people’s physical, economic and political well being are under dire threat.

As such, there will be many unhappy people happy to leverage the chaos with conspiracy consciousness, in the hope that greater confusion will bring, if not a revolution, at least a leveling, a bringing down of everyone to their level.

Yes, the forces of good are also rising, from the peaceful protestors to helpful neighbors or conservatives breaking rank to denounce Trump.

Nevertheless, there is a significant chance we are entering an epoch of darkness—not one created by imaginary puppet masters but by us, through our inaction and erroneous analysis.

Although it is not the end times, which is essentially a conspiracy concept, we are obviously in a period of elevated death, economic hardship and political turmoil.

My Dearest John, Won’t you rejoin me in fighting for the love and cooperation you convinced me of on the roof of the Utopia Hotel?

I realize you’re petrified of your inner demons, which undoubtedly involve your father and your sources of income. I realize you have taken up with some very dark energies, as indicated by your Facebook page. I realize change is hard at 76 years of age, and that it might seem like a betrayal of your conspiracy confreres.

But the time for petty differences and denials is done. We must get to work, immediately. Don't tarry another instant in coming back over to the right side of dream, romance and enlightenment, as well as history.

Once you get rolling, once you get back on the Rainbow Express, as it were, I think you will find that all the distrust, lying and hate required by conspiracies is hard, while love, honesty and forgiveness is actually pretty easy. That is because it is the way; it is the way of all flesh; and it is your true self.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair in front of Birkenau, Auschwitz’s death camp, where she was incarcerated for three weeks in 1944, 1980. photo: V. Blair
Part 4: Anti-Jewish Conspiracies and the Conspiracy of Love

The Holocaust arose from a collision of various political, social and psychological forces, a major one of which was conspiracies.

Although Hitler’s hatred of Jewish people was no secret, the Nazis attempted to conceal their extermination conspiracy. They used euphemisms and lies, like claims that the camps were just for labor. They concealed facilities in back woods and through threats of death, and they dolled one up, Terezin in the Czech Republic, with food, schools and cultural facilities. Then they forced the inmates to perform for visiting officials before shipping them to Auschwitz.

In fact, the Third Reich was the ultimate conspiracy kingdom, with almost everyone conspiring against each other: children denouncing parents, underlings their superiors, while Hitler split the Nazis, military and intelligence agencies into endless subgroups to play them against each other.

In standard conspiratorial mirroring, Hitler accused the Jews of conspiring to control not just Germany but the entirety of socialism and capitalism. The latter claim was often bolstered by references to a popular conspiracy theory of the 1930s, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a document which appeared to show that Jews ran international banking (and still used today among anti-Semites).

By 1922, however, journalists had proved “The Protocols” was a forgery by the Russian Tsar’s secret police in 1903. Although those supporting “The Protocols” claimed it was the journalists who were conspiring, the Tsar’s conspirators gave themselves away. Not being writers, nor very intelligent, they plagiarized “The Protocols” from a 30-year-old French political satire, inserting the words Jew, Jewish and Hebrew where appropriate.

“The Protocols” conspiracy theory was readily believed due to the long association of Jews with moneylending. While those accusations were not themselves a conspiracy theory, since a few Jews had started lending money in the 11th century and continued through the Middle Ages, as well as to today, what remains little known is the actual conspiracy perpetrated by Christian authorities against the Jews.

Indeed, both the Christian clerics of the 11th century and the Nazis built their actual conspiracies against the Jews by using conspiracy theories about non-existent Jewish conspiracies.

Lending at interest has been central to almost all civilizations, and Europe was no exception. Although it has been abused as debt slavery, lending at interest more often incentivized the sharing of wealth, enabling poorer people to build businesses, buildings, ships, etc.

Tribes, on the other hand, encourage lending only through the provision of gifts and favors on top of repaying the principal. As a tribal people, the Jews outlawed lending at interest.

Although European Christians inherited that Jewish law from “The Bible”, in practice they were building a civilization and had to have moneylending, which was provided by the bishops, princes and merchants.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair, in addition to working as a nurse in Poland during the war, worked as one after (shown here) in Lansburg Am Lech, Germany, 1947. photo: unknown
But when Christ neglected to return for the millennia, Christian thinkers assumed it must be due to the sin of usury. Hence, they conspired to foist moneylending onto the Jews. Since the Jews were condemned to Hell anyway, lending at interest to them would be no sin. In this way, a few Jews became retail lenders, while the wealthy Christians became their secret central bank, a conspiracy so successful, it remains little known to this day.

The Jews were also attacked with the “blood libel” conspiracy theory, which claimed they used the blood of Christian children to make their high holy days’ matzo, the Christ-killer accusations and other calumnies. (For more on this, see the cineSOURCE article, "Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained".)

With all these conspiracy theories rattling around the European brain, explicitly or through implicit bias, it was amazingly easy not just for Germany but most European countries to pass increasingly severe anti-Semitic laws. First they excluded Jewish people from society; then they forced them into ghettos; finally, they deported them to death camps.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair was 13 when the Germans invaded her hometown of Lodz, Poland, and she turned 19 in Auschwitz, which means she spent the entirety of World War II as a teenager.

While the Nazis mounted the biggest killing machine in history, conspiring to kill as many as possible—leftists, Russians, Slavs, Roma and queers as well as Jews—she attempted to save as many as possible, both working as a nurse and through love, kindness and romance.

In fact, ten of the 37 stories in her book, “Love at the End of the World”, concern actual or aspirational romantic relationships. In reference to Gustav Freulich, whom she tended as he was dying of tuberculosis—therefore, although they held hands, they never kissed—she wrote, “Life had become meaningful again during those desperate times.”

Indeed, the first story she wrote, after enrolling in a writing class and dedicating herself to the task, was “Stefan” (read it here). She met Stefan at the deportation trains and they fell in love, reciting poetry and kissing while crammed in the back of a cattle car on route to Auschwitz.

Many people might say that such romanticism was misguided, given the existential threat. Perhaps she should have wriggled out the cattle car’s tiny window and leapt to freedom, albeit in the middle of Nazi territory, or foraged a piece of metal and stabbed a Nazi. But she was an undernourished teenage girl unschooled in such skills.

She had, however, learned about love from her adoring parents, and she had studied romanticism, like most teenage girls, which even a total war could not interrupt. Au contraire, it inspired her to rise to the occasion and fight to preserve love, to maintain romantic traditions, to appreciate poetry—even inside the greatest killing machine ever assembled.

In fact, my mother became brief friends with a decent German officer and was allowed a life-saving meal by another, suggesting that the Conspiracy of Love also lived on in their hearts, despite the decades of Nazi propaganda and brutality and the years of training and war.

Why didn’t she give into conspiracy thinking, that the world is run by an evil cabal of haters out to exploit, abuse or kill regular people—particularly since she was under the boot of Hitler for those five-and-a-half years? If anyone was entitled to conspiracism, it was her.

Yes, humanity has produced horrors—genocides, conquests, enslavements and all manner of brutalities—but that has not been the majority of the human experience. And we are able to heal from it. While we have used religion, psychotherapy, art and volunteerism to regain our balance, perhaps the most powerful force of all is love, including romantic love and romanticism.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair handing out bread to the people of Plsen, Czech Republic, during the filming of 'Our Holocaust Vacation', to honor the war-time meal they gave her, 1997. photo: N. Blair
An advanced level of the latter would be the Conspiracy of Love, the actual conspiracy of humans doing the right thing, often after doing everything else but still eventually doing it.

Despite claims that might is right, that only the fittest will survive or that hate runs the world, in point of fact the Conspiracy of Love is the dominant force. Obviously, it conceived most of the people on the planet, since a majority are not the product of rapes, and most of the good we enjoy. Indeed, sexual selection begot mating dances, romantic rituals and romanticism, which powers a lot of art, faith and dreams.

Hence, if we are open, tolerant and loving, we can more easily join with like-minded—but not identical—people, communities and tribes, and foster a faster, easier and less violent evolution towards a more functional civilization.

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on Jul 04, 2020 - 04:08 AM
The Kink Tour
by Summer Lawrence

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Madison Young, the guide to Revry.tv's new series 'Submission Possible', experiments with Shibari, Japanese rope bondage. photo: courtesy Revry.tv
OK, SO... QUARANTINE HAS BEEN ROUGH.

After binging all the shows and movies on my regular streaming services, I needed some refreshing new content—something with a little sizzle, perhaps even a sexy element.

Well, Revry.tv, the first LGBTQ+ streaming service, has added a titillating new show “Submission Possible”. An original Revry docu-series, it is beautifully narrated and guided by feminist kink icon and bondage model, Madison Young, who is searching for “the new kink.”

As an enthusiastic and open-minded narrator, Young investigates the new, cutting-edge sexual revolution nation-wide, first stop: New Orleans.

She starts at an iconic spot, a bar called The Phoenix, where she dives into an interview with a leather devotee, Elyse the Beast, asking her about her personal journey as well as New Orleans’ sex culture and community.

Lensed by cinematographers Marion Hill and Ryan Douglass, the episode is an interesting mix of filmic close-ups and relaxed, relatable home-video-esque footage. Although the boom doesn’t ever come into shots, the film crew and the production process feel part of the episode.

On the streets of this hauntingly beautiful city, Young finds that there are many people who have interacted with spirits, which do more than just haunt. Indeed, her interviews lead her to Café Lafitte and Sura Hertzburg, a dance artist, who introduces us to the new world of sex magic.

Young makes a pilgrimage to a special grave in New Orleans' central cemetery. photo: courtesy Revry.tv
Along with Young, we learn about the energy and power of this mysterious, almost supernatural, intimacy. Hertzburg and her partner send out sexual signals for a sensuous rainfall and, after their own personal thunder, they were rewarded with just that.

Next stop: the sex witch and herbalist Gypsi Sandiego. Here the conversation goes more grounded, natural, and elemental. Sandiego introduces Madison to all kinds of peaceful, healing and rewarding herbs, such as blue lotus, which increases circulation, elevates mood and gets you ready for your partner.

She also recommends sage and maypop for communication and ginger and black pepper for stress and improving flow. Along with moon cycles, herbalism seems to enhance relationships sexually as well as emotionally and mentally. Young obviously feels some vibrational and orgasmic effect.

Young learns about sex magic and tarot cards from Ashton Young, no relation. photo: courtesy Revry.tv
Ashton Young, no relation but a fellow kinkster, tells us about candles, crystals and how she decorates her alter. A tarot card reader, she expands on the sex witch concept, how such practitioners develop their power and how consent is always essential.

Indeed, Ashton recalls how her orgasms affected an ex-lover because she was subconsciously sending non-consensual energy. Sex power is “yummy energy,” she says, and something all women deserve to learn about and enjoy.

The adventure culminates in a gathering of all the episode's women discussing their various sexual or spiritual methods, from using oils and herbs to burning candles.

“Submission Possible” approaches kinky sex in a refreshingly honest and curious way. At the end of the episode Young seems more in sync, spiritually and sensually, which inspired this viewer to open her heart and maybe even her legs to a welcoming world of feminist pleasure.

Madison Young experiments with BDSM and femdom arts. photo: courtesy Revry.tv
I would have liked to have seen a bit more of the history of New Orleans, maybe even some historical footage, and perhaps some variation in tone in the course of the episode.

Regardless, “Submission Possible” was a great ride, and it leaves me eager for more. Cheers to the uncovering of more undiscovered kink culture as we become adventurers alongside Madison Young on her titillating mission.

Summer Lawrence is a writer, actress, and filmmaker and can be reached . Posted on Jul 03, 2020 - 11:22 PM
A Great Singer and Story: Ella Fitzgerald
by Karl F. Cohen

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The inimitable Ella Fitzgerald does the Cotton Club, circa 1958. photo: courtesy Leslie Woodhead
FOR A DELIGHTFUL ESCAPE FROM THE
duress of pandemics, discover Ella Fitzgerald’s rich career in music and why they called her The Queen of Jazz, The First Lady of Song, and Lady Ella. The new feature documentary, “Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things” does an outstanding job presenting a heart-warming rags to riches story that goes from the turbulent years following the death of her mother, when she as 15, to her international recognition as a star of major concert halls, movies, TV and radio.

It was directed by Leslie Woodhead known for “Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave” (1999) and “The Day Kennedy Died” (2013) among many others.

Ella grew up experiencing poverty with an abusive step-father and other tragic moments. She ran away from home to live life as a penny-less street waif included dancing on the street for spare change. She fell in with low-life criminals and was sent to a state reform school in Hudson, New York, from which she escaped.

Then, almost overnight, Ella’s luck changed when she was 17. On November 21, 1934 she stepped onto the stage of the Apollo Theatre as a contestant in their amateur night. She was billed as a dancer, but a legend says she was intimidated by a dancing duo she was going to follow. Instead she opted to sing two songs in the style of the Boswell Sisters. She won first prize.

The Apollo’s prize included a week’s engagement, but a biography of her says that didn’t happen. Instead, in January, 1935, she was invited to sing for a week with Tiny Bradshaw and his Orchestra at the Harlem Opera House. That engagement was followed by Chick Webb, who needed a singer for his orchestra, asking Bradshaw for a recommendation. Ella not only got the job, but she stayed with Webb until he died in 1939.

By the time of Webb’s death, she was a well-known radio star who had recorded several hit records. Indeed, she was successful enough to hire Webb’s orchestra and rename it Ella and Her Famous Orchestra. She also was taking gigs performing and recording sessions with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, plus she formed Ella and Her Savoy Eight.

Ella’s strength was a remarkable clear voice and that she could sing many kinds of music. When big band swing lost popularity in the early 1940s, she became a celebrated scat singer with Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Her approach to the new kind of jazz known as Be Bop was summed up when she said, “I just tried to do what I heard the horns in the band doing.”

One of the wonderful segments of the film for me was a long selection of scat solos that is edited together into an amazing demonstration of her vocal and mental abilities. A 1945 review of one of her recordings by a New York Times critic called one of her scat discs “one of the most influential vocal jazz records of the decade” and he praised her “dazzling inventiveness.”

Ella went on to work in other forms of music and to graduate from playing in clubs to singing in major concert halls around the world. The film shows her with many who admired her including Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Tony Bennet.

There is a nice sequence on her in this 90-minute feature with Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was a great fan who went to bat for her and got her a booking at the Mocambo in LA when they rarely hired non-white stars.

When I was in my late teens I fell under the spell of her voice. I have fond memories of playing her music at parties along with a few late night romantic evenings with my girlfriend listening to her sing the love songs of Cole Porter and duets with Louis Armstrong.

Thanks to many interesting brief interviews with people who knew her (musicians, friends, her son) we learn about the many hardships she experienced in a segregated world, her brief marriage to Be Bop bassist Ray Brown, her fight for civil rights, the charity she founded for Black kids, and other aspects of her active life.

Her last public performance was in 1993. She would have gone on if her health had allowed her to do so. She passed away in 1996.

Check out the film’s trailer here, or watch the movie here. The film is shown on the internet thanks to the Roxie Theater, Smith Rafael Film Center and the Rialto Cinemas.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jun 28, 2020 - 06:48 PM
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: July 2020
by Karl F. Cohen

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Hattie McDaniel (rt) and Vivien Leigh in the antiquated and problematic 'Gone with the Wind' (1939). photo: courtesy David O. Selznik
Finding an Acceptable Way to Deal with Offensive Art

Should we ban offensive images, show them with a detailed introduction or simply put a warning that a film or TV show contains political incorrect content?

Disney banned “Song of the South” years ago and no longer distributes it. Apparently they didn’t bother to renew the copyright, hence, non-authorized copies are available for sale on the internet or downloadable free.

“Song of the South” is truly over-the-top politically incorrect. Indeed, while it was being made, Walt Disney ignored detailed warnings from a staff member, Maurice Rapt, assigned to study exactly that.

Rapt told me all about Walt’s wanton disregard, when I interviewed him for my book “Forbidden Animation”. Many others also warned him as well but he dismissed most of their advice.

Now the Splash Mountain ride at Disney theme parks is being criticized for including characters from “Song of the South” on its fake mountain. Are those sculptures really going to upset anybody because they come from an offensive film?

Should We Ban a Racist Classic?

Another reaction to the current unrest is HBO MAX announcing that they are withdrawing “Gone With the Wind” (1939), due to its South-sympathetic and outright racist content.

When I told my aunt, Joan Cohen, a longtime film researcher and a film curator at the LA County Museum in the 1970s, about HBO’s censorship, she emailed me:

“Somehow, rewriting history lets the US off the hook and gives in to too much political correctness. We always have been a racist nation and, hopefully, that is changing. But censoring ‘GWTW’ and Elmer Fudd is not going to change the past. Where do you stop with works of art? Do you cover up nude paintings in museums for children?”

There was enough criticism of HBO’s decision that, a few day later, Variety reported that “‘Gone with the Wind’ will return to HBO Max after ‘careful’ planning,” and, hopefully, a well-researched and -written introduction.

Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny but not with a gun, in the reboot from Looney Tunes. photo: courtesy Looney Tunes
New Looney Tunes Brings Back Classical Fun

HBO has, however, found a fairly uncontested path to renewing a beloved classic.

From what I’ve seen, their new “Max Looney Tunes” cartoons captures the spirit and fun of the originals, although I’ve yet to see the brilliant writing and artwork of the teams headed by Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin and Tex Avery. Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed plenty of overly fast-paced chases, explosions and other historic gags.

I wish the series’ executive producer, Peter Browngardt, good luck finding the right mix of contemporary culture with the aesthetics of the past.

Parody, a basic element in many classic cartoons, has to be updated to be funny for younger audiences. Given fewer people today have much knowledge of opera or classical music, perhaps Bugs and friends can delight us with a rock musical or being a punk or hip hop musician.

Although a basic premise of many Bugs Bunny cartoons is Elmer hunting for rabbit, Browngardt said in an interview that, “Guns are out.” Obviously, a lot more people today are turned off by gun culture than in the1940s and ‘50s.

In the first season of “South Park”, the “Coming Right At Us” episode was quite critical of hunting. Meanwhile, many have repudiated the Trump family’s enjoyment of trophy hunting. Is Elmer hunting Bugs still funny? Times have changed, so can Looney Tunes adopt? I hope so.

An article on the new series noted Browngardt held meetings where writers and artists threw out ideas based on the simplest of premises. “We don’t do scripts,” he said. “I hired cartoonists. So we get them together in a room, and we just draw pictures and gags.”

That sounds more like a script session at the Fleischer studio (developers of Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman). Does he understand what made each director’s work unique, or how their best works were from carefully thought out scripts?

HBO Max is a new streaming service and, from what I’ve seen, they have the good sense not to modernize this show. If you subscribe, you can look forward to shorts with Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, Sylvester, Porky and other animated stars.

Is Bob gay or just very happy?. image: courtesy Steve Hillenburg
Submarine Sexuality?

Is SpongeBob Squarepants gay, and is that a gay pride flag behind him? Nickelodeon has depicted the character in LGBTQ+ colors for Pride month, stimulating still more discussions about his sexuality. Although SpongeBob is 21 and lives under the sea in the legendary city of Bikini Bottom, it is hardly a sex club.

Created by the late Steve Hillenburg, a marine biologist turned animator, the lovable and wildly optimistic SpongeBob is a cook in the Krusty Krab restaurant. His close friend is Patrick Star, a pink starfish who wears floral shorts, resulting in people speculating about his sexuality.

Nevertheless, “We never intended them to be gay,” Hillenburg said in 2005. “I consider them to be almost asexual.”

The assumption that SpongeBob is sexually active off-screen is absurd. He is simply a fictional character with no off-camera life, although there is a lot of merchandise available. Admittedly, SpongeBob does have an onscreen friend who is bisexual, and one of the voice actors is transgender.

The homophobia lobby also created a rumor that Tinky Winky, a star of Teletubbies, was gay because he dressed in purple and carried a red bag that looked like a woman’s purse.

When the tele-evangelist Jerry Falwell alleged that the character was a gay role model in 1999, the BBC replied, "He's not gay. He's not straight. He's just a character in a children's series.” They also noted that his so called purse was a “magic bag.”

Other cartoon characters once rumored to be gay include Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry.

Mark Fiore's recent Trump caricature. image: courtesy M. Fiore
Fiore’s Operation Photo Op

Mark Fiore has been creating his often outrageous political cartoons since the turn of the century. He writes about this one, “I sure hope President Trump’s Lafayette Park escapade is a footnote in his horrible presidency and not the first major salvo in his coming autocracy.”

After it was announced that Muni will no longer take cops to anti-police brutality protests, SFPD said, "We've adjusted our transportation and operations accordingly." Here's Mark's reaction (by the way, it is from KQED's newsletter, which you don’t have to be a member to receive.)

Mark is a real San Francisco treasure. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize a few years ago for what the Pulitzer committee called his "biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues."

Mark’s work also appears locally in the SF Chronicle’s online edition SF Gate.

Paley Honored at Spanish Festival

Cartoon queen supreme Nina Paley is being honored by Animakon, the major animation festival in Bilbao, Spain. Although Europe will open its boarders to other Europeans on July 1st, there will still be a ban on non-Europeans, so she can’t be there. She will probably accept her lifetime achievement award using Skype.

Paley is best known for her film “Sita Sings the Blues” (2001) and she worked in the Bay Area for many years as a cartoonist.

Who would dare tell a pirate story with armless peg-people—Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, of course. image: courtesy John Harvatine & Tom Root
The Robot Chicken People’s New Show

Stoopid Buddy Stoodios' John Harvatine IV and Tom Root, the team behind “Robot Chickens”, created the concept of “Crossing Swords” about a decade ago. Finally somebody at Hulu was silly enough to bring this stop-motion show to a small screen. Most of it was animated last summer and fall before the virus so a full season awaits their fans.

The shows concept was to use “peg people,” which are cute toys designed for preschoolers, and put them into a wacky and wild world where their dialog was written for adults. The episodes are sword and sorcery fantasies and each episode is set in a different environment. Peg people don’t have traditional arms and legs and they move about in unique ways. Hopefully what John and Tom have done with them is engaging to watch.

When they made “Robot Chicken” they learned to make their characters emote and do and say things that you can believe in. They had to use a lot of expressions in the faces and the eyes including blinks and lots of mouth movements since their puppets don’t have any arms to gesture with.

To gesture without arms the puppets somehow gesture with props that they move around. They can point to things if they need to. Wires were used to create movement and wire removal software hid the mechanism. Hopefully you will connect with them.

In one episode the action is a medieval version of Coachella so they created a rock and roll extravaganza. People speak English, but there is no specific location. In an interview the creators said they ignored the rules that creators of TV are required to establish in what is called the show’s “Bible.”

Apparently, in this sword and sorcery world anything can and will happen. Apparently. they got away doing whatever felt right to do to them.

Virtually Tour the Disney Museum

Enjoy taking a virtual tour of a new exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum. When the virus closed down almost everything, the museum decided to go ahead and hang their new show and let us see it in a new way.

You can walk around the complete exhibit using your mouse. Click on each work in the exhibit to get a closer look. You can independently navigate around each gallery space with 360° views.

When you click on a work you get closer and can also read information about the work and the artist. Visit the museum’s website to find the World of Tomorrow exhibit.

The exhibit includes conceptual images from around the world by artists creating paintings, drawings, photographs, and 3D objects. It opened June 10 in the actual museum and online.

“Our vision was to create a unique opportunity for a new kind of exhibition,” according to Executive Director Kirsten Komoroske.

It began as a juried exhibit on the theme of the show. They received hundreds of entries from adult and teen artists from around the world, including India, the UK, Spain, Finland, Romania, Nicaragua, and Australia. The jury selected over 175 works.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jun 23, 2020 - 02:33 AM
Restarting Theaters and Productions
by Karl F. Cohen

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Crowds flock to see a controversial film, in this case Sony's comedy 'The Interview' (2014). photo: courtesy CNN
Three Major Theater Chains to Re-Open

AMC, Regal and Cinemark theaters, our country's three largest chains, plan to reopen from the Covid-19 pandemic closures on July 15th. AMC says they will open 450 halls in the US on that day and 150 more on July 24th.

They will show Disney's “Mulan", a live-action drama derived from Chinese folklore, and Warner Bros.' “Tenet”, the Christopher Nolan spy film, which they predict will be smash hits.

The chains say they will be implementing a wide array of sanitary and social distancing measures, including staggered, separated seating, in order to make customers feel comfortable again.

Despite increasing Covid cases in many states, they are predicting audiences will return in droves.

Covid-19 is mainly an airborne disease, so they have redesigned and are currently refurbishing their ventilation systems to provide 100% fresh air. They will also provide masks and encourage guests to wear them,

AMC will limit seating capacity to 30 percent in non-recliner auditoriums by blocking off every other row. They will sanitize seats and other surfaces between showings and “rearrange concession sales and stands,” although it is hard to know what that really means.

They hope attendance will rise to 50 percent by Labor Day and reach full capacity by Thanksgiving. Are these plans realistic?

What happens if there is a second wave of the Corona virus, which have happened in past pandemics and medical experts think is likely to happen this fall?

AMC, for example, is good at making news, but be careful about what you believe. AMC claimed recently they lost over two billion dollars the first quarter of this year, so they were questioning if they would ever reopen. They said they would never again show films made by Universal because the latter opened two features online for families.

Although it is hard to know the veracity of these claims, it is indisputable is that many of us are getting sick of watching world-class cinema on the small screen and are itching for a theatrical experience—if safe.

Restarting Film and Television Production

The DGA, IATSE, SAG, and Teamsters released their recommendations for ongoing set safety during the Covid-19 pandemic on June 15th, see the 37-page comprehensive guideline.

In it, the unions and guilds reiterated their position that comprehensive, mandatory testing was obligatory to allowing the resumption of production, especially with close contact, multiple actor scenes.

Without it, an entire production would be at risk to one asymptomatic carrier. Especially vulnerable would be the many film professionals over 60, or family members in that age cohort.

"While expensive and likely not real practical for most independent films, it can work for the studios for TV and movies," according to Debbie Brubaker, the premiere indie producer who tackled the topic for cineSOURCE a month ago (see article).

Obviously, the first and almost only factor is testing. This will happen at various levels of frequency, depending upon the "zone."

Zone A is "the set" with actors and crew, like the director, first AD, DP, operator,first AC, onset MU and costumer, etc, They will likely require testing two or three times a week, in addition to frequent taking of temperatures.

Zone B is the area around the set with the rest of the crew: scripty, the video village and art department, hair and makeup, other costumers, craft services and base camp, who will be tested one or two times weekly.

For Zone C, people who don't come into much contact with zones A or B—the production office, background extras (if they only work once)—it would once a week, plus the daily temperature taking.

"The 'Matrix 4' is going to start shooting in Berlin in August," Brubaker continued. "There are a number of films shooting in different places around the globe starting in the fall. Locally, Universal has plans to start shooting on Mare Island, Vallejo, in July."

All of these projects plan to test the cast and crew and then put them into quarantine. They are also recommending 10 hour work days, which, in a perfect world, means 12 hours on and 12 off.

"[The Zones] actually makes some sense and could work," according to Brubaker. "I think the studios have to go first and figure it out. They have the deep pockets for F-ups that indies don't. But the long and the short of it is that they're going back to work."

"In the Bay Area, there's nothing slated before October that I'm aware of. It's an ever changing landscape and all this will depend upon people's behavior."

"If we behave, we can work," concluded Brubaker. "If people go to bars and gyms and don't practice 'safe six' [feet social distancing] and don't wash their hands or stay mostly at home, then we won't be working so much."

Without robust testing, cases are only recognized days after people shed the virus. In addition to jeopardizing cast and crew, it could lead to costly production shutdowns as well as drastic increases production insurance.

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on Jun 23, 2020 - 01:39 AM
To Live and Die in West Oakland: Mark Zaffron
by Doniphan Blair

NOTE: This was written in March, 2014

UP TO 30 PEOPLE ARE MURDERED
in West Oakland in any given year and dozens more die of more natural causes like old age and disease. But one recent passing of the latter category hit me extra hard. It was my neighbor, right across the hall, Mark Zaffron—only 53 years old.

While street shootings in West Oakland are often commemorated with shrines of candles, balloons and other memorabilia, Mark's death went unmarked, as it were.

A print maker who taught etching and related arts, Mark had a massive hand press in his studio and ran a small distribution company for green printing supplies called CRATE.

After getting back from the holidays in January, I noticed I hadn't seen Mark for a while. Admittedly, he was a bit of an introvert and sometimes our paths didn't cross a lot but when I saw strange people going in and out of the studio, I called the landlord.

"He died," the landlord stated, "at the end of November." When I expressed astonishment and asked if he was going to put up a death notice or information about a funeral, he gave me his response to many of my queries over the last twenty years: disdainful rejection. When I inquired if there was an address for a family to which I might send condolences, he agreed to check but never got back to me.

The landlord did help Mark in his last moments, since he happened to be walking by his door that day in November, heard Mark moaning and facilitated the arrival of the ambulance, albeit not quite quick enough to save Mark from the aneurysm he suffered. But attending to his non-mortal remains appeared to be too much to ask.

Human consciousness, which is better understood as self-consciousness, is often dated to around 40,000 years ago when, instead of leaving their dead for the wolves and vultures, our homo Sapiens forbears began burying them and adding artifacts and other indicators of their life.

The landlord did inform Mark's family, and some relatives came to collect his valuables and make arrangements, but only a few neighbors found out.

Admittedly our building is a live-work, composed largely of singles, artists and craftspeople, who often keep odd hours and have a lot on their mind.

One neighbor, the activist and graphic designer Sandy Sanders, who only met Mark twice in the hall—they both lived there for ten years but he lived on the second floor while Mark lived on the third—happened to notice Mark's diploma from the Art Institute of Chicago in the trash. He fished it out thinking, "No one throws away their diploma, something must be wrong."

When I asked around, quite a few people knew Mark and were shocked to hear he died.

Even though it was two months after his passing, we decided to hold a memorial and I put up notices around the building. About ten people came and, after a brief "Om" chant and lighting of candles and other benedictions, we remembered Mark.

"He always had a big smile for you, when you met him in the hall," another neighbor, Barney Haynes, a video and installation artist, recalled, "Even though as you approached, you could see the weight he was carrying."

I recounted getting to know Mark better over the last year, even though he had been there for ten years, and finally coming into his space for a visit. Although we often borrowed cooking implements or asked each other for little favors, that was a first.

Mark showed me a series of etchings he was working on. They combined images of dilapidated houses, suggestive of West Oakland, overlayed with scientific theories, scratches and other embellishments, which imbued them with a mature style and complexity.

In fact, the series was about to be shipped off to a show in China and Mark had the great fortune to fly over for that event in the fall of 2013.

But even more incredible were the stories of Favianna Rodriguez, the well-known Oakland artist, print maker and social activist who moved into Mark's space. When the family was selling the big hand press in January, she bought it and found out the space was also available.

After doing some renovations, she moved in just before our memorial. Favianna was able to amplify what little we knew about Mark's Southern upbringing and family.

Tragically, Mark's father had died a week after Mark, really burdening the family.

As it happens, Favianna is also an advocate of green printmaking and purchased from the family all of Mark's remaining supplies, paper and ancillary equipment. In fact, she may continue to run his small distribution company.

A greater legacy and memorial for Mark Zaffron could not be found unless it would be the formation of the OAMS—the Oakland Artists Memorial Group—or something like it.

Art was as important as burial practices to the origins of civilization. Alas, little known or solitary artists like Mark Zaffron often die in obscurity unmemorialized by the culture or community to which they committed themselves.

In addition to periodically checking on each other while alive—listening for moans coming from behind doors like our landlord did, OAMS could provide a proper funeral or memorial when we pass, thereby maintaining the level of civilization started by our ancestors 40,000 years ago.

Although Mark Zaffron's spirit and legacy was remembered by us that Thursday in February and will be carried on by Favianna Rodriguez, can we afford to loose other artists and their memories and work in our sometimes lonely and throwaway culture? Posted on Jun 18, 2020 - 01:49 AM
A Queer TV Channel
by Jonah Blechman

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Promo shot from Revery, the new channel from Samsung TV Plus. photo: courtesy Revery
AMID OUR CURRENT UPHEAVAL OVER
race, another group comes to the fore under the auspices of Revry, the first global LGBTQ+ streaming network, which is located in Los Angeles.

Indeed, on June 2nd, Revry launched on Samsung TV Plus, Samsung’s free “smart TV” video service. It brings subscribers instant access to over 120 free channels of entertainment, news, sports and more.

The Revry Channel features hundreds of hours of original as well as licensed LGBTQ+ movies, shows, music, podcasts and related news. As the world’s only Queer-focused TV channel, it will premiere just in time for Pride season, and will be the first and only home for exclusively LGBTQ+ entertainment on Samsung’s Smart TVs.

“We are excited to launch our newest live linear channel on Samsung TV Plus,” said Damian Pelliccione, Revry CEO and Co-Founder. “Given Samsung’s massive reach, we now have the opportunity to touch a broader LGBTQ+ and allied audience through Samsung Smart TVs.”

“We believe representation saves lives, so partnering with Samsung helps us bring our ‘radically inclusive’ entertainment to an even bigger audience, and gives us the chance to change hearts and minds, both inside and outside of the LGBTQ community.”

These diverse perspectives have become the hallmarks of Revry’s “unapologetically queer” programming.

Indeed, it includes a slate of originals such as the GLAAD Media Award recipient “The Category Is”, a Spanish-language documentary series, which explores the vibrant underground ballroom scene in Mexico City; the Wes Anderson-style comedy series, “Sink, Sank, Sunk”, starring Academy Award nominee Laura Linney; the second season of the reality TV series, “Putting On”, starring rising Israeli fashion designer, On Mekahel; and “The Queens”, an insightful documentary about favorites from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (2009): Alaska, Katye, Jinkx Monsoon, and Sharon Needles.

The Revery home page. image: courtesy Revery
In addition to these originals, Revry will be releasing over 100 new titles this Pride season.

In order to optimize the distribution and programming of its live channel, Revry is using Frequency Studio—a cloud-based video platform and channel creation software—to manage, create and distribute the Revry Channel to Samsung.

“Revry continues to have a huge impact on the LGBTQ+ community,” said Blair Harrison, Frequency’s Founder and CEO. “We’re really proud to be working with them to optimize the delivery of Revry’s newest channel to the Samsung TV Plus platform, just in time for Pride 2020.”

For more information or to view a list of Samsung’s 120 channels, please visit Samsung TV Plus, or for Revry, go here.

by Jonah Blechman is a film fanatic and professional public relations agent in Los Angeles, who can be reached . Posted on Jun 05, 2020 - 08:35 AM
Corona’s Impact on the Film Industry
by Debbie Brubaker

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OBVIOUSLY, THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
has devastated movie theaters, perhaps providing the last nail in the coffin long being hammered by streaming. Indeed, box offices world-wide lost billions of dollars in the last two months, while film releases have been pushed back or cancelled, as have festivals.

But fear not. It’s more than likely that the theater attendance collapse will be temporary. Richard Janes had some insight that is probably pretty spot on (go here).

With everyone stuck at home, naturally streaming has achieved an all-time high. Indeed, Netflix, which fortuitously raised its prices in January, saw its stock soar, even on days the Dow dropped. Hulu and Amazon as well as all the new services, like the Disney Channel, have also been banking record profits. But now the beast must be fed.

According to LightShed Partners, a research firm based in New York City, Netflix is “in a unique position to offer fresh content to a global audience that is hungry for in-home entertainment,” (see more here).

And there’s the rub: who is going to produce all that content?

Unfortunately, I can say with some certainty, after following closely various online reports and webinars: Movies and television will be one of the last businesses to "go back" from pandemic.

On May 12th, more than 5,000 SAG-AFTRA and IATSE members tuned in for a virtual town hall with US Representative Adam Schiff of the 28th District, which includes West Hollywood.

Hosted by SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris and IATSE International President Matt Loeb, they discussed the impact of the pandemic, future government relief efforts and the process of getting the entertainment and media industry back to work.

The gist of it was: Carteris and the SAG leaders had no intention of letting their members return to work until there's both robust testing and almost immediate results, or a vaccine.

Matt Loeb concurred. Indeed, they both felt that the different ideas flying around about how to use on set social distancing simply weren't practical, nor would they adequately protect our industry’s workers.

Five days earlier, I sat in on “Viral: A Film Industry Conversation”, with panelists John Sloss, Christine Vachon, John Ridley and Tim League. Interestingly enough, the consensus there was that the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple, HBO, Showtime and FX, as well as the networks, were about to run out of content. Indeed, there would be a crisis if we didn’t get back to work ASAP!

All I could do was laugh. As much as they honestly think that the normal pipeline of projects, which is sometimes years-long, had run dry, the reality is: it would take years to watch all the stuff out there. And that's just what might interest you. If you were to get into shows outside your "wheel house," it might take decades.

But no one wants that to be the case because then there would be no work on the far side of the pandemic. So I'm fine with the fantasy that all the streaming companies and broadcast networks are in danger of running out of content.

What beast do they think they're feeding anyway? Perhaps the reset that the pandemic has forced on pollution, consumerism and working from home should be applied to media. Indeed, it should, if we want the nose of our cultural camel to wriggle under the tent of established precepts and ideologies.

Regardless, the point is that at the end of this thing, while we don't want to be stuck on the inside looking out, it's highly likely we will be. The muscle memory of the work we do and the way we do it is going to be a monster to overcome by cast and crew.

The actors hold the keys to the kingdom, I think. They must feel comfortable doing what actors do—physical contact with other actors on set—although perhaps virus transmission concerns could be mollified in the manner of the porn industry, with rigorous, timely and fully documented testing.

I also read a piece put out by the Florida Film Commission in Florida (go here). It listed the protocols that, if we put them all into place, we could go back to work.

It, too, was laughable.

Essentially, by the time you enacted all the procedures required of the cast and crew, there'd be precious little time to do any work. Rather unreal, it was written by someone who obviously knew enough about the business to be dangerous but not enough to know what the heck they were talking about.

So we're at an impasse here.

Commercials will undoubtedly go back sooner because many of them can be done with reduced crews—some even without actors. Certainly that’s the case with car commercials. I'm sure people will get creative and think of shots, scenes and stuff they can do without cast and crew having to really engage. Animation, of course, can continue.

To be sure, extraordinary efforts can resurrect production. The Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur devised a system of armbands which allowed him to restart “Katla”, a science-fiction series from Netflix, after its mid-March shut down. Meanwhile producer Lucas Foster isolated his crew and cast in Australia to film “Children of the Corn”, from the Stephen King story (see more here)

Since both these steps were costly, it is independent filmmakers who will be the ones most likely take it in the shorts, so to speak.

They'll have to wait for SAG to get on board, if they expect to make a movie that anyone will want to buy, simply because it's all about casting usually. (I say “usually” because there have been some amazing movies with no recognizable talent, but that's the exception, not the norm).

Hence, we'd better be strapping on our seatbelts and biting down on something similar to bullets, cuz it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

But there's always something brewing, even with—maybe especially with—people stuck at home with plenty of time on their hands. This is when the writers amongst us should go to work.

Indeed, I've been hearing about plans being made for indies and other projects for "when we come back."

I guess, at the end of the day, it's a wait-and-see thing. I, for one, am hoping the revised worldview imposed by the virus will stimulate some great work

Debbie Brubaker is a Bay Area-based producer/unit production manager and member of the Directors Guild of America, who also teaches a class in the Cinema Dept. at City College of San Francisco, see her IMDb page or reach her .
Posted on May 23, 2020 - 05:06 AM
Get a Free Corona Test
by Seema Verma

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A nurse administering a Covid-19 test at a drive-in testing facility. photo: Wilfredo Lee
NOTE: The US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in San Francisco asked cineSOURCE to help communicate this crucial corona testing information.

IF YOU HAVE MEDICARE AND WANT TO BE
tested for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the Medicare and Medicaid Administration has good news.

Medicare covers tests with NO out-of-pocket costs. You can get tested in your home, doctor’s office, a local pharmacy or hospital, a nursing home, or a drive-through site. Medicare does not require a doctor’s order for you to get tested.

Testing is particularly important for older people and nursing home residents, who are often among the most vulnerable to Covid-19. Widespread access to testing is a critical precursor to a safe, gradual reopening of America.

When a vaccine for Covid-19 is developed, Medicare will cover that, too.

For Medicare beneficiaries who are homebound and can’t travel, Medicare will pay for a trained laboratory technician to come to your home or residential nursing home to collect a test sample. (This doesn’t apply to people in a skilled nursing facility on a short-term stay under Medicare Part A, as the costs for this test, including sample collection, are already covered as part of the stay.)

If you receive Medicare home health services, your home health nurse can collect a sample during a visit. Nurses working for rural health clinics and federally qualified health clinics also can collect samples in beneficiaries’ homes under certain conditions.

Or you can go to a “parking lot” test site set up by a pharmacy, hospital, or other entity in your community.

We’re doing similar things in the Medicaid program, giving states flexibility to cover parking lot tests as well as tests in beneficiaries’ homes and other community settings.

Seema Verma, of San Francisco's Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, wrote this article. photo: courtesy US Medicare & Medicaid
We also implemented the Families First Medicaid eligibility option, which allows states to cover tests for uninsured people with no cost-sharing. Individuals should contact their state Medicaid agency to apply for this coverage.

Both Medicare and Medicaid cover serology or antibody tests for Covid-19. These tests can help identify who has been exposed to the virus.

Medicare generally covers the entire cost of Covid-19 testing for beneficiaries with Original Medicare. If you’re enrolled in a Medicare Advantage health plan, your plan generally can’t charge you cost-sharing (including deductibles, co-payments, and coinsurance) for Covid-19 tests and the administration of such tests.

In addition, Medicare Advantage plans may not impose prior authorization or other utilization management requirements on the Covid-19 test or specified Covid-19 testing-related services for the duration of the Covid-19 public health emergency.

We have also required that private health issuers and employer group health plans cover Covid-19 testing, and certain related items and services, with no cost-sharing during the pandemic. This includes items and services that result in an order for, or administration of, a Covid-19 diagnostic test in a variety of medical settings, including urgent care visits, emergency room visits, and in-person or telehealth visits to the doctor’s office.

From day one, Medicare has worked to ensure that cost is no barrier to being tested for Covid-19, and to make testing as widely and easily available as possible. As a result, we’ve seen a surge in testing among Medicare beneficiaries. Robust and widespread testing is of paramount importance as we begin easing back into normal life.

You can always get answers to your Medicare questions by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227).

Seema Verma is an administrator at the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in San Francisco and can be reached .
Posted on May 21, 2020 - 11:57 PM
12 Years of cineSOURCE
by Doniphan Blair

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Anthony Lucero, director of the successful Oakland indie, 'East Side Sushi', was cineSOURCE's featured interview in March, 2014, see article. photo: D. Blair
WE ARE IN TRYING TIMES—NO, DUH!—
and my cineSOURCE colleagues and I send our condolences to those who have lost family or friends. Fortunately, Oakland has dodged a bullet—finally—with only 86 Corona deaths across the entire county of Alameda (as of May 20th).

Amid this tragedy and turmoil, however, I do have some good news. Not only did cineSOURCE just celebrate its twelfth birthday in April, we published our 2000th article and garnered our highest monthly readership since 2018.

We also expanded our author pool. It now includes Debbie Brubaker and Bob Sáenz, a renown Bay Area producer and screenwriter, respectively, as well as the French journalist Alex Grardel and English media watcher Claudia Schergna.

Unfortunately, as cineSOURCE has expanded over the last dozen years, more than 1800 American newspapers and magazines have closed and 25,000 journalism jobs disappeared, mostly in smaller markets.

While this leaves a field day for corrupt cops, politicians and civilians, it also diminishes the diversity of our views and our odds of uncovering critical insights.

In such a fraught information arena, we now depend on bloggers, indie news sites and ‘zines, like cineSOURCE.

Although our beat is media, typified by stories like “Corona’s Impact on the Film Industry” or “Tiktok Takes Over”, we also do long-form analysis and investigation, like the recent “Oakland in the Time of Corona” or the 2017 “The Black Panther Filmography”.

cineSOURCE championed Sean Baker (middle) and Chris Bergoch, now of 'Florida Project' fame, from the premier of their also brilliant 'Tangerine' at the 2015 SF International Film Festival (with their star Kiki Rodriguez, right), see article. photo: D. Blair
Moreover, we’ve tackled some serious historical enigmas, in essays like “Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained” or “The Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto”—see "cineSOURCE’s Top Eighteen Articles of All Time" below.

Indeed, over the last dozen years, cineSOURCE has shown itself to punch above its weight as a resource for both information and ideas.

In the latter regard, we have long advocated for radical multiculturalism, as opposed to the race-based variant, and avant-garde analysis, in lieu of hewing to established politics or perspectives. In sum, we mix it up—from topics to target audiences—to provide the well-rounded worldview obligatory to come up with innovations in trying times.

Indeed, I believe such ambidextrous ability will prove essential as we enter the circus of our upcoming electoral contest, which will be unlike anything in memory if not history, a funhouse of “what-about-ism,” where critiques are rebutted by listing opponents' faults, and its crazier cousin, narcissist mirroring.

What this means is that crimes are acquitted simply by claiming absolute innocence and that the accusations are an unmitigated lie fabricated by people, who themselves are sick, Satanists or perhaps even pedophiles. As strange as this may sound to the actually innocent among us, it has become a common argument among the astoundingly large number now espousing the PizzaGate and QAnon conspiracies.

Most respectable reporters as well as people are understandably befuddled by conspiracy theorists, with whom discussion is akin to attempting to squash a blob of mercury. But those of us long residing on the edge of economies and cultures or researching esoteric subjects or meeting with outlaws have had useful training and experience.

Hence the Conspiracy of Love.

After wowing the world with his cutting-edge performance troupe, Suicide Kings, Jamie DeWolf made the spectacular Oakland feature, 'Smoked' (2103), and many scintillating shorts, see article. photo: D. Blair
Drawing on civilization’s greatest tolerance traditions, the Conspiracy of Love is based on ideas espoused by my mother, Tonia Rotkopf Blair, who spent her entire teenage years with a Nazi boot on her neck, but remained a devoted romantic and humanist.

Indeed, I believe I can speak for all my colleagues at cineSOURCE that we are honored to debut our entrance into literary publication with Tonia Rotkopf Blair’s story “Stefan”, from her upcoming book, “Love at the End of the World”, to be released by a London publisher this fall.

In addition, we are organizing “The Great Oak Journey: Oakland to Oklahoma”, a car caravan through some of America’s great cultural centers as well as natural environments, which will allow us to test radical multiculturalism and the Conspiracy of Love by talking about it with folks living faraway from Oakland.

In fact, if nothing else, the Covid-19 pandemic proves that we are all connected, while the burgeoning economic collapse may confirm radical multiculturalism and the Conspiracy of Love.

At any rate, with cineSOURCE doing so well, despite the difficulties, I and my colleagues have a lot to be thankful for.

First of all, we would like to thank you—our readers—the 51, 250 of you who joined with us last month and the even more who may do so this month (please like and share articles).

Secondly, we want to show our appreciation for the writers who contributed two or more articles over the last year: first of all, Don Schwartz with a whopping 94, albeit short documentary reviews, but then Karl Cohen with eleven often extensive surveys of local and international animation, as well as Jerry McDaniel, D Swan, Randy Gordon and now Debbie Brubaker.

After going to Cannes with his first feature, 'Northern Lights' (1979), inventing a unique improvisation system, 'Direct Action, making over 60 features AND still at it at 80, Rob Nilsson fully deserves the title Enfant Terrible-Old Man of Bay Area Indies, see article. photo: D. Blair
Finally, our greatest gratitude goes to those who put their ideas into actions and subscribed since last April (to join their hallowed ranks, go here):

Edgar Ayala, Juliet Bashore, Nicholas Blair, The Camera Museum, Eugene Corr, Eve Edelson, Durand Garcia, Michael Gelbart, Ralph Guggenheim, Gary Halpern, Ashley James, Chris Johnson, Hubert Koenig, Legacy Festival for the Aging, Lisa Loel, Stephen Lowe, Anne Macksoud, Stu Sweetow, Mark Weiman and David Winterburn.

Someone has to take a stand for fresh views on media and culture—it may as well be us.

CineSource’s Top Eighteen Articles of All Time

“The Black Panther Filmography”

“Soros, Jewish Bankers and Interest Explained”

“The Tribe Versus Civilization Manifesto”

“Romanticism and Its Discontents, East & West”

“The Cowboy Versus the Jew: the Saul Zaentz-John Fogerty Saga”

“Holocaust Films/Books: What’s Been Achieved/Missed”

“Was Hitchcock a Misogynist or a Feminist: See Chart”

“Om Prakash Sharma: Painting, Post-Colonialism and Tantra”

Eric Jacobus, writer, director, martial arts expert and stuntman, started in the small city of Redding, segued through Oakland and made it to Hollywood on sheer innovation and chutzpah, see article. photo: D. Blair
“CAN ALL BE FORGIVEN? Art, Sufism and Radical Islam”

“Chairman of the Edit: Walter Murch”

“Cine Collectives Come Back, Finally!”

“The Entertainment Surveillance Complex"

“When Flawed Men Make Awed Art"

“Canyon Cinema, 60s Icon, Moves On"

“Film Manifestos: Hot or Just Hot Air"

“Towards a Rasquache Cinema: Chicano 3rd Cinema"

“The Green Prince of Peace Documentary"

“Steady as She Films: Panzica’s America’s Cup Doc"

Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached . Posted on May 21, 2020 - 08:07 AM
Animation Keeps On Truckin’, Despite Viruses Lurkin’
by Karl F. Cohen

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A scene from 'The Blacklist', the showrunners of which risked a lot by mixing their live-action show with animation. photo: courtesy NBC
NOTE: Cohen has been teaching animation history at San Francisco State remotely, using software provided by iLearn and Zoom.

IT IS NICE TO KNOW ANIMATORS ARE NOT
being forced to collect unemployment. Indeed, they are hard at work.

Perhaps most amazingly, on May 15th NBC’s “The Blacklist” aired its season finale, which mixed animation with live action. In a spectacular creative leap, the show runners dodged the pandemic shutdown's scuttling of a half-shot episode by adding animation. It was an ambitious collaboration stretching from California to England, with a lot of sound recording at the house of star James Spader.

Similarly, “One Day at a Time”, a live-action comedy from Pop TV, will run an animated episode later this month, with all production done remotely, mostly in Canada.

Meanwhile, you will see all the promised new episodes of “The Simpsons”, “Bob’s Burgers” and other shows despite Covid-19 lurking about. Voice actors are using home recording studios to produce the dialogue tracks, just as radio news reporters and commentators are bringing you the latest news from homes and garages converted into mini-sound studios.

Disney, Nickelodeon and other studios say they are managing to successfully work on a remote basis, although it took time to adjust. While the virus has sidelined a lot of live productions, animation studios are meeting production deadlines. I even read that Bento Box, which produces shows for Fox, is actually hiring animators to keep projects on schedule.

Keeping things going has been a major adjustment for a lot of people, including the unsung technology people who have developed the production and communication tools required to keep the world up-to-date with their favorite animated characters. Indeed, studios have worked out deals with all kinds of companies to keep animators working on shows in the safety of their homes.

Will the animation industry be the same after the virus is gone? More or less probably, but that is not the case with theatres.

Scene from 'Trolls World Tour', a new straight-to-streaming release from Universal. photo: courtesy Universal
Theatres may still have to compete with video-on-demand for the right to premiere new Hollywood features, even when the fear of going out to the movies is finally a thing of the past. The reason? The world premiere of “Trolls World Tour” on April 10th was an impressive financial success, according to The Wall Street Journal.

That achievement may soon be changing the way we see movies. Why? The feature has supposedly grossed over $347 million worldwide, which is more than the original “Troll” film did. And, to make Sony’s front office really happy, the studio’s share of the gross is considerably greater since they don't have to give theatre owners a cut.

In the future, families wanting to save money may be quite content renting the latest family film for $19.99 rather than dealing with high priced tickets, overpriced popcorn, baby sitting and parking fees and other costs.

Since then “Scoob!” was released on May 15th, and parents anxious to keep everybody entertained once more rented copies at $19.99 for the weekend, or bought copies for $24.99. This kids’ movie featuring a young Scooby-Doo, was actually scheduled to debut in theatres on that date.

Instead, with Amazon Prime promoting it, “Scoob!” was the most-watched film on that weekend and it did more business than “Trolls” on its opening weekend. (At this point there is no official site keeping track of VOD sales and rentals, so no one is sure how accurate box office figures actually are.)

Do the opinions of critics count during a pandemic? Although neither film was a smashing critical success, that didn’t keep crowds away. “Scoob!” was actually hated by The SF Chronicle’s reviewer, but it appears that doesn’t matter to parents desperate to find something for thier kids to do.

Indeed, while “Scoob!” got a 52% positive score from critics, the public gave it 67%. “Trolls”, on the other hand, received a Rotten Tomato rating of 70% from the critics but only 61% from the public. A $20 rental fee is apparently a bargain if it keeps the kids occupied for 90 minutes; and most kids don't read reviews.

Will VOD releasing of first-run features be the new “normal?” If so, I expect to see more movie theatres go out of business.

But of course, a kids' film would obviously do well if all the schools were closed on its release day. Meanwhile home viewing, by definition, doesn't involve parental escape from the house nor the quality of the big screen or mega sound system that can really enhance some cinematic experiences.

Turning to the smaller screen in your home, most animated series did not have to switch to reruns before their current season was scheduled to end. It may be harder to direct a film with your team of artists working at home, but the show must go on!

Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached . Posted on May 21, 2020 - 05:45 AM
Stefan: Falling in Love on the Train to Hell
by Tonia Rotkopf Blair

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Tonia Rotkopf Blair working as a nurse in the Lodz ghetto, Poland, in 1942. photo: Henryk Ross
This story, from the upcoming book 'Love at the End of the World', from a London publisher, concerns a young woman who remains a romantic, despite being trapped in the Holocaust. Written in 1999, it is one of the first stories she wrote and beautifully expresses her central themes of love, art and hope.

I was already late. The notices, posted on every street corner, said we had to be at the train station by eight in the morning. I was petrified. I tried to run with my little suitcase. It wasn’t heavy, but it slowed me down. The cattle cars were being loaded. The barking of the dogs, held on short leashes, made your blood curdle. People were being pushed into the cars by German soldiers carrying guns with bayonets. “Schnell, schnell,” they were shouting, pacing the platform in their heavy boots, kicking stragglers.

I ran alongside the train, trying to spot a familiar face through the doors of the cattle cars. There was no one I recognized. My heart was racing. I didn’t want to be pushed or kicked by one of the guards. Then I heard my name. “Tonia, Tonia, tutaj, tutaj,” which means “here, here.” Then I saw him. Stefan was leaning out from the wide opening of the car motioning to me. I elbowed through the heavy-coated men and women. His outstretched arm pulled me up from the platform into the crowded train. I felt safe to be with someone I knew.

I knew Stefan, but I had never talked with him. I wouldn’t dare. He was older, maybe twenty-four, educated, handsome, aristocratic-looking—the dream of every young nurse at the Drewnowska Hospital in the Lodz ghetto. I don’t know what his position was at the hospital, but I used to see him near the administration building. I was eighteen, the year was 1944.

Stefan held my hand while squeezing himself, with me following behind, to the farthest end of the car. Clearing a little space, he sat down on the floor, leaning against the wooden corner of the car.

The platform was emptying of the Jewish people. We could see the Germans walking alongside the cars. Then the heavy doors were slammed shut, bolted from the outside. Inside it was stifling hot. Although it was August, we were wearing our winter coats. The announcements said that the Germans were sending us to work camps, so we wanted to be prepared for the cold.

It was dark in the car. There were no lights and no windows. Two rectangular, narrow openings at opposite ends of the car, below the ceiling, covered by two strips of wood, allowed a little air and light to seep through. Our eyes were getting adjusted to the dark, and people began forming little spaces around them, sitting on their belongings.

Stefan drew me down next to him, on the wooden floor, placing our coats behind us. My heart was pounding. It seemed incredible that I was so close to this man. I couldn’t utter a word. Then there was a jolt and the train started moving. The sound of the wheels on the tracks and the rhythmic movements of the train were soothing. It gave us hope—something was happening.

I remember Stefan was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck; a little light coming from above accentuated his sharp profile. We soon became oblivious to the people around us, absorbed in our own world. He was telling me about the Polish writer Maria Konopnicka, and I hesitantly mentioned that I had read her short story, Mendel Gdanski, concerning anti-Semitism. Quietly we recited verses and whispered poems by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland’s most famous poet, who was part Jewish. He told me about his life before the war, about his aspirations. He was holding my hand all this time and, my being so near him, I felt faint. I could hear his heart beat and feel his breath on my hair. The train kept going.

We talked most of the night and sang, barely audibly, Chopin’s song “If I were a bird . . .” We kissed—I felt delirious.

Tonia Rotkopf Blair returning to Auschwitz in 1980, where she was incarcerated in 1944. photo: Vachel Blair
The dawn was breaking and a little light had crept in when we realized the train had stopped moving. People were changing positions from the night, children were crying, two buckets were being filled by our eliminations. We didn’t know where we were. Since Stefan and I were sitting right under the opening, Stefan went on his hands and knees and I stood on his back to try to look through the narrow slot.

Everything appeared gray with a smoky haze covering the barren dirt. The most frightening sight was the tall poles with barbed wire connecting them. Wooden guard booths were situated at intervals. In the distance, structures looking like giant chimneys were visible. My heart sank. A terrible fear enveloped us all. I sat down next to Stefan wanting to crawl into something and obliterate what I had just seen.

Then the doors opened with a tremendous clank, the bright sunlight was blinding; the jarring shouts were penetrating our hearts. Gathering our possessions, we jumped down to the platform. Stefan and I, being younger, did so swiftly; others were brutally pulled down by the guards. It was bewildering.

We stood there close to each other with our little suitcases. German soldiers were shouting orders. They pulled Stefan away from my side. It all happened so quickly. All the men were herded away, leaving the women and children on the wide platform. I saw his proud head turn a little, but he could not see me. We never had a chance to say goodbye.

I later learned this hell was Auschwitz.

Preview copies of this book are available by emailing . Posted on May 20, 2020 - 12:54 AM
Screenwriting Success Outside of LA?
by Bob Sáenz

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Scriptwriter and writer Bob Sáenz. photo: courtesy B. Sáenz
IN THE LATE-'90S, FOR THE FIRST FEW
years of my film career, such as it was, I was an extra—excuse me—a background actor in films and TV pilots shot in the Bay Area.

I was lucky enough to get a recurring gig as a uniformed cop on “Nash Bridges” for its whole six seasons. I even got to talk on screen in the character a few times, but mostly I walked a lot behind Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.

Finally, I got an acting agent in San Francisco and some principal parts on a few commercials and in a few films, but never more than one scene and a few words. It was clear to me, after a few years of scraping by, that I wasn’t going to make a living as an actor.

But I remember reading “Nash Bridges” scripts and thinking, “Hey, I can do this.” So, I got some screenwriting software and went to town. Had no idea what I was doing.

What I eventually found out is I was a much better writer than actor. I decided to concentrate on that while still walking behind movie stars to make some money.

When I first decided I wanted try my hand at screenwriting and let some people on set know, I was told by more than few of those people, “You have to be in LA to have a career as a screenwriter. You can’t live here in the Bay Area and succeed.”

My answer was, as it is every time someone tells me I can’t do something, “Why not?”

20 years later, with 14 produced films with my name on them as writer, four other film scripts sold and not made yet, one TV pilot sold, and an agent and a manager in LA, I’ve done what I intended.

I made a living at this and proved those people wrong at the same time.

A scene from Sáenz's 'Extracurricular Activities', directed by Jay Lowi, with actors (lft-rt) Colin Ford, Danielle Macdonald and Paul Iacono. photo: courtesy J. Lowi
I still don’t live in LA. I live in the East Bay. Yes, before this pandemic I had to go down to Southern California once a month or so for meetings and, yes, it was on my dime. And, indeed, that can get expensive. But it’s part of the cost of being in the screenwriting business.

When I first started getting my work noticed by producers, I never said “Oh, by the way, I don’t live in LA.” When they said they wanted to meet with me, I said, “Tell me when, and I’ll be there.” It wasn’t until I was face to face with them that the truth about my address was mentioned.

They didn’t care. They liked what I had. I never lied to them. I just never mentioned it. You don’t need to either.

The first thing a reader or producer or production exec reads on your script is the title page. The name of your film or pilot, your name, and your contact info at the bottom, which these days is just an email address.

There’s zero indication where you live or where the room or coffee shop was where you wrote it.

If you queried them for the read, there was nothing in your query about where you live. At least I hope not—if there was, get rid of it.

Producers and reps care about one thing. The story. The film you want them to see as they read. That’s what they option or buy. They never reject a script they loved because the writer didn’t have an LA zip code.

Having a script they want isn’t easy, of course. But I had one. I wrote an out-of-the-box black comedy thriller called “Orphans.” It’s about a high school junior whose after-school job is killing parents for his classmates.

The poster for 'Extracurricular Activities'. image: courtesy J. Lowi
It opened every door in Hollywood for me. I never really intended for it to get made because it was so weird and controversial. What I did want was for it to be my resume, telling producers and reps what I could do in my own unique writing voice.

It worked.

“Orphans” was optioned eight different times over 18 years, to a variety of producers, directors, production companies, and one studio. None of them made it. Well, none of the first seven. The eighth did make it under the title “Extracurricular Activities”, and it was in theaters in May of 2019. Then went to VOD and now is free on Amazon Prime.

I’m proud of it, and it’s a good, funny, strange film. And it hit screens a mere 18 years after I originally wrote it.

During that 18 years, nobody involved in any of the options or in making it cared where I lived. In fact, the producers of “Extracurricular Activities” actually toyed with the idea of shooting it in the Bay Area. They didn’t, but it was nice to think about.

Also during that 18 years, I was selling other scripts and getting paid writing assignments from production companies and producers on a regular basis. All based on that one script. It’s still paying me off, to be honest.

If you’re writing and living out of Hollywood, stop worrying about whether it makes a difference. It doesn’t for film. At all.

For TV, if you want to work in writers’ rooms? Before this Covid-19 thing, you did have to live in LA. Now, I’m not even sure about that.

I have friends that are TV writers who are now meeting in virtual writers’ rooms for their various series at home. If that stays the norm, TV writers could work from anywhere, too. We’ll see where it goes.

Since the beginning of the lockdown, I’ve had more than a few Zoom conferences with producers, two paid rewrite jobs, a greenlight on one of my films, an option on my horror script, made progress on a new original spec script… and never left my home.

It’s a brave new world out there for writers. The need for content is high. If you have a low-budget film script—meaning a one to five million-dollar budget—there are all kinds of producers looking for it, if it’s the right one.

The cover of Sáenz's 'That’s Not the Way It Works'. image: courtesy B. Sáenz
Now is the time, while these producers are as stuck in their homes, as you are in yours, to query them with your projects.

Why low budget? Because no one right now is looking for big-budget films. No one. Not even the studios. It’s a sign of the times.

There are great examples of query letters online or… you can find examples in my screenwriting book, “That’s Not the Way It Works: a no-nonsense guide to the craft and business of screenwriting.” It’s available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, or anywhere online that sells books.

Also in the book: how to find producers to query, how to network online, and many other aspects of the business end of screenwriting based on my experience over the last 20 years.

You can succeed living where you are as a screenwriter. That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about. You still have to worry about writing a great script that producers can’t put down. That’s not easy and it’s a lot of hard, time-consuming work, but successful writers do it. I did it.

If I did, you can, too.

Bob Sáenz is a screenwriter and writer living in the East Bay whose IMDb page can be viewed here and can be reached .

Posted on May 16, 2020 - 07:22 PM
Memorial for Ned Kopp
by Debbie Brubaker

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One of the Bay Area's premier assistant directors and production manager, Ned Kopp, hard at work. photo: courtesy N. Kopp
ON TUESDAY, MAY 5th, 2020, NED KOPP,
a local producer, unit production manager and first assistant director, who also taught film production at San Jose State University, passed away at home after a battle with cancer.

He was 84 and is survived by his wife, Pat, daughter, Teri Anne, and son, Thomas.

A big bear of a guy with a bushy mustache and friendly manner, I got to know Ned in the late-1990s, and we became close friends.

Essentially Ned took me under his wing, had my back at every turn and was always a trustworthy and helpful guide. Indeed, he talked me into joining the Directors Guild of America (DGA) and shaped my career, earning my eternal gratitude as well as friendship.

We worked together on a number of projects and always had a blast, even—indeed, especially—on some tough shows when camaraderie and cooperation is crucial.

Ned was born Edward Kopp, Jr. on July 16th, 1935 and grew up in the Bay Area, attending the College of San Mateo and then SF State, where he graduated in 1962.

He found his way into the movie business as a camera assistant, which is the position he held on George Lucas’s first outing, “THX 1138”, in 1971.

Ned became a first assistant director and unit production manager, while still doing occasional camera assisting. He loved the movie business and, in 1973, founded his own piece of the pie, Ned Kopp and Company. His company served as a pass through for a number of projects, in addition to producing commercials and mentoring students.

Ned Kopp (right) with his student team at San Jose State University, 2009. photo: D. Blair
Ned was also best known for working on many notable motion pictures, including as first assistant director on “American Graffiti” in 1972. If you have ever gone into a Mel’s Diner, there were wall murals featuring production photographs of the making of the film. Among them is a memorable one of Ned behind the bar, with some cast and crew.

Ned lamented on at least one occasion that he’d been offered points in the film in lieu of some pay. He took the pay and the rest is history.

Ned worked on many memorable pictures, such as “The Godfather” (1972), “Shoot the Moon” (1982), “The Black Stallion” (1979) and “The Black Stallion Returns” four years later. He was also the production supervisor on the Bond film “View to a Kill” (1985), which shot all over SF and produced a slew of interesting anecdotes.

"Everything was very first class," claimed Kopp, who hired the local crew, stunt people and caterers as well as arranged all the Bay Area locations, according to reporter G. Allen Johnson (SF Chronicle, 5/12/20).

"No yelling, no moaning or groaning or screaming. Everyone was very organized, very quiet, very matter of fact, whether it was a stunt scene involving car crashes or a dialogue scene."

"We shot 24 hours a day, the first unit shot during the day, and the second unit, which was most of the stunts—chase down Market Street, chase across the Lefty O'Doul Bridge—most of that happened at night… I'd take a nap during the day at various times.”

Then, when setting up for the fight between the stuntmen playing star Roger Moore and his nemesis (played by Christopher Walken) on the top of a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge, an equipment case fell down an elevator shaft. To get it back, a bridge worker had to be bribed.

"’There was an item in the petty cash for 'miscellaneous,' Kopp said. 'I later found out [it] was for a few cases of Heineken beer for the fellow who went down the shaft to get the case back.’"

In his later years Ned produced several indie features, notably “Swing” (2003), “Super Hero Party Clown” (2010) and “Brujo” (2019). Already in his late-70s, he production supervised the not-easy “Quest: The Truth Always Rises” (2017).

Ned was one of the founding members of the DGA’s San Francisco Coordinating Committee and an active member of the union.

Ned Kopp (center back) on the set of "American Graffiti', in 1973. photo: courtesy G. Lucas
In addition to all his film and TV work, Ned taught part-time at San Jose State University, in their Film Production Department. He was easy going, a mentor to many, and accessible. Indeed, he was always happy to answer questions about “what to do?” when issues would arise for students and professionals alike.

In the summer, the school started running its own production company, South Bay Film Studios, which would shoot an entirely student-made feature, except with Ned as the line producer.

The films were so good their 2005 outing, “Drifting Elegant”, premiered at the Mill Valley Film Festival, “GloryBoyDays” (2006) premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, and they even got DVD distribution, with Cineplex and Cinematic Media buying films.

One of his best take-away mottos was, “If it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen.” He will be sorely missed. RIP Ned Kopp.

Debbie Brubaker is a Bay Area-based producer/unit production manager and member of the Directors Guild of America, who also teaches a class in the Cinema Dept. at City College of San Francisco, see her IMDb page or reach her .
Posted on May 14, 2020 - 09:07 PM
Tiktok Takes Over
by Doniphan Blair

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Loren Gray, Tiktok’s long reigning queen, who started charting on the app when she was 13. photo: courtesy L. Gray
NOTE: Sadly, as with many social media apps, Tiktok has been infiltrated by haters and white supremacists, although the under-200 reported postings is minimal compared to the millions of users, see article.

WITH MOST OF US SHELTERING IN PLACE
during the pandemic, traffic has increased on Facebook and Google, but only about 15%. Meanwhile, Zoom and HouseParty have emerged as the business and personal group meeting platforms of note.

But the brand new app for that, the truly fresh universe-in-your-phone—the Queen of the Corona, as it were—is Tiktok.

Since starting three years ago, Tiktok doubled last year, skyrocketed two months ago and is now counting almost a BILLION users. Originally targeting kids—indeed, 16 to 24 years olds comprise some 40% and up to 60% in the US—Tiktok is now the fourth most popular app on the planet, downloaded 750 million times last year!

Designed to make short videos and learn dances or songs, Tiktok has a ton of tools, including a sophisticate slow-motion function, for learning steps or lip-syncing, a split-screen for duets and lots of effects. Another button lets you “borrow” any Tiktok track, music or voice, which makes it radically multicultural.

Indeed, a popular Tiktok trick is lip-syncing previous Tiktoks: lily-white women reprising performances by gravelly-voiced black comedians, men doing toddlers, etc.

While such ventriloquism would be verboten anywhere else—raising the massive red flag of cultural appropriation, if not copyright lawsuits—not on Tiktok.

Actually, it is the center of the story. On Tiktok we are all equal, able to contribute, reenact or reveal, kids, commoners or celebs alike.

Although you’re legally required to be 16 to board the ride, Tiktok was first adopted by kids, many of whom resent the adult invasion. Alas, as noted, appropriation is at the heart of Tiktok.

There’s also a lot of talk on Tiktok of becoming “Tiktok famous.” If something catches the community’s fancy, they’ll shoot it 10,000 views or more within a matter of days. This frequently shocks the clip’s creator, often a bored-out-of-her-mind mother, or subject, a crotchety elder or some other odd character.

One such unlikely personage was Lil Nas X, country music's newest super star, who happens to be black and gay but whose “Old Town Road” spent 19 weeks at number one on the country charts last year. He owes it to Tiktok, where he first went viral in early 2019.

Charli D'Amelio, Tiktok's new queen, who is only 16, apparently has a sense of self-effacing humor. photo: courtesy C. D'Amelio
Indeed, most of the stars in Tiktok heaven are singers, starting with Charli D'Amelio, a 16-year-old Connecticut woman who also dances and earned a cameo in a Super Bowl commercial last year. As of April, she had 41.4 million followers.

She is followed closely by Loren Gray, Tiktok’s previous queen, now with “only” 41.3 million acolytes. Gray first charted when she was 13, lip-syncing on musical.ly, Tiktok’s predecessor. Last year, she released her first single, "Can't Do It", a slick effort that brought accusations of "borrowing" from Billie Eilish.

Then comes Riyaz Afreen, a 17-year-old Indian actor, who likes to host other Indian celebs; Baby Ariel, a 19-year-old American, who also started on musical.ly, was named one of the internet’s biggest influencers by Time, in 2017, and now appears on the Disney Channel; and Addison Rae, also 19, who dances and lip-syncs.

In sixth place is the old man, Spencer X, a beatboxer (meaning he makes music with his mouth), who is 28, has 25.9 million followers and is sponsored by the energy drink Moster.

Before the pandemic, adult Tiktokers often included nurses, firefighters and US soldiers, since they like to kill time creatively between emergencies.

As Tiktok skyrocketed quite a few celebrities hopped onboard, ranging from Amy Schumer, Arianna Grande and Britney Spears to Kevin Hart, Tommy Lee and The Rock. Heck, I recently saw Anthony Hopkins, the 82-year-old English actor, doing a little dance in his living room.

Some celebs think it’s enough to show their face and wish us well, but others put serious thought into their one-minute-and-under pieces—seasoned Tockers frequently go longer and make you subscribe to get their reveal in part two.

Cute kids and animals are another pillar of the platform. But it is people dancing, often in large synchronized groups, or telling stories, some extremely personal, that seem to be its backbone—along with humor. The latter ranges from pranks to presidential parodies and talking dogs (which probably involves feeding them peanut butter to get the vigorous chewing that can be synced to speech).