Last night I spent a little time going over a grant application for film funding. Years ago, I gave up on applying for grants because we never got them- literally- in our first ten years of applying, we got none. The one positive thing about the process is that it does force one to do the work of articulating what...
The Commons Trailer from rumur on Vimeo. When I start a new project, I rarely have a full understanding of how it connects to our other work. However, I have spent the last few years taking stock of what we’ve done, and where we are heading, and there are a lot of patterns that have emerged that make the decision-making process...
I probably should not admit it, but I have not been to the doctor in 6 years. I’m healthy, exercise, eat right, cut my drinking to an occasional beer or two, and I do a lot of work to understand what’s going on with me emotionally. I’m admitting it because I have just been in the hospital ICU...
Sarno can't save you. His ideas and his work can point you in the right direction, but in the end, no doctor can heal us; they can only help us heal ourselves. The truth is, you can save yourself by shifting your perspective to focus a little more on your emotional health rather than just your physical health. When...
We woke up this morning and did a 10 minute gratitude meditation As it finished I reflected on the importance of practice, and how practice leads to growth and resilience. Every time I head out for a run I have to overcome my initial resistance. For the first half mile I almost always have a powerful desire to stop, coupled...
In early December I posted a radiant image of my mother on the first night of Chanukah. She got a lot of positive feedback on that image; maybe too much. A week later on her birthday so many people wrote to her about the picture that it kind of overwhelmed her. Turning 84 was hard enough on her...
A couple of years ago, I wrote "A Letter to Young Photographers". This post is meant to build on that idea, but with a more expansive focus. In the last few days, I've been pulled back to my archives of older work because a friend, Bill Siegel, passed away suddenly. He was a great filmmaker ("The Weather Underground" and...
All through the process of making All The Rage we have had a series of fortuitous coincidences take place. Shortly after I got up off the floor from my last attack of back problems I was taking notes at my desk, charting all of the people that we needed to contact in order to make the film. The first name...
For many people who struggle with TMS, our relationships with our parents play a role in our need to achieve and excel. Oftentimes, the import of achieving isn’t communicated directly, or even intentionally, by our parents. Yet, we harbor both conscious and unconscious anger that they forced us into a role we didn’t want to play - a role we...
A few years ago I went to the dentist and wrote about meditation practice. The other morning I went again and found myself thinking about meditation in a slightly different manner. About a week ago I saw a post about Sam Harris' meditation app and downloaded it. Well over a decade ago my partners and I shot a series of...
Before I made films, I made photographs, and those photographs were related to documentation. My first shoot was at a Klan rally and my first project was documenting people in malls. At around the same time, I also started to shoot bands and that gave me the first real outlet for my work. Sharing those images with fanzines and with...
Most stereotypes have some truth to them -but it’s how those shreds of truth are twisted that leads to the kind of dehumanization that is seen in this ad. My father, who was Jewish, didn't love money so much as he hated to spend it. We got our winter coats in May (when they were practically giving them away) and...