This week, in addition to hustling to finish Battle for Brooklyn, we have been working on an EPK (electronic press kit) for a Danish singer named Agnes Obel. Agnes moved to Berlin to be creative, and over the course of a few years she put together an album of seemingly simple songs based around piano melodies and singing. I write...
When I was a freshman in high school, I became somewhat obsessed with photography. I was "that guy" who took most of the pictures for the school paper and the yearbook. I knew that I wanted to be a photographer, but I didn't want to go to art school, or journalism school for that matter. I intuitively knew that it...
This fall, as the pace of education"reform" in New York cranked up, I started to pay more attention to what was going on. With two children in my local public school, I quickly realized that the more I looked, the less I liked what I saw. I began to write about the subject to try to get my head around...
Today is the 5th anniversary of my father's death. My mom seems to be trying to join him. Yesterday she fell on some steps and cut her head badly enough to require staples. After poking, prodding, and some cat scans it was determined that she had suffered no long term damage. I wasn't around - she's in NC and I...
If you’ve been to a protest in the last 10 years, you’ve likely heard the chant, “The people, united, will never be defeated.” The opposite is true as well. When the government pits community against community, as it is now doing in the process of promoting charter schools designed to compete with community schools, it's important to...
The internet is a terrible place to discuss ideas and work out complex feelings. Yet, in our hyper busy culture we seem to fall back on it more and more. It's difficult to make time for a community meeting, but we end up having our days taken over by comment wars. Over the last couple of years I have followed...
Most of the films that we make are in some way about the flow of information. We tend to follow stories about people who butt up against the power structures. In general they seem to get treated poorly by the mainstream media. So when I see and hear the media piling on Assange, I try not to...
About 8 months ago my good friend Bob Ray sent me a cut of his documentary "Total Badass". The cut was a bit of a mess but it was clear that there was a pretty amazing tale unfolding. Tonight i saw the final cut at a screening in Brooklyn and I was shocked at how much he had been able...
I have been extremely busy with finishing the Battle of Brooklyn- as well as taking care of my kids, so I haven't had much time to focus on Donor 67. However, today an old friend, who i hadn't seen in years stopped by. He was a donor in college and introduced me to the lab. A couple of years ago...