"Street Legacy" Documentary, Broll Cinematographer

During the summer of 2022 I had the opportunity to work with fantastic up-and-coming film director Hunter Gregory Scheidt on the project "Street Legacy" as a b-roll contributor. I had my hands in some of the pre-production too!

Presented by Bar Seven Seven productions, Hunter's film outlines the "Street Legacy" street art exhibition at the Escondido Arts Center, curated by Tribal Streetwear's very own Bobby Ruiz and art professor and critic Jim Daichendt. Check out the doc, below:

And more info. is available here in this article by Toby Franklin.

Podcast: Robbie and James Talk Music, Episode 1

I'm really pleased to announce that writing professor and colleague Robbie Maakestad and I started a podcast in which we chat about the music we enjoy listening to. It's something we always do casually since we enjoy sharing music and playlists, so it felt natural to document and share it in this way! 

And since I was pre-school age I always wanted to be a DJ, so this is a fun outlet for that old ambition.

In this first episode (part 1 of 2), we chat about our musical influences. Thanks for checking it out!

link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0eVN9k1YAmZvAaV8owACLo

"'In the Dark Places, Getting Burned': Portrayals of Street Culture in Taiwan Cinema Today"

It is a pleasure to share this recent publication:

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jcfs-2021-0022/html

Abstract

Street culture is represented in two mid-2010 Taiwan films, The Kids 小孩 (Xiaohai, 2015) and Thanatos, Drunk 醉.生夢死 (Zui sheng meng shi 2015), in such stunning and beautiful ways that this essay sets out to etch each of them not only into the annals of Taiwan’s most memorable urban films ever made, but also position them as essential texts within the emergent field of street culture more broadly. Both movies depict physical and ideological boundaries that separate urban spaces from Taiwanese culture at large, and reveal the extent to which their young protagonists are perceived as “abnormal” even as they use street literacy in sophisticated ways to interact with formal actors (such as school teachers and the police) and informal actors (such as hooligans and petty criminals). These two films arguably present the best vantage point to understand the peripheral status of Taiwan’s urban young people who do not conform to hegemonic norms.

Thanatos, Drunk 醉.生夢死 movie poster.

Interview with Devyn Bisson, Director of The Wave I Ride (2015)

Interview with Devyn Bisson, Director of The Wave I Ride (2015)

Interviews with Students: History and Culture of Surfing

History and Culture of Surfing course interviews with students: 

LIT4090: History and Culture of Surfing

This semester (Fall 2020) I am pleased to have the opportunity to teach a special topics class alongside colleague Dr. Ben Cater on the history and culture of surfing. My section of the course will focus on surf cinema which is a passion of mine as well as a topic I've written about previously on this blog. I look forward to updating this blog with updates, reviews, and interviews throughout the semester.

Sundance Film Festival 2020, Thurs.1/30 & Fri. 1/31

Park City, Sundance 2020

Thursday 1/30

Possessor (Cronenberg, 2019) was the most thought-provoking film of the festival for me this year, and I wrote a bit about it yesterday—please check it out (link here) on my blog if you get the chance. Miss Juneteenth (Peoples, 2020) was fine and the Documentary Shorts Program 1 included an important doc on the 2019 Hong Kong protests: “Do Not Split” by Anderson Hammer. 

Friday 1/31 

Us Kids (Snyder, 2020) powerfully documents the aftermath of the Parkland’s Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Finished up the festival with a bit of levity—the Animation Spotlight was filled with humor and insanity, a nice reminder to stop trying to figure everything out. Loved “Sh_t Happens,” “Daytime Noir,” and “Eli.”