“for the life and progress toward well-being…”
I came across this spectacular short film. I don’t know how long it is (barely 8 minutes?) because I was so engrossed in it the entire time. I experienced one of those blessed moments when we forget time. I enjoyed it for many reasons but primarily because it was wonderful storytelling in every aspect.
This morning I woke up very early to work on an essay about how social media has destroyed the word art beyond repair. What am I to do with this state of the world? Am I? The very tools that were supposed to help us innovate have become just one more way to destroy that which is REAL and innovative. I have been working on this essay for some weeks now. Words come and go. I am cognizant enough to know when it is my ego trying to assert a point (that’s when I stop writing unless my intention is that to make a personal point) and when I am just a conduit who must share a universal truth. How Grand must be the Source from where eternal Truths keep flowing! for it comes together ever so slowly. So, having serendipitously discovered this short moving film I had to save it for myself at the Vault. I hope you too will find it valuable.
I am not sure if the embedded video will open for those subscribed. I was informed it doesn’t show up within a post if it is a youtube video but this is vimeo so I hope it does. Please do click on it and see it in a new window.
It also reminded me of the following by Leo Tolstoy from his essay “What is Art?” which is akin to my own view and understanding about Art with a capital “A”.
Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.
Here is to the guardians of Real!
~a.q.s.
MAN AND BEAST from peter simonite on Vimeo.
Please Support Panthera:
http://www.panthera.org/people/alan-rabinowitz-phd
Dir – Dante Ariola
Producer – Natalie G. Hill
DP – Jeff Cronenweth
2nd unit DP – Peter Simonite
Production Designer – Christopher Glass
full credits:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2303634/fullcredits
Thanks for sharing this film and also for throwing the cloak of Tolstoy’s challenging vision of art over it as context. Tolstoy kept his moral aims for human well-being consciously close, as this filmmaker and advocate/activist does for the well-being of animals. People such as Rabinowitz show that the union of feeling Tolstoy refers to can sometimes cross the divide between species, if the gates of understanding are opened.
~lucy