sparrow songs
Sparrow Songs. Linked to it a couple months ago because I found the "Porn Star Karaoke" episode so arresting, but now that the series is over and I've seen every episode I feel it's definitely worth mentioning again.
The concept? Alex Jablonski and Michael Totten, two young filmmakers in southern California, put together a short documentary every month, funded entirely out of their own pockets. The result could have been disjointed and clumsy in a gimmicky way, as many such projects tend to be, but somehow it isn't. There's a contemplative, deliberate subtlety to each short that is profoundly affecting.
Despite great diversity in tone, theme, and subject matter, the one unifying element to each of the twelve shorts (as a plethora of film reviewers have already noted) is a deep and honest compassion for the people they portray. It comes out in the littlest things: a lingering shot of a paper plate, a B-roll clip of a nervous pre-interview smile, a glimpse of a chess player compulsively punching the time clock as he waits for a game. The series is a love letter to everyday America in all its different flavors. A love letter that does not apotheosize its subjects as icons or messages or victims but merely says, "Thank you for being you."
Episode 5, "The Donut Shop," isn't the most compelling Sparrow Songs short--that would be "Fall Begins in Trona, CA," about high school football in a dying highway town, or "L'Arche," about a Christian community for disabled people and caretakers, or the previously mentioned "Porn Star Karaoke"--but it's the one that, for me, hit closest to home.
Sparrow Songs - Episode 5 - The Donut Shop from Sparrow Songs on Vimeo.
I sleep late, eat late, work late. I spend a fair amount of time alone in late-night coffeeshops, donut shops, bodegas. Tang's Donuts may be across the continent from where I live but this is it. This is the contemporary Nighthawks. This is where I go. This is where I am.
There is also a blog. Sometimes the filmmaker commentary is as poignant as the films themselves.
The concept? Alex Jablonski and Michael Totten, two young filmmakers in southern California, put together a short documentary every month, funded entirely out of their own pockets. The result could have been disjointed and clumsy in a gimmicky way, as many such projects tend to be, but somehow it isn't. There's a contemplative, deliberate subtlety to each short that is profoundly affecting.
Despite great diversity in tone, theme, and subject matter, the one unifying element to each of the twelve shorts (as a plethora of film reviewers have already noted) is a deep and honest compassion for the people they portray. It comes out in the littlest things: a lingering shot of a paper plate, a B-roll clip of a nervous pre-interview smile, a glimpse of a chess player compulsively punching the time clock as he waits for a game. The series is a love letter to everyday America in all its different flavors. A love letter that does not apotheosize its subjects as icons or messages or victims but merely says, "Thank you for being you."
Episode 5, "The Donut Shop," isn't the most compelling Sparrow Songs short--that would be "Fall Begins in Trona, CA," about high school football in a dying highway town, or "L'Arche," about a Christian community for disabled people and caretakers, or the previously mentioned "Porn Star Karaoke"--but it's the one that, for me, hit closest to home.
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
Sparrow Songs - Episode 5 - The Donut Shop from Sparrow Songs on Vimeo.
I sleep late, eat late, work late. I spend a fair amount of time alone in late-night coffeeshops, donut shops, bodegas. Tang's Donuts may be across the continent from where I live but this is it. This is the contemporary Nighthawks. This is where I go. This is where I am.
There is also a blog. Sometimes the filmmaker commentary is as poignant as the films themselves.