They are known as the Black Hebrew Israelites. A community of 300 African Americans who at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, uprooted their Chicago community in search of sanctity abroad. Finding their home in the Negev Desert of Israel, the community forged a new culture, blossoming into a flourishing village of over 5,000 citizens today. Their community, known as the Village of Peace is founded upon the virtues of health, family and enlightenment.

Drawing their practices from the Torah (Old Testament), The Black Israelties do not consider themselves “Jewish” in the conventional sense, although their practices are influenced by the ancient text. Self-sustaining, self-governed and self-educated, the community has managed to exclude many of society’s ills from their livelihood. With no guns, no gambling, and no homelessness or alcoholism, the seemingly utopian lifestyle of the Black Israelites allows us to reconsider the values of our own culture at home.

Traveling to Israel in the Summer of 2010 to visit their friend Shaleem whose family lived in the town of Dimona, it was there that brothers Sam and Ben Schuder first learned of The Village of Peace. Receiving valuable perspective on life within the village, Ben and Sam left Israel determined to return. In 2011, after months of preparation, the brothers returned to Israel with their Berkeley-based crew, Niko Philipides, Aaron McCreary, Jack Madigan, Vincent Hobbs, and Brandon Katcher to learn more about the culture of The African Hebrews. Their documentary in production, entitled The Village of Peace documents the history of the Black Israelites, while highlighting the significance of their legacy. Currently in post production, the initiative can be supported through Kickstarter, as the team is welcoming donations to help present the film to world.

Standing alongside Yung Rizzle last night, faced with the question of what to watch, Russ’ recommendation of Man On Wire came to mind. Not to be confused with Denzel Washington’s 2004 action drama Man on Fire, Man on Wire tells the tale of Philippe Petit, a French high-rope artist whom in 1974 gained global notoriety for walking across the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on a wire.

Having seen the towers in a magazine six years before, walking the across quickly became Petit’s dream and obsession. Studying nearly every facet of the towers, Petit built a team of supporters to help him infiltrate, scale and walk the towers. Considered by many as the “artistic crime of the century,” Man on Wire is the story of Petit’s extraordinary pursuit to the top of the World Trade Center. Considering the beautiful archival footage of Petit and insightful interviews throughout, it’d be a crime to not recommend the film to you.

“Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge – and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope.”

You have to give it to the artists that go above and beyond. Earlier in the year, for Justin Vernon, that meant giving us one of the year’s coolest albums, a follow up to his debut that wasn’t just self-assured; it was gorgeous on all fronts. Now, as the year’s starting to wrap up, Bon Iver’s Bon Iver will see a deluxe re-release on Jagjaguwar, which naturally, is accompanied by a full-length visual for every song, billed as the “comprehensive vision for the record captured in moving picture”. Like the music its accompanied by, each video focuses on feel and atmosphere, using natural scenery and texture to make its distinct impression. Kaleidoscopic images, flowers blooming, waves crashing, smoky fog — it’s all in the interest of creating an experience. Read on for the rest.

Consider this one evidence in support of our mission statement. I can’t say I know what I was up to July 24th, 2010, but apparently that day, as are all days, was full of peculiar and extraordinary happenings around the world. Shot by filmmakers around the world, both amateur and professional, Ridley and Tony Scott’s Life in a Day is a pretty substantial time capsule, capturing for future generations what it was like to be alive on that particular date. Real stories, real people. For us, some of the footage here will be more ordinary than others, but the project as a whole is pretty phenomenal, if only for its scope. Either way, it’s worth the watch.

By Reed Windle

History is strange. What can seem like an instant classic may turn out to be a footnote. It’s hard to say what is going to resonate culturally. It’s like predicting the future. All we have are our tastes. But, damn, if I wasn’t blown away by Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Pulling elements of countless movies both classic and kitsch, Drive is hypnotic in its tone, as we ride through moments that range from melodrama to poignancy. And — unquestionably — Drive is directly from the guts.

Anyone who’s seen Bronson, Refn’s last outing, knows the guy is stylistically clean, if not totally bizarre. Yet, Drive is a much more accessible film. One moment, you see the crazed look in Ryan Gosling’s eyes and Taxi Driver is written all over things. Next, Gosling is talking softly with his jacket over his shoulder to a distressed Irene (Carey Mulligan) as Cliff Martinez’s synth music plays in the background and you’re in Pretty in Pink. Don’t let that fool you, however, because the movie is extremely violent at times, reminiscent of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Eastern Promises, or every Tarantino movie. The cinematography brings back The French Connection. Sometimes, there’s a humor in Gosling’s quiet character and an odd sensitivity that recalls Lenny from Of Mice and Men. Hell, it even has a dash of Fast and the Furious in there.

The soundtrack really makes the movie. It’s as important as any character. The electronic pulse provided by Martinez, and led by Kavinsky’s “Nightcall”, is in perfect tune with the steady purr of the endless driving scenes it accompanies. It adds a surreal quality that’s both romantic and dangerous, which is mirrored in the cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel. His endless shots of downtown Los Angeles transport you, from an industrial wasteland one minute, or an apartment on the edge of a jungle (Echo Park) the next. Many of the shots are highly composed and create a storybook feel to the interactions between Irene and Driver (Gosling’s character has no name).

While it’s hard to say how long Drive will remain in our cultural consciousness (if at all), one scene in particular made me feel the film is a definitive one. Gosling drives Irene and her son down into the L.A. River. They seemingly drive to the end of the concrete bed, to where it’s once again natural banks (I have no idea if this is actually possible). The three skip rocks and lie in the grass and, for a brief moment, they look like the picture of happiness, but then as soon as the moment settles, it’s back to the asphalt.

I remember talking with Steve before he left for NYC about Gosling. He said he thought he had transcended something. He wasn’t sure what it was. I agreed, but couldn’t really pin it. Now, I think it’s obvious. He’s transcended The Notebook; he’s stepped up to a different class of performances in the vein of Brando, Pacino, and Nicholson.

So, while I’m not going to say Drive is going to be legendary, I will say I think it’s a definitive film. I think for Nicolas Winding Refn, he’s established himself as both entertaining and provocative, I think it’s somehow definitive in Gosling’s career, and I think it’s a definitive “2011″ film. That’s why I think Gosling and Refn both compared the film to John Hughes movies — because those were movies of such a specific slice of time. There wasn’t any real, purposefully classic nature to them. They were NOW. Drive is a NOW film.

Written By Reed Windle

In 1966, before London was burning down, London was blowing up. The city got its first taste of technology and music when Bob Dylan played his electric show at the Royal Albert Hall. Fashion became a form of self-expression with the emergence of the clean fits of the “mods”. Art and architecture were like something out of the future. Sex was becoming an act people enjoyed rather than attached their guilt and insecurities. Drugs expanded minds rather than solely killing pain. And the craziest thing happened: popular culture actually mirrored what people were feeling. People weren’t rioting. The “free world” wasn’t controlled by four or five Rupert Murdochs. In essence, London in 1966 was an awakening and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up was that feeling distilled into a film.

Imagine a film for the 2011: the actors wear fits by Band of Outsiders, Bon Iver provides the score, Toro makes a live-performance cameo, the characters are liberated and adventurous, the direction is by Sophia Coppola, and the story is by Haruki Murakami. While it may not be a perfect comparison for everyone’s taste (just mine), such was the scope of Blow Up. The story was penned by the Argentinian genius, Julio Cortazar, The Yardbirds play a raucous live show within the story, Herbie Hancock provided the background tunes, and Jocelyn Richards’ costume design was immaculate. Blow Up was the type of movie that was so in the moment that it was practically outdated by the time it came out. After years, however, something viewed as a zeitgeist often becomes a cultural reference point.

Cortazar’s story follows Thomas (David Hemmings) a highly successful fashion photographer who has become jaded in his own achievements; his women, his wealth, his life all come too easily. Yet, his ennui is shaken when he absent-mindedly starts shooting a couple kissing in the local park. Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), the female subject of his voyeuristic photos, notices Thomas sneaking the shots. To his shock, Jane inexplicably stalks Thomas in an attempt to get back the photos. He tricks her by giving her a roll of film from one of his shoots and begins developing the negatives of Jane and her lover in the park. Through all the grain and the red lighting of the darkroom, however, Thomas notices something strange in his prints. The more he blows them up, the deeper he finds himself in a mystery involving murder, lust, and confusion.

In addition to capturing the mood of 1966, Blow Up was one of the first films to show the life of high-fashion photography. Like Darling (1965) was for the life of models, Blow Up showed that photography was a small amount of very hard work and a large amount of chaotic distraction. Caroline Baker, a leading stylist since the 60′s said this of Blow Up: ‘I thought it was wonderful. The photographer and the model getting together? It did go on. On location, you always got off with someone. The model had first pick and usually chose the photographer; the stylist had second pick, the hairdresser flirted with the female client but really fancied the photographer and the fashion assistant got the van driver. It really was the sexual revolution.”

In truth, Blow Up is a lifestyle film. The intention is not to get your heart racing with explosions, make your heart swell with yearning, or keep you on the edge of your seat. Nor is it a film that changed social structure or pointed out injustice. It does, however, make you feel like you’re part of a different time; like a vivid dream of London in ’66 where anything can and will happen with anyone and everyone. So, while we all keep dreaming of a film highlighting the favorites of our own era, we have Blow Up to remind us that such films can be made — that we can have a voice beyond burning down buildings. We can still create our own aesthetic, our own style, our own unique era. We can still become iconic.

Written By Reed Windle

Dear Max,

Wes Anderson knows what the fuck he’s doing. In 15 years, he’s released more classics than many directors do in their whole lives, he’s made no critical flops, he’s launched and reignited the careers of actors, and he’s done something that puts him in the same category as Godard and Cassavetes — he’s become an “auteur” filmmaker. The worlds he creates are so rich and deep that you can instantly tell he was the type of kid in high school wearing Raging Bull t-shirts and killing it at “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”. On top of his prowess as a director, his journey is an inspiration for the current “do-it-yourself” world.

Anderson has defined a generation of independent films. If you like understated comedies like Juno or Little Miss Sunshine then Anderson is partially to be congratulated. Yet, no one has created worlds with the same lushness, honesty, and detail as he has. I mean, who can forget the gigantic cross-sectioned boat, The Bellafonte, he created for Life Aquatic or the lavish brownstone apartment in The Royal Tenenbaums? Despite their dream-like nature, nothing seems out of place in his films; they almost feel like a more heightened version of our everyday world. Most of his films follow characters that are stuck somewhere between maturity and childishness and between knowing themselves and losing themselves. The film most demonstrative of this theme is Rushmore.

Penned by himself and Owen Wilson (Wilson also co-wrote the oscar-nominated Tenenbaums with Anderson), Rushmore was the megaphone that announced Anderson’s arrival. The film follows Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), a 15 year-old scholarship student (his grandpa and sole guardian is a humble barber) at Rushmore Prep, an uber elite private school, who has all the ambition in the world (maybe even an unhealthy amount), but none of the focus. While he is a member of every club in school, he’s failing most of his classes. The only topic he truly excels at is Drama where he puts on elaborate restagings of classic films like Serpico. When Herman Blume (Bill Murray) a corporate CEO comes to give a motivational speech at Rushmore, Max is blown away by his words and introduces himself. Blume, half out of pity and half out of loneliness, decides to mentor Max. The two become an odd pair of friends, but shortly after they both fall for a beautiful new teacher named Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams) who arrives at Rushmore. Quickly, their friendship turns to war as they battle for her affection. The casualties are immense as Murray’s domestic life crumbles and Max loses his best friend, Dirk (Mason Gamble), in a pathetic attempt to look cool.

With his theatrical escapades and wild imagination, one can imagine Max being an awful lot like Anderson as a kid — Anderson himself was prep school grad. Between that and the demeanor of the characters, Rushmore truly blurs the line between childhood and adulthood. Perhaps more accurately, the film shows there is no line — the kids are sometimes more mature than the adults and the adults sometimes more foolish than a child. Rushmore also shows that reality is not consensual — each character has their own expectations for how others should act which are, of course, always shattered when the others exercise their own free will.

From the “real-world” perspective, Rushmore helped revive Bill Murray’s career and launch Jason Schwartzman’s. It also gave Anderson the clout to demand bigger budgets and thus fostered grander ideas. More importantly, however, Rushmore is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen and Anderson’s story displays the importance of doing things yourself. Never struggle to find your audience, let your audience find you. If you haven’t found Anderson for yourself yet, Rushmore’s a great place to start.

It was the largest mass suicide in modern history. It was known as the Jonestown Massacre and it happened on November 18th, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana. Led by the righteous yet enigmatic leader Jim Jones, a religious sect of over 900 followers killed themselves when Jones convinced them to drink cyanide-laced, grape-flavored Flavor Aid. A massacre on a grandiose scale, the events served as a dark reminder of the power of utter devotion.

Recently, the New York-based pop group simply known as Cults have released the visuals for last year’s indie sensation, “Go Outside”. Although sonically vivacious, the mood of the song deviates from the severity of the Jonestown massacre. Splicing archival footage alongside performance scenes, the Cults have managed to combine a history lesson into a slap. Kinda brilliant.

Written By Reed Windle

I’m a sucker for films about blind ambition. A friend of mine once said, “People know what they want from life, but they don’t know how not to get it.” It’s a little cynical, but there is some truth behind these words. We have a tendency to want a dream with all of our soul, but we forget that to receive anything in this world we must give something up. Life’s a balance; you take one thing off and put on another. You can’t move to New York and still want the sun and the ocean of Los Angeles. You can’t be with a new partner without giving up the good times you had with your last. You can’t achieve success without losing some of that purity you had when you and your friends sat around dreaming about the future. If you don’t believe me, look no further than your favorite artists. From newcomers like the folks in Odd Future to Goethe to Robert Johnson to Basquiat to the Beatles they all have discussed or displayed the pitfalls of an ambition satisfied.

While I find myself glorifying these stories sometimes, I try to never forget they are also a type of warning. We have to learn that self-actualization is not mutually exclusive to success. To be truly happy, we have to look inward. No piece of art has burned this in my mind more than Billy Wilder’s masterpiece, Sunset Boulevard.

I first saw Sunset Boulevard when I was 19 and had just moved to LA. Like most kids with their Ford Taurus’ packed with junk and bound for the end of the world, I was more full of dreams than knowledge, but I sweat ambition and enthusiasm. I worked a job as a second assistant at a major talent management company and took acting classes in Hollywood. Being in those environments, I encountered things I wasn’t used to in Louisville, Colorado: egos and lies and people looking to take advantage. Yet, it was Sunset Boulevard, a film now 61 years-old, that truly showed me how dark this city can be even in all of the sunlight.

Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

In the film, Joe (William Holden) is an aspiring screenwriter who is down-on-his-luck and thinking of running back to one of those cities many of us originally ran from. When debt collectors come to repossess his things, he flees by flying down the beautiful Sunset Blvd. in its still quiet and newborn state. To his dismay, his tire blows out and in a last-ditch effort to get away, he pulls into the garage of a dilapidated Victorian mansion. His creditors drive right past the house in one of those “Where’dee go?” kind of moments. After they pass, Joe decides to walk around believing the place to be abandoned. A strange and Igor-like, German butler informs him that he is at the abode of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) a fading silent film star lost in the world of technicolor. After a brief conversation, she entreats him to move in with her to write a screenplay for her always-on-the-horizon comeback film. While the arrangement is perfect for a desperate man like Joe, what will he have to give up in the process? Dignity, real love, freedom, youth, friendship, identity, life — they’re all thrown into the balance.

So, in our world of cougars and silver-foxes, promises and fast opportunities, incentives and rich gifts, just remember: if you give up everything for a dream the champagne might as well be sand. If you don’t believe me, go back and take a look.

More films, less movies. We said it a couple weeks ago to relate the fact that although movies like Scream 4, and Tranformers 8 might be in theaters now for $15, great films like The Godfather, Casablanca and Half Baked are just a few clicks away for no more than $5. Films are a bit of a time investment, an hour and a half of your precious precious time, which is why it’s important to invest it wisely. So with the arrival of this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, we’d like to highlight a few films that may pique your interest or provoke a thought or two. With films showing at both the Downtown Independent & The Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live we’ve included a few synopses of some particularly extraordinary looking films. But be sure to check out the festival website for a full list of films and times.

Page One: Inside the New York Times

As the standard-bearer for daily journalism, the New York Times has been confronted by the 21st-century old-media revenue crisis in a way mirrored by no other American newspaper. Andrew Rossi’s Page One provides a tour through these critical issues, guided by the company’s curmudgeonly, idiosyncratic media critic David Carr.

In the age of the Internet, the Times faces unprecedented challenges: covering worldwide news on a shrinking budget, crafting a complex relationship with Wikileaks and determining how to get online readers to pay for their daily digital fix. Page One makes a convincing and entertaining case for the Times’ necessity in a world where all the rules seem to be changing.

Renée

In 1976 women’s amateur tennis star Renée Richards rocked the sports world when it was discovered she had been born Richard Raskin and had undergone a sex change operation two years earlier. As Richard, born to a wealthy family, he had been an alpha male, a popular Yale athlete, a world class eye surgeon and a married man and father. As Renée, she caused a storm. Many women refused to play her. She had to sue the National Tennis Association to go pro. And now she has to deal with the guilt she feels about her strained relationship with her abandoned son.

In Eric Drath’s fascinating, painfully honest portrait of this pioneering athlete, Renée comes forth to reflect on her amazing and troubled life on both sides of the gender divide.

Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest

As Beats, Rhymes & Life begins, the rappers who anchored pioneering group A Tribe Called Quest are already going their separate ways. As youths in the mid-’80s, the Queens-born foursome of Tribe—Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White—found success with their exhuberant exploration and combination of hip hop, pop and jazz. But in recent years, Q-Tip, the band’s visionary and reluctant pop star, has tired of the street-bred capriciousness of his lyrical partner Phife, who is equally frustrated with Q-Tip. How these two friends and musical partners got to this state forms the guts of actor-turned-filmmaker Michael Rapaport’s candid and combustible documentary..

Mamitas

At school, Jordin is a cocky but charming Latino firebrand; at home he is a doting grandson who can’t seem to please his perpetually cranky father. On the day he’s suspended for insulting a teacher, Jordin meets Felipa, a bookish, no-nonsense New York girl who sees past the swaggering facade. The two immediately embark on an unlikely friendship that inspires Jordin to find out who he really is.

Beautifully shot in Echo Park and against Los Angeles’ downtown skyline, this beguiling coming-of-age romance introduces two phenomenal young actors in EJ Bonilla and Veronica Diaz-Carranza and a remarkable new talent in first time feature filmmaker Nicholas Ozeki.

Salaam Dunk

Basketball is much more than a game in David Fine’s stirring documentary about an Iraqi women’s basketball team at the American University of Iraq—Sulaimani in Kurdistan. For the young women on the team, most of whom have never touched a basketball or been allowed to play any sport, it is a blissful release from the realities of a war-torn nation. They come from all ethnicities and sects—Iraqi, Kurd, Shiite, Sunni—but the joy they discover in playing and the deep love they come to feel for the young American man who coaches them reveals an Iraq united in a way we’ve never seen before.

The ’72 Dolphins. The ’92 Dream Team or the ’95 Bulls. Pacquiao recently or Ali in his prime. When we talk about the winningest teams and athletes in sports history, these ones tend to come to mind quickly. In the game of cricket however, the ’70s and ’80s were marked by an unexpectedly dominant force: the West Indies cricket team. One of the stronger teams in international cricket for years, the team won world championships in 1975 and 1979. Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival last month, Fire in Babylon tells the story of West Indian cricket, and of a pivotal era for Caribbean culture. Aside from that, it features music from Bob Marley, Toots & the Maytals, Gregory Isaacs, and the Upsetters, to name just a few. Looks like a winner to me. Look for Fire in Babylon in select theaters now.

Capturing the convoluted nature of wealth, luxury and excess, iconic designer and visionary Karl Lagerfield of Chanel fame has made an ambitious foray into the world of cinema. Telling the tale of two wealthy sisters living on a magnificent estate in the French Riviera, the film, written and directed by Lagerfield, offers a window into the tumultuous lifestyle that can accompany wealth. “It’s kind of a narrative around the people that buy these clothes,” claimed Lagerfield in a recent interview, referring to the wealthier women who sometimes blindly purchase his clothing. At just under 30 minutes, Lagerfield’s short film coincides with the recent release of the label’s Cruise Collection. Highly stylized with Lagerfield’s subtle accents of taste, The Tale of a Fairy should serve as a source of inspiration for fashion aficionados and film makers alike.

I gotta admit, Steve Nash is pretty cool, and apparently quite introspective. As the leader of the Suns for the past seven years, (and those three years back in the 90′s) Steve Nash has risen to the pinnacle of professional sports on more than one occasion. Honestly, I was a little salty when Nash’s name was brought up in conversation during those MVP years, mainly because Kobe was doing his thing too. But with time comes perspective, and Steve Nash is pretty dope. Co-directing Into The Wind last year alongside filmmaker Ezra Holland, Nash helped tell the tale of Terry Fox, a cancer patient turned marathon runner who inspired people through sheer will. More recently, Nash has turned the cameras on himself to capture his life at the moment. Soon to be released in a theater near you, I bet we’ll all appreciate him a little bit more after the credits roll.

What can ancient cave paintings tell us about our history? Better yet, what does our art tell us about who we are? Fortunately for all of us, director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man and a handful of other incredible films or documentaries) continues to probe the world for its most peculiar stories, and this time he’s chosen the Chauvet Cave in France as his subject. Premiering for the first time at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, Cave of Forgotten Dreams explores one of our most storied prehistoric sites, and tries to make sense of art dating as far back as 25,000 years. How much we can understand by studying these, it’s hard to say. But I’m glad we’re asking the question. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is in theaters now.