World's Stictest Parents
Part 1
That was part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
via half wit
Showing posts with label Documentaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Documentaries. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.
Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain science: neurotheology.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Over the years, I have increasingly believed that mental illness and neurological disorders hide inside religious fanatics.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Last night, we watched Última Parada 174 about the real life story of Sandro do Nascimento and the high jacking of a public bus just outside Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Botanico.
He took its driver and 10 passengers hostage on June 12, 2000.
It prompted me to look up the original documentary after reading about it on IMDB.
Here is part one:
Follow the rest on YouTube.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
"Here is a story of young, idealistic students who rose up against tyranny; who took to the streets nightly for three months in the dead of Serbian winter; who fought a dictator not with violence, but with humour and love. Abandoned by Europe, sanctioned by America, their only contact with the outside world was an outrageously bad television show called Tropical Heat. It played on all four of their national channels -- over and over again in endless re-runs -- until finally they embraced it, as if to say “Even the worst of the West is better than dictatorship.” And there in the heart of the Balkans was born the strangest political slogan of all time: “Slaughter Nick for President!”
The film follows Rob from the discovery of this phenomenon and his subsequent efforts to scrape together a production with little or no financing, to his trip to Serbia (still with no money) to investigate this highly improbable story. What he finds there is a humbling story of real-life courage, far more profound than the absurd fame of any actor."
Funkaoshi found this article in The Globe
...at first I found it funny, kind of a Balkan David Hasselhoff type thing.
But listening to Rob talk in this interview:
I realize that this is something a little different.
A real, and awesome example of the sardonic and dark humour of Serbians in the face of sanctions and war...as well as nostalgia for the character who was in their homes during one of the hardest times in the country's recent history.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Stories of people who find themselves in situations far from the beaten path, where there are no guidelines and no useful precedents.
Audio really worth listening to.
Really.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
A couple of years ago, I linked to Vice Magazine's article about a "networking" community that only allows you into their membership if you're "beautiful".
The article was kind of funny, and makes the members who were featured look a little pathetic, and shallow. The comments are outstanding...and I got a big kick out of how this community was portrayed, and made fun of by the vice community.
I ran accross it again today, and found out through this article that Slice has done a series of reality show episodes:
"Each episode delves into the world of the vain, the egotistical, and the self-obsessed. New applicants are allowed in only if they pass the beauty test. We join them on dates---will they think their date is as beautiful as they are or will they be sadly disappointed?---go to Beautiful People events, and meet the ones desperate to get into this exclusively gorgeous club. Each week we follow those who have tried (and tried again) to get membership---but keep failing."
...and then, I realized that these episodes are actually available online!
Scroll down for some shallow and vapid goodness.
Because it's entertaining to watch people who think they're more beautiful than the rest of the population go about their empty headed business of looking for other empty headed people to build some sort of facade of what they think others wish they had.
It's amusing to me.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Case Studies in Schizophrenia
Gerald.
Part 2
Heather
My heart breaks for the families dealing with this.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (Big Edie) and Edith Bouvier Beale (Little Edie)
Read the Wiki articles on these two eccentric recluses who were aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill.
While over at Aloha Nico I noticed that she posted about the movie Grey Gardens starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange(?)...whatever.
It sent me looking for the original Grey Gardens documentary about these two Blanche DuBois-like women living in a falling down house in the Hamptons.
I couldn't find part one....but, here it starts with part 2:
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
The house has since been restored. Big Edie dying of a pneumonia in 1977, and Little Edie found dead in her apartment in 2002. She had been dead about five days from a presumed heart attack.
What really stood out for me was how they both continued to show their breeding in the way that they spoke, and Little Edie dressing up "10 times a day" in different outfits from her modeling days...all while the house was falling down around their ears.
Bizarre in the way that European films can be...but, this was real.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
This happens to be two days after my older son's 21st birthday, which we marked behind two sets of locked steel doors. I'm exhausted and hopeless and vaguely hung over because Andrew, who has autism, also has evolved from sweet, dreamy boy to something like a golem: bitter, rampaging, full of rage. It happened no matter how fiercely I loved him or how many therapies I employed.
More of Ann Bauer's experiences with her son's Autism:
Finding Fargo.
Psych meds drove my son crazy.
The Body Electric.
God talked to me today
The evolution of Ann's thinking, and beliefs about her son's Autism seems to fit any range of feelings around the uncontrollable while dealing, and coping with the medical conditions of loved ones.
She blames her ex-husband's new wife for steering thinking in a different direction. Blames herself. Blames Doctors, Psychiatrists, drugs. Feels guilt, and grief. Pines for her son's childhood days...all the feelings connected to loving someone who is incurable. Who cannot be fixed...while mere humans struggle to find a way to help.
Heartbreaking.
I was recently speaking to a young man who candidly spoke about his mother's schizophrenia.
He said,
"Sometimes when people tell me about their minor little problems, I want to tell them to shut the fuck up...try struggling to get your violent, naked mother off the front lawn into a hospital...Sometimes I just wish I had someone else's life"
I told him to never wish that.
People front.
People live all kinds of lives that they don't share the details of because they want to be viewed as "normal".
I told him that I appreciated him speaking openly about his mother...that one day, if enough people talked about all the things that are dealt with in families...there would be less stigma.
More empathy.
Less front.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Switched At Birth
On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families. One of the mothers realized the mistake but chose to keep quiet. Until the day, more than 40 years later, when she decided to tell both daughters what happened. How the truth changed two families' lives—and how it didn't.
Amazing if you've got an hour to listen to this story.
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