Dialogic Cinephilia - October 27, 2018

I have been doing everything I can to work to develop a better life in which to cultivate self-love through healthy physical and spiritual practices and with the hope of integrating it into my work as a teacher/community-member and to cultivate a greater creativity/spirituality in my life (inward and outward). It has made remarkable changes in the way I perceive, think-about and act in the world. Still, I suffer a dis-ease from the chaos and hatred circulating in our social/political realms. It literally acts as a sickness at times, it can be debilitating. I'm trying to immerse myself in works/practices of mindful awareness , cultivating spirituality, peaceful relations, and healthy living - then I look around at our society/world and I am quite literally horrified at the hate, disinterest, and dischord permeating our reality.

What is to be done? How can we work individually and collectively to create a better world?

I'm thinking about this as my focus and want to open up discussions on this subject. We have to do something about the poison infecting our culture/society. This is beyond Trump, he is but a symptom of the greater affliction (although I am committed to treating that symptom, we should not ignore the root causes).

I'm a humanities professor/professional. I'm going to re-commit to focus on the arts and culture, but my work in that field is never divorced from the other perspectives/disciplines/knowledge of our world. In fact, one of the problems I sense is the separation/specialization that isolates different ways of thinking/being from other ways of thinking/being. We need to make those broader connections and collaborate as much as possible.

Peace and love - Michael Benton
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Bradley, S.A. "Fighting Phobias with Phantasms." Hellbent for Horror #68 (March 19, 2018)

---. "A Good Year for Fear." Hellbent for Horror #64 (January 10, 2018)





Greenberg, Jamie. "Future '38." Following Films (June 3, 2017) ["FUTURE '38 was an Audience Award winner at Slamdance this year and will be having its New York premiere on June 8th at the Art of Brooklyn Film Fest. It's a hilarious, screwball comedy and sci-fi throwback to the golden era of cinema about a time-travel adventure which presents the exotic future-world of 2018 A.D., as imagined by the film-makers of 1938. The film stars Betty Gilpin, Nick Westrate, Robert John Burke, Ethan Phillips and Sean Young with a special appearance by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Today my guest on the show is the director/writer of FUTURE '38 Jaime Greenberg. We discuss how the Technicolor "bag of gumballs" that was the color pallet for THE WIZARD OF OZ influenced the look of FUTURE '38, the importance of blurred scratches, our mutual love for HIS GIRL FRIDAY, JOHN WATERS, and the immortal Howard Hawks classic BRINGING UP BABY."]

Greenwald, Glenn. "Roger Waters, Marielle Franco, and the Power of Inspiration in the Face of Darkness and Danger." The Intercept (October 25, 2018)

"Native Americans Left a Code of 20 Rules for [Humans] to Live By..." The Meaning of Life (ND)

Self, Will. "The Printed Word in Peril." Harper's (October 2018)  ["The age of Homo virtualis is upon us."]

At once a dreamlike portrait of teen alienation and a boldly experimental work of film narrative, Paranoid Park finds Gus Van Sant at the height of his powers. A withdrawn high-school skateboarder (Gabe Nevins) struggles to make sense of his involvement in an accidental death. He recalls past events across tides of memory, and expresses his feelings in a diary—which is, in effect, the movie we are watching. The extraordinary skating scenes, filmed by Rain Li and Christopher Doyle in a lyrical mixture of Super 8 and 35mm, depict their subjects soaring in space, momentarily free of the earthly troubles of adolescence -- The Female Gaze (2018)

October 14, 2018: Saudi Arabia