The Fall is a photographic survey of our historic unconscious. Mosse traveled to intensely remote locations, from the Patagonian Andes to the Yukon Territories, and worked as an embed with the US military to produce work for this exhibition. The Fall is a rescue mission to try to locate our blasted sense of landscape and archeology, and reclaim the primeval waste for our imagination. Produced to an epic scale, each of the photographs in The Fall is a history painting for our times.

727, Santo Domingo, January, 2009.

C-47, Alberta, June, 2009.

Entropy has always been a painfully difficult concept for me to accept, yet it’s undeniable and unavoidable. There’s a grand sadness to the inevitability of material decay and transformation, which is masterfully captured in this series—just as it was in “Breach.” But that sadness doesn’t detract from the beauty of these photos. If anything, it adds to it.

Curtis Commando, Patagonia, November, 2008.

The Jack Shainman Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. “The Fall” will show from November 19 through December 23. You can see all the images on Mosse’s website.

A conversation with the director of a powerful new film about notifying families of our war dead.

The Messenger tells the tale of a young soldier, played by Ben Foster (Six Feet Under, 3:10 to Yuma), who has just returned from a brutal tour of duty in Iraq. After he is charged with the task of notifying families when their sons and daughters die overseas, Foster’s character finds himself strangely connected to one of the widows he notifies, played by Samantha Morton, and he struggles with the ethical and emotional fallout of those feelings. The film (which GOOD helped develop and produce) was directed by Oren Moverman, (who wrote Jesus’ Son for the screen and co-wrote I’m Not There). He was kind enough to speak to us about the unique challenge of making a military film during war time.

GOOD: The film focuses on soldiers played by Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster, whose job it is to notify the next of kin when a soldier dies at war. You’ve described the film as not being about the horrors of war, but about something else. What do you mean by that?

OREN MOVERMAN: I was referring to the bigger picture of what the movie’s about, thinking that while it is a movie set against the backdrop of the military during war time. What goes on in the movie is actually really universal because the truth of the matter is that we all get notified. We all get news that someone we love has died or we tell other people and people find out about us. I was just making the point that the movie addresses something that people can relate to regardless of the military context.

G: Sure, the experience universal, but the context is specific. How did the actors prepare themselves to give those notifications?

OM: We did a trip to Washington D.C., where we went to Walter Reed Medical Center, to Arlington Cemetery, to a notification center in Arlington. We spoke with soldiers who have done notifications and been to war. We got their perspective. We got to interact with them. But the actual notification scenes were actually scenes we didn’t rehearse, and we didn’t prepare in the traditional sense.

G: Why?

OM: We wanted to capture something very raw in those scenes. We separated Ben and Woody from the people they were going to notify, so they never got a chance to talk about what each side would do. We threw everyone off set so we could shoot in every direction, so nobody new what we were going to shoot. We encouraged the actors to go off script. And we shot long takes: When the scene started, we started rolling, and when the scene ended, we stopped. So there was no interruption. Basically, it’s the kind of thing you can’t prepare for in life, so can’t prepare for it in acting. It’s just trying to create a raw, immediate moment, where people receive the worst news they can possibly get: how would you react? How would move in that space? All those things were left open.

G: Ben Foster’s character, also, is pretty unprepared to deliver that news.

OM: The challenges were the same with all these roles, really. On the one hand, it was to make them as realistic as possible for the world that they were moving in. On the other hand, you wanted to make it work in the way a movie should work. The challenge was actually to find that balance and tone, to were military people can watch this and find it a good representation of what they’re going through, and civilians would watch and say, This is something I didn’t know about. When you’re working off things that are happening right now, you have to be very careful and gentle about how far you’re going to push them.

G: What has the response been from the military community?

OM: The response has been very strong. We’ve had all kinds of soldiers watch the movie. Generally we’ve received a lot of gratitude. It’s very humbling to hear them talk about our portrayal of what they’re going through. They seem to appreciate the fact that we put the spot light on them to make their story heard.

G: Was that a cause of fear or stress for you—how the soldiers might view the film?

OM: Yeah, you always worry about that, but you have to just put it out of your mind and make the movie. The thing is you know you’re going to have a mix of audiences, so you have to just concentrate on making the movie as truthful as possible, and making it as honest as possible, and making it work as a movie. Then, the audience part—getting people to see and react to it—that’s a whole other mystery.

G: There are some very complicated relationships in the film. One of those relationships is between Ben Foster’s character and Samantha Morton’s, whom Foster notifies of her husband’s death. Can you talk about what the characters are up against there?

OM: Well, what we tried to do is hard to explain, not only for us, but also for the characters. If you asked them about finding each other, they could try to explain it, but they wouldn’t be able to articulate it. The truth of the matter is, it’s impossible to explain the thing that draws any two people together. In this particular case, they don’t know what the relationship is. And that level of mystery has them very interested in one another; there’s a strong pull happening, an odd dance between them. Ultimately, her character gets to tell her story just like he does. That was one of the most important things, to almost stop the movie, to listen to the widow, because there are thousands and thousands of stories like this.

The messenger is currently showing in New York City. For a list of openings around the country head here.

Photos courtesy of Oscilloscope. Header: Woody Harrelson (left) and Ben Foster; middle: director Oren Moverman; lower: Ben Foster (left), Jahmir Duran-Abreau, and Samantha Morton.

You can see more photos at Jezebel.

UPDATE: GOOD contributor (and friend) Jaime Wolf just brought my attention to this excellent Colors piece on Congolese sapeurs. If you’re interested in the topic, it’s well worth a read.

In the Spring of 2009, the photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq, where he captured arresting images of U.S. soldiers working and living in what used to be palaces of Saddam Hussein. These visions of western soldiers at rest in imperial palaces are both intensely jarring and oddly playful, and they underscore the seemingly ineffable experience of downtime during a military occupation. The transformation of an imperial palace into a site of temporary housing also speaks to the notion that our histories are constantly being rewritten—architecturally, sociologically, globally, and locally.

What follows is a selection from Richard Mosse’s “Breach.”

To learn more about this fantastic series, we recommend reading Mosse’s interview with BLDGBLOG from earlier this year.

–
Are you a photographer with a project you would like to share with the GOOD community? Send a brief description and a few sample images (or a link) to photo [at] goodinc [dot] com, and we’ll take a look. If we like it, it might end up as one of our Picture Shows. We look forward to your submissions.

The Wooster Collective talks to Neozoon about their furry installations, and what they mean for how we view animals.

Neozoon’s work is both amusing and arresting. Seeing the playful animals in city centers and on monuments makes us smile. But the subsequent realization that these are actual animal pelts (made from discarded fur coats) creates a feeling of uneasiness.  For sure, their message does not go unnoticed.

WOOSTER: How do you choose the specific placements?

NEOZOON: Finding a place to release the Neozoons always depends on several criteria, the most important one being the animal itself. We try to find the right place for each one: where it feels at home, where it finds the attention it needs, were it finds fellow kind—like the bears in Berlin, who were close to the Berlin heraldic bears in their undeserving bear pit—or where it walks on historic trails, like the flock of lambs on their way to La Villette in Paris, once one of the largest slaughterhouses in Europe.

W: What do you think your piece adds to or subtracts from to the community?

N: At best, it raises questions, like: “Where have all those animals gone in my environment” or “oops—was this piece of shrink wrapped supermarket meat really once alive and kicking?” We take discarded fur coats and reintroduce them to the environment by returning them to their former shape, making it “live,” to let people perceive [that] this used to be a living animal. Then it was just an animal skin, with a human inside, and now it has returned as an animal. Maybe it also adds something wild to our civilized urban surrounding.

W: What type of reaction did you get from the community?

N: Overall the reactions are positive, both on the streets and via the internet. Often people encourage us, when they “catch“ us working, although, to be honest, some are also disgusted.

W: Is there a story about putting it up?

N: The starting point of our work is the material, which we get in masses for free because it is otherwise discarded and destroyed. It is a simple recycling process by which we can diversify urban space without being merely decorative.

W: Why did you choose the subject matter you did?

N: Our concern is the animal and its environment. We question the relationship of people and animals in a Western urban surrounding. You could really describe it as schizophrenic. On one hand, tons of meat: thousands of animals slaughtered every hour outside the cities and sold in clean plastic with expiration dates, and preferably not to be recognized as such. And on the other hand pets: insanely bred toys and overloaded with emotions. Its just interesting to see, how we perceive animals and how they seem to differ in value, just depending on what fits us best.

W: What is inspiring to you now?

There are a lot of interesting debates and weird stuff going on in transgenetic research, politics, economy, sociology, and it is all connected to the question of what separates human beings from animals and what connects them. And it is inspiring to reinvent our social, environmental, and natural surroundings.

To see more of Neozoon’s work, visit their website. To see more great street art, visit the Wooster Collective.

Top photo by Daniel Dick.

A new book looks at the surprising and inspiring ways people of all stripes can affect social change.

With his new book Actions Speak Loudest, Bob McKinnon has brought together some disparate names to explain how change is fueled by action—not just talk. From Newt Gingrich to Donovan McNabb, Jeffrey Sachs to Jimmy Carter, the book illustrates the many ways in which changemakers leave their mark. McKinnon also heads up Yellowbrickroad, a communications and marketing company that promotes social change through programming, communications, advocacy, and action. We sat down with him to talk about his new book.

GOOD: What inspired the book?

Bob McKinnon: We all have this implicit promise to leave the world a better place for our children. Generally, over the course of previous generations, we’ve been able to keep good on that promise—but what the data now points to is that we may not make good on that promise. We may actually be creating the first generation of children to lead shorter, unhappier, unhealthier lives than their parents, which, in a country with the resources, ingenuity, and the brainpower that we have, is sort of an unacceptable outcome. So the thought was “What do we need to do to draw a little more attention to this promise and the issues that affect it?”

G: And what did you come up with?

BM: We have a short attention span in terms of being able to deal with multiple issues at one time; we’ve got an “issue of the month” mentality. We talk about childhood obesity for a while or maybe climate change gets a lot of attention. We don’t treat them holistically. Our point was to talk about these issues in one project and for us to show how connected they really are. We then wanted to give people some very specific things to act on in the hopes that small actions can accumulate into something much bigger and more powerful.

G: The book has a lot of contributors. How did you pick what to include?

BM: We wanted to select contributors who had demonstrated an action-oriented approach. There’s a wonderful Helen Keller quote we use in the book: “All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” That’s what these people represent. So, our contributors range from Jeffrey Sachs to Jimmy Carter, Rachel Ray to Dave Eggers. Some of them are household names, but there are also people who have experienced the issues that we’re talking about and have a very firsthand knowledge. For example, there’s one written by Richard Castaldo, who was paralyzed at Columbine. I think those are some of the best essays in the book.

When you look at the contributors and what they share in common, these are people who reached into the muck and mire of life and made something more beautiful—a better outcome.

G: The book also has a companion website where you’re encouraging user-generated content.

BM: We wanted it to be a resource, so if people are interested in the work of our contributors or the organizations that are listed in the book, they get more information about what these organizations are doing and how you can get involved directly. We also created a widget, which scrolls through the different actions that are encompassed within the book so every time you visit the site, you can be inspired to do something very immediate. People can tell us about their own actions, about what they’ve done to make the world a better place. It’s been a great way to allow people to demonstrate how their actions are speaking loudest.

G: Who are you hoping to reach with the book?

BM: People who love social change and have an interest in a broad variety of issues. Juan Williams, who contributed both a chapter and the foreword, said two really cool things about the book: One is that a person who has this book in their hands is a dangerous American because they’re empowered to make change. The other thing that he said is that when you look at the contributors and what they share in common, these are people who reached into the muck and mire of life and made something more beautiful—a better outcome.

Buy Actions Speak Loudest here.

When President Obama delivered his stay-in-school speech, reminding students for the umpteenth time that they can’t all grow up to be rappers and basketball players, he caused a stir. It sparked overblown controversy, but it also brought into the national conversation the fact that every year, 1.2 million kids drop out of school—or, one every nine seconds. It’s a shamefully high number, which is why filmmaker Mary Mazzio focused her lens on the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship program in her new uplifting new documentary Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon. NFTE is a program that helps students from low-income communities learn skills that will actually help them more forward in life—preventing them from dropping out in the process. Her film, which opens today, offers a dynamic picture of inner-city life, following a handful of kids as they compete in NFTE’s business-plan competition, all the way to the nationals. We asked her a few questions about the process.

GOOD: The competition starts with tens of thousands of kids. How did you choose who to focus on?

Mary Mazzio: The competition starts in the classroom, then it goes to the school, then it’s cities, states…. I waited until it was regional, it was down to 1,000 kids: I saw all of them, and to be honest, I wanted to follow all of them. It was unbelievably hard to choose. I originally wanted to just do six kids, but that was almost impossible. I thought, I can’t just do six kids! So I then looked for kids I thought would win, and who had compelling and diverse stories of the inner city.

G: You seemed to go to great lengths to paint a dynamic and upbeat picture of the inner city.

MM: So many stories that come out, and so many documentaries, it’s so effing bleak, and it’s all stereotypes. I didn’t know much about inner-city life going in so I learned a lot in the process. And one thing I learned was that for all the Rodneys [a character] in the film, who are so sweet and aspirational—there were hundreds or thousands of kids just like him and they need so little. All they need is a good education. This program isn’t the be-all end-all, but this is a pretty great tool in the anti-dropout toolkit.

G: Because kids are learning things that are relevant to their everyday lives?

MM: “Trig makes no sense—I’m hungry.” “Chaucer? Who cares about Chaucer if my mom is laid out with a drug issue.” Right? That education is completely irrelevant in the lives of these kids. What if you tell them, go to the wholesale district, buy five watches for $5 and sell them for $20, this makes sense: There is money in their pocket, and they learned something, too. But the beauty of that is the traditional education still makes it in there: They still have to learn math, negotiation, and then they stay in school. That’s the point of the whole movie.

G: What, that kids stay in school?

MM: No, that they’re given a reason to be excited about school. Instead of losing a generation of kids, we do something about it. These are tomorrow’s job creators. They can help take us out of the recession: they have the chutzpah, the smarts, the energy, they just have no money.

G: Right, but since not everyone can win, I guess the idea is more that it gives kids a sense of what is possible. What did you think of Obama’s stay-in-school speech a couple of months ago?

MM: Oh my god. It shocked me with the controversy it created. I was stunned. I think we’re so polarized in this country that it’s paralyzing for the nation. But here’s the one thing about this film: I am as left as they get—full disclosure—but I have been getting calls from all kinds of folks on the right, about how excited they are about this film. Here is a common ground, because it’s business, and it’s “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” and that makes sense to someone on the right, and someone on the left. The idea of creating your own opportunity is appealing to the right, but opportuinity and education to me are nonpartisan issues.

G: Or, they should be.

MM: The message about teaching people to be entrepreneurial is nonpartisan. Tom Friedman wrote an editorial recently about how you can’t just be good at what you do, you have to be entrepreneurial and you have to be an innovator. We call it “entrepreneurial” in the film but really it’s about teaching kids and encouraging them to be innovators.

G: The bootstraps argument can be a little contentious when you’re talking about kids,  though, because it can be argued they can only do as much as they are set up to do. Not every kid gets to go through this program.

MM: Well that’s the point: Every kid needs this kind of education. The second goal of this movie is for policymakers and people in positions of influence to say “Whoa, this kind of education is life changing. Why isn’t this in every high school economics curriculum?” Why is it—and let me get on my soap box real quick—that you have to go to a vocational school to learn quote-unquote business. That is ridiculous. When you have a generation of people, especially women, who can’t balance their own check book, who don’t know what a 401(k) is,  and you have to go to a vocational school to learn that? It is so backwards that to learn financial literacy you have to go out of your way. The issues have to be taught to our kids.

G: And that’s what this program teaches them?

MM: It’s innovation and financial literacy. It is my hope that the people who serve these kids to realize how aspirational they are, and that they only need a little bit of water! What is that water? This kind of education so they don’t drop out.

G: You have said you want to make sure kids to see it. How will they?

MM: We signed this innovative arrangement with AMC theatres. It’s unprecedented to have a documentary in a multiplex—in an urban multiplex—and not just your arthouse cinemas for the NPR crowd. There [were] free screenings for kids and teachers on November 12, then there is a wider release. We’re also having a screening at the Smithsonian in DC chaired by policymakers, people from treasury, and influencers. We are taking a multi-pronged approach.

Gabriel Echoles and Rodney Walker, pictured at top, were finalists in the competition. Photo by Richard Schultz. For more information visit Ten9eight.com.

Ten9Eight opens today in major cities.

Video by Evan Roth. Via Swiss Miss (via Amrit).

The charter has already been signed by the Dalai Lama and Paul Simon. That’s a club I want to be a part of. You can read it and learn more here.

UPDATE: If you’ve got a weblog, there’s an embeddable widget for the charter here.

It’s a compelling homage, if not a list per se, and it lacks the depth of something like the strangely fun retrospective You Aught to Remember.

As far as evaluations go, Times Online’s boldly erratic 100 Best Films of the Decade makes for some great—if bizarrely ranked—reading. Pitchfork’s annoyingly well assembled best of the decade material is also worth poring over, though over at LargeHeartedBoy, there’s a ridiculously comprehensive compilation of best music of the decade lists.

What other 2000s retrospectives and lists should we be reading?