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On-the-ground reporting from the students of Ciné Institute. Check their website for updates.  The clip below is from a January 20 report.

“Avion Ki Pote Manje” by Keziah Jean from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

Our hearts go out too everyone affected by the earthquake in Haiti. There are several ways to help out. See below.

You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti.

List of Resources
NPR’s The Takeaway

For Information
Global Voices Online

Haitian Times

The White House

Here is the new video from Corinne Bailey Rae. The single is from her upcoming album “The Sea” (out in the US on January 26th). The new album is supposed to be less pop and more dense and layered than the her great debut album (which was already less pop than most albums).

The video is simple yet powerful without being over the top. One can’t help but think of the death of her husband saxophone player Jason Rae. I love the repetition of the images. It breaks my heart every time I see it. I am totally bummed that I missed her performance at Joe’s Pub.

The video was directed by Jamie Thraves [Wikipedia].

Here is the beautiful short film Dennis by Danish filmmaker Mads Matthiesen. The film stars Danish bodybuilder Kim Kold who does an amazing job as Dennis. This might actually be his film debut which makes the performance all the more remarkable.

Happy weekend!!

I was going to post this as weekend viewing item but this video is blowing up everywhere. It is a short film called Moonboy by animation house MoreFrames.

Moonboy from MoreFrames on Vimeo.

A short film about a boy who wishes for better things.

This is the new video from Jay-Z featuring and produced by Swizz Beatz. The video was directed by Sam Brown. I wasn’t a big fan of the song but the constant rotation has gotten me used to it. I really like the video though. I am having fun and shaking my head reading all the posts online about how the symbolism of the video is proof of all the internet chatter around Jay-Z dabbling with the “dark side”.

Image courtesy ecolabelling.org

Leonard Lopate had a great show explaining explaining eco-lables in all of their confusing manifestations. I learned so much about about things I assumed I knew. Enjoy.

I was really surprised by how this moved me. Here we go again: nostalgia. This is Jay-Z’s Rhapsody commercial for “The Blueprint 3″ which comes out on 9/11/09. Supposed to look like one shot, he goes through different lighting setups and staging to seamlessly present tableaux (yeah, I know. couldn’t think of another word though) of all of his CD covers. Even though the covers seemed blah at the time, seeing them all took me back to the very specific times each CD came out and what was happening in my life and in NYC at the time. every cover had an impact.

If anyone knows who produced or directed this please drop me a line or leave a comment. Thanks.