PBS’ MediaShift:Your Guide to Soldier Videos from Iraq

If the first Gulf War put cable news and CNN on the map, the second Gulf War in Iraq has put video shot by soldiers in the spotlight. I first wrote about these videos in January, focusing on the ones that proliferated at the video-sharing site YouTube. But now, the phenomenon has exploded into the mainstream, with an MTV documentary, Iraq Uploaded and a full-length film, The War Tapes (”the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves”). Read more

Venice Arts seeks Volunteer Artists Mentors

Venice Arts is currently searching for engaging and enthusiastic filmmakers and video artists to mentor students and teach them the basic elements digital filmmaking. With small class sizes and low mentor-student ratios, our classes are the perfect opportunity for artists to make a meaningful impact on a young person’s life.

Venice Arts: In Neighborhoods is an innovative arts center that brings talented artists together with low-income young people to nurture their creativity, imagination and talent. Through our unique mentor-driven model, Venice Arts is a great opportunity for artists to connect and share their knowledge and gifts with youth of all ages.

Core Duties / Responsibilities:
• In conjunction with the Lead Mentor and other volunteer artists, lead and facilitate student discussion and critical analysis of their work.
• Teach the basics of digital filmmaking, including writing, planning, shooting, and editing.
• Prepare student work for end-of-session exhibit

Requirements:
• Commit to participating in the entire eight-week session, including orientation.
• Candidate must be proficient in all stages of video production.
• Ability to implement media literacy into classroom discussion and exercises
• Familiar with basic elements of design (typography, layout, etc.)
• General understanding of the Mac OS X.
• Working knowledge of DV Cameras, sound design; documentary techniques and storyboarding is a plus.
• Most importantly, you must possess a passion for mentoring youth!

Classes run one (1) day a week for 8 weeks The kids of Venice need your creative and personal input! Come and connect with a great program!

For more information about our program and volunteer application, please visit www.venice-arts.org or email info@venice-arts.org

Photo Project: Megan Baaske

From New York City to San Francisco, cities throughout the United States and the world boast efficient and popular modes of public transportation. Los Angeles is the second largest city in country, and one of the most dispersed geographically, but cannot claim a thriving system of public transit. Despite the presence of buses and even the Metro, most residents of the City of Angels rely on their cars.
The result, of course, is the ever-worsening traffic nightmare. Backed-up freeways are an ever-present problem, and it is not unusual to find congestion at any hour of the day. Commuters may spend as much as two hours driving to and from their work or school. The amount of time and energy devoted to navigating Los Angeles is astounding.
This photography project, then, is about the transportation of Los Angeles. The focus of the work will be on private transportation, since the majority of residents rely on their personal cars to get around. Transportation is well worthy of such study. As any city, but particularly one as large and dispersed as Los Angeles, develops, solutions for transportation assume increasing urgency. Admittedly, the topic is more challenging than documenting the more graphic societal ills of the city. Whether it is homelessness or gang violence, it is much easier to represent those dilemmas through visuals than the abstract, and admittedly dry subject of transportation. Yet what it lacks in severity, the transportation problem makes up for in universality. Everyone in Los Angeles can relate to the frustrations of traveling the cityscape. Finally, I propose this topic because it is a societal problem with which I intimately familiar. I have little knowledge of the homelessness that plagues my city. My attempts to catalogue these ills would unavoidably be from an outsider’s perspective. With transportation, however, my work might be more authentic and sincere, since I regularly grapple with the aggravations of traffic.
My goal is to create a body of work that will compel viewers to look at something as ordinary and commonplace as transportation from a different perspective. I want to force viewers to really think about what it means to travel around Los Angeles, and the realities of spending so much time in transit. My hope is to bring attention to the issue of transportation as a sight of social change.

Photo Project: Emily Van Mourick

With this photo project, it is my goal to give a voice
to those whose stories are often not heard, and
advocate the value of documenting stories that may not
be the front-runners in documentary work. A secondary
goal, one that arose unintentionally, is the
empowerment of the participants in continuing their
own form of documentary work by sharing their stories
through tattoos. I have a camera and they may have an
ink gun, but we both have stories to tell.

Photo Project: Sophia Kokores

For the last four months I have taken photographs of graffiti in East LA, South Central, and Venice Beach, Los Angeles. I chose this subject because I wanted to explore the different meanings of graffiti in a city that both accepts and illegalizes it. I learned to be more hyper-aware of my surroundings as graffiti can be found almost everywhere in this big city. I also learned that graffiti comes in many forms, from religious and political murals, to gang tagging, to artistic expressions. This was truly an eye-opening experience for me and I would encourage everyone to engage in participatory photography to learn, hands-on, about their own communities and express their particular perspectives about it.

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