Taro, a track by Alt-J, is inspired by the story of war photographer Robert Capa and his relationship with Gerda Taro, who died during the Spanish Civil War. The concept for this video came from students and directors of the Ghetto Film School (the final video and treatment used in the video below came from Melissa Murray)

The Ghetto Film School has a mission to educate, young storytellers and filmmakers. Every year the organization helps over 650 emerging artists in the South Bronx (via workshops). Many more, hundreds off thousands work with the organization on collaborations and online classes.

Alt-J became involved when they contributed a song to David O. Russell's film, Silver Linings Playbook. Russell is on the schools board of directors. He encouraged the students and graduates to pitch ideas for the video to the band.

Find out more at www.ghettofilm.org.                                 

Silent film enthusiasts (like me) should be very pleased over the release of Accidentally Preserved: Rare & Lost Silent Films from Vintage 16mm Prints, a somewhat cumbersome title for this DVD collection of nine silent film shorts. The set comes out June 11 and will be available only at Amazon.com via their “CreateSpace” DVD on demand service.

Some of these have been lost for decades and guess why they are back? Crowdfunding.  The crowdfunding project was put together by silent film musical accompanist, Ben Model.  Model coined the phrase “accidentally preserved” to refer films that exist because they were copied onto 16mm safety film for home rental (yes, they had home rental). Model is, as mentioned, a silent film accompanist and has worked as such at the Museum of Modern Art since 1984.

The films include pieces by Wallace Lupino, Billy Franey, Clyde Cook, Cliff Bowes and Paul Parrott (Charley Chase’s sibling). There is also a Max Fleischer cartoon and an industrial film (very few of these from the era survived—even less than entertainment films)

Find out more at www.accidentallypreserved.com. There will be more releases in the series. Probably in part, because of this “on demand” service by Amazon. It is tough to get distribution of such films and costly to duplicate in numbers.

For more on Model head to www.silentfilmmusic.com.

Dave Grohl isn’t just a musician. These days he is a budding documentary producer and director. Grohl started making Sound City--a music documentary  after he purchased an old recording console, a console of the type used at the old Van Nuys studio, Sound City. The focus is on that studio and its remarkable history. The list of bands that recorded at Sound City crosses genre lines and includes some of the biggest (or just BEST) acts in music history.

Check out clips below of Germs, Nirvana (etc) guitarist Pat Smear and Fear’s Lee Ving. Don't let these fool you. It isn't all about punk or post-punk rock n roll.