Video Formats - Milindo Taid

Anthony Giddens lectures at the USC Annenberg: On Globalization

Jul 11

‘Globalization and Communication’ is what Anthony Giddens lectures about in this recording from 2008 at the USC Annenberg. A sociologist of considerable repute and a prolific author to boot, Giddens talks about the impact and debate of globalization, calling it the single most important debate of the beginning of this century. He also considers this as one of many debates pointing to the dislocation with the enlightenment project. Includes a Q & A with a pointer to India as well. Give it a listen, accept OR reject him.

Dalkomhan Insaeng: Jee-woon Kim. (South Korea) 2005.

Jul 05

Dalkomhan Insaeng (translated ‘A Bittersweet Life’) showcases the inimitable Lee Byung-hun primarily, with the obligatory ‘crimson tide’ that is somewhat a part and parcel of most gangster films. Part over the top action choreography, part dripping melodrama – not exactly a ballet with bullets, but comes close to an attempt at it. I found it strangely unsatisfying. Watch out for the violence – mature audiences advised.

Kim Ki-Duk: Bin-jip (2004)

Jun 30

Kim Ki-Duk‘s “Bin-Jip” (‘Empty House’ also titled ‘3 Iron’) is a quaint cinematic experience, a love story of sorts hovering between spirit-reality-fantasy. Nothing is articulated entirely, nor is there a need for it. Relationships are discovered in profound silence. Watch.

Albert Bandura: Stanford Psychologist, in Conversation

Jun 28

” Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing. “

Influential Stanford psychologist, professor Albert Bandura, is in conversation with fellow psychology professor Gian Vittorio Caprara of the Sapienza University of Rome. This recording is from August 26, 2013, in the studios of Stanford University, CA, USA. Listen in.

Jan Švankmajer – Něco z Alenky aka “Something from Alice” (1988)

Jun 25

Švankmajer is probably one of the worlds best kept creative secrets, unfortunately. Hardly heard and known outside the initiated follower groups, Jan comes up with the most striking and thoughtful, or should I say stirring film narratives. Working in his native city of Prague throughout, his background in puppetry, sculpture and performance gives him a unique voice in animation-live action film making. Inimitable. See for yourself.

Jacques Derrida

Jun 21

Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

Jun 19

Kurt Kuenne, a friend of Dr. Andrew Bagby made this devastating documentary, crafted to be a letter to Dr. Bagby’s son, Zachary. Deploys all the cinematic weaponry to tell a tragic tale. If truth is, at times, stranger than fiction – this is it. Watch.

Martin Heidegger – Thinking the Unthinkable

Jun 18

“We are attempting to learn thinking. The way is long. We dare take only a few steps. If all goes well they will take us to the foothills of thought. But they will take us to places which we must explore to reach the point where only the leap will help further. The leap alone takes us into the region where thinking resides. We shall therefore take a few practice leaps right at the start, though we won’t notice it at once, nor need to…In contrast to a steady progress, where we move unawares from one thing to the next and everything remains alike, the leap takes us abruptly to where everything is different, so different that it strikes us as strange. Abrupt means the sudden sheer descent or rise that marks the chasm’s edge. Though we may not founder in such a leap, what the leap takes us to will confound us.” – Martin Heidegger

Exit Through the Gift Shop – Banksy (2010)

Jun 17

Banksy made this exhilarating piece centering around Frenchman Thierry Guetta, himself (in his usual hooded brilliance), and the curious, and lamentable question of ‘What is Art?’. Watch! Read More…

Jean-Paul Sartre: The Road to Freedom

Jun 16

The late Jean-Paul Sartre is arguably one of the best known philosophers of the twentieth century. His indefatigable pursuit of philosophical reflection, literary creativity and, in the second half of his life, active political commitment, gained him worldwide renown, if not admiration. He is commonly considered as one of the leading figures of Existentialist philosophy, and whose writings set the tone for occidental intellectual life in the decade immediately following the Second World War. A student of Edmund Husserl and his phenomenology, Sartre brought a refreshingly startling philosophical perspective on contemporary life, society and being.