SHERMAN’S MARCH
For a long time the consensus among my family members is that what I really need to do is find what they call, “a nice southern girl” and things will be fine. They’re on vacation in the mountains of North Carolina and they’ve invited me to go with them to a picnic and festival. They’ve also invited a number of family friends and their sons and daughters. Mostly, it seems, daughters.
Sherman’s March
Dir. Ross McElwee
1986.
THE HOUSE IS BLACK
“I thank you God for creating me. I thank you God for creating my caring mother and my kind father. I thank you God for creating the flowing water and the fruiting trees. I thank you for giving me hands to work with. I thank you for giving me eyes to see the marvels of this world. I thank you for giving me ears to enjoy beautiful songs. I thank you for giving me feet to go wherever I will.”
The House Is Black
Dir. Forugh Farrokhzad
1963.
LAND OF LOOK BEHIND
“That is the Look Behind forest right over there… There you have holes that you call sinkholes. You have cliffs that you’ll drop off. And when you drop over there you will die and never be seen again. And that’s why it’s called If-Me-No-Call-You-No-Come and If-Me-No-Send-You-No-Come.”
Land of Look Behind
Dir. Alan Greenberg
1982
DEAD BIRDS
“There is a fable told by a mountain people living in the ancient highlands of New Guinea about a race between a snake and a bird. It tells of a contest which decided if men would be like birds and die or be like snakes which shed their skins and have eternal life. The bird won and from that time all men, like birds, must die.”
Dead Birds
Dir. Robert Gardner
1963
In January, we quietly started publishing this journal with entries on art, design, fashion, and the natural and cultural landscape of Los Angeles. The journal is a big part of ALTAI; it gives us a place to offer some context for what you can expect to find in the ALTAI store and to write about the things we love. Now that our opening day is right around the corner, it seemed like a nice idea to take a break from our usual posts to give a little nod to those of you who have been reading for the past couple of months. Coming up, look for posts on some of the other things we’re up to at the ALTAI design consultancy along with our usual focus on our favorite designers, musings on the Southland, and art features like our friend Mark McKnight’s fantastic Nouns series. Austin Lynch’s Non-fiction column with posts on experimental documentary film will make a regular appearance, and you can look forward to reading Betty Hallock’s ideas about what we eat and where we eat it in her upcoming posts. Thanks for reading!
EIN BILD/AN IMAGE
“This film, An Image, is part of a series I’ve been working on since 1979. The television station that commissioned it assumes in these cases that I’m making a film that is critical of its subject matter, and the owner or manager of the thing that’s being filmed assumes that my film is an advertisement for them. I try to do neither. Nor do I want to do something in between, but beyond both.”
- Harun Farocki, Zelluloid, no. 27, Fall 1988
Ein Bild
Dir. Harun Farocki
1983.
