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question_for_joo
i'm left. youall can bite me
Registered: 04/30/03
Posts: 1,591
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Baraka
#2710261 - 05/21/04 07:46 AM (19 years, 10 months ago) |
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I'm not sure if this is the best forum for this post but I just wanted to talk about the film Baraka for a second. When it starts, they show a red face monkey bathing in a hotspring. As it went on and you see all these different people from different cultures around the world. I started just mentally comparing each of their faces to the face of the monkey and the dots started connecting for me. It's one thing to understand how something works technically, scientifically, but it's something else to appreciate that thing. Evolution is a really amazing process. We are now almost like holy animals. We have almost all the awareness we need to get our shit together for good. I have faith that soon we will. I'd be interested in what other people have taken away from this movie.
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JacquesCousteau
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I have not seen it.. I have heard a lot of good things about it as a "tripping movie".. but the next time I visit another perception will be at the gathering in Ohio, where I will not have access to a TV at any point... so maybe on the comedown of the trip after THAT I will get to check it out...
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TimeTraveler
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I saw bit and peices of the movie at a friend's house, and from what I remember it was a very powerful and moving peice of art. Wasnt there a part where they showed chicks going down a conveyor belt at a chicken processing plant? I remember the movie showing both good/evil aspects of humanity. I should rent it soon.
-------------------- The air is cut with cyanide.
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CleverName
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i wouldnt call it a tripping movie. its a piece that portays the human organsim and our effects on the environment around us. it is a visual masterpiece... unfortunately, most of my friends werent into it, at all and thought it was boring. i loved it, i found it thought provoking, i watched it alone later. it was a while ago when i saw it, but it shows how humans have a tendancy to take more than they need, greed and those things. but it also shows many of the good things about humanity. im not sure what you meant by, " We are now almost like holy animals. We have almost all the awareness we need to get our shit together for good." could you please explain a bit more
-------------------- if you can't find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? this is the purpose
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Oddish
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Yeah, I remember segments such as Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge party pretty much bringing genocide to mass amounts of people in Cambodia. Also, the chickens being branded on their beaks was very disturbing. On the other hand, when that tribe was chanting and moving their bodies in a rhythmic wave-like motion, that was awesome!
I want to see Koyaanisqatsi next. Actually, I want to see pretty much everything on this web site. http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/copies.aspx
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MarkostheGnostic
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Man...the little chicks having their beaks burned off so they won't peck at each other in the Hell of their agri-farming existence is the ONLY thing that I remember from Baraka. That's why we only but free-range animals for food: a somewhat free existence before their sacrificial death for us.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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question_for_joo
i'm left. youall can bite me
Registered: 04/30/03
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Clevername: I dunno really how to describe the feeling I got this time watching Baraka but it's jut like I understood better how we got from monkey to human and even though the physical difference is relatively minor, the awareness difference is almost infinite. So, even though we don't look like angels or them aliens with the big heads and long oval eyes, we're almost on their level intelectually I think and that's pretty coo.
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Jellric
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To me, those snow monkeys do look very human. I think its because their faces are without hair and the rest of their body is covered with hair, making them look like humans with fur coats on! When you look at them as they relax in their hot springs (read monkey jacuzzi) while they are surrounded by snow and ice you're thinking...man, they looked so damn relaxed, they look stoned almost!
Let's face it- these monkeys are having a damn good time!! You can look at their face and tell. They know it, you know it, everyone knows it!
-------------------- I AM what Willis was talkin' bout.
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Positronius
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Re: Baraka [Re: Jellric]
#2713437 - 05/21/04 11:46 PM (19 years, 10 months ago) |
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Baraka is a very good film, but dont confuse it for any sort of objective observation of life on earth, its a very skewed, very discriminatory, directed, convoluted attempt to present the viewer with a refined vision of life within the filmmaker's biased paradigms.
its basically a really beautiful propaganda peice.
-------------------- and you know it like a poet, like....babydoll
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mr crisper
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biased propaganda! no! i'd love to see baraka's opposite 'neo-con reply to baraka' imho koyaanisquatsi is way better
anyway, nice coincidence, i watched baraka last night. the monkeys hang out in hotsprings around nikko, japan. they have a tendency to relieve themselves in the water, hence the contented expression.
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Oddish
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Quote:
mr crisper said: tendency to relieve themselves in the water, hence the contented expression.
Yeah, I get that look when I let loose in the swimming pool.
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Shroomism
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How can something be biased when there is zero words, zero comments, zero opinions... just pictures? The only thing that could be biased is the viewer watching those pictures, and associating things with those images that creates a bias in his/her mind. The bias is preconceived notions from the viewer, not the movie. That's like NASA taking pictures of some galaxy and saying that galaxy is propoganda.
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NariusFractal
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Quote:
Shroomism said: How can something be biased when there is zero words, zero comments, zero opinions... just pictures? The only thing that could be biased is the viewer watching those pictures, and associating things with those images that creates a bias in his/her mind. The bias is preconceived notions from the viewer, not the movie.
By showing only pictures showing only scenes that reveal a negative aspect of a group or institution, without showing equally positive pictures about the group. and vice-versa
-------------------- You are the microcosm of the macrocosm.
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lukeboots
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Quote:
sheister said: By showing only pictures showing only scenes that reveal a negative aspect of a group or institution, without showing equally positive pictures about the group. and vice-versa
yeah, but i kinda thought the point of the video was to group humanity into one large category.. not separate us into factions. the movie wasn't meant to trash on certain aspects of humanity - it simply shows parrallels between cultures.
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CleverName
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what makes any image negative/positive?
-------------------- if you can't find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? this is the purpose
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el_duderino
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i think, more than anything it just shows the beauty that is diversity! It does show both the negative and positive aspect of humanity. I suppose you could say it is a propaganda piece against capitalism or something. In regard to the scene where it shows the brutality of battery hens and the scenes with the sped up traffic and then the factory jobs, to me that represents how dull and lifeless the fast paced material (capitalistic) world -of work your arse off and then consume/buy shit you dont really want or need- is. I thought it was great how it showed the chickens stuck in their cages and soon after it showed the people working repetitive factory jobs doing the same thing over and over in their own sort of prison. I loved watching the city traffic scene and the trainstation all the sped up motion scenes, ...very trippy. but my favourite part is the tribe doing the chanting, or seeing that old man with the reeeeaaaally long dreadlocks!
Edited by el_duderino (05/22/04 11:25 AM)
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Shroomism
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again, negative and positive are human concepts.. that is a bias created in the human mind based on past experiences or other pre-conceived notions. Showing cultures in action and nature at work is not negative or positive, and can only be perceived as such by the subjective individual.
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Mixomatosis
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"How can something be biased when there is zero words, zero comments, zero opinions... just pictures?"
Here's how: Depict westerners living in universally-accepted shitty conditions (repetetive meaningless work) and show the mutilation of baby animals.
The film itself is an expression of a person's subjective view of reality. Did it portray humans like me living in the west able to support myself with only 3 months of work a year with the rest of my time pursueing my art thanks to our powerful economy and consumer-society? Nope.. factory workers. Does it show nature-dwelling people committing genocide or enslaving neighbouring tribes? Nope.. meaningful spiritual rituals.
As an amateur photographer, trust me, you don't need words to produce what we in this thread are calling "propaganda".
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Shroomism
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yes I realize that words are not always needed to necessitate propaganda.. advertising can attest to that. and perhaps the view of the cameraman was a some skewed subjective view of reality, but I think that the film very efficiently demonstrates and observes the extreme diversity of life on Earth in these modern times. Certainly it was not perfect and without flaws, but it is perfect in its imperfection. Baby chick mutilation is a rather mild example of the negative dominating attitude that exists on Earth, yet that is a very striking and memorable thing. It also shows the beauty of nature, and many other things. It is not propaganda, it is an honest look at the various states of Earth. So it doesn't show every single aspect of existence. I don't think that was the point of it. Besides that would be a really, really, really, really long movie.
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Positronius
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"again, negative and positive are human concepts.. that is a bias created in the human mind based on past experiences or other pre-conceived notions. Showing cultures in action and nature at work is not negative or positive, and can only be perceived as such by the subjective individual."
shroomism, "baraka" fits perfectly into your world view, and thus you do not experience any intellectual conflict when you watch it. If you thought differently, the films extreme degree of bias and (obvious) attempts at manipulation would be much more apparent. Germans are a very diverse people, from herman hesse to hitler. Lets say I make a film about german history and culture with ONLY images, and I ONLY show shots of concentration camps and Kraftwerk music videos.
Dont you think thats a biased view, attempting to manipulate the viewer to get them to think of Germans in a certain light?
-------------------- and you know it like a poet, like....babydoll
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