JONOKINO

Check out my interview for Disarray Magazine for the NewFilmmakers LA screening series.

It’s a been a big past couple of months for the Meditations series.

Last week, on May 14th, “Meditations: Supper” premiered at the New Filmmakers LA screening series. It was a pretty remarkable event. Take a look at some pictures from the event.

Jonathan Ade (writer/director), Alexander Paul (cinematographer), Michael Condro (UCLA researcher), Sylvia Loehendorf (actress), Ray Chao (producer)

Jonathan Ade (writer/director) and Alexander Paul (cinematographer)

Jonathan Ade (distracted) and Alexander Paul (confused)

Jonathan Ade (writer/director), Sylvia Loehndorf (actress), Alexander Paul (cinematographer)

Hello friends!

We’ve officially begun the fundraising campaign for the third film in the Meditations series. Despite being one of our simpler stories, “ItsOkayItsOkay” remains our most logistically complex challenge to date. We could really use your support!

Thanks,
Jonathan 

Alexander Paul, Christopher Lane and myself will be in attendance for the premiere of “Meditations: Supper” in San Francisco, California at the New Media Film Festival.

Interested in attending? More information can be found at:

http://www.newmediafilmfestival.com/

When I was a child, I really thought my future was with computers. I remember receiving a big, beige PC for my birthday and doing a book report about Steve Wozniak, who for some reason I thought was the only Steve that mattered (perhaps the scope of the book was a little skewed). I was really into computers at that age, so much so that with a pair of oversized glasses and a complete disinterest in the outdoors, I fairly resembled the archetypal nerdy outcast. For a while I thought that was what I was going to be when I grew up. Not an engineer (I was developing a distaste for math even then), but something where the computer would be the focus of my world.

Computer as career path; not a strange thought for the child in the mid-90s. It’s only now how silly that seems, considering how much the computer forms the cornerstone of our lives. How it revolutionized how we interact with one another, how it nearly (or in some cases, completely) replaced multiple major avenues of communication, entertainment, commerce, information, you name it. But it’s really now, looking back on the career that I’ve actually chosen, how the computer has played a significant role in human expression and artistry. And the center of that is Apple, its hardware, software and major driving force: Steve Jobs.

I believe that Jobs understood that, if computers were to become an actual revolution in the daily lives of individuals, they would have to evolve as effortless extensions of human beings. The technology would have to catch up to that dream, but you would have to be able to “play” (which I mean in the divine sense) with your computer as a violinist plays with their instrument, as a painter interacts with the brush. The goal was the shortest and simplest step between thought and expression.

When I saw the iPad for the first time, I wasn’t terribly impressed. It seemed like a bigger, less portable iPhone. Until I realized that an iPad wasn’t just another device. It was a COMPUTER. It was a permanent step in that evolution that started with a keyboard, continued with a mouse, and finally landed with the physical gesture. I realized all computers will someday be this, and our way of interacting with them, expressing ourselves through them, will have changed forever.

As a filmmaker and editor I always fantasized that editing would someday resemble the technology seen in the science-fiction film Minority Report: moving clips and timelines around with effortless ease, like a painter in broad stroke. An art form that wouldn’t slow down when you wanted to speed up, that would ebb and flow to your inspiration. Though we’re not there yet, I believe Apple has pointed the way to making this fantasy real.

Sure, Avid existed long before Final Cut Pro, but FCP was the program where I really learned the craft of editing, developed a voice in construction, recognized visual juxtaposition and earned my instinct for storytelling. Final Cut Pro was not a perfect program (and still isn’t), yet its very availability and accessibility dwarfed Avid as a system that unleashed human expression. When I first learned Avid, I always thought of it as archaically keyboard-based, like MS-DOS, versus Final Cut Pro’s mouse-centric operation. I realize now how important that is. It points the way to the future: nonlinear editing with your hands.

I could have certainly learned other programs, used other interfaces, found other ways to make films as I saw them. But the effect of Apple’s products, the warmth and humanity they found through sheer simplicity! Jesus. I think the effect they had on my work is largely incalculable.

Though I was just a kid, I feel a little ashamed to say I thought Steve Wozniak was the genius behind Apple. He certainly had the technical know-how, but the vision belonged exclusively to another Steve, one who I admire greatly, and thank sincerely and deeply for his untraceable gift to my development as a filmmaker.

You’ll be missed.

“Meditations: Supper” is complete!

Over the next year, I will begin the process of sending it to film festivals across the world. If you’d like to see it before it becomes publicly available online, send me a message: jonathan.ade@gmail.com

Many thanks to the fantastic cast, crew and donors who made the film possible!

Jonathan

Hello friends,

“Meditations: Man in Water” has finished its festival run! It appeared on the following programs:

Los Angeles, CA - Film Independent’s Cinema Lounge

Carbondale, IL - 33rd Annual Big Muddy Film Festival

Brooklyn, NY - Recession Art Show’s Emerging Filmmakers Showcase

Lorton, VA - Clifton Film Festival *Winner - Best Editing*

The film will now be available to view on JonoKino.com. It’s recommended that you click through to watch the film in HD, and that you listen either through headphones or good speakers.

“Meditations: Supper” is weeks away from completion. Stay tuned for details.

Many thanks!

Jonathan

“Meditations: Man in Water” has won the award for Best Editing at the 2011 Clifton Film Festival!

My loving sister, Alexandra, has accepted the award with tremendous gusto on my behalf.

You can find the video below.

http://www.cliftonfilmfest.com/

Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” cannot be evaluated as one might evaluate most films. Because, unlike most films, “The Tree of Life” is not simply one that you pay money to see. It is, like so few and rare of films, a gift. A gift in intention and, properly oriented, a gift in reception as well. When someone offers you an unexpected gift, you do not evaluate, you do not lambast, you do not challenge, for its very gesture is a loving expression of thought, a challenge to see the giver anew.

“The Tree of Life” finds itself in this category easily, as if the director himself wandered in from a storm and offered you his overcoat. The intention behind the film is clear from the very beginning, and its visual language is that of deep, thoughtful prayer.  The first thing you see is the slowly churning lantern of a light organ (similar to the one that is playing nonstop at LACMA - whenever you feel inclined), and at that moment, you understand that your approach to watching movies was completely wrong. You’ve grown so cynical, so critical of what films don’t do, that you’ve forgotten what they can do. 

And so, “The Tree of Life” is a gift, a reminder. “Yes, of course. THAT’S why.” When I left the theater with Charles, we both felt like being thrust into reentry of the world. The film is a primer in that it re-calibrates how you listen and how you see. It’s what I’ve always hoped synagogue would do for me but never could. Perhaps the Rabbi should have stopped talking altogether.

“The Tree of Life” is less of a straightforward story and more of an endlessly rewarding detective piece. The more that’s uncovered, the more the film softly burrows into you. It slips around in time a fair amount (as if time had no boundaries whatsoever), but most of it takes place in the 1950s, where Jack is one of three boys in a loving, complicated family. It moves to current day, where adult Jack is adrift and haunted by the death of his brother. And it moves to the beginning of life on earth, and the birth of the universe. In no particular order.

The scope is tremendous. “The Tree of Life” manages to do what even Kubrick couldn’t in “2001”: to draw threads between the intimacy of human experience and the grand ineffable cosmos. Immediate and universal, the very big and the very small. “The Tree of Life” addresses that divide and seeks to bridge it. Every whispered voiceover (Malick’s cinematic scar tissue) is a prayer and a question.

When we left the theater, after a long time, Charles meekly said, as if he was trying to relearn how to speak altogether, “There are… I guess there are no words…” And we nodded to each other. To be touched by cinema is to see the world, yours and others, as completely the same. Only a gift can do this. Don’t mistake “The Tree of Life” for anything less.

“Meditations: Man in Water” will be appearing at the Recession Art show!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 7:30pm

The Invisible Dog Art Center

51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY

Good news!

“Meditations: Man in Water” has been accepted to the Recession Art’s Emerging Filmmaker Series in New York City. This is the third festival for “Man in Water”, joining the Film Independent Cinema Lounge in Los Angeles and the 33rd Annual Big Muddy Film Festival in Carbondale, Illinois.

Stay tuned for more news. The date of the screening is set for May 4th in Brooklyn, New York. Specifics to come!

From their website:

“Recession Art is an organization devoted to helping emerging artists show and sell their work while giving collectors of all incomes an opportunity to buy original work at affordable prices. We aim to break open the traditional gallery model and make showing, buying, and enjoying art more accessible for people who have been hit by the recession. We believe that we can start our own art stimulus plan today!”

JonoKino is under construction.

Thank you for your patience. Good things will come. In the meantime, check out my reel.