A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
January 1, 2020
Original Title:
Mighty Bright Light
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 3
A juxtaposition between a camera experiment and the song, “Mighty Bright Light”, sung by the prisoners at the Ramsey and Retrieve State Farm prisons in Texas, 1951, allows for a moment to contemplate the structural and thematic similarities between the two. Participating with the song’s antiphonal (call and response) form traditionally found throughout African and African American music, the lens of the camera is removed in unison with the rhythm of the choir’s chant back to the caller. This action is repeated for the duration of song which, corresponds to the 100’ length of film. As the turret of the Bolex swings away, removing any point of view dictated by the lens or the filmmaker, the light from the present that exposes the film, and the light from the past that is the subject of the song are brought into question.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.