have you seen marwencol? (on pbs tonight at 10 p.m.)

http://www.marwencol.com/gallery/

http://www.marwencol.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNKPEp6aEqQ

Heard about this the other day. Sounds damned amazing.

My friend raved about this. Definitely watching it.

it's good

it's on NetflixWI

It's also available outside of Wisconsin.

made my Honorable Mentions last year

the shoe thing threw me for a loop. i didn't see that coming at all.

Great movie.

Can't wait to watch this. NY Times article + slideshow blew my brane.

watched the trailer, felt really exploitative. does the actual movie come off like that? or had the train already left the station by the time the doc was made

I didn't feel like the documentary was exploitive; felt like the filmmakers really respect his art and the reasons for it.

yea it really isnt at all imo. 1 of the things i liked the best was the magazine editor dude who's like the 1st guy that "discovers" him is really genuine & can see & sez that this is good art b/c it's ttly devoid of irony

I need to watch this.

just saw this last night. it's fantastic.

yea it really isnt at all imo. 1 of the things i liked the best was the magazine editor dude who's like the 1st guy that "discovers" him is really genuine & can see & sez that this is good art b/c it's ttly devoid of irony

― johnny crunch, Tuesday, May 3, 2011 9:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

yeah I get this - but at the same time putting this guy in the public consciousness when he doesn't necessarily want to be...

I haven't seen it yet, and don't know the full backstory, so I'll shut up now.

this movie is fucking magical

loved this so much

we thought this was kinda boring and couldn't finish it

I was basically on the fence about this movie until the moment where the magazine editor guy describes the photographs in his own words. And then I started realizing, holy shit yeah, these are amazing photographs. They're so honest and when you see them you just want to be in that world. It's completely like the best movie you ever saw, only with even more heroism and bravery and hot babes and staged catfights and smokes and booze.

So, the fact that at that point in the movie I totally got the photographs meant that I didn't see the magazine editor guy as an exploiter. He talks about making it so that when Hogancamp "makes work" he has a "space" to show it. Normally when art types use words like "space" and "work" I get really grossed out, but it makes total sense. You basically have to do something in the world in order to get money to buy shit, like smokes, or more army figures, so you have to have a job. Many of the artists I've met are actually more disabled than this guy, so why not do art to make money to pay the rent. It's not such a big deal. Animal Collective don't need the fucking money, but this guy needs the money. It's practical.

Vaguely upset by some of the rich poser-types, art hipsters, and free wine people you see at the gallery opening. Like I say, Hogancamp is at about the middle of the spectrum of weirdness as far as people I know, and, well, whatever. Free wine people.

The only person who really comes off poorly is the filmmaker. I don't think there's anything wrong with help putting on an art show or "curate" some weird art. But everything nowadays has to have a documentary made about it and I think that's kind of... ancillary to understanding the art and the person. There are too many fucking up-and-coming documentary filmmakers around, just circling around looking for things to make documentaries about. It's a big supply chain problem, in a sense, that nobody ever heard of the magazine or the gallery where this shit was, and only hear about it by reading a thread about the inevitable documentary on ILE.

his photographs were nice and I wouldn't mind looking at them irl. but the actual documentary really just doesn't feel like it goes anywhere after 5 minutes - I mean, once you get what's up w/ his situation there's nothing much to say.

I saw this on More4 a few weeks ago (they broadcast it under the title 'Village of the dolls'), having watched the segment on This American Life some time back. Iatee, you could have just watched that because it does almost the same thing in a shorter time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZGZZlM-AJo

Strange that the filmmaker should be in for any criticism in this thread though. At least the film does a good job in showing just how necessary it is in Mark's life to have created Marwencol and to spend time there; how it's something more fundamental to him than 'making art' -- it's the way he lives; and the photographs - as fascinating and expressive as they are for outsiders to look at - are very much a by-product.

I couldn't really tell how well the publisher and gallerist had presented this aspect of the photos' creation but certainly from Hogancamp's friend talking about overhearing some of the attendees at the exhibition, I assumed that a fair proportion of that crowd probably didn't 'get' it. The recursive story at the end, with his alterego building and photographing a scale village, seems like it's a way of communicating the process to the people who would only see the photographs.

In a sense I feel that the 'Mark goes to NYC' portion was included to add a plot and make the film worthy as a feature documentary. I wonder if they are actually two separate films in there: one about the man who escaped into his own world and the other a bit like Crocodile Dundee, but with an outsider artist. Or perhaps that later section just serves to reinforce that anything outside of Marwencol is largely superfluous to him.

I didn't feel like the documentary was exploitive; felt like the filmmakers really respect his art and the reasons for it.

― EZ Snappin, Tuesday, May 3, 2011 12:30 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark

This. Just saw it the other night, and I liked how much the movie was transfixed by the art itself. Like, you have all the reasons for the art, these very explicit explanations of what he's doing and why, but the town and the photos work as art on their own plane, even without the backstory. Good movie.

Finally saw this. Was incredibly affecting...

Zemeckis/DiCaprio fiction film action?

http://thedissolve.com/news/761-robert-zemeckis-wants-to-turn-marwencol-into-a-fic/

Marwencol is a strange and wonderful film. No doubt giving it the Hollywood "based on a true story, but jazzed up for your more complete entertainment" treatment would get more people to watch it, but the whole thought of fictionalizing that film makes me sad.

Uuuuuuugh, fuuuuuuuuuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6dy7xQ8NeE

Seriously, why? The fact that this is happening makes me so IA.

Were Hogencamp's attackers actual Nazis or just run-of-the-mill thugs? I honestly don't remember them being identified as such in the doc (or even if the attack was homo/transphobic in its motivation), so this amendment just feels like an attempt to cash in on anti-Tr*mp sentiment.

Which, whatever, but this still looks terrible.