Right In Our Own Backyard (2022)
Treasures of San Timoteo and Live Oak Canyons
Treasures of San Timoteo and Live Oak Canyons
Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize: does he deserve it? (2021)
This 45-minute film is for authorized viewers only. Contact Peter Coonradt to request the password.
This 45-minute film is for authorized viewers only. Contact Peter Coonradt to request the password.
Teach The Timeline (2020)
A sprint through the history of life.
A sprint through the history of life.
Worst Case Scenario (2020)
"You always got to be prepared but you never know for what." -- Bob Dylan
"You always got to be prepared but you never know for what." -- Bob Dylan
Stir Crazy (2020)
A documentary of the mind.
A documentary of the mind.
Far Away (2020)
In memoriam for Hub Segur, University of Redlands economics professor and associate of Cesar Chavez in the early days of the United Farm Workers. Music by the great Hawaiian singer-songwriter-slack key guitarist Dennis Kamakahi.
In memoriam for Hub Segur, University of Redlands economics professor and associate of Cesar Chavez in the early days of the United Farm Workers. Music by the great Hawaiian singer-songwriter-slack key guitarist Dennis Kamakahi.
UNDERGROUND 68 (2019)
The late 1960s counterculture was a mass awakening. It was a renaissance of music, art, experimental films, underground comix, psychedelic drugs, Eastern philosophy and cosmic consciousness. It was the dawn of the movements for peace, civil rights, environmentalism, sexual diversity and women’s liberation.
UNDERGROUND 68 is the story of Ariel, a Harvard student writing her 2017 senior thesis about campus opposition to the Vietnam War fifty years ago. She digs up more than she bargained for in the unconventional lives of artists, musicians and activists from the Harvard class of 1968. Her story shines a blazing light on today's realities. Visit the UNDERGROUND 68 website for the trailer, commentary from people who have seen the film, plus t-shirts, posters and the Shadows of Time U 68 music album.
UNDERGROUND 68 is the story of Ariel, a Harvard student writing her 2017 senior thesis about campus opposition to the Vietnam War fifty years ago. She digs up more than she bargained for in the unconventional lives of artists, musicians and activists from the Harvard class of 1968. Her story shines a blazing light on today's realities. Visit the UNDERGROUND 68 website for the trailer, commentary from people who have seen the film, plus t-shirts, posters and the Shadows of Time U 68 music album.
This is Who We Are (2017)
One out of seven people in the Inland Empire region of Southern California are undocumented. Who are they? How do they live? What does their future hold? This inspiring film takes you into a world you'll never see if you're not part of it. Filmed in collaboration with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.
Don't Mess With California (2016)
This exorcism of a demon was coughed up over two days right after the election.
The Lizard King (2015)
Mysterious mail. Three hundred and twenty million years of reptilian evolution in the back yard. A sixteen-hour non-stop flight to Dubai. Seduced and robbed by a cunning whore. A vain ruler who writes bad poetry. It all ends in oblivion.
Zombies Go Viral (2014) |
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, confirmed, fine tuned and elaborated over the hundred and sixty years since its publication, is the most powerful and enlightening idea of all time. The more we learn about the details of biology and ecology, the more complex and subtle evolutionary theory becomes. But at its heart is a realization that's almost too simple to grasp.
Darwin's idea makes sense of everything we observe in the biological realm but it doesn't stop there. It's an algorithm that rules any self-sustaining system as it plays out over time. The evolution of human civilization, conventionally called history, is merely a continuation of the Darwinian process that began in the primordial ooze.
Biology gave rise to homo sapiens, humans gave rise to culture, and culture gives rise to ideas. Zombies Go Viral extends the evolutionary idea to demonstrate that ideas form, mutate and evolve in their own abstract ecosystem in accordance with the Darwinian algorithm. Zombies Go Viral demolishes the illusion of free will and shows that human brains are mere Petri dishes where ideas land and turn their hosts into zombies to carry out the ideas' parasitic demands, and this drives the evolution of all aspects of civilization.
Zombies Go Viral is a new way to experience your place in the world.
Darwin's idea makes sense of everything we observe in the biological realm but it doesn't stop there. It's an algorithm that rules any self-sustaining system as it plays out over time. The evolution of human civilization, conventionally called history, is merely a continuation of the Darwinian process that began in the primordial ooze.
Biology gave rise to homo sapiens, humans gave rise to culture, and culture gives rise to ideas. Zombies Go Viral extends the evolutionary idea to demonstrate that ideas form, mutate and evolve in their own abstract ecosystem in accordance with the Darwinian algorithm. Zombies Go Viral demolishes the illusion of free will and shows that human brains are mere Petri dishes where ideas land and turn their hosts into zombies to carry out the ideas' parasitic demands, and this drives the evolution of all aspects of civilization.
Zombies Go Viral is a new way to experience your place in the world.
Pass It On 2013
Midland school headmaster Will Graham goes back to his roots, the football program at Middlebury College in northern Vermont. He reconnects with the coaches and mentors who taught him the values he lives by. Their lessons for young men transcend the world of sports.
Between The Tides 2012
Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck turned his friend Ed Ricketts (1897-1948) into the colorful “Doc” character in his classic novel Cannery Row, but it's the real Ed Ricketts whose spirit animates this remarkable film.
Ricketts was a pioneer of ecology as a scientific discipline and his book Between Pacific Tides remains the primary reference on west coast marine invertebrates. Between The Tides follows retired marine biologist Bud Laurent on a quest to reconnect with some old friends, naturalists whose lives embody the sense of wonder and free spirited curiosity that made Ricketts a great scientist and “The Renaissance Man of Cannery Row.”
For more about the film see http://www.betweenthetides.net/
Ricketts was a pioneer of ecology as a scientific discipline and his book Between Pacific Tides remains the primary reference on west coast marine invertebrates. Between The Tides follows retired marine biologist Bud Laurent on a quest to reconnect with some old friends, naturalists whose lives embody the sense of wonder and free spirited curiosity that made Ricketts a great scientist and “The Renaissance Man of Cannery Row.”
For more about the film see http://www.betweenthetides.net/
A Simple Life School 2011
A Simple Life School is the fourteen-minute opening episode of Midland Stories. It sets the scene and introduces the main characters: Will Graham, headmaster of Midland School; Miranda Poett, a student with dreams of the Broadway stage, performing Lynn Redgrave's Shakespeare For My Father for her senior thesis project; Lorri Hamilton Durbin, an ambitious Midland alumna in New York City facing a life dilemma; and Midland founder Paul Squibb (1895-1984) whose ghost brainwashes everyone's life for the better.
The film Midland (listed below, 2010) is a nostalgic tone poem about childhood paradise. Midland Stories shows what happens when children of paradise go into the world.
What's fundamental? How do you get along without what you don't really need? That's what Midland Stories is about and that's what Midland is about.
The film Midland (listed below, 2010) is a nostalgic tone poem about childhood paradise. Midland Stories shows what happens when children of paradise go into the world.
What's fundamental? How do you get along without what you don't really need? That's what Midland Stories is about and that's what Midland is about.
Miranda & Lorri On The Path (2011)
Midland Stories episode 2: Miranda meets with her thesis committee. Lorri flies west for a Midland board meeting, hoping to find clarity when she sees Grass Mountain.
Paul Squibb the Man (2011)
Midland Stories episode 3: Midland's founder comes back to life.
Midland Stories episode 3: Midland's founder comes back to life.
Tea With Louise (2011)
Louise Squibb, played by Lise Goddard, gives some Midland boys a botany lesson over tea and cookies.
Louise Squibb, played by Lise Goddard, gives some Midland boys a botany lesson over tea and cookies.
Bob Gillespie (2011)
Climate change, pollution, habitat loss, displaced human populations, mass extinction of species, exhaustion of natural resources and the global epidemic of claustrophobia are all results of a single underlying cause. That cause is a taboo subject. Any politician or social activist who brings it up will be booed off the stage and run out of town.
The problem is overpopulation. The urge to reproduce is the most powerful biological drive so it's no use telling people not to have children. Businesses need to grow so you can't ask them to endorse policies that will reduce their pool of potential customers. Tribes have to raise more warriors lest they be slaughtered by their enemies. "Go forth and multiply" is the mantra of most of the world's religions and it's heretical to question it.
If ever a problem seemed intractable, this is it. Yet Bob Gillespie, featured in episode 4 of Midland Stories, is an optimist. He has a right to be because he's been a world leader in population control for five decades and he's seen progress with his own eyes.
The problem is overpopulation. The urge to reproduce is the most powerful biological drive so it's no use telling people not to have children. Businesses need to grow so you can't ask them to endorse policies that will reduce their pool of potential customers. Tribes have to raise more warriors lest they be slaughtered by their enemies. "Go forth and multiply" is the mantra of most of the world's religions and it's heretical to question it.
If ever a problem seemed intractable, this is it. Yet Bob Gillespie, featured in episode 4 of Midland Stories, is an optimist. He has a right to be because he's been a world leader in population control for five decades and he's seen progress with his own eyes.
The Advent of Power (2011)
Do you have to be primitive if you want to live an elemental life? Do you have to turn back the clock? Episode 5 of Midland Stories.
Mathias Craig (2011)
Episode 6 of Midland Stories takes place on the remote Caribbean coast of Nicaragua and it asks the same Paul Squibb question students face at Midland: what are the minimum conditions for a useful fulfilling life? In a land without sewer or septic systems, where human waste runs in the streets, seeps into the groundwater and gets flushed directly into rivers and streams, access to clean water is a fundamental need. In a remote village accessible only by an hours-long boat ride, electricity to power a clinic's refrigerator to keep vaccines and medicines cold is a life saving amenity.
Mathias Craig and his non-profit Blue Energy work with international volunteers and local communities to build and install small wind turbines and water filtration systems. In the process they jumpstart the empowerment of communities with little infrastructure and few resources.
Mathias Craig and his non-profit Blue Energy work with international volunteers and local communities to build and install small wind turbines and water filtration systems. In the process they jumpstart the empowerment of communities with little infrastructure and few resources.
On Miranda's Mind (2011)
Midland Stories episode 7. As Miranda goes through a school day she can't get Shakespeare For My Father out of her mind.
Living The Land (2011)
The 2,800-acre Midland property is one of many historic ranches in Santa Barbara County. Hollister, Chamberlin, Sedgwick, Isaacson, Diblee and Poett are some of the families whose stewardship of the land goes back many generations, and many of those families have sent their kids to Midland. All Midland students, regardless of where they come from, wind up with a deep connection to the land. Midland Stories episode 8.
Grass Mountain Day (2011)
What does Grass Mountain evoke or symbolize? Midland Stories episode 9.
Lorri Landed (2011)
"She said you can't relive the past. I said you can't? Whatta ya mean you can't? Of course you can!" -- Bob Dylan
Midland Stories episode 9.
Midland Stories episode 9.
Ed Carpenter (2011)
The artist and the elemental life. Midland Stories episode 10.
Megan McGrath (2011)
The sensorium and the convivium. Have you lost your senses? Midland Stories episode 11.
Susanna Vapnek (2011)
Fire in the sky. Midland Stories episode 12.
Shakespeare For My Father (2011)
Lorri and Miranda connect. We are such stuff as dreams are made on. Midland Stories episode 13.
Lorri's Clarity (2011)
Just do it. Midland Stories episode 14.
The End (2011)
Everything is tied up in a neat little bow but life goes on in dreams. Midland Stories episode 15.
Midland (2010)
Nostalgia is the most poignant feeling. People mistake it for a longing for the good old days, for the Golden Age, for Eden. But time is an illusion. All that exists is right here, right now. But that doesn't mean you can't live in Paradise. Right here, right now. Nostalgia can get you there.
Orange Sunrise (2009)
Today the last vestiges of citrus farming around Redlands and Riverside in Southern California evoke a way of life that once defined the California dream. Orange groves framed by palm trees and snow capped mountains drew legions of migrants, rich and poor, from smokestack cities of the east and Midwest from the late 1800s through the 1950s. Orange Sunrise tells the history of an industry and a way of life.
The World Within (2008)
The historic A.K. Smiley Public Library in Redlands, California is a metaphor for the accumulated knowledge of humankind and a doorway to personal transcendence.
Solace (2007)
A public service announcement from the Riverside County (California) Department of Public Health. Your tax dollars at work.
Pathogen (2006)
Filmmaker Diana Brown is making an animal control officer training video about rabies. Her curiosity draws her into an epic quest with 82 year-old Denny Constantine, the world's leading authority on bat rabies. She has a cosmic revelation in the darkness of Frio Cave in west Texas hill country.
Mecca (2005)
De colores
De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera
De colores, de colores son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera
De colores, de colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí
All the colors
Colors, all the colors, how they light up the fields in spring
All the colors, the colors of little birds that come from afar
All the colors, all the colors in rainbows we see
And that's why a great love of many colors makes me happy,
And that's why a great love of many colors makes me happy.
Everyone in Mexico and all Mexican Americans know that children's song. It's the anthem of the farmworker movement founded by Cesar Chavez. An anthem that's not about marching to glorious victory, no bombs bursting in air, just the beauty that children see.
Mecca is a farmworker town near the Salton Sea in the Coachella Valley, a half-hour drive from affluent golf course resorts visited by presidents and kings. They never go to Mecca. Why should they? It's the poorest town in Riverside County. Yet the people of Mecca have something everyone else is longing for but rarely find.
De colores, de colores se visten los campos en la primavera
De colores, de colores son los pajaritos que vienen de afuera
De colores, de colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí
Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí
All the colors
Colors, all the colors, how they light up the fields in spring
All the colors, the colors of little birds that come from afar
All the colors, all the colors in rainbows we see
And that's why a great love of many colors makes me happy,
And that's why a great love of many colors makes me happy.
Everyone in Mexico and all Mexican Americans know that children's song. It's the anthem of the farmworker movement founded by Cesar Chavez. An anthem that's not about marching to glorious victory, no bombs bursting in air, just the beauty that children see.
Mecca is a farmworker town near the Salton Sea in the Coachella Valley, a half-hour drive from affluent golf course resorts visited by presidents and kings. They never go to Mecca. Why should they? It's the poorest town in Riverside County. Yet the people of Mecca have something everyone else is longing for but rarely find.
Curve & Flow 2002
Scientists and students work on restoring sinuosity to a section of the Red River in northern Idaho that had been dredged a century ago.
Diamond Joe 1999
This music video is an uptempo version with a cowboy band and a cowgirl cast. The origins of Diamond Joe are murky and you can check https://www.elijahwald.com/songblog/diamond-joe/ and http://www.keeponliving.at/song/diamond_joe.html if you want to do the scholarship. Bob Dylan recorded it for his 1992 album Good As I Been To You.
Gimme Punta Rock... Belizean Music 1992
The Central American nation of Belize is a peaceful amalgam of four main cultural groups: Creole, Mestizo, Mayan and Garifuna. The Garifuna are descended from the intermarriage of escaped slaves from the United States and Carib people on the island of St. Vincent who migrated there from the Orinoco Basin of South America. When the Garifuna were expelled from St. Vincent they fled by canoe to the Caribbean coasts of Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Garifuna music and dance have African roots and the making and playing of drums is deeply embedded in the culture. One of the dance forms is called Punta, out of which evolved modern Garifuna music called Punta Rock.
In the 1990s and early 2000s Andy Palacio was known as the King of Punta Rock in Belize and among the Belizean diaspora concentrated in Chicago and Los Angeles. He was a national icon and cultural ambassador for all the people of Belize. He's the storyteller of this film which looks at the nation of Belize through its many forms of music. A decade later he served as head of the National Institute of Culture and History. He considered his final album Watina (2007) to be his finest work and it features guest appearances by other leading Garifuna artists including the legendary Paul Nabor, who appears in this film. Andy Palacio died of a stroke in 2008 and is still revered as a great songwriter and performer and tireless worker for the preservation of Garifuna language and culture.
Garifuna music and dance have African roots and the making and playing of drums is deeply embedded in the culture. One of the dance forms is called Punta, out of which evolved modern Garifuna music called Punta Rock.
In the 1990s and early 2000s Andy Palacio was known as the King of Punta Rock in Belize and among the Belizean diaspora concentrated in Chicago and Los Angeles. He was a national icon and cultural ambassador for all the people of Belize. He's the storyteller of this film which looks at the nation of Belize through its many forms of music. A decade later he served as head of the National Institute of Culture and History. He considered his final album Watina (2007) to be his finest work and it features guest appearances by other leading Garifuna artists including the legendary Paul Nabor, who appears in this film. Andy Palacio died of a stroke in 2008 and is still revered as a great songwriter and performer and tireless worker for the preservation of Garifuna language and culture.
