Maya Deren - Meditation on Violence - 1948 - (12:17)

Today I was thinking about photography and literacy mostly. About how, as time goes along it seems that, to me, people are reading less and watching more. I once assumed that image literacy (the understanding of the image & moving images [film]) would grow as fundamental literacy declined and eventually plateaued (or do you say valley-ed). It seems, however, that both forms of literacy are declining. It seems that the "truth" provided by an image (or moving images) is accepted readily by all of us most of the time.

Well, as I was thinking along those lines I remembered something from George Orwell's "Animal Farm." And I believe that without any grounding in history - and here I'm talking about moving images and the understanding of The Image and our collective mediascape - maybe some are already thinking things like "four legs good, two legs better." So, without further commentary I will begin presenting films from humanity's history. And should you desire to become more literate in the images that may very well provide the backdrop to your daily existence, I recommend UbuWeb as a good starting place.
http://www.ubu.com/
http://www.ubu.com/film

The first film is by an important female artist, Maya Deren, as I believe females to be underrepresented.