PRESS RELEASE: Nina Paley Declines Screening Permission to Vagina Museum

Urbana, March 15 – Nina Paley, a renowned filmmaker known for award-winning films like Sita Sings the Blues and “This Land is Mine” has announced her decision to deny permission to screen her film Seder Masochism to the UK Vagina Museum, an organization which purports to stand for the values of respect, integrity, and inclusiveness, but which has demonstrated a pattern of behavior directly opposite of those aims.

Although Seder Masochism is Free Culture, dedicated to the Public Domain and therefore free to show, edit, reuse, remix, and redistribute by anyone, Vagina Museum Community Cinema Co-Founder Charlie Corubolo (They/Them) wrote in the UKVM’s enquiry, “Even if our understanding is that we can screen the film for free, we would like to ask you for permission to do so and if there is any requirement prior to the screening,” thus granting Paley this opportunity to deny.

As a committed artist who has produced comics, textile arts, films, books, and other works, Paley has historically supported the screening of her work by small organizations, schools, and festivals, believing that culture should be open, free, and inclusive of everyone. Seder Masochism has won awards from the Moscow Jewish Film Festival and Fantaspoa (Brazil), but since its release has been pulled from venues by fearful organizers who surrender to anti-woman activist calls for Paley’s works to be canceled due to her personal gender critical views.

Paley’s decision is extraordinary. This is the first time she has refused permission for a screening of her work, but Paley is standing up for the belief that an organization that purports to realize feminist goals must be consistently inclusive of women. When women objected to the Vagina Museum deploying woman-erasing language, the Vagina Museum reacted with derision and mockery, even referring to objectors by the misogynistic slur TERF. “How can I, as a woman, work with organizations that cancel women? I would be working against myself and my sisters,” Paley added.

Paley hopes this decision will encourage other artists and organizations to reflect on the values they support and promote their work through partnerships with organizations that respect women. “Organizations can support women by acknowledging the definition of women: adult human females. Until they do so, any claims to support women are meaningless,” said Paley. 

The Vagina Museum and others like it which wear a feminist cloak and then muddle and confuse the meaning of biological sex, conflate gender identity with sex, and deny the well-established historical oppression of women on the basis of sex, must be held accountable for their detrimental behavior against women.

For further information:

Nina Paley
nina_paley@yahoo.com
https://twitter.com/ninapaley

Nina Paley remains dedicated to free culture and the widespread screening and distribution of her work, which can be used without permission by anyone, even those she disagrees with.

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Have At It

HUGE VIDEO FILE AT ARCHIVE.ORG

Compressed hi-res MP4 at Vimeo

After 4 tedious days of rendering hundreds of high-resolution video files, only to discover they seemed to be missing one frame each and so weren’t looping properly, followed by a few days of unhappy procrastinating, followed by 3 additional tedious and crabby days of re-rendering, I finally have all the animation of ApocalypseAnimated.com in Ultra HD (3840 x 2160 pixel) uncompressed Apple ProRes video for your remixing pleasure. Roughly in order, each loop in this gigantic, 20GB file appears exactly once. They can be cut apart and looped again and again in your video editor.

It’s under a Share-Alike license, so you can do whatever you want as long as what you make with it is also Free. I understand some projects want proprietary licenses, and I can negotiate a waiver for those if you email me.

People have used my other Free Cultural works as backdrops for dances and runway shows, illustrations in books, giant puppets, and of course music videos, and I hope all that happens with these too.

In my heart of hearts, some creative sound designer(s) would make fresh audio for these. I made my own short musical video, but it’s barely 3 minutes, and with almost 12 minutes of animation total, most of the work wasn’t included. Plus, I almost always animate to music; what I never do is make animation first and add sound effects later, and these clips provide an opportunity for just that. By looping, the total length of the piece can be extended indefinitely. That means if someone wants to attempt an audio reading of the Book of Revelation, with this animation as the visuals, it can be done.

If you want to try your hand at editing and/or sound design, please have at it. Credit me for the animation and yourself for your work, and anything else you throw in there to whomever else is responsible. Do whatever you want. No permission needed. Have fun and send me a link.

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Apocalypse Animated video

I made this little “trailer” video for ApocalypseAnimated.com . It’s only 3 minutes long, while there are almost 12 minutes of animation (without even looping!) in the project, so this is but a mere sample of the wonders to find at the website. But this has music so people are likelier to share and attend to it.

There are some technical looping flaws that bother me. Apparently when I export HD video from Moho, it omits the last frame of the loop, causing a jerk in the seams. This doesn’t happen when I export gifs. To make my hi-res video archive perfect, I will have to go back and add one frame and re-render every. single. file. This took 4 boring tedious days last time, and I’m not looking forward to doing it again. But such are the responsibilities of an Apocalypse animator.

Choosing the song was not straightforward. I was really smitten by Fuck Everything by Euringer (aka Jimmy Urine). It would have supplied nice ironic tension because it’s not intentionally about the Apocalypse, and it’s from the point-of-view of two bratty entitled lovers, which is an interesting lens through which to view John of Patmos and his God. But Fuck Everything already has a perfect video, and who knows what kind of headaches it would cause me; even if Jimmy isn’t a copyright maximalist, his songs are distributed in a  system that doesn’t recognize Fair Use, and YouTube’s ContentID would surely block even its first upload. I did start making an edit with it, but got frustrated (as one does) and that anxiety contributed to my consideration of an alternative song.

Fortunately I’d already compiled a list of old gospel songs that might work, and the top entry proved a good fit. I found it on the wonderful archive.org, where I always go a-hunting in my research phases. I worried that straight-up gospel wouldn’t be ironic enough with the animation, but When The Fire Comes Down had its own irony, contrasting a cheerful jaunty melody with horrific subject matter. Everything fit right away and I banged out this edit in a single day. Thank you, Internet Archive!

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Mystic Symbolic: the developening

On January 27 I awoke with an idea for a mystic symbolic art generator. I immediately sketched copious notes and put out word I was looking for a coder to collaborate with. By some miracle, Atul Varma responded within an hour, which makes me believe this project really wants to exist.

My plans are vast and sprawling, so we’re starting simple. And by simple we mean bonkers:

Atul and I are on the same page regarding Free Software and Free Culture, so we’re both happy to share as we go along. You can generate your own strange images like the ones above by clicking the “randomize” button here:

https://toolness.github.io/mystic-symbolic/?p=creature

Here is the main Mystic Symbolic work-in-progress page:

https://toolness.github.io/mystic-symbolic/

And if you’re on guthub, which I am not yet but will be soon, there is this:

https://github.com/toolness/mystic-symbolic

This is a mere taste of things to come.

 

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