I’ve been playing around with our DSLR, with some of the cool kids in the university to help me out. And the amazing Mike Berk did the sound design.

A woman. A man. A clarinet.

Actors – Daphne, Zarc, Doggie.

Sound Design- Michael Berk

Assistance – Kevin Chen

And yes, I realize I have the mentality of a fifteen year old. But that is exactly how entitled male artists make me feel.

Lucky Strike from Shashwati Talukdar on Vimeo.

Ready! Aim! Light Up!

Lucky Strike commercials from the fifties and atomic bomb tests meet their match.

I love archival films. And Rick Prelinger is a hero for making his collection freely available to the public. I’ve started playing around with some of my favorite archival films, and I just couldn’t resist these Lucky Strike commercials and atomic bombs.

Update: The piece is part of the apexart show. Please vote for it on their page, look for ID#52, ‘Lucky Strike.’ And if you happen to be in downtown NYC, you can go to the show from Nov. 11 to Dec 22, 11am to 6 pm, Tuesday to Saturday. 291 Church St, New York, NY.

Reception on Nov. 10, 6-8 pm.

Click here for directions to the gallery and hours.

My quest to use my mobile phone as a creative tool continues.  I am surrounded by mountains and very lush subtropical vegetation.  Its futile to try and reproduce it’s complexity and beauty. The following is an attempt to express what it is like to live with this abundance.

It has been a while since I painted or drew. It is nice to get back to it.

I spent an afternoon at the Taipei train station with my i-phone. It was a slow, leisurely afternoon for me, but not for the people who had places to go. I love having the luxury of being stationary in a place where everyone else is compelled to move.

This is a little animation I made using my i-phone, a gag software called Hipstamatic and FCP. The music is by Kevin McLeod of Incompetech.com.

We have a new name for the film, it used to be called, ‘Hooch and Hamlet in Chharanagar,’ now its called ‘Please Don’t Beat Me, Sir!’ Kerim redid thewebsite, after we had a couple of our designers fall through. And I finally got around to cutting a trailer.

Scenes from an immigrant’s workers rights I went to yesterday in Taipei.  The theme this year was domestic workers, who want the right to a day off.  David on Formosa has a blog post about the march and immigrant workers in Taiwan.

Every time I see labor contractors in the Foreign Affairs office, they give me the heebie jeebies, they seem like a cross between pimps and petty landlords scared to death of losing their petty privileges, so it was great to attend something where immigrant workers could articulate their concerns.

The visual theme for the protest was slippers, since the Chinese word for slippers 拖鞋, shares its first character to mean ‘delay,’ as in ‘dragging your feet.’  The event ended with the Council of Labor Affairs being pelted with slippers. Me and my friends were in the front of the crowd, the wrong place to be if a crowd is going to be throwing slippers!

This is the first video I shot using the Flip. It was a pain editing it on FCP, and I pretty much had to do it blind, unless I wanted to spend hours rendering it to preview things. I marked in and out points on the audio track and picked an in point on the video and let the chips fall where they may.  Its not the greatest video ever, but it did get done in a couple of hours.

The Bench from Shashwati Talukdar on Vimeo.

A little video I made with friends Olga Humphrey and John Plenge.

Posted via email from Shashwati’s posterous

Daily Kos has a post about the DREAM Act:

Each year approximately 2.8 million students graduate from US High Schools. Some will go on to college, join the military, or take other paths in life, hopefully all becoming productive members of society.

But for approximately 65,000 of them, these opportunities will never be available. Not because they lack motivation, or achievement, but because of the undocumented status passed on to them by their parents.

The DREAM Act would allow these kids to do the things other people take for granted like being able to go to college, get a driver’s license, and get a job. It would allow them to participate fully in society, in the only country they know.

There are a couple of videos in the post. The first one was produced by Theresa Thanjan and me, and the music was composed by John Plenge. Theresa and I also did a music video of a song, ‘I have a dream,’ written by a couple of the kids.

Theresa Thanjan and I produced the following PSA for the Dream Act. The music, Star Mangled Banner was composed by John Plenge.

If you have been following the immigration debate, you might know that the DREAM Act is one of the provisions that applies to young people who came here with their parents. It essentially allows these kids to have a fair chance to compete with every one else for access to education and jobs.

My colleague Theresa Thanjan and I have made a music video for a song written by a couple of kids about the DREAM Act.

Some of the stories about these young people are just heartbreaking. This American Life has a story about one such girl who is struggling to get an education.

To get involved, get in touch with New York State Youth Leadership Council.