"Johnny is so kickass, these kids are wet farts slogging down cool Johnny who is the proverbial awesome majority of one."
Ashleigh Nankivell
This film seems to have been a mild viral event in 2010, which is also the year I assume the filmmaker Ashleigh Nankivell made her short by appropriating and then severely editing and altering the 1956 educational film Helping Johnny Remember, which the great Internet Archives describes as a "surreal social-guidance film showing the problems of a boy rejected by other children because he is selfish, uncooperative and domineering."
The original 1956 film is too long and boring to watch till the end (unless forced to in class, which I swear I was made to do in Alexandria, VA in the late 60s – or was it Lee, MA in the early 70s?), but Ashleigh Nankivell twists the excerpts she takes from the ephemeral film into a petite, visually disturbing and highly intriguing, surreal social-guidance film showing the problems of a boy rejected by other children because he is selfish, uncooperative and domineering – a film that, by the end, could more than almost be seen as a reflection of US foreign politics throughout most of history.
Ashleigh Nankivell, by the way, has a website of her own, lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., speaks fluent Spanish and likes chorizo a lot. She used After Effetcs CS 4 to redo the film, which won first place at the lofilounge.org RE/Mixed Media Festival 2010.
And now, for April 2011, her take on Helping Johnny Remember is the Film of the Month here at A Wasted Life. Enjoy.
The original 1956 film is too long and boring to watch till the end (unless forced to in class, which I swear I was made to do in Alexandria, VA in the late 60s – or was it Lee, MA in the early 70s?), but Ashleigh Nankivell twists the excerpts she takes from the ephemeral film into a petite, visually disturbing and highly intriguing, surreal social-guidance film showing the problems of a boy rejected by other children because he is selfish, uncooperative and domineering – a film that, by the end, could more than almost be seen as a reflection of US foreign politics throughout most of history.
Ashleigh Nankivell, by the way, has a website of her own, lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., speaks fluent Spanish and likes chorizo a lot. She used After Effetcs CS 4 to redo the film, which won first place at the lofilounge.org RE/Mixed Media Festival 2010.
And now, for April 2011, her take on Helping Johnny Remember is the Film of the Month here at A Wasted Life. Enjoy.
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