UPDATES BELOW: 12/26/13 & 1/14/13

Though the semester is nearly over, a film class at the University of Vermont has welcomed a new student: acclaimed director Werner Herzog.

Herzog, who has been making films since the early 1960s and is best known for his films Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, has been an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College for the past semester, working with students and speaking at public screenings of his films.

UVM professor Peter Gruner Shellenberger, a visiting lecturer in film and photography, recently took some students in one of his filmmaking classes to Hanover to hear Herzog speak about his films. Shellenberger brought to the event a vintage Super-8 camera, preloaded with film and, at the Q&A session, asked Herzog if he would use the camera to make a film for the UVM students.

To Shellenberger's surprise, Herzog agreed.

"Did I think he would do this?" asks Shellenberger rhetorically. "Never in a million years. But, then, there’s a part of me that maybe knew that he would be open to it," he adds, referring to Herzog's reputation for unusual film projects.

Two weeks after giving Herzog the camera, Shellenberger received it in the mail, with a roll of unexposed film still inside it. Herzog also included a few unusual conditions:

What should happen is the following: please develop the film and hand it over to your students. My demand is the following: they have to make films, collectively or individually, which should include my footage. Obviously, they do not need to take everything, nor in the order I filmed the material.

The title of their film/films has to be WHERE’S DA PARTY AT?

In my footage this appears in one of the graffiti, and at least this portion of the text should appear in the film, or all the films.

 No way, man. It’s too cold to get my lighter out ... Unless you got a joint?

— Two men

 

She broke my tooth. Bitch deserved it.

— Two women

One intrepid Burlington resident has been compiling random heard-on-the-street comments in a tumblr blog aptly called Overheard on Church Street since 2010. Every Monday, the blogger shares a couple of snippets with Live Culture. You can read more at the OOCS archive. Submissions are also welcome.

You’re doing better than we are! I almost fell three times and broke my neck! This fuckin ice!

— Man yelling at man in wheelchair

 

Burlington’s bullshit but they got good breakfast.

— Three men

One intrepid Burlington resident has been compiling random heard-on-the-street comments in a tumblr blog aptly called Overheard on Church Street since 2010. Now, every Monday, the blogger shares a couple of snippets with Live Culture. You can read more at the OOCS archive. Submissions are also welcome.

 

From a physical standpoint and all, he’s totally her type. Besides the gun charge.

— Woman to man

 

I keep telling you fuckers why I’m miserable all the time but none of you ever listen to me.

— Three men

One intrepid Burlington resident has been compiling random heard-on-the-street comments in a tumblr blog aptly called Overheard on Church Street since 2010. Now, every Monday, the blogger shares a couple of snippets with Live Culture. You can read more at the OOCS archive. Submissions are also welcome.

The local music community was deeply saddened to learn this morning that Andy Williams, aka DJ A-Dog has passed away. Williams, 38, was diagnosed with leukemia in December 2012 and had been receiving treatment in Boston. Specific details of his passing are as yet unknown to 7D, but we'll report back when they emerge.

In the meantime, we'll add our voice to the chorus of those heartbroken by Williams' death. He was a tremendously talented DJ. But he was also one of the sweetest, most generous people we've ever had the privilege of knowing. We'll miss you, Andy.

In the words of Dead Prez — as reimagined/"refixed" by A-Dog himself — all my dogs, stay real.

[UPDATE: A candlelight walk in rememberance of Williams is scheduled for this Saturday, December 28, at 5 pm at the top of Church Street in Burlington. The procession will make its way down Church Street and will be followed by a vigil at the Waterfront Skatepark. Candles and warm clothing are encouraged.]

 

You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to kill someone. Trust me.

— Man to young man

 

You wouldn’t want me on top of you. You’d fuckin' die.

— Woman to man

One intrepid Burlington resident has been compiling random heard-on-the-street comments in a tumblr blog aptly called Overheard on Church Street since 2010. Now, every Monday, the blogger is sharing a couple of snippets with Live Culture. You can read more at the OOCS archive. Submissions are also welcome.

You can have yourself a very leftist Christmas at the BCA Center’s “Reference for Radicals” show. It features work by a dozen local artists who have given visual expression to political terms included in a booklet on “movement building” that was compiled for this project.

 Many of the terms — such as direct action, Occupy movement and empowerment — will be readily familiar to most viewers. Definitions are probably unnecessary, but the show’s organizers provide them anyway. They also present a lot of amateurish art. But a few professionally executed pieces make it worth visiting a show that runs through January 8.

The most artistically successful work in the exhibit is its least explicitly political. (That combination will not surprise aesthetes who regard “political art” as an oxymoron.) Carol MacDonald’s monoprint etching of a flock of birds encircling a piece of red fabric — or possibly a bloody gash — is correlated to the term “vigil,” though it’s not clear why. The birds appear to be about to pull and peck at the object; it’s not as though they’re bearing silent witness to whatever it is.

But the apparent disconnect between word and image won’t interfere with viewers’ appreciation of MacDonald’s skill.

The new Hotel Vermont has been winning praise from all quarters for its architecture and décor, cuisine and use of local resources and products, from granite to soap to original art (including the found-wood "painting" by Duncan Johnson pictured at right).

Now, along with that warm blankie from Johnson Woolen Mills, all 125 guest rooms will offer a small book filled with Vermont words. Writing, that is, by members of the Burlington Writers Workshop.

In an announcement today, BWW organizer Peter Biello said, "Our writers get a wider audience, and Hotel Vermont's guests get a pleasurable reading experience. It's a win-win."

It would be especially winning, Biello added, if one of those guests had the power to advance any of the writers' careers.

Regardless of serendipitous "discovery" by a visiting publisher, the writers can at least hope hotel visitors will choose their poetry, stories or essays for bedtime reading.

These pieces — I'm calling them "locavore lit" — will be chosen by staff at Hotel Vermont and and compiled into a modest publication on a quarterly basis, said the announcement.

Hotel Vermont marketing coordinator Tori Carton added, "The arts are an integral part of the Hotel Vermont experience and we hope that our partnership with Burlington Writers Workshop will continue to advance the arts in our community, and give our guests a well-rounded and unique stay in Burlington.”

By the way, a member of the BWW, Michael Freed-Thall, has a fiction story in this week's Winter Reading Issue of Seven Days. You can read "Fort Stockton Blues" here. And here's a glimpse at a past BWW workshop.

Spotted on King Street in downtown Burlington on the evening of December 17 was quite possibly the awesomest, sparkliest, most winterrific-est vehicle on the road today. Thank you, S.D. Ireland.

The glitter effect was automagically added by Google, and it couldn't be more appropriate.

Truckers of Vermont, the gauntlet has been thrown down. The next logical step — and we should expect nothing less — is Dekotora, those completely insanely decorated semis that brighten Japan's highways.

He’ll probably be dead by the time we get there for Christmas, so that’ll be interesting.

— Young woman on cellphone

 

I’m the kind of motherfucker that goes all night, bitches!

—  Man yelling alone

One intrepid Burlington resident has been compiling random heard-on-the-street comments in a tumblr blog aptly called Overheard on Church Street since 2010. Now, every Monday, the blogger is sharing a couple of snippets with Live Culture. You can read more at the OOCS archive. Submissions are also welcome.