It’s June 27th, I’m Gina Telaroli and this is TakePart.com’s look at the week in social action…

The New York City Waterfalls, a new public art installation by Olafur Eliasson, starts in the Big Apple tomorrow. The installation features four waterfalls in the East River and New York Harbor in the following locations:

• Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage - Brooklyn side (seen left)
• Governors Island
• Between Piers 4 and 5 in Brooklyn
• Pier 35 in Manhattan

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, best known for “The Weather Project” at the Tate Modern where he made made realistic representations of the Sun, sky, mist and wind, had this to say about “The New York City Waterfalls” in his artist’s statement for the exhibition:

“When water flows down the East River, we tend to see it as a simple surface, framed by a neutral urban waterfront. By elevating it into waterfalls, I wish to amplify its physical and tangible presence while exposing the dynamics of natural forces such as gravity, wind and daylight. My idea is to encourage people to identify more with the waterfront of New York City; this is a call for the revitalization of areas that until recently have been under-utilized as creative and recreational spaces because people have focused primarily on the interior grid of the City. There is a huge unrealized potential waiting to be explored and this is located right at our feet.”

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Nicole Hughes:

U.S. Media Ignores Link Between Midwest Floods and Global Warming

Top 10 Houseplants for Removing Indoor Air Pollution

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Andy Kondrat:

Dubai to Build Rotating Positive Energy Tower

Bioethicist Peter Singer Tackles World Food Shortage

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Jon Popham:

Americacorps Workers Assist Flood Ravaged Town

Australians “Out-Fat” Americans

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Giulia Rozzi:

Progressive Book Club

Oprah Recommends “A New Earth”

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Gina Telaroli:

Human Rights Watch 2008 Film Festival Update

SilverDocs 2008 Update

PLUS

EQUALS

Me being one happy filmmaker and one happy blogger! I’ll have a lot of pictures and videos to show you once I get an upload cord, but here is the skinny on DocuClub, Meerkat Media, Stages and our Silverdocs screening!

DocuClub : http://www.mediarights.org/docuclub/

DocuClub is a film screening series of works-in-progress documentaries. Each month, a filmmaker presents a rough cut of her film. Afterwards, a moderator facilitates a discussion between filmmaker and audience. Constructive feedback from these sessions informs the finished film. Past films that have been screened at DocuClub include Born Into Brothels, The Boys of Baraka, and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.

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So the first week of Human Rights Watch is almost over so if you’re in NYC, catch something while you still can. I’ll be posting reviews of the remaining films in the next few days before they screen so keep checking back. Each film’s screening times will be listed and I’ll leave a schedule of reviews to come here.

Also in case you’re just tuning in now, here’s a little refresher on what’s already played:

• Human Rights Watch 08 : Calle Santa Fe
• Human Rights Watch 08 : The Beytrayal (Nerakhoon)
• Human Rights Watch 08 : American Outrage
• Human Rights Watch 08 : A Promise to the Dead

Here’s what’s ahead:

• Under the Bombs : http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/underthebombs.html
• The Sari Soldiers : http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/thesarisoldiers.html
• Traces of the Trade : http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/tracesofthetrade.html
• Letter to Anna : http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/lettertoanna.html

After all is said and done I’ll post a comprehensive piece full of Takepart links that will let you connect to the issues in the film!

The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) Director: Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath, Country: US/Laos; Release: 2008, Runtime: 100

Screened : Sat Jun 14: 6:30 and Sun Jun 15: 8:30

Ellen Kuras has been shooting other people’s movies for years and it turns out she has also been shooting her own. The Betrayal, which she made with and about her friend Thavisouk Phrasavath, takes it’s audience from Laos to New York from the 1980s to the present. It’s a film that deals with family, war and the bonds that we keep and the bonds that we break.

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The internet continues to expand in it’s ability to offer distribution alternatives. The nonprofit Tribeca Film Institute in New York and Amazon.com are teaming up to create an online space/service called Reframe : reframecollection.org, where they plan to make available films that normally aren’t seen or have had historically small distribution in the past. The films will available digitally and some, that are already owned by others, will be available on DVD:

Reframe, Mr. Newman and others said, is a hybrid. It is expected to serve as a nonprofit clearing house for short and feature-length films and video works, while giving rights holders a mechanism by which they can sell or rent downloads or DVDs through Amazon.

The service is unusual in that it offers to convert works to the digital format from video without charge and will convert film formats to digital at cost, under an arrangement that allows duplication of a 90-minute feature movie for as little as $672, far less than the thousands of dollars filmmakers usually spend on conversions.

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From Anne Thompson:

More than two hundred firefighters battled a raging blaze on soundstages at the Universal Studios back lot Sunday morning, which was eventually contained. Look at this video.

Helicopters dropped water on several blocks of burning structures, including a King Kong exhibit, which was destroyed. According to one fire official, the cause of the fire is unknown. UPDATE: At a news conference, Universal studio chief Ron Meyer said he had not heard about any bomb threat. He added that the Universal Park would open at noon Sunday. But tram tours would skirt King Kong. [On Hollywood]

Eeeeek! Fire that close to important film history is scary..

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

Necklacing Returns to South Africa, Tutu Calls for Peace, and History Repeats Itself

Ted Kennedy’s Malignant Brain Tumor: Sad News, But the Work Goes On

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Nicole Hughes:

Bush’s Food Aid Package Promotes Use of GMOs

Gas Prices Exceed Those of 1973 Oil Crisis

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Andy Kondrat:

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Cost US 38 Trillion Annually

USDA Budget Squeeze Forces Agency to Stop Tracking Pesticide Use

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Jon Popham:

Brooklyn Bridge Birthday Celebration!

Smokey the Bear: Environmental Icon

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Giulia Rozzi:

Suicide Tourism in New York City

Kristin Davis and Her Solar Powered Home

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Gina Telaroli:

Media That Matters Film Festival Premieres on May 28th

Top 10 Ways Indiana Jones Saved the World: Part #1

I read a really interesting article in New York Magazine last week about  how the same things that attract millions of tourists to New York City (the glamour, the skyline, the anonymity) also attracts visitors to come specifically to the city to kill themselves.

…researchers stumbled on a striking fact about suicides in New York: A surprising number of people who kill themselves in the city come here from out of town, and many appear to come expressly to take their own lives. In a report published last fall called “Suicide Tourism in Manhattan, New York City, 1990–2004,” researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College found that of the 7,634 people who committed suicide in New York City between 1990 and 2004, 407 of them, or 5.3 percent, were nonresidents. More strikingly, nonresidents accounted for 274, or 10.8 percent, of the 2,272 suicides in Manhattan during that time (the numbers did not include college students, who were considered residents for the purposes of the study). The researchers didn’t look at comparable data from other cities, but, says the study’s lead author, Charles Gross, “One in ten people that commit suicide in Manhattan don’t live here. That’s a big chunk.” [NY Magazine]

and visit http://www.save.org/ for ways you can help prevent suicide.

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