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15th May 2012
Directed by Emmy-Award-winning filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Ballets Russes), this entertaining and inspiring documentary nimbly maps the creation of an industry that went on to become the single greatest engine of innovation and economic growth in the 20th century. Told by the visionary risk-takers who dared to make it happen—Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, Arthur Rock, Dick Kramlich and others—the film also features the audacious industrialists behind such groundbreaking companies as Intel, Apple, Cisco, Atari, Genentech, PowerPoint and Tandem. Our lives would be dramatically different without the contributions that these venture capitalist pioneers and their entrepreneurial partners have made to the creation of life-saving drugs, personal computers and the Internet.
Reblog for the chance to win Something Ventured on DVD!
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18th October 2011
For those unfamiliar with Naomi Klein, the journalist/author is a prominent social activist whose bookThe Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) inspired the 2009 Michael Winterbottom/Mat Whitecross film of (almost) the same name. That same film was featured (alongside Zeitgeist’s The Corporation) in indieWire’s list of ten docs to watch as a primer for Occupy Wall Street… and starting TODAY, the film (it’s just called The Shock Doctrine) is now available on DVD as a Kimstim/Zeitgeist release! Trailer for the film is here.
Klein’s site describes “shock doctrine” as: “… using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks - wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters - to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.” You can read the rest of her book’s synopsis on her site.
One more thing, a morale-boosting quote for the occupiers from Klein, who gave a speech on (and at) the Occupy Wall Street movement, ending with this: “Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.”
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7th October 2011
If you’re like me, you probably find money really confusing (other things you find confusing: most things). Making it, saving it, not spending it on The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath or some other book I’ll never get to (so I can, I dunno, PAY MY RENT) - these concepts are only peripherally familiar to me. Directors Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller (both responsible for the 2005’s Ballet Russes), however, have oodles of knowledge on the subject (informed in part, no doubt, by executive producers Paul Holland and Molly Davis). Their latest film, Something Ventured, tells the fascinating stories of the entrepreneurial gambles that resulted in some of the biggest successes in the history of business… ever.
As a nod to the (controversial, but ubiquitous) late Steve Jobs, we bring you this clip from Something Ventured in which Mike Markkula, one of Apple’s first investors (and CEOs), talks about the origins of Apple and his first impression of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. A note to all the gentlemen out there: investors do NOT like goatees*. Markulla isn’t the only man in the film to wrinkle his nose at the inexplicably controversial facial hair of Jobs and Wozniak (but for more complaints, you must see the film!).
Something Ventured is currently only available via educational screenings (for info on how to obtain an educational DVD, see our site)… but will be available for consumer purchase in April 2012. Stay tuned, and get to a screening in your area!
See executive producer Molly Davis discuss the film here, and for the full trailer, click here. While you’re at it, follow the film on Twitter!
*may only apply to 1970’s era investors
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7th October 2011
Our awesome intern Whitnae went down to Occupy Wall Street with postcards from Jonathan Lee’s upcoming Paul Goodman Changed My Life - a biographical documentary on “the most influential man you’ve never heard of”, whose Growing Up Absurd became a sort of bible for the New Left of the 60’s and 70’s.
For writings on the film, the man, and the ongoing occupation of Wall St, check out the film’s official blog and website, paulgoodmanfilm.com.
