Tag: Vimeo (page 1 of 1)

Off the Grid

This is Colossal Off the Grid

I’ve been catching up on a few things since our return from Denmark (photos coming soon, I promise!). One thing on my “To-Do” list was to go through the things I saved in my Instapaper account. As I slowly started combing through the articles I had put in there for rainy day reading, I re-discovered this one on Colossal.

A Canadian couple have spent the past 24 years building their own floating island. Today they are currently moored off the coast of Vancouver. I was completely fascinated by this idea. I would love to follow them through the seasons and see how their life changes when the snow begins to fall.

Off the Grid on a Homemade Island from Great Big Story on Vimeo.

{The original post from This is Colossal, can be found here}

Memories of Paintings

This is Colossal Tom Blanchard Film

I sat down yesterday afternoon to catch up on a bit of blog reading that I had saved and I watched this. I was mesmerised. Created by Thomas Blanchard, using a mixture of paint, milk, oil and liquid soap. I was completely entranced. I felt that I was watching a cosmic explosion, a carnival of candy colours, a film showing biological matter in all it’s minutea. It is a metamorphosis of colours and shapes. I found it to be almost meditative. Enjoy!

Memories of Paintings from Thomas Blanchard on Vimeo.

{Found via: This is Colossal}

Al Pioppi

pioppi-5As I was perusing through my blog reading list last night, I saw a post on Colossal that peaked my interest. Maybe it was because this restaurant opened on my Birthday many moons ago, or maybe it is because my family is part Italian and hearing this little man named Bruno spoke to me. He has spent the past 40 years creating a small amusement park alongside his restaurant in the woods. It is art.

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There is something to be said for Italians, there is an ingenuity there that is all there own. My grandfather can look at something and see how to fix the problem, or design something that will do what he wants, my Dad has that same gift. I call it a gift, because it is, not everyone has the “eye” to see the solution, to see how it can be improved, or to see how it could be created in the first place.

This story was incredibly charming, Bruno is quite the doll. Enjoy!

On June 15, 1969 in Battaglia, Italy a man named Bruno bought a few jugs of wine, some sausages and a few other items and set up a tiny food stand underneath a tree to see if anyone would show up. By the end of the day he had sold almost everything and the family restaurant, Ai Pioppi, was born. The next month he had a chance encounter with a blacksmith who didn’t have time to make a few hooks for some chains. Bruno decided he would learn to weld himself and enjoyed it so much he began to dream up small rides he could build to entice new customers to Ai Pioppi. It turned out to be brilliantly successful.

Now forty years later, the forest around the restaurant is packed with swings, multi-story slides, seesaws, gyroscopes, tilt-a-whirls, and bizarre kinetic roller-coasters for adults and children. In this artfully filmed 10-minute documentary by a team over at Fabrica, we get the chance to meet Bruno, see many of his rides in action, and learn a bit about his philosophy on existence and death.

For this post I also included a few photos courtesy Oriol Ferrer Mesià who visited Ai Pioppi in 2011 with several friends. You can see many more shots here and here.

{images and the statements made after the film have been taken from the Colossal post}

Christmas at the Cottage

I thought I would share with you a little taste of Christmas in the cottage. Shot with an 8mm app on Mr. Michie’s phone. I was trying to keep the camera slightly jumpy and a little off skew, to mimic old home movie reels from the 50’s and 60’s.

Enjoy!

Easter Time Rag

Goose Girl & Foxy have been busy getting ready for their annual Easter Egg Hunt at the farm cottage and they sent me a little video on what they have been working on.

I didn’t think it was too bad for Foxy’s first attempt at filming!

Enjoy!

P.S. Foxy has shared with me that he has done an entire write up of the event over on their blog that he will post on Easter Sunday. So please head over there and check it out. He was almost done writing it and planned to put it up today along with some images, but his typewriter ran out of ribbon, so he took himself off to the store to procure some more. He likes working on a typewriter, he is old-fashioned like that…The Adventures of Goose Girl & Foxy

(P.S.S. You can click on the video to watch it on a bigger screen)

 

Easter Time Rag from Jennifer Michie on Vimeo.