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kottke.org posts about Lena Dunham

368 Broadway: the NYC Building That Nurtured the Film Careers of Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, the Safdie Brothers, and More

Somehow I’d never heard of this before watching this video (nor it seems, had much of anyone else outside of the participants), but the building located at 368 Broadway in Manhattan was, in the years after 9/11, the creative home for a surprising number of filmmakers: Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, the Safdie brothers (Josh & Benny), the Neistat brothers (Casey & Van), the Schulman brothers (Ariel & Nev), and Henry Joost.

Here’s a clip of Van Neistat talking about those days (starting at 19:50):

Brian Eno had a word for places like 368 Broadway and the people who gather together to create: scenius. Austin Kleon elaborated on scenius in his book Show Your Work:

There’s a healthier way of thinking about creativity that the musician Brian Eno refers to as “scenius.” Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals โ€” artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers โ€” who make up an “ecology of talent.” If you look back closely at history, many of the people who we think of as lone geniuses were actually part of “a whole scene of people who were supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, copying from each other, stealing ideas, and contributing ideas.” Scenius doesn’t take away from the achievements of those great individuals: it just acknowledges that good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and that creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds.


Girls, Girls, Girls

Girls. Trailer. Third season. HBO. January 12. Lena Dunham. Watch:

I am so excited for this show to return. I don’t think I can hide it. It’s like I’m about to lose control. Maybe I like that feeling?


The Dunham Collection

Lena Dunham shares her fifteen favorite Criterion films, saying she’s embarrassed that “so many of these films are in English, but I just love speaking English”.


Trailer for Girls season two

I am not ashamed to admit that, to my total surprise, I am looking forward to the second season of Girls more than The Hobbit or the next season of Mad Men. (But perhaps not season three of Game of Thrones. Perhaps.)


First episode of HBO’s Girls on YouTube

The first episode of Girls, an eagerly awaited HBO series by executive producer Judd Apatow and writer/director Lena Dunham, is available for free on YouTube (HBO disabled embedding for some dumb reason). HBO plans to do this with Veep next week as well.