issue-1.jpgWholpin Magazine

Web: http://www.wholphindvd.com

Quarterly Magazine of Film Shorts on DVD

 

What is Wholpin ? it is a fantasy hybrid of a Dolphin and a Whale, a bit like Wholpin magazine which is a hybrid between a DVD and a magazine and that what makes it so unusual. Wholpin makes available rare and unusual short films, documentaries and other visual titles which are hard to put in a category. While the internet can be a fun place for short films,  still is still an issue, and hence the quality is usually rather limited. At the same time short films are usually difficult to market as standalone products. Wholpin solves this by offering a unique quarterly magazine packed with all sorts of gems.

 

It is hard to label Wholpin, the content varies film to film, but it is always interesting, challenging and entertaining. Sometimes the shorts are whimsical and funny, often times powerful yet rarely seen documentaries, there is always a balance in content so each issue offers “something for everyone”.

 

Wholpin is beautifully presented in a “book like” case which has the DVD in the front and a detailed colour booklet describing the content.

 

Issue One, Wholpin’s premier issue showed they were off to a great start. It offered the rare and unseen doco on Al Gore by Spike Jonze, a strange Dutch artist singing backwards (including a weird version of Stairway to Heaven), the Great Empty which s really an “art” short which examines the experience of emptiness and cultural isolation under the guise of Selma Blair finding she has a real gynaecological problem, a great empty literally inside of her ! While this short seems like absurdist humour, it has a poetic and allegorical message. There is more including an amusing re-subtitled Turkish Sitcom, an Iranian animation and a film on U.S. soldiers in Iraq. What a damn good start for a magazine!!

 

Issue two includes some amazing short films. The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello is an astounding experience which is superbly rendered and animated. There is Steven Soderbergh’s intense sci-fi homage to Godard, a rather weird how to film on “Poke Poling a Monkey-Faced Eel” and a rescripted Japanese sitcom which has to be seen to be believed and that’s just the start. Issue Two includes a Bonus DVD which is Part One of Adam Curtis’s highly acclaimed documentary, The Power of Nightmares, which follows the simultaneous rise of Islamic fundamentalism and American neoconservative thought.

 

Issue three includes a very rare performance art piece by Dennis Hopper called the Russian Death Chair, a documentary about a thirteen-year-old Yemeni girl who refuses to wear her veil, a nice short about playing with a ball over razor wire and another strange nature doco, this time on the “The Popcorn Effect” of trap-jaw ants. There is again lots more, including some great animated films and a bonus DVD featuring Part Two: “The Phantom Victory” of Adam Curtis’s powerful documentary, The Power of Nightmares.

 

Issue four includes a solid excerpt from Strange Culture which examines the paranoid mindset in the US after 9/11 and how this led to the mistreatment of the artist Steve Kurtz. Heavy Metal Jnr is a doco about a young, very young, Scottish heavy metal band, while Heavy Metal Drummer explores a drummer in Casablanca where such music can lead to a morals charge ! Of course there is a lot more and another bonus disc featuring the final instalment of Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares. Part Three: “The Shadows in the Cave.”

 

Wholpin five includes some truly mind shattering shorts including one on the world champion, one-handed, blind-folded Rubik’s Cube master and one on Carrie and Mary Dann who are feisty yet rather elderly Western Shoshone sisters who live and ranch in beautiful but barren north central Nevada. Like most Western ranchers, they graze their livestock on the open range outside their ranch and this has led to a legal battle which went to court, the Supreme Court and then to the UN ! There, of course, is much more, even a film on the Darfur rebels literally smuggled out of Sudan in the back of a horse cart.

 

Wholpin is one of most entertaining and erudite of publications, mixing together documentaries, art films, humour, comedy with animations and world cinema. It offers such a diverse mix of fascinating content that it impossible not be to be drawn into each issue spending time exploring the different viewpoints and experiences offered.