Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic. She curates the Video channel. More
Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg's work in media spans documentary television, advertising, and print. As a producer in the Viewer Created Content division of Al Gore's Current TV, she acquired and produced short documentaries by independent filmmakers around the world. Post-Current, she worked as a producer and strategist at Urgent Content, developing consumer-created and branded nonfiction campaigns for clients including Cisco, Ford, and GOOD Magazine. She studied filmmaking and digital media at Harvard University, where she was co-creator and editor in chief of H BOMB Magazine.
Warning: this music video contains somewhat violent imagery. Director duo Daniels' latest video for Battles' "My Machines" showcases their signature style -- inventive special effects and twisted physical commedy. A single continuous shot of a guy falling down an escalator for four minutes just demands a making of video. The Creators Project, luckily, promises to post one soon. More »
RealBeat is a mobile app for iPhone that lets you record sounds in your evironment and mix them to create music. Designed by independent developer Joerg Piringer, the app lets you record, cut, loop, and sequence sounds. More »
A "modern-day pirate," 75-year-old Ray Ives has been diving for sunken treasure for decades, and even wears an ancient, bronze-helmeted diving suit to search the ocean floor. This gorgeous documentary follows the adventurer via land, sea, and air; filmmaker Amanda Bluglass explains how they did it in interview with The Atlantic. More »
In April of 2001, scientists and animators at the Goddard Space Flight Center drew on data from numerous spacecraft to create this continuous super zoom that begins with the Twin Towers in Manhattan and ends framing the Earth. More »
StoryCorps records true stories as told by real people and then brings them to life with animation. In John and Joe, retired New York City firefighter John Vigiano Sr. describes how his two sons grew up to be a firefighter and a police detective, and gave their lives responding to the disaster on September 11. More »
StoryCorps records true stories as told by real people and then brings them to life with animation. In She Was the One, Richie Pecorella remembers his last morning with Karen Juday, the love of his life. More »
The International Space Station captured this footage of Category 3 Hurricane Katia traveling northwest across the Atlantic, north of Puerto Rico on September 6. Now that the National Weather Service expects the hurricane to miss the U.S. coast, we can appreciate how pretty it is. More »
The wildfires around Bastrop, Texas, have grown so big that plumes of smoke can be seen from NASA's International Space Station. This footage was captured by external and handheld cameras on September 6. More »
An experimental film with a comic sensibility features gravity-defying tennis balls, a car that can tango, and other fun surprises. Filmmaker Michael Langan talks about his latest film, Heliotropes, in an interview with The Atlantic. More »
StoryCorps records true stories as told by real people and then brings them to life with animation. Always a Family is the heartbreaking story of a father who called his family on the morning of September 11 from the 103rd floor of the North Tower to say goodbye. More »
NASA's Lunar Orbiter has captured the Apollo landing sites in so much detail that one can see tire tracks of lunar rovers. More »
The founder of Prelinger Archives, Rick Prelinger, shares a look at 1940s Los Angeles via old Hollywood stock footage (intended to be projected behind characters in driving scenes shot on studio sound stages). He writes, "If it was ever used, it was seen fuzzy and out of focus. Today, however, it's amazing documentation of a lost neighborhood." More »
Shot in Tunisia by army cameramen, this documentary excerpt follows the Battle of Tebourba in late 1942. For photographs of the North African Campaign, see Alan Taylor's World War II retrospective. More »
Spanning India, Tahiti, Alaska, Paris, Scotland and the far reaches of central Africa, these eight videos transcend the conventions of the genre More »
In the words of filmmaker Michael Langan, Heliotropes "documents the parallel goals of man and nature, through the most primitive and sophisticated means, to simply stay in the light." Based on the poem by Brian Christian, the short film is an inventive blend of animation, live action footage, and poetry. Langan discusses his creative process and the making of the film in an interview with The Atlantic. More »
Cartoonist Dan Meth's epic mashup of movie scenes featuring the Twin Towers, spanning 1969 to 2001 More »
This short animation seeks to convey one simple thing: happiness. Commissioned by the F5 Festival, it was created through a variety of animation techniques by Mixtape Club, also known as Michelle Higa, Chris Smith, and Jesse Casey. They describe the process in an interview with The Atlantic. More »
Kim Pimmel is a designer, filmmaker, and inventor whose Compressed series taps the science of magnetism, capillary action, and fluid dynamics to create gorgeous cinematic time-lapse videos that look out of this world. He explains how he used soap and ferrofluid to create this one in an interview with The Atlantic. More »
The Salton Sea was once a tourist destination, a "Palm Springs with water." Now the largest lake in California is an environmental disaster: The water is toxic and the surrounding area abandoned. Photojournalist and filmmaker Jim Lo Scalzo contrasts these two visions, layering archival footage with new images of the landscape. He discusses his work in an interview with The Atlantic. More »
