an animation from Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan’s Crossing the BLVD project.
This video, directed and animated by Warren Lehrer with Brandon Campbell, features the words of Eugene Hütz—leader of the gypsy-punk-cabaret band Gogol Bordello—sharing his views on ‘globalization’ and putting forward an alternative vision of what he calls “multi-kontra-culture.” This animation, with sound production and arrangement by Judith Sloan, is the newest manifestation of Lehrer/Sloan’s multi-media project, Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, which documents and portrays new immigrants and refugees in the United States.
Warren and Judith were hanging out on a Lower East Side rooftop one hot summer evening, drinking vodka and sharing stories with members of Gogol Bordello, when Eugene came out with his critique of multi-culturalism, and offered up a kind of extemporaneous manifesto of multi-kontra-culture. They liked his vision so much, they ended their 400 page, 4-color book with it (W.W. Norton). Judith mixed it with some street noise and the accordion of Yuri Lemeshev, also from Gogol Bordello, and made it the last cut on the Crossing the BLVD CD. That cut called “Globalization” is the soundtrack of this 4 minute 15 second animation, which Warren recently completed in collaboration with artist/animator Brandon Campbell.