Anita: Dances of Vice

Anita: Dances of Vice (German: Anita – Tänze des Lasters) is a 1987 German avant-garde film directed by Rosa von Praunheim. The film premiered at the 1987 New York Film Festival and was also shown at, for example, the 1988 São Paulo International Film Festival.

The film follows a delusional elderly woman who believes she is Anita Berber (1899-1928), a German dancer who, along with her partner Sebastian Droste, epitomizes the decadence of 1920s Berlin. Nude dance performances, cocaine use, and an excessive sex life characterize their lifestyle. Anita Berber's story is told through the thoughts and memories of the old lady (played by Lotti Huber) who is being held in an "insane asylum". Scenes from Anita's scandalous life are replayed also in her dreams.

Deep End (1970)

Deep End is a 1970 psychological comedy drama film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski and starring John Moulder-Brown, Jane Asher and Diana Dors. It was written by Skolimowski, Jerzy Gruza and Boleslaw Sulik. The film was an international co-production between West Germany and the United Kingdom. Set in London, the film centres on a 15-year-old boy who develops an infatuation with his older, beautiful colleague at a suburban bath house and swimming pool.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September 1970. Deep End, considered a cult classic, went unreleased for many years due to rights issues. In 2011, it was given a digital restoration with the co-operation of the British Film Institute and was released in theatres and on home media.

Mike (John Moulder-Brown), a 15-year-old bathhouse worker, develops a crush on his older, attractive co-worker, Susan (Jane Asher). At first they help each other secure bigger tips by swapping their respective male and female clients. But their tidy business arrangement is severed when Mike discovers that Susan has not only shunned him, but is cheating on her fiancé with an older swim coach. As Mike begins stalking Susan in an effort to break them up, his innocent crush spirals into obsession.

The film features the song "Mother Sky" by Can in an extended sequence set in Soho, and "But I Might Die Tonight" by Cat Stevens in the opening scene and finale; the previously unreleased version heard in the film was eventually released in 2020 on a reissue of Stevens' album Tea for the Tillerman.

Deep End was one of David Lynch's favourite films.

"I don't like colour movies and I can hardly think about colour. It really cheapens things for me and there's never been a colour movie I've freaked out over except one, this thing called Deep End, which had really great art direction." - David Lynch

CAN Free Concert Cologne 1972

Film shot for the occasion of CAN's free concert in their home town of Cologne on February 3rd 1972, attended by over ten thousand. During the event, the multitrack tape recorder meant for the film's audio sync failed, and the band was left with only a highly flawed cassette recording of the concert from the front of stage.

The decision was then made to overdub the tape at Inner Space Studio the following month, and to film the overdubbing as well as CAN in their regular mode of improvisation. Two tracks recorded for the film later ended up on the album Unlimited Edition, titled "I'm Too Leise" and "LH 702 (Nairobi/München).

CAN (stylized in all caps) were a German experimental rock band formed in Cologne in 1968 by Holger Czukay (bass, tape editing), Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Michael Karoli (guitar), and Jaki Liebezeit (drums). They featured several vocalists, including American Malcolm Mooney (1968–70) and Japanese Damo Suzuki (1970–73). They have been hailed as pioneers of the German krautrock scene.

The founding members of CAN came from backgrounds in avant-garde music and jazz. They blended elements of psychedelic rock, space rock, funk, samba and musique concrète on influential albums such as Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyasi (1972) and Future Days (1973). CAN also had commercial success with singles such as "Spoon" (1971) and "I Want More" (1976) reaching national singles charts. Their work has influenced rock, post-punk, indie rock, post-rock and ambient acts.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is perhaps the most densely packed, aggressively weird movie to ever emerge from a major studio. It posits a hero who is a neurosurgeon, particle physicist, rock star, and comic book hero all at once. Peter Weller plays the titular character with a deadpan cool that holds the madness together. The film throws the audience into the middle of a complex mythology without a map, featuring a team of sidekicks called the "Hong Kong Cavaliers," an alien invasion by "Red Lectroids" from Planet 10 (all named John), and a plot involving a jet car driving through solid matter.

Despite flopping at the box office, it became a legendary cult classic because of its refusal to explain itself. It treats its absurd premise as absolute fact. The cast is a marvel of 80s talent, including Jeff Goldblum in a cowboy outfit, Christopher Lloyd as a manic alien, and John Lithgow giving a scenery-chewing performance as Dr. Emilio Lizardo. The film’s aesthetic and tone—particularly the end credits sequence where the cast walks in sync to the synth-pop theme—have influenced directors like Wes Anderson. It remains a litmus test for sci-fi fans: you either bounce off its chaotic energy, or you become a lifelong initiate of the Banzai Institute, quoting, "No matter where you go, there you are."

Brazil (1985) Full movie English

In a retro-future world, Sam Lowry, a clerk in the ministry department, is given the task to rectify an administrative error. However, in the process, he becomes an enemy of the state.

There is so much I could say about this film. It has shaped my life in some ways. This film is a work of genius.

Ongka's Big Moka: The Kawelka of Papua New Guinea

Ongka is a charismatic big-man of the Kawelka tribe who live scattered in the Western highlands, north of Mount Hagen, in New Guinea. The film focuses on the motivations and efforts involved in organising a big ceremonial gift-exchange or moka planned to take place sometime in 1974. Ongka has spent nearly five years preparing for this ceremonial exchange, using all his big-man skills of oratory and persuasion in order to try to assemble what he hopes will be a huge gift of 600 pigs, some cows, some cassowaries, a motorcycle, a truck and £5,500 in cash. As an example of the big-man familiar from written texts, Ongka is memorable, and the film manages to convey through this main character the importance of pigs, of exchange and of prestige in the life of these Highlanders. The film-crew never in fact managed to film the big moka, as the conspiratorial and complex manoeuvres involved in setting the date thwarted their plans. But we are shown Ongka replacing tee-shirt and shorts with his ceremonial feathers and setting off to a little moka where he collects pigs he `invested' with his wife's father. The interview with Ongka's wife raises the issue of the sexual division of labour and the importance of the wife's labour in pig-rearing and moka preparation, as well as the role of women in the establishment of a big-man.

A key component to Kawelka culture, the Moka ceremony finds those seeking to gain influence attempting to do so not by acquiring valuable objects, but by giving them away. This is similar to the Potlatch in Haida culture. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned and the leader of the tribe is ultimately threatened with violence as a result of his outwardly selfless act of giving.

Directed by Charlie Nairn, Ethnographer Andrew J. Strathern, In Disappearing World (London, England: Royal Anthropological Institute), 55 minutes

Horror Hospital

Produced in 1973. Directed by Antony Balch. Starring Michael Gough, Robin Ask, Vanessa Shaw. A pair of friends on a british rail trip soon find themselves in a secluded mansion with a slew of bizarre characters and an even more bizarre secret.

Robin Askwith (just prior to his shift into a sex comedy franchise) is a stressed out singer with a pop group. He decides to go for some R&R at a country retreat. He hooks up with Vanessa Shaw on the train journey in, and once they arrive at the retreat they find it's a bizarro world inhabited by mute bikers, lobotomised robots, a malignant dwarf and a mad doctor (Michael Gough) in a wheelchair!

The Secret of Roan Inish

The Secret of Roan Inish is a 1994 independent fantasy-adventure film written and directed by John Sayles. It is based on the 1957 novel Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry, by Rosalie K. Fry.

It is centered on the Irish and Orcadian folklores of selkies—seals that can shed their skins to become human. The story, set on the west coast of Ulster in the north-west of Ireland, is about Fiona, a young girl who is sent to live with her grandparents and her cousin Eamon near the island of Roan Inish, where the selkies are rumored to reside. It is a family legend that her younger brother was swept away in his infancy and raised by a selkie. Part of the film takes place in Donegal Town.

Witches: New Fashion, Old Religion (1977)

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An in-depth exploration of several covens' and practitioners' Witchcraft traditions in 1977.

A businessman who studies witchcraft as a hobby and a businesswoman who heads a coven are interviewed about their beliefs and practices. Shows the initiation of new members into a coven and the attempt by a "circle" to heal a member.

Outer and Inner Space (1966)

Outer and Inner Space is a 16mm film of Edie Sedgwick sitting in front of a television monitor on which is playing a prerecorded videotape of herself. On the videotape, Edie is positioned on the left side of the frame, facing right; she is talking to an unseen person off-screen to our right.

Outer and Inner Space is a groundbreaking multimedia document. Edie Sedgwick appears to have a conversation with herself. Time is compressed into the moment and we read a face in four parts which seems to be communicating with itself.

"As spectacularly beautiful as it is a fascinating spectacle, Warhol’s spatially dynamic and dramatically lit film-and-video portrait of Sedgwick, Outer and Inner Space, 1965, is perhaps his most brilliant articulation of the schism between private self and public image, as well as a further exploration of the serial imagery in his paintings. Shot during the summer of 1965, publicly screened in 1966, and recently rescued from oblivion, this was his first double-screen film—The Chelsea Girls would follow in September 1966—and his initial foray into video. Given the chance by Norelco to experiment with a prototype home-video recorder, Warhol used the camera to create a half-hour portrait of Sedgwick (as well as other Factory denizens). He then shot two thirty-three-minute 16 mm reels of the actress sitting in front of a television playing her videotaped image. In the final product, the two reels are shown side by side." ArtForum