The Scandalous Lady W (2015)

An 18th-century drama detailing the scandalous life of Lady Seymour Worsley. Starring: Natalie Dormer, Jessica Gunning, Aneurin Barnard.

Lady Worsley was rumoured to have had 27 lovers. In November 1781 she ran off with Bisset, a captain in the South Hampshire militia, who had been Worsley's close friend and neighbour at Knighton Gorges on the Isle of Wight. In February 1782 Worsley brought a criminal conversation case against Bisset for £20,000 (equivalent to £2,918,500 in 2025). Lady Worsley turned the suit in her favour with scandalous revelations and the aid of past and present lovers; and questioned the legal status of her husband. She included a number of testimonies from her lovers and her doctor, William Osborn, who related that she had suffered from a venereal disease which she had contracted from the Marquess of Graham. It was alleged that Worsley had displayed his wife naked to Bisset at the bath house in Maidstone. This testimony destroyed Worsley's suit and the jury awarded him only one shilling (2015: £5.28) in damages.

Bisset eventually left Lady Worsley when it became apparent that Worsley was seeking separation rather than divorce, meaning Seymour could not remarry until Worsley's death. Seymour was forced to become a professional mistress or demimondaine and live off the donations of rich men in order to survive, joining other upper-class women in a similar position in the New Female Coterie. She had two more children: another by Bisset after he left her in 1783, whose fate is unknown; and a fourth, Charlotte Dorothy Hammond (née Cochard), who she sent to be raised by a family in the Ardennes.

Lady Worsley later left for Paris in order to avoid her debts. In 1788, she and her new lover, the biracial composer, conductor and champion fencer Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, returned to England, and her estranged husband entered into articles of separation, on the condition she spend four years in exile in France. Eight months before the expiration of this exile, she was unable to leave France because of the events of the French Revolution and she was probably imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, meaning she was abroad on the death of her and Worsley's son in 1795. In early 1797, she returned to England, and she then suffered a severe two-month illness. Owing to the forgiveness of her mother, her sister and her sister's husband, the Earl of Harrington, she was then able to move into Brompton Park, her previous home, but which the laws on property prevented her from officially holding.

On Worsley's death in 1805, her £70,000 jointure reverted to her and just over a month later, on 12 September, at the age of 47 she married 26-year-old newfound lover John Lewis Cuchet (d. 1836) at Farnham. Also that month, by royal licence, she officially resumed her maiden name of Fleming, and her new husband also took it. After the armistice of 1814 ended the War of the Sixth Coalition, the couple moved to a villa at Passy, Paris where she died in 1818, aged 59. She is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Pervert's Guide to Ideology

Cultural theorist superstar Slavoj Žižek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes (The Pervert's Guide to Cinema) for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. With infectious zeal and a voracious appetite for popular culture, Žižek literally goes inside some truly epochal movies, all the better to explore and expose how they reinforce prevailing ideologies. As the ideology that undergirds our cinematic fantasies is revealed, striking associations emerge: What hidden Catholic teachings lurk at the heart of The Sound of Music? What are the fascist political dimensions of Jaws? Taxi Driver, Zabriskie Point, The Searchers, The Dark Knight, John Carpenter's They Live ("one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left"), Titanic, Kinder Eggs, verité news footage, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and propaganda epics from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia all inform Žižek's stimulating, provocative and often hilarious psychoanalytic-cinematic rant.

Celebration at Big Sur (1969) Festival

 

Celebration at Big Sur is a film of the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival in Big Sur, California, featuring Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell and others.

Songs: 

"I Shall Be Released" – Joan Baez

"Mobile Line" – John Sebastian with Stephen Stills offstage

"Song for David" – Joan Baez

shown rehearsing offstage, with stage performance of same song cut in

"All of God's Children Got Soul" – Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs Sisters

"Sea of Madness" – CSNY

"4 + 20" – Stephen Stills solo performance

Stephen Stills introduces this number discussing his interaction with a heckler in the previous scene

"Get Together" – Joni Mitchell with Crosby, Stills & Nash and John Sebastian

"Put a Little Love in Your Heart" – Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs Sisters

incomplete

non-musical footage of nude sauna, audience happenings

"Swing Down Sweet Chariot" – various

offstage, incomplete

"Rainbows All Over Yours Blues" – John Sebastian

"Woodstock" – Joni Mitchell (playing piano)

non-musical footage of self-identified "freak" with Woodstock-themed bus

"Red-Eye Express" – John Sebastian with Stephen Stills

"Changes" – Mimi Fariña and Julie Payne with Stephen Stills

incomplete

"Malagueña Salerosa" – Carol Ann Cisneros

"Rise, Shine, and Give God the Glory" – The Struggle Mountain Resistance Band

incomplete

"Down By the River" – CSNY

incomplete, over 7 minutes

folk musician improvising outside the festival

"Sweet Sir Galahad" – Joan Baez

"Oh Happy Day" – Dorothy Combs Morrison and the Combs Sisters with Joan Baez

opens with Joan Baez rehearsing same number with Dorothy Combs Morrison

Directed by – Baird Bryant, Johanna Demetrakas

Produced – Ted Mann, Carl Gottlieb

Cinematography – Baird Bryant, Johanna Demetrakas, Gary Weis, Peter Smokler, Joan Churchill

The Stones And Brian Jones / 2023, BBC4

At the age of 14, Nick Broomfield met Brian Jones by chance on a train. Brian was at the height of his success with the world at his feet - yet six years later he would be dead. The Stones and Brian Jones looks at the relationships and rivalries within The Rolling Stones in those formative years. It explores the iconoclastic freedom and exuberance of the 1960s, a time of intergenerational conflict and sexual turmoil which reflects on where we are today. Featuring revealing interviews with all the main players, and unseen archive released for the first time, The Stones and Brian Jones explores the creative musical genius of Jones, key to the success of the band, and uncovers how the founder of what became the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world was left behind in the shadows of history.

F for Fake Orson Welles (1973)

F for Fake (French: Vérités et mensonges, "Truths and lies") is a 1973 docudrama film co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles who worked on the film alongside François Reichenbach, Oja Kodar, and Gary Graver. Initially released in 1973, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Far from serving as a traditional documentary on de Hory, the film also incorporates Welles's companion Oja Kodar, hoax biographer Clifford Irving, and Orson Welles as himself. F for Fake is sometimes considered an example of a film essay.

In addition to the 88-minute film, in 1976, Welles also shot and edited a self-contained nine-minute short film as a "trailer", almost entirely composed of original material not found in the main film itself. Here is that trailer:

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles looks at the remarkable genius of Orson Welles on the eve of his centenary - the enigma of his career as a Hollywood star, a Hollywood director (for some a Hollywood failure), and a crucially important independent filmmaker. Orson Welles's life was magical: a musical prodigy at age 10, a director of Shakespeare at 14, a painter at 16, a star of stage and radio at 20, romances with some of the most beautiful women in the world, including Rita Hayworth. His work was similarly extraordinary, most notably Citizen Kane, (considered by many to be the most important movie ever made), created by Welles when he was only 25. In the years following Citizen Kane, Welles's career continued to change as he made film after film (some never finished, many dismissed) and acted in other projects often to earn money in order to keep making his own films. Magician features scenes from almost every existing Welles film, from Hearts of Age, (which he made in a day when he was only 18 years old) to rarely-seen clips from his final unfinished works like The Other Side of the Dream, The Deep, and Don Quixote, as well as his television and commercial work

The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

In September 1980, Iraq invades Iran. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is convinced that now is the time to strike, since Iran is still shaken by its Islamic Revolution, and he expects victory within weeks. Instead, the conflict will last 8 years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives , threaten world oil markets, and draw the US into the Persian Gulf for good. It’s the last total war of the 20th century.

If you want an indication of what a land war in Iran might look like. Watch this.....Does nobody remember the Iran-Iraq War? It was 8 years of absolute hell on earth (1980 - 1988). The US funded, armed and trained Iraq. There was no quarter given. It was brutal (think genocide . ethnic cleansing, mass murder, deportation, chemical warfare, enforced disappearance and counterinsurgency). The war caused around 500,000 deaths (excluding numbers from the related Anfal campaign - another 50,000–100,000 dead), making it the deadliest conventional war ever fought between regular armies of developing countries. Most of the present-day leadership in Iran are veterans of the Iran- Iraq War. They have seen things that Trump cannot imagine.

Trump is either bone stupid or insane (maybe both). Iran will fight until the bodies are piled high. But we still have this ridiculous speculation on the part of even so-called progressive media in the West:

"Despite launching the attack on Iran, with Israel, the White House does not seem to have fully anticipated what was likely to follow. Iran had few good military options for fighting back, but attacking US bases, US allies and merchant shipping in the Gulf was the most obvious response – to try to impose costs on the west." - The Guardian

Iran will not surrender until the armed forces (a million people, including the special forces and security forces) are destroyed. It will be brutal in the same ways the 1980 - 88 war was. The Americans have clearly not considered this.

Day of the Triffids (1963)

After meteors enter Earth's atmosphere, blinding much of the planet's population in the process, plantlike creatures known as Triffids emerge from the craters and begin to take over. Military officer Bill Masen (Howard Keel), one of the few sighted people left alive, meets with other survivors in England and tries to find a safe haven from the vicious vegetation, as scientist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) desperately seeks a way to defeat the leafy extraterrestrials.

"The Center Street Cut-Ups"

"The Center Street Cut-Ups" is the abbreviated title of the latest Third Mind Books original presentation, "HAVE A PLEASANT TRIP... 210 Center Street NYC 1965: the Cut-Up Life of William S. Burroughs," -- crafted with monocle at the ready by TMB founder & Ann Arbor eminence, Arthur S. Nusbaum with the assistance of Joe Provenzano (VP of Operations at Third Mind Books, and Nusbaum's protégé in life and literature). 

The focus, here as elsewhere is on WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS -- the Patron Saint-Demon of Third Mind Books -- and even more specifically, on a tranche of documents acquired at auction belonging to the painter, David Prentice. Prentice was a close, personal friend to Burroughs and his Papers document

document a very key time in the development of the Cut-Ups as both a literary technique and original philosophic contribution. 

The presentation was first delivered at the European Beat Studies Network Conference (ebsn.eu) in Paris, France in September of 2023, and was re-recorded with narration by the author in December of that same year.

Text & Narration by Arthur S. Nusbaum

Original Research by Arthur S. Nusbaum & Joe Provenzano

Paper/Research, PowerPoint & Film © Third Mind Books, 2023

Summer Storm - Tatsumi Hijikata (1973)

“A Summer Storm by Hijikata Tatsumi” primarily consists of the legendary Japanese dancer Hijikata Tatsumi's legendary performance shot in Kyoto in 1973, and is a tribute to this extraordinary talent. Now, thirty years later, it is still funny, sad, and infinitely gripping. Hijikata was the pioneer of the reputed Butoh dance. Butoh, performed in slow, unique movements by dancers, with their bodies painted white and bent-forward, is an antithesis of the traditional Western dance. As the only remaining footage in color of his performance, the film shows Hijikata as an eternal punker, rebel, and sufferer.