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.

The Monumental and Domestic Architecture of Neolithic Scotland

Tristan Hughes goes on a road trip of a lifetime to discover more about the mysteries of prehistoric Scotland.

In Part one, Tristan heads to Orkney to investigate its astonishing 5,000 year old Stone Age remains.

In Part two, Tristan sees the beautiful carvings of adult red deer, the first animal representations in Scotland. This is just one of the remarkable finds in one of the most extraordinary prehistoric landscapes in Scotland: the magical and mysterious Kilmartin Glen.

In Part three, Tristan ventures across Scotland to investigate prehistoric skyscrapers - brochs.

Included in the documentary is the absolutely incredible Maeshowe. Maeshowe (or Maes Howe; Old Norse: Orkahaugr) is a Neolithic chambered cairn and passage grave situated on Mainland Orkney, Scotland. It was probably built around 2800 BC. In the archaeology of Scotland, it gives its name to the Maeshowe type of chambered cairn, which is limited to Orkney.It was not only constructed for contemporary spirtual and social reasoning. Maeshowe was intended to last forever, giving us an indication for a conceptual relationship to time held by the builders of Maeshowe.

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV is a 2023 documentary film by Amanda Kim about video artist Nam June Paik. The film traces the life of the artist from his privileged childhood in Japanese-occupied Korea up until his death in 2006. The films uses archival footage, interviews with fellow artists who knew him best and written letters to personal friends John Cage and others narrated by Academy Award-nominated actor Steven Yeun.It premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival before being acquired by PBS Films and Greenwich Entertainment as an episode of American Masters. Click on the above image for the full film.