SK Thoth

When I lived in Amsterdam for most of 1998 I played didgeridoo almost everyday in the small Flower Market, the Kalverstraat, the Leidseplein and along Damrak. One of the highlights of this period of my performance practice was spending a few days in the company of SK Thoth. I performed on the Kalverstraat with Thoth about three times. This is Thoth today, what an inspiration!

I got the Key to the Highway

This morning I listened to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. When I was 15 years old a local sharecropper (who was also a Scottish fisherman from Dundee) gave me a harmonica and some photocopied pages about Terry and McGee. I started hitchhiking at about the same time, between the small towns that my school friends (and a girlfriend) lived in. It was the beginning of a life of travel. I got the key to the highway, a harp some good shoes and a pack with some bread in it.......

FLCL (フリクリ, Furi Kuri?, also Fooly Cooly)

FLCL is an anime OVA series co-produced by Gainax and Production I.G.. The series was created and directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki, and written by Yōji Enokido.

Furi Kuri follows Naota Nandaba, a twelve-year-old boy living in the fictional Japanese suburb of Mabase. The industrial town houses the Medical Mechanica building, the reason for Haruko Haruhara's visit to the usually quiet suburb.

Naota's life is confined to going to school and living with his father and grandfather. The usually tranquil life in Mabase in interrupted with the arrival of Haruko Haruhara, who burst on the scene by running Naota over with her Vespa motor scooter and hitting him on the head with a Rickenbacker bass guitar. Later, Naota finds Haruko working in his house as a live-in maid.

Haruko's search for Atomsk puts her at odds with Medical Mechanica. At the same time, Naota is being watched by Commander Amarao. The Commander believes Haruko is in love with Atomsk and Medical Mechanica is out to conquer the galaxy. The fortuitous circumstances get Naota involved in a three way battle between Haruko, Amarao and Medical Mechanica.

Jodorowsky For One Week Only (Jonathan Ross, BBC)

Jodorowsky For One Week Only (Jonathan Ross, BBC)
Alejandro Jodorowsky or Alexandro Jodorowsky (born February 7, 1929, in Iquique, Chile) is a philosopher, scholar in comparative religion, playwright, director, producer, composer, actor, mime, comic book writer, tarot card reader and historian, and psychotherapist.
He started his film career in Mexico with Fando y Lis (1968). The feature-length film debuted in Acapulco at the Film Festival and is famous for having incited a full scale riot there, requiring that Jodorowsky be smuggled out in a limousine.

Alejandro Jodorowsky speaking in Sitges festival of cinema 2006El Topo (1970), a mystical western, was his second film and is now considered a cult classic. John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped to arrange the film's release and distribution in the United States through Beatles manager Allen Klein.

Jodorowsky's third film, La Montaña Sagrada (The Holy Mountain) (1973), was entirely financed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. At a projected budget of $1,500,000 (in USA dollars), it was the most expensive Mexican film production to date. It has been suggested that the Holy Mountain may be inspired by Rene Daumal novel Mount Analogue.

Jodorowsky began working in 1975 on an adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. The project was intended to involve his son Brontis (Paul), Orson Welles as the Baron, Salvador Dalí as the Emperor, Mick Jagger as Feyd Rautha, Alain Delon as Duncan Idaho, Geraldine Chaplin as Lady Jessica, Dan O'Bannon for the script, Chris Foss, Pink Floyd, H.R. Giger and Jean Giraud (Mœbius). Ultimately, its funding evaporated, but Jodorowsky claimed it was sabotaged by the major studios in Hollywood because it was too French, a strange claim considering that Jodorowsky, while a naturalized citizen of France, has never identified with any particular country or culture (although the funding and his producer, Jerome Seydoux, were French). Many close to the project claim that the set designs later turned up in Star Wars. Several of the people working on Jodorowsky's version of Dune later worked on Alien with elements (specifically those designed by Giger) similar to that of the failed Dune project. In the early 1980s, David Lynch would later make the first film adaptation of Dune.

In 1989 Jodorowsky completed the Mexican-Italian production Santa Sangre. The film received limited theatrical distribution, putting Jodorowsky back on the cultural map despite its mixed critical reviews. The film delved into psychodrama territory with its protagonist becoming the amputated arms and hands of his mother and committing a string of murders in the process. Several of Jodorowsky's sons were recruited as actors.

He followed in 1990 with a very different film, The Rainbow Thief. Though it gave Jodorowsky a chance to work with actual "movie stars" Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, the producer effectively curtailed most of Jodorowsky's artistic inclinations, threatening to fire him on the spot if anything in the script was changed.

PARADISE NOW: The Living Theatre

"In 1968 The Living Theatre, led by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, triumphantly returned to America from years of self-imposed exile in Europe with their theatrical breakthrough Paradise Now. The play introduces the practice of collective creation, dissolving the boundaries of human interactions and forging a harmony between the actors and audience. Of this process, Julian Beck writes, "Collective creation is the secret weapon of the people... This play is a voyage from the many to the one and from the one to the many. It's a spiritual voyage and a political voyage, a voyage for the actors and the spectators. The play is a vertical ascent toward permanent revolution, leading to revolutionary action here and now. The revolution of which the play speaks is the beautiful, non-violent, anarchist revolution. The purpose of the play is to lead to a state of being in which non-violent revolutionary action is possible."
Order the DVD.

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc 1928

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc 1928 Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer with Anotonin Artaud as Jean Massieu. One of the last great silent films.