William Burroughs interviewed by Kathy Acker

This is a fairly rare interview with William Burroughs by Kathy Acker, a great punk/postmodern/experimental writer, originally released on video by the Institute of Contemporary Art in London although it is no longer listed in their catalog. This particular copy comes from Dutch television.

Echoes and George Greenough

Pink Floyd "Echoes" (1973) from the film Crystal Voyager

Crystal Voyager is one of the most beautiful surfing movies ever made, and one of the most successful. It was the first surfing film biography, and the first to concentrate largely on one surfer. Greenough’s innovations had helped revolutionise surfboard design in the 1960s, but the film concentrates on his efforts to capture the perfect surfing footage, from the perfect platform – his own boat.

The film took the surfing road movie, a well-established genre, to the water, with a camera strapped to Greenough’s back. Riding his famous kneeboard – known as 'the spoon’ – Greenough’s footage from under and inside the waves gave the film an extraordinary immediacy.

The final sequence, a 23-minute odyssey, has an almost abstract beauty, aided by an ecstatic song contributed by Pink Floyd. The band had seen his first film, The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun (1970), when it was shown in a Sydney experimental art gallery, The Yellow House. Crystal Voyager was produced and directed by David Elfick, who went on to produce Newsfront.


The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun- George Greenough (1970)

This release is essential watching because it is a cinematic masterwork of the highest magnitude. In it, George Greenough chronicles ground zero of the shortboard revolution as it evolved in 1968. This highly personalized film is the prime instigators perspective of the innovations that changed surfing forevermore as they came down. Track the inside out with George in groundbreaking point of view sequences that are utterly unique. Experience remote Australia and hidden California as ridden by Mac T, Ted Spencer, Baddy Treolar, Chris Brock, Gary Keys, Russell Hughes and a brigade of the undergrounds best. Revel in the morphic hand hewn artwork of Patty Hennick. Hear the distinctive improvisational soundtrack which was scored on the spot by Dennis Dragon, (before the Surf Punks), his brothers Doug and Daryl, (the Captain before Tennille), and Denny Aaberg, (before Big Wednesday).

Finances entirely with the proceeds generated by Greenoughs fishing business, this document is entirely free of and commercial constraints or advertising sludge. Gritty, witty, unexpurgated, unadorned and essential; this is the first film from the tubes perspective (GreenoughVision). It is the Innermost Limits of Pure Fun.
-C.R. Stecyk

Himalayan Yoga Neuroscience & Astrophysics

Wings to Freedom

Mystic Revelations from Babaji and the Himalayan Yogis

There never has been, nor will be, a time when man's own nature shall cease to demand his foremost attention. The evolution of human consciousness is the most comprehensive enterprise ever undertaken by mankind, besides which the greatest of human achievements pale into insignificance.

In the quiet spaces of our lives we often wonder: Where did we come from? Where do we go after death? Who are we and why are we here? Meditating Yogis realized that the answers lay within the depths of one's own consciousness, unlocked by the key of breath and the Science of Yoga.

Join award winning documentary film makers Som and Rita Bakshi as they follow the path of a yogi's mystic journey through the Himalayas.

The film captures candid moments as Gurunath illumines us on man's timeless questions against the breathtaking high-altitude scenery, glacial rivers, and caves hallowed by Ancient Sages. A unique feast for the eyes and the intellect unfolds as the Yogi's experiences and in-depth revelations come to life.

Featuring Yogiraj Gurunath Siddhanath, a living Kriya Kundalini Solar master.

"To transmute the minds of sincere seekers of yoga into a higher state
of consciousness is the purpose of my work." -- Siddhanath

If earth peace is to herald the dawn of the new age, we must all realize:

Humanity is one's only religion,
Breath one's only prayer, and
Consciousness one's only God.

Evolution of the Human Brain:

In the center of the human brain, there is a miniature cave of Brahma. This cave of Brahma is the 3rd ventricle.

In the human brain lies the corpus callosum. Connected to the corpus callosum is the Hamsa swan.

Since eons yogis have reported seeing a Hamsa during meditation. Now in the 3rd eye center there is the agya chakra, called the "shiva netra", the eye of shiva. The Hamsanath yogi sees the shiva netra, which is just in front of the cave of Brahma.

Within the center of the 3rd eye is the scintillating white star called the kutastha chaitanya. When the yogi by constant years of meditation, penetrates the star—he is already in the no mind state, the "unmani avasta" a state of bhav samadhi, sabikalpa samadhi. —he penetrates the star and enters into a state of nirvikalpa samadhi! And now this lofty soul, radiant in his splendor, rests with his pranic spiritual energy in the ventricles of the Hamsa swan, which are the lateral ventricles in the brain. The evolution of human consciousness is still going on, as the human brain develops, vaster and more beautiful, the texture refines. The 100 billion cells in the human brain are uniting with the 100 billion stars in our galactic system, and they go beyond the galactic system into the wonderful state of supernal splendor of niranjan nirvana, kaivalya samadhi, the Nirvana.

His physical brain and body cannot take it much, but the ultimate stage is that the corona radiata in his brain cells, these subtle fibers, these tubes, light up with a divine effulgence. This radiant splendor goes and spreads in its aura far beyond the earth system, way into the galaxies.

Os Mutantes Documentary Movie

A trailer from the upcoming documentary on psychedelic rock pioneers "Os Mutantes". The story of Os Mutantes is perhaps one of the strangest in the entire history of rock music, and has served as heady inspiration for artists as varied as David Byrne, Beck, Sean Lennon, and Nirvana. Imagine a 1960's Brazilian rock band on a weekly television program disguised as aliens, witches, or conquist-adors performing surreal hymns to such bizarre figures as Don Quixote (or at other times: Genghis Khan and Lucifer) while tossing massive nets and giant rubber caterpillars across their audience. Add the fact that they had the courage to perform a fusion of traditional Brazilian rhythms with psychedelia at a time when the "MPB" (the Brazilian music establishment) were openly hostile to the wild sounds of American rock 'n roll and this provoked even further outrage by fashioning their own outrageous musical instruments, often constructed out of such common household objects as rubber hoses, cans of hot chocolate, or bottles of bug spray. Finally, they did all of this under the watchful eyes of a brutally repressive right-wing military dictatorship, as they were regularly censored by the government while performing alongside such musical revolutionaries as Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso (who, like many artists in Brazil at the time, were imprisoned and exiled for their political stance). For more information - visit: www.americangirlproductions.com This is by far the best copy of this video of the Brazilian group Os Mutantes. Recorded in a Festival in 1967 in São Paulo, Brazil.

Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning (born August 25, 1910) is an American painter, printmaker, sculptor and writer. She has also designed sets and costumes for ballet and theatre.
Born in Galesburg, Illinois, Tanning lived in Paris for twenty-eight years. Having moved to New York, she exhibited with the Julien Levy Gallery prior to meeting the German painter Max Ernst in 1942; she married Ernst four years later (becoming his fourth wife, after Luise Straus-Ernst in 1918, Marie-Berthe Aurenche in 1927 and Peggy Guggenheim in 1942). Ernst introduced her to the circle of the Surrealists. Her best-known work, Eine kleine Nachtmusik (a dark painting laden with symbolism; ironically named after Mozart's light-hearted serenade), shows that she became a member of that group for a while, but later her painting style became prismatic and lyrical.

During her 95th year, a New York gallery published a new monograph entitled Dorothea Tanning: Insomnias 1955--1965. Her most recent museum exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, entitled Birthday and Beyond, and mounted in 2000 to mark their acquisition of Tanning's celebrated 1942 self-portrait, Birthday.

In the 1940s, when she was one of the painters in Julien Levy's stable, Tanning painted within the idiom of surrealist representation. By the mid-50s, her work had radically changed. As Tanning explains, "Around 1955 my canvases literally splintered . . . I broke the mirror, you might say." Insomnias (Moderna Museet, Stockholm) — the group takes its name from a painting of the same title that Tanning made in 1957 — are forays into the realm of conjured energies. They represent a forceful shift at a particular, postwar moment that continues to reverberate today. In his essay for Dorothea Tanning: Insomnias, Charles Stuckey describes these "seemingly multidimensional mindspaces" as "among the most ambitious and sophisticated paintings to address the dilemmas of imagination and culture in a new atomic, space-race age."

Following her retrospective at the Centre Pompideau organized by Pontus Hultén in 1974, Tanning returned to New York in 1978 following the death of her husband. In her tenth decade, Tanning frequently has been publishing poetry in The New Yorker, and is completing several books. Her most recent novel is Chasm.

The Obama Deception

Yesterday a good friend told me about a film he saw on the net that made an impression on him. It is called The Obama Deception and it deal with:

The Obama phenomenon is a hoax carefully crafted by the captains of the New World Order. He is being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American people into accepting global slavery.

Last night I watched some of it with this blog post in mind and a critical eye at the ready. My thoughts congealed around the idea that power for 99% of the population is as distant as the moon. Conspiracy (and I will explain what I mean by that) is one way of bringing the conception of power closer to the mundaneness of daily life. To explain how I came to this idea I go back to the Goombungee school bus in the hot summer of 1983. The Australian government had just changed and after 8 years of centre-right leadership the adults who could had just voted in a Labour government led by Robert (Bob) Hawke, then holder of the beer sculling world record, a yard glass - approximately 3 imperial pints or 1.7 litres - in eleven seconds.

On my school bus sat several teenagers from religious families. I remember one of these kids speaking at length about Hawke "being pushed as savior in an attempt to con the American Australian people into accepting global slavery" involving a world bank and Zionist plots. There was even a prophecy from Nostradamus involved in his explanation (something about "a man with the name of a wild bird in a land yet undiscovered coming to power"). We on the Goombungee bus looked out over the eucalyptus scrub and dry fields and felt somehow involved in the functions of power by being privy to this 'truth'. The machinery of power may have been impossibly distant from us there in that hot tin box on wheels, but we understood something that perhaps others did not. There was a conspiracy at work and we had come into contact with it through narrative.

Later in my life, in 1994 I attended a lecture at Sydney University by Noam Chomsky (who no doubt is part of the same conspiracy as Bob Hawke but we on the Goombungee bus did not get much exposure to anarchist linguists so he was never in the story). I remember Chomsky touched on the idea of conspiracy theories in his presentation. He said that conspiracy theories are dependent on distance; if it is an enemy state it is not a conspiracy, it is intelligence (think Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, the famine that has been going on in North Korea for a decade and so on). If the theory under consideration is closer to 'home' and involves one's own government then we are talking conspiracy.

In the decade and a half since I saw Chomsky speak, power has drifted even further away from the masses in many lands. With jobs moving to the new industrial economies of the East and governments moving upwards into a level of global blocs (NAFTA, EU, ASEAN and so on) the average citizen can be forgiven for feeling there is more to the story of government than what they are being told. The concept of politic agency at the individual level is not strong and healthy at the moment in many nations. It is here that the conspiracy enters into the fabric of political narrative. Conspiracy, such as The Obama Deception brings power closer to people via narrative and thereby provides a sense of mythic agency in relation to politics.

The tragedy of media such as The Obama Deception is not the possible degrees of truth value that can be related to it as a text. Rather, that political agency is translated into complex narratives and enacted out along reactionary lines of behaviour as a part of the political process (it has had 2.5 million views on just one of its YouTube sites) I find very disturbing. The more time people spend putting together the pieces of The Obama Deception puzzle (even if it is just in their minds) the less time is being spent on actually doing something to participate in the democratic political process. Of course the people behind The Obama Deception would say that there is no democratic process today. That's the way they want it. The result of such a narrative as The Obama Deception and "the man with the name of a wild bird" from 1983 is a negation of what few democratic rights we have remaining.

Terry Hall & Mushtaq

Terry Hall & Mushtaq: A Tale Of Woe from the CD Hour Of Two Lights (2003)


Terry Hall & Mushtaq / Ten Eleven (Live)

TERRY HALL & MUSHTAQ
The Hour of Two Lights : Release Date: August 26, 2003

Terry Hall's career has always been one of spotting trends and breaking new ground. In the early '80s he helped spearhead the hugely popular ska revival as lead vocalist with The Specials, who went on to become one of the most popular and influential bands of the punk era inspiring the likes of Rancid, Blur and No Doubt and The Basement Jaxx. Hall followed that up with Fun Boy Three, ushering in a musical eclecticism seldom heard in the pop charts and on mainstream radio.

Throughout these projects as well as his subsequent group, The Colourfield, and several solo albums, Terry Hall's understated, evocative vocals has continued to be one of the most distinctive and recognizable voices in all rock music. Now, together with Mushtaq, a UK-based, Middle Eastern musician with a background in hip-hop, reggae and r'n'b Terry Hall has created an album no less groundbreaking and arresting than anything he has done in his career.

Terry Hall and Mushtaq's album couldn't be more in tune with today's headlines, fusing the Jewish and Arabic musical cultures which draws upon the duo's own lineage -- Terry Hall being a Polish refugee with a Jewish background and Mushtaq being a Middle Eastern Muslim. In some ways, the album is a return to Terry Hall's musical roots (you'll recall The Specials' breakthrough hit "Gangsters" was based around a Middle Eastern-influenced melody).Yet, together with Mushtaq, the album breaks bold new ground by creating a stunning topical tapestry of music. This melting pot of sounds features Jewish Gypsy music (from the group Romani Rad), a Mongolian throat singer, an Egyptian violinist, an Algerian rapper, a Turkish percussionist, a Syrian oud player, an Arabian pianist, and a Jewish Clarinet player whose resume includes being a sessions musician on the original "Pink Panther" theme! Even Blur and Gorillaz front man Damon Albarn provides guest vocals and instrumentation.

No wonder the album is positioned as an early contender for Britain's prestigious Mercury Prize awarded
for the best British album of the year reflecting originality and talent chosen by an independent jury of
industry leaders, musicians and critics.


"Everybody we worked with had a story to tell," says Terry Hall. "And their stories became part of the record. We were blessed with the range of people we found. But it really happened by accident."

Napalm Sticks to Kids by Alien Virus

The Brisbane sound from 1990.

Gongs Across Borders

Music and dance from the highlands of Cambodia and Vietnam. Some beautiful images and sounds.

A Musician from Non Lec Village in Cambodia explains: “The Gong, is very important because all my ancestors no matter what they faced, they always had Gongs. Every ceremony we must play Gongs for the Spirits. Without Gongs it’s useless to hold the Ceremony. The Gongs speak to the Spirit and represent our Tribe. They are so important that if we lost Gongs it will be like we lost half of our bodies. Gongs are extremely important.”

Terrence Koh

"The Voyage Of Lady Midnight Snowdrops Through Double Star Death" By Terrence Koh.

I watched a documentary on Terrence Koh this weekend, Hey Koh Bunny, Hey Koh Bunny!. A cool account of a 'cool' artist. What impressed me about Koh is not so much his art, which is clever and summarizes a lot of what has been happening in the west over the last ten years in art, media and buying, but the whole 'art as reality/reality as art' paradigm that is present in Koh Bunny.

Tim Buckley - Dolphins - Whistle Test (May '74)

The Road of a Thin Man

I am moving house. Me alone. Feels good in a nervous way. I am only listening to Dylan as my CDs are all packed.

A different version from Bob Dylan's "Eat the Document" This was an extra that wasn't actually in the movie.

Here, My Explosion

Here. My Explosion happened when I totally stopped doing some things that I completely hated and free to do what made me be. A story. A magic trick. And a burn. I thought it would be fun to end to have the second half be a long Western, and it would have been, but it totally didn't fit in, so I ended with a longer hope. Yes, Hope of what you want to do. Hope, Dreams. In It. Life. by Reid Gershbein

Download a quicktime version of the entire film here.


Get the soundtrack for free here.

The Hunt For Gollum

An unofficial and free 39 minute Lord of the Rings fan film, made for less than $5,000 by Independent Online Cinema. Based on parts of The Lord of the Rings, it tells of when Aragorn tracked down Gollum between The Hobbit & The Fellowship of the Ring.

www.thehuntforgollum.com
www.independentonlinecinema.com

Bill Brasky-Stock Broker

I saw this on TV late the other night and laughed. Even thought about it afterwards.

Bill Brasky was the subject of a series of sketches on the television sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live between 1996 and 1998. The sketches were written by cast member Will Ferrell and writer Adam McKay.

The format of the sketches resembles the short-form improv game "Two Describe a Third." Three or four friends (known as the "Bill Brasky Buddies") gather in a public place to drink Scotch, smoke cigars, and loudly reminisce about their mutual acquaintance Bill Brasky. While the friends refer to Brasky in both present and past tense on occasion, it appears that Brasky is still alive: some sketches end with Brasky's appearance via a forced perspective shot that makes him look like a giant. (One sketch, set at Brasky's funeral, ends with Brasky breaking out of the coffin holding a glass of Scotch.)

Most of the friends' discussions focus on their admiration of Brasky's superhuman accomplishments, usually focused on his huge size, virility, celebrity connections, amazing tolerance for drugs and alcohol, and reckless disregard for human life. The stories of Brasky's life and seemingly legendary accomplishments are exaggerated to absurd levels in the American tradition of tall tales, similar to the "Chuck Norris Facts" Internet phenomenon, employed nearly a decade later (in fact, Bill Brasky quotes are regularly recycled as Chuck Norris facts). If their stories are to be believed, Brasky is ten feet tall, weighs two tons, possesses a variety of superhuman capabilities, is capable of lactation, and has cheated death on numerous occasions.

The Brasky Buddies are all apparently salesmen who worked with Brasky, as they frequently state that he was "the best damned salesman in the office." They all have red cheeks and red noses (apparently due to the large amounts of Scotch they consume), and extremely large, white teeth (for unexplained reasons). They appear to be coming from a sales conference or a business meeting, and by the time the sketch begins, they are very drunk.

Typically, the three cycle through the same genres of comment four or five times. The first buddy will begin a long anecdote about Brasky, interrupted by the second drunkenly blurting out something embarrassing (e.g. "I masturbate to the Teletubbies..."). The buddies then exchange several shorter claims about Brasky. The cycle will then repeat, starting with the second Brasky Buddy, getting more outrageous each time around. At some point a man not party to the original conversation, usually played by Tim Meadows, will interject with "Are you guys talking about Bill Brasky? I know Bill Brasky!"

8.08.08 Celebrational Ritual at the Loveland Godfarm

A tenth anniversary celebration of the founding of Bruce Damer's piece of heaven, the Ancient Oak's Loveland Godfarm.. Join us for a celebration of new beginnings and long term friendships.

I have spent some time in the company of Bruce and Galen these last few days and what a pleasure it has been...

Sun City Girls - CIA Man

Unyazi of the Bushveld - 2007

This film by Aryan Kaganof was shot in 2005, during the first symposium organised by our fellow citizen Dimitri Voudouris at the University of Witwatersrand, near Johannesburg. Its final editing was completed this year, as the film is really a formal, musical and, above all, stylistic improvisation, which took time to be transferred onto film.

The film opens with the words of the composer Francisco Lopez and continues with those of the theoreticians George Lewis (an American, thanks to whom the film was shown at the latest jazz festival at Columbia University), Christo Doherty and the musicologist James Sey. The scene is set in a way that’s free and advanced, making us look forward to hearing the improvised and naturally modern music, and goes well with the musical content of the film. Kaganof has brought together a large number of images of the festivities and preparations, and we watch musicians of every nationality experimenting and rehearsing with their musical instruments. These experiments are presented as a visual and acoustic symphony. Voudouris adds that the festival will also be a multi-media event. (More)

Jerry Rubin 1970

Phil Donahue, ironically plays the Bill O'Reilly role in 1970, admonishes Yippy leader, Jerry Rubin, that his radical antics only serve to help President Nixon.

Baba Space

Pete Owen-Jones, a vicar in a Sussex parish, is dissatisfied with some aspects of his faith and sets off on three extreme pilgrimages to China, India and Egypt to explore Zen Buddhism, Hinduism and ascetic Christianity. Pete feels that the Church of England is too much a faith of the head, and not enough a faith of the soul, the heart or even the body. He now sets off on a quest in search of a more physical and mystical path to enlightment. Pete says: "What I'm looking for is a spirituality that is absent from western Christianity. A spirituality I know exists in the extremes of world religions. "I hope to enter worlds where rule book and doctrine are replaced by an individual relationship with God and where the attainment of enlightenment is won by hardship, privation and pain. I have to become an extreme pilgrim." Pete travels to India and joins the Mela, the huge Hindu pilgrimage that draws to the Ganges.Pete meets a Guru who agrees to take him under his wing and teach him how to become a Sadhu – an Indian holy man. He then sets off on a journey across northern India to the mountains in search of the Hindu road to spiritual bliss

Babas in Varanassi

The act or practice of feeding on dead bodies (necrophagia) is beyond comprehension in the western world. But in other cultures ritual cannibalism is a fact of life. This astonishing documentary, filmed in India, is a very rare recording of this practice as well as its philosophical background. Varanasi is the holy city of Hinduism. More than 1 million believers arrive in this city every year, after a long journey, to die on the banks of the holy Ganges River. Here, the Aghori Sadhus members of a sacred and ancient sect seek their way to heaven: human remains from the cremation grounds. They believe that by eating human flesh of the dead bodies floating in the Ganges they humble themselves, therefore come closer to God. Aghoris seems to follow a path, which is radically opposite that of ideal Hinduism. They drink liquor, eat flesh and utter obscenities, meditate at night and have uninhibited sex. Aghoris are one of the most controversial of Hindu holy men (sadhus). People believe that Aghoris possess magical powers; stories of Aghoris curing people suffering from serious diseases are common in the Indian villages.

Satsang with Papaji

The Door to the Self


Your nature is Silence


Wake Up.
Papaji beautiful guidance about no difference between sleep state and dream state. When we wake up from this, we realise we are already free.

Sri H.W.L. Poonja, lovingly referred to as Papaji, was born on October 13, 1910, in a part of the Punjab that is now in Pakistan.

He had his first direct experience of the Self at the age of nine. He met his Master, Sri Ramana Maharshi, in 1944. Shortly afterwards he realized the Self in the presence of his master.Being a householder, he continued to work and support the many members of his extended family until his retirement in 1966. After extensive travel Papaji settled down in Lucknow, India, where he received visitors from around the world. He died on September 6, 1997.

"Let there be Peace and Love among all beings of the Universe." (Papaji)

Derrida (2002)

Watch 'Derrida' (2002) in Educational & How-To  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com Derrida is a documentary film about the philosopher Jacques Derrida directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman and released in 2002. The philosopher, who is often noted for his reluctance to be interviewed, is shown in personal life, among his family, and is interviewed by the documentarians about his thought. Several interludes present passages from Derrida's work, read in voice-over by Kofman. Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, served as an editor and worked on sound for the film. The soundtrack was composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Boing Boing Video: The Throbbing Gristle Interview

"Next closest thing to an internal organ massage standing next to [SRL's] V1 pulsejet engine," said BB pal Karen Marcelo, after one of the dates on the band's 2009 reunion tour. "It was like my diaphragm resonated until my lungs became a subwoofer while words once from a man's mouth sprung from the same woman's mouth," twittered TG trufan T.Bias.

Download The Video (Mpeg4)

Dimi Mint Abba

Ouleye mint amar tichitt 10 موريتانيا




Dimi Mint Abba is Mauritania's most famous musician. She was born Loula Bint Siddaty Ould Abba in 1958 into a low-caste ("iggawin") family specializing in the griot tradition.

Dimi's parents were both musicians (her father had been asked to compose the Mauritanian national anthem), and she began playing at an early age. Her professional career began in 1976, when she sang on the radio and then competed, the following year, in the Umm Kulthum Contest in Tunis. Her winning song "Sawt Elfan" ("Art's Plume") has the refrain "Art's Plume is a balsam, a weapon and a guide enlightening the spirit of men", which can be interpreted to mean that artists play a more important role than warriors in society.

Her first international release was on the World Circuit record label, following a recommendation from Ali Farka Touré. On this album, she was accompanied by her husband Khalifa Ould Eide and her two daughters.

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is an independent documentary film about the Motion Picture Association of America's rating system and its effect on American culture, directed by Kirby Dick and produced by Eddie Schmidt. It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was released into select theatres on September 1, 2006. The Independent Film Channel, the film's producer, aired the film later that autumn. The MPAA gave the original cut of the film an NC-17 rating for "some graphic sexual content": scenes that illustrated the content a film could include to garner an NC-17 rating. Kirby Dick appealed, and descriptions of the ratings deliberations and appeal were included in the documentary. The new version of the film is not rated. The film discusses disparities the film maker sees in ratings and feedback: between Hollywood and independent films, between gay and straight sexual situations, and between violence and sexual content

Primer (77 mins)

Primer (2004) is an American science fiction film about the accidental discovery of time travel. The film was written, directed and produced by Shane Carruth, a former mathematician and engineer, and was completed on a budget of only $7,000.

The principal characters in the film are Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan), two engineers who create a device which will allow an object or person to travel backwards in time. The pair initially use the device to cheat on the stock market, but are ultimately unable to resist the temptation to meddle with every aspect of their lives. Through recklessness they create increasingly complex paradoxes, and ultimately their newfound power begins to destroy their friendship.

Primer is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth chose not to dumb down for the sake of his audience. One reviewer said that "anybody who claims [to] fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar." The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 before securing a limited release in cinemas, and has since gained a cult following.

Saturday Morning Tunes

Group Doueh Sublime Frequencies Tour 2009
Live in Concert: GROUP DOUEH Group Doueh are led by the enigmatic guitar hero Bamaar Salmou, who is known simply as 'Doueh' (pronounced: 'Doo-way'). They are from Dakhla, in the Western Sahara. The group's sound is rooted in the traditional foundations of Sahrawi/Hassania music, but one that is also entirely its own. It shares its roots with the neighboring styles of Mauritanian music, however Group Doueh have managed to transcend the classical limitations of that music with a fiery, independent, and avant approach that incorporates a distinctly pop and rock element that is anomalous in the region. This is a sound that can only come from the land that inspired it. This is the sound of the Sahara desert. It is a searing, meditative, and hypnotic modal sandstorm of note clusters that has been cathartic to anyone who has heard it. Group Doueh have been playing together for over 20 years. The band consists of their leader, Doueh on guitar and tinidit, his wife Halima on vocals and tbal, their son Jamal on organ, and longtime friend Bashiri also on vocals. They had declined several offers from Moroccan, French and Spanish recording labels to release their music. It was not until Sublime Frequencies, after a long search for the music landed them at the man's house in Dakhla, that Doueh agreed to have his music released for the very first time. Sublime Frequencies & QuJunktions are proud to present Group Doueh's first ever UK appearance and extended shows in Europe. Sublime Frequencies was founded in 2003 by Alan Bishop, Hisham Mayet, and Richard Bishop. In just over 5 years, the label has produced 35 CDs, 8 DVDs, and 5 LPs. Sublime Frequencies specializes in releasing audio & video from North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The presentation, aesthetic, and approach sidesteps traditional ethnomusicology, academic protocol and corporate funding, documenting the sound and images of ignored cultural phenomenon rich in expressive ideas. The projects are divided into four areas of presentation: regional radio collages, field recordings, folk and pop music compilations, and video/film documentaries. Sublime Frequencies is self-motivated, self-financed, and fearless in approach. The world is changing so quickly that it has become apparent that cultures and ideas from less-developed countries will be buried and replaced entirely by the export of western-styled culture unless there are alternative perceptions of the great traditions and hybrids of these traditions that still remotely exist today across the globe. The productions are not limited to their own archive and expand to the many associates the group correspond and work with who have similar interests. The list of contributors to the label includes Mark Gergis, Robert Millis, Tucker Martine, fm3, Laurent Jeanneau, Carlos Casas, Stuart Ellis, Hicham Chadly, Geoff Hawrylk, and Anla Courtis. Today's 'controlled' presentation of foreign culture, traditions, and spiritualism in the west is steeped in judgment and spin agenda. SF are presenting some of the greatest expressive music in the world with only one agenda in mind: that it needs to be heard or seen, respected and recognized. More info here: http://www.myspace.com/sublimefrequencies2


Highlights & Interviews from Chhandayan's 9th Annual All-Night Concert of Indian Classical Music at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City, May 10th (9pm) - 11th (8am) 2008

Featuring:

Pandit Jasraj - Vocal
Debashish Bhattacharya - Indian Slide Guitar
Rajyasree Ghosh - Vocal
Joya Biswas - Sitar
Ronu Majumdar - Bansuri Flute

Accompanied by:
Samir Chatterjee - Tabla
Nitin Mitta - Tabla
Dibyarka Chatterjee - Tabla
Ramdas Palsule - Tabla

Opening Performance by
K.V. Mahabala - Sitar
Dan Weiss - Tabla

Recorded Live at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City
May 10th (9pm) - 11th (8am) 2008