Prophecy of the Royal Maze (1978)

John Starr Cooke (March 1920 August 1976) was an American mystic and spiritual teacher who influenced the development of the counter-culture movement that emerged in San Francisco during 1966-1968. His teachings were based on the doctrine of “One consciousness”, which Cooke believed was communicated to him through a Ouija board, during the early 1960s. He designed three original decks of Tarot cards: T: the New Tarot for the Aquarian Age (1967, 1992), the Atlantean Tarot (1992) and the Medieval Tarot (1992).

You are about to watch a film made by John Starr Cooke in 1976.  This film represents his legacy to the people on earth, for he knew he was soon to die.  Since he himself would journey no further in this world, he wanted to leave with us some intuitive pointers of the way ahead.

For the last turn of his life’s path, John had gone to Mexico, seeking the peace and quiet which he found in the small village of Tepoztlan.  John was a magnetic figure, full of love and humor for all. As an energizing catalyst, he gave unique encouragement to each individual through listening and loving. John had always been a seeker.  He went from the Church of England to the Sufis of North Africa, from Pak Subuh in Indonesia to Meher Baba of India; always searching. He read Gurdjieff and Madame Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Krishnamurti, Carl Jung.

But John could never be a follower, and though he remained in loving contact with all, he continued on his individual path.  When he was with a Muslim sect, he was stricken with polio in Algeria and returned to California anchored to earth by a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  In the next turn of the path, he would search deeper rather than farther.

Since he was a little boy, John was captivated by the strange symbolic figures in the deck of the Tarot cards.  The 22 Tarot trump cards are representations of fantasy images universally used by mankind.  Down through the ages, instincts and hungers in the abstract unconscious can express themselves in us as symbolic personalities in order that we may understand them.  The Greeks sculptured their gods, the African his mask, Hindus portrayed their deities, and Christianity uses its powerful symbol of the cross.  So too, the Tarot cards have been envisioned and painted by many to personify 22 of the most universal archetypes of mankind such as birth, death, victory, love.  The cards change as cultural aspects in the world change.

At different times in his life, John was given detailed instructions from the unconscious on how to paint three decks of Tarot which you will see depicted in this film.  After debating about its form, John decided to give a direct Tarot card reading from his own, The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age.  John, alas, did not live to see the film we are about to see.  He died in August 1976.  So here is John’s last gift to the world, his Prophecy of the Royal Maze. - Introduction to the film narrated by Alice Kent.

Stelarc - Meat, Metal and Code: The Cadaver, the Comatose and the Chimera

Stelarc is a Performance Artist and holds the Chair in Performance Art at the School of Arts, Brunel University, London. Stelarc speaks on mixed and augmented realities and our biological bodies at the Screen Media seminar: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2251/

Abstract: We are increasingly expected to perform in Mixed and Augmented Realities. We are no longer merely biological bodies but increasingly accelerated by our machines and enhanced by our instruments. And we have to manage data in virtual systems. We have become extended operational systems, performing beyond the boundaries of our skin and beyond the local space we inhabit. As well as Circulating Flesh it is now an age of Fractal and Phantom Flesh.

Hell W10

Black and white short film directed by Joe Strummer. The basic plot surrounds a man named Earl (Clash bassist Paul Simonon) and a drug-lord/porn director/crime lord named Socrates (their guitarist/singer Mick Jones). Earl's girlfriend gets involved with Socrates and his business, and soon enough Earl becomes the man's number one enemy. Socrates tries to get his goons on Earl's case, especially after he hocks a batch of Socrates' "special" porn, but Earl manages to wrangle up a group of his friends to rebel against them. He's clearly not going to go down without a fight. Besides, the movie's entire score is a 49 minutes run of back to back Clash songs with some rarities.

Clash roadie Barry (The Baker) Auguste writes about the creation of Hell W10 with witty insight in an article for The Daily Swarm. 

Some three decades ago this month, the members of The Clash, those of us in their crew, and the band’s closest friends found themselves standing in the freezing cold of Ladbroke Grove, filming a movie entirely directed, conceived, and paid for by Joe Strummer. Hell W10 was a personal project for Joe, which initially plays like a simple, unpretentious home movie. But hidden beneath the surface of its archetypal cops-and-robbers plotline, Joe was cleverly caricaturing the true-life roles of everyone in the band, making the film a prime example of art imitating life. In truth, the “Last Gang in Town” was unknowingly having its last soirée, and that was clear from Hell W10, both in front of and behind the camera.” Barry Auguste.

Dennis Hopper Performs Sections from Naked Lunch (1959)

When Naked Lunch: the Restored Text appeared in 2003, it changed the originally untitled opening section by dividing it up into three shorter sections, beginning with “And Start West” — but where did this title come from? It appears in no previous edition of the book and was not used when this material featured in Chicago Review or Big Table magazines in 1958 and 1959. Most literally, it derives from the section’s final phrase: “So we stock up on H, buy a secondhand Studebaker, and start west"

Dennis Hopper performs select passages from William S. Burroughs' seminal novel, where the physical world is melded with mind-blowingly surrealistic.reveries and instances of slyly dark humor. Mr. Hopper is accompanied by Sonic Youth, "Cool Thing".

Hilma af Klint: " When Spirits are guiding Your Hand"

Gertrud Sandqvist -" When Spirits are guiding Your Hand"
Evening Lecture at the 23 Augut 2010 @ Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts 2010; ©2010 Laura Kokoshka, Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Gertrud Sandqvist;

Art and the unconscious as specific categories were formed at the same time, in late the 18th century. They have haunted each other since then. Something in art seems to be wide open, even conditioned by the unconscious, no matter how often artists and art critics try to keep art in place as perfectly intelligible. And the unconscious seems to be best understood throught art - even Sigmund Freud admitted that.
Between 1906 and 1922, the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint made over one thousand secret paintings. According to her, spirits werde guiding her hand in a very literal way. Ever since her secret work was shown in 1985, she has been considered as a test case to the sources behind early abstract art. But it is even more in- teresting to take her at her own word, and enter the unconscious world she is showing us.
Gertrud Sandqvist is Professor in the Theory and History of Ideas of Visual Art at Malmä Art Academy, Lund University, Sweden. She has been a board member of the National Foundation for Swedish Culture of the Future since 2003. Since 2007 she has been chair of the steering committee of KUNO, the network organization of all Nordic Art Academies and she is a member of the international board of Maumaus-escola des artes Visuales, Lisbon. Gertrud Sandqvist writes extensively on mainly Nordic and Eurpean Contemporary Art.

A Brief History of Time

A film about the life and work of the cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, who despite his near total paralysis, is one of the great minds of all time.

A Brief History of Time was Morris’s first film as a director-for-hire (he was recruited by Steven Spielberg for Amblin Entertainment), which created some difficulties, but Morris was pleased with the outcome. He later said, “It’s actually one of the most beautiful films I ever shot.” The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Filmmaking and the Documentary Filmmaker’s Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival.

In 1992 Morris told the New York Times Magazine that A Brief History of Time was “less cerebral and more moving” than anything he had worked on before. “This feeling of time, of aging, of mortality combined with this search for the most basic and deep questions about the world around us and ourselves,” Morris said, “is pretty persuasive stuff.” The film is from the Open Culture Free Movies Online collection, within the Documentary section.

William S. Burroughs lecture on paranormal,synchronicity and dreams

Audio recording of a lecture & writing class writing class,June 25,1986, with Q & A with students at Naropa University. Poet Allen Ginsberg is also in the audience & asks some questions. Burroughs covers topics including paranormal phenomena, magic, synchronicity, precognition, dreams, his cut-ups technique for writing, & he answers many questions from students & from Ginsberg in a Q & A. He reads from some of his fiction & non-fiction writings. The woman who asks many questions near the end & thanks him at the end I believe is Anne Waldman of Naropa U.

Gilles Deleuze on Cinema - What is the Creative Act? (1987)

This 45 minute talk at a conference in 1987 on the "act of creation" in cinema is perhaps the most intimate capture of Gilles Deleuze on film besides the Abécédaire interview. Gilles Deleuze speaks continuously and fluidly in a raspy but gentle and sincere voice that betrays much reverence for the work of figures such as Bresson and Kurosawa, particularly as concerns what Deleuze claims to be an absolute need of theirs to adapt the works of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky for film. Other figures discussed include Syberberg, Straub and Duras, along with a discussion of Foucault and disciplinary societies. Deleuze concludes with a meditation on what he calls the "mysterious connection between the work of art and the act of resistance."

We Live in Public

We Live in Public is a 2009 documentary by Ondi Timoner which profiles Internet pioneer Josh Harris. It has as its theme the loss of privacy in the internet age.

We Live in Public was screened six times at the Sundance Film Festival before being awarded the Grand Jury Prize award in the U.S. documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival.[6] Timoner is the first director in the history of the Sundance film festival to win the grand jury award twice.[7] Her first win was in 2004 for the widely acclaimed documentary, DIG!

The film was also the runner-up for 'Best Documentary' at the 2009 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard

The documentary about the founders of the Pirate Bay. Share it with the world! Support the filmmakers of this free film here www.tpbafk.tv A film by Simon Klose

Simon Klose, the Swedish documentary and music video maker, wants you to pirate his film, TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard, and he’s not even kidding. His documentary about file-sharing website The Pirate Bay is available for sale, on YouTube (free), or via Pirate Bay torrent (also free).

The documentary covers the stories of Pirate Bay administrators Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, and Peter Sunde as they handle their 2009 Sweden court case about civil and criminal copyright laws. After being convicted, they are then forced to handle life “away from keyboard”.

Witness : Children of the Riots

As the financial crisis weighs heavily on Greece, the country seems trapped in a cycle of violence. But discontent over the misuse of power has long been simmering. Greek youths reflect on how the killing of a teenager by police changed their lives.