Rebels: A Journey Underground: #2 - A New Kind of Bohemian

This is part two of a six part series on bohemian life in the West. This episode takes up the post-World War Two scene in American and Europe. Jazz, Beatnicks, existentialism.

Following World War II, a new period of post-war social complexity overtook America. It was during this turbulent, often repressive Cold War time that Jack Kerouac coined the phrase, "beat" and gave birth to a new literary movement. This film follows the activities of this new breed of writer: Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsburg and a handful of outsiders who became known as the "Beat Generation."

Whoever Says The Truth Shall Die—A Film About Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini said his first films were inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the founder and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party.

To Pasolini, Gramsci was the ‘greatest Marxist theoretician in all Italy,’ who wanted popular art to be aimed at an “ideal people.”

But by the 1960s, this “ideal people” had been turned by capitalism into consumers—a culture of mass consumption, where works of art and politics had little or no value.

It was then that Pasolini instinctively rejected the idea of making films for mass consumption, and instead opted for a more personal and political film-making.

Based on Montaigne’s idea that ‘one does not really know a person until he has died,’ Philo Bregstein’s documentary Whoever Says The Truth Shall Die—A Film About Pier Paolo Pasolini offers a fascinating look at the life, artistic ambitions and political vision of the poet, writer and controversial film director.

Mind Game / マインド・ゲーム (Full movie with English subtitles)

Mind Game (マインド・ゲーム?) is a 2004 Japanese animated feature film based on Robin Nishi's Japanese comic of the same name. It was planned, produced and primarily animated by Studio 4°C and adapted and directed by Masaaki Yuasa, with chief animation direction and model sheets by Yūichirō Sueyoshi, art direction by Tōru Hishiyama and groundwork and further animation direction by Masahiko Kubo.

It is unusual among features other than anthology films in using a series of disparate visual styles to tell one continuous story. As the director commented in a Japan Times interview, "Instead of telling it serious and straight, I went for a look that was a bit wild and patchy. I think that Japanese animation fans today don't necessarily demand something that's so polished. You can throw different styles at them and they can still usually enjoy it."

Big Black - live at CBGB July 1986

This is amazing. Here is Steve Albini's sonic performance machine Big Black performing on July 13, 1986 at CBGB, New York, NY.
Filmed by Greg Fasolino.

1. Clear Out!
2. Fists of Love
3. Big Money
4. Passing Complexion
5. Cables
6. Pigeon Kill
7. The Ugly American
8. Kerosene (stopped)
9. Kerosene [with Peter Prescott - drums]
10. Rema-Rema [with Peter Prescott - drums]

If you really want to live the dream, listen to this: Songs About Fucking by Big Black

The Doors - Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine (Ray Manzarek dead at 74)

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away today at 12:31PM PT at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. At the time of his passing, he was surrounded by his wife Dorothy Manzarek, and his brothers Rick and James Manczarek.

Manzarek is best known for his work with The Doors who formed in 1965 when Manzarek had a chance encounter on Venice Beach with poet Jim Morrison. The Doors went on to become one of the most controversial rock acts of the 1960s, selling more than 100-million albums worldwide, and receiving 19 Gold, 14 Platinum and five multi-Platinum albums in the U.S. alone. “L.A.Woman,” “Break On Through to the Other Side,” “The End,” “Hello, I Love You,” and “Light My Fire” were just some of the band’s iconic and ground-breaking songs. After Morrison’s death in 1971, Manzarek went on to become a best-selling author, and a Grammy-nominated recording artist in his own right. In 2002, he revitalized his touring career with Doors’ guitarist and long-time collaborator, Robby Krieger.

Generation OS13: The new culture of resistance

Generation OS13 is an explosive insight into the attack on civil liberties occurring in western democracies and how artists, musicians, journalists and authors encourage the peoples right to resist against Banker occupation.

Examining economic dictatorships, puppet regimes, tax havens, tax dodgers, and the debt based money system the film explains why 'you can not count on the law makers to see shit when it first happens'. For a new era, generation OS13, the repression will not be tolerated; do 'the government really think they can win that war if the young people are like fuck this, you cant beat that you, can't beat us, its Impossible' - Saul Williams.

Featuring Painter, poet & song writer Billy Childish, Harry Malt from Bare Bones, Luke Turner from The Quietus, journalist Huw Nesbitt, broadcaster Max Kaiser, author Nicholas Shaxson & Artists Anika, Comanechi, Gaggle's & Saul Williams.

"Those bailouts were absolutely required to save your civilisation, now if you talk about bail outs for everyone else you have to say to say to those people suck it in and cope buddy, suck it in and cope"

- No thanks mate !!

Dead-End Drive In (1986)

Dead End Drive-In is a 1986 Australian New Wave film about a teenage couple trapped in a drive-in theater which is really a concentration camp for societal rejects. The inmates, many of whom sport punk fashion, are fed a steady diet of junk food, New Wave music, drugs, and bad movies.

The film was directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. It stars Ned Manning and Natalie McCurry as the captive couple, and Peter Whitford as the manager of the drive-in. Mad Max 2 stuntman Guy Norris did some of the stunts.The soundtrack includes contemporary popular music performed by such bands as Kids in the Kitchen and Hunters and Collectors. The song during the rolling credits is "Playing With Fire" by Lisa Edwards.

In the near future, the economy has collapsed and massive crime waves sweep the inner-cities. The manufacturing industry has decimated to the point where cars are a commodity and parts are fought over between salvage companies and roving bands of car gangs. In an attempt to control the crime-wave, a chain of drive-in theaters are turned into concentration camps for the undesirable and unemployed youth. The dirty, graffiti-laden drive-ins are surrounded by high fences (electrified at the top), and the roads leading to them are Security Roads ("S-Roads") that do not allow walking under any circumstances. Police collaborate with the owner to sabotage cars of unsuspecting visitors identified as undesirables to keep them in; however, some who know the true nature of the drive-ins come voluntarily for the shelter and food. Broken cars are continuously collected at these facilities. The prisoners are allowed easy access to a wide variety of drugs and alcohol, and are fed a horrendous diet of fattening and greasy fast-food at the drive-in diner, which blasts New Wave music. This, coupled with the awful conditions on the outside, engineers an atmosphere of complacency and hopelessness so the inmates will accept their fate and not attempt escape.

The movie was based on a short story by Peter Carey although Brian Trenchard-Smith says he hadn't read it when he came on board the project. A previous director had been attached but had pulled out. "I came in, took a week, and welded the best elements from the first three drafts together, boosting the social comment," says Trenchard-Smith.

The film was shot over 35 days at a drive in at Matraville starting on 9 September 1985. Funding came from the New South Wales Film Corporation. The director said of the film that:

The Drive-In is, of course, an allegory for the junk values of the eighties, which our hero sees as a prison. The last 20 minutes of the film - the escape - is the desperate blazing climax, but the whole film has a feeling of high style, of heightened or enhanced reality - a little bit over the top, but retaining a reality that the public will accept.

 The final stunt by Guy Norris cost around $75,000, more than any single stunt performed in Australia until then, and set a world record for a jump by a truck: 162 feet.

In Conversation: Jaron Lanier and James Bridle On Who Owns the Future?

In Conversation: Jaron Lanier and James Bridle On Who Owns the Future? from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Jaron Lanier is a technology inventor and philosopher who has been dubbed the prophet of the digital age. He coined the phrases 'Virtual Reality' and 'digital Maoism'. His last book, You Are Not A Gadget, was a hugely influential and hotly debated critique of the 'hive mind'. Here he talks about his new book, Who Owns the Future?, with artist and writer James Bridle.



Digital technologies dawned with the promise that they would bring us all greater economic stability and power. That utopian image has stuck. But, Lanier argues, the efficiencies brought by digi-techs are having the effect of concentrating wealth while reducing overall growth. He predicts that, as more industries are transformed by digital technologies, huge waves of permanent unemployment are likely to follow those already sweeping through many creative industries.



But digital hubs are designed on the principle that people don't get paid for sharing. Every time we apply for a loan, update Facebook, use our credit cards, post pictures on Instagram or search on Google, we work for free says Lanier. He argues that artificial intelligence over a network can be understood as a massive accounting fraud that ruins markets. Past technological revolutions rewarded people with new wealth and capabilities. He will explain why, without that reward, the middle classes - who form the basis of democracy as he sees it - are threatened, placing the future of human dignity itself at risk.



Lanier discusses his analysis of the deep links between democracy and capitalism, and shares his thoughts for how humanity can find a new vision for the future.

 

This event was part of The School of Life's 'In Conversation' series and took place at Conway Hall on 6th March 2013.

Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham - Metamorphosis

"Chaos is the birthplace of order. Chaos is not the problem. Chaos is the answer." - Terrance McKenna

A common theme emerges from this video recorded lecture of having three noted thinkers from distinctly different backgrounds ask questions about the world and its seeming lack of order: is there a higher order in the seeming chaos we see. Such a cross-discipline approach to asking questions has been popular since the rising interest in non-linear systems that one would call chaotic (chaos theory). While the lecture tends to ramble in places, it provides an interesting starting point regarding higher systems of order which are beyond the reach of common perception and may be acessible only through mathematics and such.

The Clash live @ Le Palace 1980

Set list
Jimmy Jazz
London Calling
Protex Blue
Train in Vain
Koca Kola
I Fought The Law
Spanish Bombs
Wrong ‘Em Boyo
Stay Free
Janie Jones
Compete Control
Garageland
Tommy Gun

Malcolm McLaren: Artful Dodger

Malcom McLaren - Artful Dodger from Jono Smith on Vimeo.

A tribute to the inspirational manager and artist who revolutionised the music business in the 1970s with the Sex Pistols and punk fashion. McLaren later brought us Duck Rock and managed Bow Wow Wow. With previously unseen interviews with McLaren and contributions from members of the Sex Pistols, Adam Ant, son Joe Corre, Jonathan Ross, The New York Dolls and many others.

"Better to be a flamboyant failure, than any kind of benign success"

At 11.17 the New York Dolls' and Johnny Thunders' drummer is interviewed: Jerry Nolan, but on the screen it says Sylvain Sylvain (The NY Dolls' guitarist). Nolan died in '92, Sylvain still plays with the revived Dolls... that's a terrible error and unexpected by somebody with the standards of the BBC.

The Israeli Dervish

Miki Cohen is a 58-year-old Israeli attracted to Sufi mysticism and the writings and philosophy of Rumi. We follow him to Kony, the resting place of Rumi in central Turkey and the religious centre for his followers, as he becomes the only Israeli granted access to the inner sanctum of the whirling Dervish order of Islam.

A Day with a Sadhu

A tale about the daily life of Gajender Gipi Mharai, a naga sadhu, at Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, India.