Before the Flood (Full Movie)

Before the Flood, directed by Fisher Stevens, captures a three-year personal journey alongside Academy Award-winning actor and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio as he interviews individuals from every facet of society in both developing and developed nations who provide unique, impassioned and pragmatic views on what must be done today and in the future to prevent catastrophic disruption of life on our planet.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish journalists who came to the US drawn by stories of urban unrest and revolution. Gaining access to many of the leaders of the Black Power Movement—Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver among them—the filmmakers captured them in intimate moments and remarkably unguarded interviews. Thirty years later, this lush collection was found languishing in the basement of Swedish Television. Director Göran Olsson and co-producer Danny Glover bring this footage to light in a mosaic of images, music and narration chronicling the evolution one of our nation's most indelible turning points, the Black Power movement. Music by Questlove and Om'Mas Keith, and commentary from prominent African- American artists and activists who were influenced by the struggle -- including Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, and Melvin Van Peebles -- give the historical footage a fresh, contemporary resonance and makes the film an exhilarating, unprecedented account of an American revolution.

I Am Secretly an Important Man (2010)

This film is about the life and work of Steven Jay "Jesse" Bernstein (December 4, 1950 – October 22, 1991), who was a vagabond performer, writer and poet. His intense lyrical writings are a searing personal account of the trivialisation of the emotions and the creative life in the commercial and commodity culture of post-industrial and post-Cold War American, amid unemployment, violence, urban ruin, regimented intoxication and mental illness.

Jesse wrote about the about sensitive souls, drifters and drug addicts; the people alienated by a society that refuses to understand them. Bernstein peels back the ugliness and the darkness of life on the fringe to expose tender and not so tender human feeling. His unique rhythms, filled with humor and pain, were especially exciting when read in his own gravely voice. Bernstein was an integral part of the legendary Seattle rock scene of the late 80's and early 90s, and in 1991 was dubbed the "Godfather of Grunge" by the British magazine THE INDEPENDENT.

He often performed as an opening act for the so-called grunge bands of the Washington state and Seattle scene (including Nirvana) in the late 1980s. Bernstein committed suicide at the age of 41 on a Washington State Indian reservation by carefully cutting his own throat after years of struggling with abandonment, bipolarity, epilepsy, incarceration, various addictions, depression and the aftermath of polio. He will not be forgotten and he deserves to be recognized as the important writer and poet he is.

More background to the work of Jesse Bernstein can be gained from this podcast by Alison 'Slow' Loris called Do the Job from 2015.

The Man Upstairs.

Modulations - History of Electronic Music | Documentary

The evolution of electronic music and its many genres. How the wide range of styles and scenes formed through experimentation on sound formation.

Modulations is a feature-length documentary that captures a moment in history where humans and machines are fusing to create today's most exciting sounds.

It traces the evolution of electronic music as one of the most profound artistic developments of the twentieth century. By cutting back and forth between avant-garde composers, Kraftwerk's innovative synthesizer drones, Giorgio Moroder's glacial Euro-disco, Afrika Bambaataa's electro-funk, and Prodigy's current worldwide superstarstardom, Modulations celebrates, replicates, and illuminates the nomadic drift of the post-human techno sound.

The film examines the kids who have turned the turntable into a musical instrument, disillusioned disco lovers who created acid house out of primitive synthesizers, Motor City mavericks who saw the drum machine as their escape route out of urban neglect, and a generation of British youth who transformed these blips and bleeps into dance floor anthems of their own alienation.

 
Modulations provides a sense of history and context in which today's electronic music can be understood. It entertains the converted and remixes the mindset of electronica's nay-sayers.
Featuring a stunning collage of interviews, cutting-edge visuals, in-studio footage, and live performances, Modulations moves at a pace that matches the energy and innovation of the music.

Iara Lee, a Brazilian of Korean descent, is an activist, filmmaker, and founder of the Caipirinha Foundation, an organization that promotes global solidarity and supports peace with justice projects. Iara is currently working on a variety of initiatives, grouped under the umbrella of CulturesOfResistance.org, an activist network that brings together artists and changemakers from around the world. At the center of these initiatives is a feature-length documentary film entitled "Cultures of Resistance", which explores how creative action contributes to conflict prevention and resolution.

As an activist, Iara has collaborated with numerous grassroots efforts, including the International Campaign to Ban Cluster Munitions, the Conflict Zone Film Fund, the New York Philharmonic's groundbreaking 2008 music for diplomacy concert in North Korea. More recently in May 2010, Iara was a passenger on the MV Mavi Marmara, a passenger vessel in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was attacked in international waters by the Israeli navy, leading to the murder of nine humanitarian aid workers. Among the many people who recorded the events on that ship, her crew was one of the only to successfully hide and retain most of the raid footage, which she later released to the world after a screening at the UN. Iara is very dedicated to the support of Gazan civilians who have been victims of war crimes committed by the Israeli military during "Operation Cast Lead" and who suffer from the Israeli government's ongoing acts of collective punishment.

At the onset of the Iraq war in 2003, Iara, eager to understand the conflict better, decided to travel and live in the MENA region (Middle East & North Africa). While residing in Lebanon in 2006, Iara experienced firsthand the 34-day Israeli bombardment of that country. Since then, moved by that experience, she has dedicated herself to the pursuit of a just peace in the region, and is an enthusiastic supporter of those initiatives which strengthen adherence to international law in enforcing human rights. In 2008 Iara lived in Iran and supported a number of cultural exchange projects between that country and the West with the goal of promoting arts & culture for global solidarity.

From 1984 to 1989 Iara was the producer of the Sao Paulo International Film Festival. From1989-2003 she was based in New York City, where she ran the mixed-media company Caipirinha Productions to explore the synergy of different art forms (such as film, music, architecture, and poetry). Under that banner, Iara has directed short and feature-length documentaries including Synthetic Pleasures, Modulations, Architettura, and Beneath the Borqa.

Iara Lee is a Council of Advisors member of The International Crisis Group (ICG) and the National Geographic Society, as well as a trustee to the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), North Korea's first and only university whose faculty will be entirely composed of international professors.

'Voices from a Mountain' by David Leach

A documentary film about British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, focusing on the re-discovery of a memorial to English-speaking soldiers killed at the Battle of the Ebro in summer 1938. The memorial was re-discovered in 2005 in the Sierra Pandols with the names of 35 officers of the Brigade inscribed in the concrete. Most of the memorials to those that fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War were destroyed following the victory of the Nationalist forces in 1939. The documentary explores the civil war and the lives of five British republican volunteers who were killed at the Battle of the Ebro. 

Uutai. Live Jew's​-​Harp by Olga Podluzhnaya (2013)

Rarely do I place just music on this blog. I do so here and now because this is an incredible work of art from the depths of human expression that stretches back to the sources of our belief and perception. In short, a trance masterpiece.

The Romantics - Eternity (BBC documentary)

Narrated by Peter Ackroyd, this documentary examines the short radical lives of Byron, Keats and Shelley and how they would change the world. At 19, Shelley wrote The Necessity of Atheism - it was banned and burned, but it freed the Romantics from religion. Through their search for meaning in a world without God, they pioneered the notions of free love, celebrity and secular idolatry that are at the centre of modern Western culture. For them poetry became the new religion, a way of reaching Eternity. Their words are brought to life in this documentary by Nicholas Shaw, Blake Ritson and Joseph Millson.

Vali: Death in Port Jackson Hotel - 1971

A film by Ed van der Elsken. Features Vali in her "savage paradise", Il Porto, the canyon near Positano where she created her artwork. (Duration: 36 minutes).

Vali Myers (2 August 1930 – 12 February 2003) was an Australian visionary artist, dancer, bohemian and muse whose coverage by the media was mostly in the decades of the 1950s and 1960s in Europe and the United States.

Music Is My Drug : Psychedelic Trance

A film about Psychedelic Trance by Martin Meissonnier and Jean Jacques Flori shot in Goa, Israel, UK and Japan for Canal +

Ikutaro Kakehashi (梯 郁太郎, born in Osaka on February 7, 1930). The founder of the Roland Corporation, inventor of the Roland 303 and the 808.

Town Bloody Hall (1979)

Town Bloody Hall from Pennebaker Hegedus Films on Vimeo.

On the evening of April 30, 1971, a standing room only audience of local literati and feminists packed New York City’s Town Hall to watch Norman Mailer, who had just written “The Prisoner of Sex,” grapple with a panel of passionate feminists. The subject was Women’s Liberation, an issue on which Mailer seemed like the devil’s own advocate.

 

There to test him was a fearsome panel of feminist representatives, among them journalist and lesbian spokeswoman Jill Johnston; legendary literary critic Diana Trilling; president of The National Organization of Women (NOW), Jacqueline Ceballos; and possibly his toughest match, the glamorous and razor-tongued author of The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer.

 

On the streets it was simply Mailer versus Greer in a knockdown debate on women’s liberation. The event, produced by Shirley Broughton and her ongoing Theater For Ideas, turned into true theater for the celebrity-stuffed audience, who vigorously offered opinions and roared their approval and disdain throughout the raucous affair. It remained the most stimulating and entertaining action to date in the continuing comedy/drama of the war between the sexes and is reverently referred to by writers on the subject.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

A 2010 independent American documentary film directed by Yony Leyser about William S. Burroughs, featuring previously unreleased footage and interviews with his friends and colleagues. 

The film uses archival footage and interviews with John Waters, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Gus Van Sant, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Sonic Youth, Laurie Anderson, Amiri Baraka, Jello Biafra, and David Cronenberg. The film is narrated by Peter Weller, with a soundtrack by Patti Smith and Sonic Youth.

The Possibility of Hope (2007) - Children of Men Extra

The possibility of Hope - subtitulos en español. from Editores Salvajes on Vimeo.

A 2007 documentary short film directed by Alfonso Cuarón included as an extra in the Special Edition DVD of Cuarón's 2006 film Children of Men.

The film looks at different matters of the world such as immigration, global warming and capitalism through the eyes of scientists and philosophers.

Naked Making Lunch - The Making of David Cronenberg's Film of William S. Burroughs' Novel

Welcome to hell.