The Alchemists of Sound (2003)

This BBC documentary is a good introduction to the people responsible for creating some of the most memorable television and radio music in British popular culture.

The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop was set up in 1958, born out of a desire to create 'new kinds of sounds'. This documentary looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake's Seven and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.

There are interviews with composers from the Workshop, as well as musicians and writers who have been inspired by the output. Great archive footage of the Workshop and its machinery is accompanied by excerpts of the, now cult, TV programmes that featured these sounds.

More information:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963155/

Directed by Roger Pomphrey. Narrated by Oliver Postgate. Interviews/appearances by Roger Limb, Mark Ayres, Brian Hodgson, Desmond Briscoe, Maddalena Fagandini, Dick Mills, Adrian Utley, David Cain, Delia Derbyshire, Malcolm Clarke, Peter Kember, John Baker, Milton Babbitt, Huw Wheldon, Robert Popper, Peter Serafinowicz, Wendy Carlos, Peter Howell, Paddy Kingsland and Elizabeth Parker.

Antifa, a Documentary Film (2018)

Since the election of Donald Trump, acts of racist violence have proliferated across the United States. Racists and misogynists feel emboldened to express and act on their views. White nationalist groups and resurgent traditional white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan have used Trumps victory to gain new recruits. All that stands in their way are the groups of anarchists, communists, and socialists who have taken it upon themselves to prevent fascism from becoming a powerful political force in the United States. This film tells the story of what “Antifa” is and why people are using these tactics to confront racism and fascism in the US today.

Who are the anti-fascists? What motivates them to risk their lives to fight the far right? What is the history of militant anti-fascism and why is it relevant again today? How is anti-fascism connected to a larger political vision that can stop the rise of fascism and offer us visions of a future worth fighting for? Through interviews with anti-fascist organizers, historians, and political theorists in the US and Germany, we explore the broader meaning of this political moment while taking the viewer to the scene of street battles from Washington to Berkeley and Charlottesville.

Exarchia, a countercultural island in Athens

Exarchia is a district of Athens that is home to leftists and anarchists, poor people and intellectuals. Greece's economic crisis hit it hard. But solidarity and a culture of autonomy mean people have got together to help themselves and each other.

Buddhist Chanting of Ladakh: The Living Heritage of the Buddha

In the monasteries and villages of the Ladakh region of India, Buddhist lamas chant sacred texts representing the spirit, philosophy and teachings of the Buddha. The monks wear ritual clothing and use hand gestures and various musical instruments while praying for the spiritual and moral well-being of the people, for purification and peace of mind, to appease the wrath of evil spirits or to invoke the blessing of various Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, deities and Rimpoches. Acolytes learn under the rigorous supervision of senior monks.

Rave in Aircraft Hanger 1989 (UK the Second Summer of Love)

Aircraft Hanger at Raydon Airfield, Suffolk in September 1989. This was it, the Second Summer of Love (which actually lasted for 2 years - 1988-89). The parties that erupted in a haze of chems and color would burst out from the UK in 1990 and even get as far as Australia -  where I attended my first illegal party in 1993 (along with about 1000 others). That was a three-dayer in the forest north of Sydney. This was a global revolution in the minds of each and every person who lost and found themselves on the dance floor in those early innocent days. But by the mid-90s it was dying fast with big money, drugs and the law moving in from every corner. I got to London in 1997 and attended a series of squat parties that felt like Saturday night in a Mad Max film. It was war by this stage for the free party scene with police and the travellers at each other like dogs. But somewhere way back around 1989 something blossomed that brought a new meaning to being human. Or was it a very very ancient one that peaked its shaved, tattooed and pieced head out from behind time and said "Everything is gonna be OK!"

Rough Track Listing:

Corporation of One - So Where Are You (Hashish Dub)
Latin Rage - Sueno Latino (Extended Remix)
J.D. - Good Vibrations
BCN Orchestra - Quien Tu Te Crees?
Bits & Pieces 89 (R/U/DEF/BOY. Mix)
Looney Tunes Vol 1 - Another Time, Another Place
The Beatmasters - Who's In The House
Shiela - Acid Kiss (Hacienda Mix)
Liaisons-D - Heartbeat
The Centrefield Assignment -  Mi Casa (DJ's Dope Long Mix)
The KLF - 3 AM Eternal (Blue Danube Orbital Mix)
Mickey Oliver - In-Ten-Si-T (Dash Rip Rock mix).

"In the early stages of the Second Summer of Love, the events and parties were often held in empty warehouses and were essentially illegal across the UK. Information about these events travelled by word of mouth (as well as the newly popular mobile phone) between clubbers who were obliged to party incognito."

Gandu (2010)

Gandu is a 2010 black-and-white Indian film, in the Bengali language, directed by Qaushiq Mukherjee and Anuj Nimbria sirji. It features Anubrata, Joyraj, Kamalika, Silajit, and Rii in the lead roles. The film's music is by the alternative rock band Five Little Indians. Gandu previewed at Yale University before making its international premiere on 29 October 2010 at the 2010 South Asian International Film Festival in New York City. Gandu was an official selection at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival and was also screened at the Slamdance Film Festival.

Gandu has received mainly positive reviews from critics. John Reis called it "a stunning visual and narrative feast" while Variety said it is "a happily transgressive rhyme-fueled romp". Gandu has caused some controversy because of language and scenes of nudity and sex. Audiences have left during sex scenes. Because of the controversy the film did not have its first public screening in India until 2012 at the Osian Film Festival. The main star Anubrata Basu is shown with his penis fully erect in a love scene.

As much of an anti-Bollywood film as one could imagine, revolutionary filmmaker Q’s Gandu (Hindi slang for asshole) is a deliriously frantic, music-infused look at one poor young man and his dreams of becoming a rap star. Excitable Gandu lives in Kolkata. Poor, he survives by stealing spare change from his mother’s sleazy lover. Gandu’s lives to a rapper, and finds a comrade-in-song with another young man, the Bruce Lee-loving Rickshaw. Together they sing, drink, do drugs, wander the city and collectively dream of success. When Gandu wins big in the lottery all his dreams seem to come true. Or do they? Told in fragmented scenes with pulsating music, the film is surreal, wild, weird, unpredictable, and sexually graphic, Gandu is a startlingly bold and wildly entertaining example of new Indian filmmaking, and which ironically is banned in India. 2010 / Bengali with English Subtitles / Directed by Q

This Is How You'll Make Your Bed in Prison (2010)

Vickie Lee Roach always felt like an outsider. As an Indigenous woman who was taken away from her mother at a young age, Vickie grew up between foster homes and youth shelters, later spending large portions of her life on the streets and also in prison.

While incarcerated in Dame Phyllis Frost prison Vickie pursued a university education, giving her a new perspective on human rights issues. During this time she learned that the Howard government had passed a bill banning all prisoners from voting in Federal elections. Outraged by this attack on the human rights of prisoners, Vickie decided to challenge this new law. For her it was an opportunity to speak out against the further exclusion of people in prison and to challenge all that the ban represented.

Assisted by committed lawyers, including Phil Lynch of the Human Rights Law Centre, the case made its way to the High Court of Australia, arguing that the right to vote is constitutionally protected. Although she couldn’t personally appear in court, and despite considerable personal risk as a prisoner daring to be prominent, Vickie eventually succeeded, resulting in a landmark decision which found that the Howard Government had acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally. It was a victory for representative democracy, accountable government, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights. It was also a personal victory for Vickie who was subsequently awarded the Tim McCoy Human Rights Award.

This outstanding short film offers an insight into both Australian human rights history and the life of Vickie Lee Roach, a woman who wasn't afraid to take on the highest powers to get back the most basic rights.

Directed, written and edited by Katie Mitchell, a post-graduate student at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, the film has played at festivals across Australia and internationally. It has also been recognised with the VCA Moving Clickers Award for Best Script and the VCA Film Victoria Award for Best Post-Graduate Diploma Documentary.

ETERNITY OR BUST: A SHORT FILM ABOUT LARAAJI

ETERNITY OR BUST: A SHORT FILM ABOUT LARAAJI from All Saints Records on Vimeo.
Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980). Laraaji has gone on to release a prolific series of album for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances. In recent years he has been collaborating with a new generation of underground musicians, most notably on the album he recorded for the acclaimed FRKWYS series with Blues Control. This short documentary has been made to coincide with a series of reissues being released on the All Saints label.

Produced by Chris Hall for Start Productions.

The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima - 1985 - BBC - Arena - documentary

This BBC produced documentary about Yukio Mishima highlights the many known major aspects of his life and personality. Mishima was a pen name he adopted en route to his chosen life as a writer. He eventually became recognized as one of Japan's most prolific post-World War II writers, producing stories, plays and novels. He became tortured by his bisexuality/homosexuality and shyness around people as a young man. Both of these played a role in his work as did many other eventful occurrences throughout his life. Mishima had an admirable dedication to the forgotten samurai way of life and ideals, which later turned into an unhealthy obsession, culminating in the storming of a general's garrison on November 25, 1970. It was Mishima's way of combining beauty, art, and action; ultimately the garrison forced to assemble and listen to his speech on that day rejected him. Mishima gave his life for his ideals, however misguided and twisted one might think him to be. His literary output of 40 novels, 18 plays (both for Noh and Kabuki theater), 20 books of short stories, 20 books of essays, and a film remain a testament to his talent despite his simultaneous tendency, at times, to be commercial, controversial, and unconventional.

Yukio Mishima (三島 由紀夫 Mishima Yukio?) is the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka (平岡 公威 Hiraoka Kimitake?, January 14, 1925 – November 25, 1970), a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, and film director. Mishima is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century; he was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature and was poised to win the prize in 1968 although lost the award to his fellow countryman Yasunari Kawabata, presumably because of his radical right-wing activities. His avant-garde work displayed a blending of modern and traditional aesthetics that broke cultural boundaries, with a focus on sexuality, death, and political change. He is also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état attempt, known as the "Mishima Incident".

Catastroika - Privatization Goes Public

It was at the beginning of 1989 when the French academic Jacques Rupnik sat at his desk, in order to prepare a report on the state of the economic reforms in Mikhail Gorbatsov's Soviet Union. The term that he used in describing the death rattle of the empire was "Catastroika". In Yeltsin's time, when Russia instituted maybe the biggest and least successful privatization experiment in the history of humanity, a group of Guardian reports assigned a different meaning to Rupnik's term. "Catastroika" became synonym of the country's complete destruction by market forces; the sell off of public property; and the steep deterioration of citizens' living standards. Now, Catastroika's unit of measurement was unemployment, social impoverishment, declining life expectancy, as well as the creation of a new cast of oligarchs, who took over the country's reins. A few years later, a similar effort to massively privatize public property in unified Germany (which is presented as a model for Greece) created millions of unemployed and some of the biggest scandals in European history.


Nevertheless, Catastroika is a virus that attacks not only the countries that radically change their economic system (like Russia) or countries under financial occupation. In fact, maybe the most unsuccessful privatization examples occur in financial superpowers that theoretically have the financial strength to control their negative consequences. However, its consequences are the gravest and most frightening in countries which fell in the trap of foreign lenders and are obliged to proceed to mass privatization. The public property sell-off which takes place in Greece has been tried several times in similar circumstances.

The procedure always follows exactly the same steps: In the beginning, the government, in collaboration with mass media, starts a forceful attack against public servants, who are presented as responsible for all the country's financial woes. The myth of the overextended public sector is often based on manipulated data from organizations supported and supporting the government of the time. Concurrently, specific public organizations are deliberately left unsupported, exasperating citizens due to their inefficiency. The process is completed by the sell-off of even the most profitable public organizations at a fraction of their real value.

Catastroika's team is already travelling in many countries, collecting images, information and material on deregulation and privatization programs that have been implemented at the so-called "developed" world. The final result of the research is never black or white. The divide between the "social character" of the public sector vis-à-vis the inhumane face of the free market is equally simplistic as the theories of Milton Freedman that professed the need to privatize even the air that we breathe. The Greek case however supersedes the simple theoretical discussion on the role of the country in the economy.

Once more, the documentary will be distributed online under creative commons licence. The free circulation of Catastroika is not just an "obligation" to our co-producers. It is our deeper and, if you prefer, philosophical belief that each product of intellectual creation should be freely available to all. The current financial system, while based all the more on the production and management of information, is incapable by its nature to find a way to secure the remuneration of information creators. This is probably one of many dead-ends in the development of the economy's productive forces, which may soon threaten the bases of the current financial system. Because, as it is well known, every system that stopped the development of the productive forces fell apart -- and you can ask the feudalists about that...

http://www.catastroika.com

LUNGFISH: Radio Waves For Viewing

One of my few regrets in life is not discovering the music of Lungfish before I did. Genius. Majestic. Mystical. Contemplative. Poetic. Brilliant. I could go on.....a mastodon in royal robes of rags.

Black Snake Killaz - The story of the Dakota Access Pipeline (2017)

Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.

Black Snake Killaz is a feature-length documentary film about the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. This film explores actions taken by water protectors to stop the construction of the oil pipeline and highlights actions taken by law enforcement, military, and corporate mercenaries to quell the months-long protest. Black Snake Killaz timelines the historical events that unfolded in Standing Rock throughout 2016 and brings you the raw experience from many frontline actions to protect the water. Although the Dakota Access Pipeline is completed, the impact of the movement will be long-lasting. As fossil fuel extraction projects continue to impact some of the most vulnerable communities throughout the United States of America, the importance of the water protectors story grows.

Genesis P-Orridge Lecture - Sound and Life

Seminal alternative artist and musician Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was born Neil Andrew Megson in 1950 in the United Kingdom and reborn as a gender-erasing pandrogyne with her partner, Lady Jaye, in 1993.

S/he rose to notability as founder of the confrontational COUM Transmissions artistic collective, which operated in Britain from 1969 to 1975, and gained widespread notoriety for their Prostitution Show at London’s ICA in 1976, after which they were vilified as “wreckers of civilization” in the tabloid press.

P-Orridge went on to front Throbbing Gristle from 1975 to 1981, the legendary band that created the industrial music genre, before forming the equally influential band Psychic TV (1981–99).

P-Orridge is also a published poet and author with a long-standing interest in the occult. S/he was a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, an informal occult order established in 1981, which had a critical influence on 1980s culture, popularizing tattooing, body piercing, acid-house raves, and other cultic flirtations and investigations.

About CCA's 2014-15 Graduate Lecture Series
Entitled Sound & Vision, the 2014–15 Graduate Studies Lecture Series, examines the rich landscape of contemporary music and sound art. In performances, audio lectures, and conversations an international roster of some of today’s most compelling and innovative practitioners and thinkers will present projects and discuss ideas and histories of interest in the aural field.

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

Gen is currently unwell. You can help by donating here.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - The Road to God knows where (1990)

The Road to God Knows Where is a 1990 documentary directed by German filmmaker Uli M. Schüppel. The subject of the movie is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as they traverse America on the Tender Prey tour in early 1989.

The documentary is short on music and long on backstage palaver. Occasionally we get most of a song such as “Knockin’ On Joe” but mostly it’s the dudes hanging out, occasionally with the Wolfgang Press, who served as openers on the tour. The lineup at this point was Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey, Kid Congo Powers, Roland Wolf, and Thomas Wydler.

The movie is shot in a lush and shadowy black and white that is intermittently reminiscent of Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel Über Berlin, which came out just a couple of years earlier and which (of course) Nick Cave appeared in.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King

A portrait of two different voices whose demands for black equality gave rise to gains in American civil rights.

A half-century after their deaths, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X remain two of the world's most revered political activists. They were both respected leaders of the American Civil Rights movement, struggling for racial equality and freedom. But at the start of the 1960s, the media were constructing a conflict that stirred the civil rights debate: Malcolm X versus Reverend Martin Luther King.

While King advocated non-violent direct action and passive resistance to achieve equal civil rights, Malcolm X was the spokesman for the Nation of Islam (NOI), the black Muslim movement which violently rejected white America and its Christian values, and preached the supremacy of blacks over whites.
He promoted a segregationist approach that sought to instil in blacks a pride in their African heritage, whereas Martin Luther King believed that self-respect would come through integration.

"King was working to take down signs that prevented black people from riding buses where they wanted to, and to ride in trains, public transportation, preventing them from voting, and all of those things that black people were prevented from doing in the south. In the north, blacks always could vote, but as Malcolm said 'You may have the vote but you ain't no voting for nothing because they've already decided that you are not going to have any power'," explains historian James H. Cone.

King once told the press that "the method of non-violent resistance is one of the most potent, if not the most potent weapons available to oppressed people and their struggle for freedom."

However, for Malcolm, turning the other cheek was a weak strategy that was unacceptable.

"Malcolm comes from a black nationalist tradition that does not believe that you can get your freedom, your self-respect, your dignity by simply letting somebody beat up on you, and you do not try to defend yourself. That's why Malcolm emphasised self-defence. But King emphasised non-violence because if blacks had responded, tried to defend themselves, that would have brought the police department down on those demonstrators and whites would have loved to have the chance to kill black people indiscriminately. So King and Malcolm had that tension," says Cone.

Malcolm X regularly criticised King, accusing him of bowing to whites and subjugating blacks to the very culture that had historically denigrated and abused them.




"The white man pays Reverend Martin Luther King, subsidises Reverend Martin Luther King, so that Reverend Martin Luther King can continue to teach the negroes to be defenceless. That's what you mean by non-violent: be defenceless. Be defenceless in the face of one of the most cruel beasts that has ever taken a people into captivity. That's just the American white man," Malcolm X said.

In Washington, King continued his political work with a group of senators sympathetic to his ideas. He opened historic collaborations with the white community - joining the debate on the civil rights draft bill initiated by President John F Kennedy - that culminated in the March on Washington in 1963 and the signing of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964.