The Very Black History of Punk Music

Stories about punk music tend to picture thin-framed white guys and girls with shaved heads, part of an angry, energetic scene born out of the working class angst of young white England in the 1970s. But the actual history of punk – as a type of music and movement – is more complicated than that.

Black punks have been an integral and pioneering part of punk history – and they're keeping the movement alive and growing today. Host Sana Saeed explores that history and talks to proto-punk band Death, musician and journalist Greg Tate, the band The 1865 and festival organizer Shawna Shawnté.

Learn more here:
New York Times. “This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/arts/music/15rubi.html


Vice. “The Bands Taking British Punk Back to Its Multicultural Roots.” https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/padjev/decolonise-fest-uk-punk-nekra-sacred-paws-fight-rosa

GQ. “Nazi Punks F**k Off: How Black Flag, Bad Brains and More Took Back Their Scene from White Supremacists.” https://www.gq.com/story/punks-and-nazis-oral-history

Relevant links:
A Band Called Death: http://drafthousefilms.com/film/a-band-called-death
The Universe Is Lit: https://www.mixcloud.com/screamxqueens/scream-queens-radio-the-universe-is-lit-black-n-brown-punk-fest-oakland-1182017/
Bay Area Girls Rock Camp: https://www.bayareagirlsrockcamp.org/
The 1865: https://www.instagram.com/the1865band/

Presented by: Sana Saeed
Written by: Sana Saeed
Edited by: Brian Joseph and Michael Zipkin
Animations by: Chia Liu
Produced by: Sana Saeed and Kathryn Wheeler


Music tracks courtesy APM, YouTube and The 1865.

Footage and images courtesy of Getty Images, The Universe is Lit, Keep on Knocking, LLC, Ed Marshall Photography NYC, Evan Carter and Paul Rosenfield.

Ladyboy Documentary - Katoey's of Thailand

A classic documentary on the plight of ladyboys in Thailand, commonly known as katoey.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Full Film)

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Sophie Scholl. An anti-Nazi political activist, she was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the LMU with her brother, Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine.

Jesus was a Buddhist Monk BBC Documentary

This documentary highlights a Jewish religious leader and preacher known as Jesus Christ—but it also suggests he was a Buddhist Monk. What’s more, it is argued that Jesus wasn’t actually crucified; instead, it is said that he travelled far and wide for many, many years. According to the documentary, Jesus was laid to rest at Roza Bal Shrine in Srinagar, Kashmir. Much about Jesus has been unknown due to a lack of information regarding his life between the ages of 13 and 29; in Palestine, these are sometimes referred to as “The Lost Years.” However, in 1887 a Russian doctor named Nicolas Notovitch went to India, Tibet, and Afghanistan in order to write The Unknown Life of Christ.
Notovitch soon found himself recovering from a broken leg at the Tibetan Buddhist Monastery of Hemis, atop India in the city of Leh. Two large, yellowed Tibetan volumes were presented to him: The Life of Saint Issa. He read that Jesus (or Issa,  the son of God) was born in the first century in Israel, and that Vedic scholars tutored him from the age of 13 to the age of 29.
A lama explained that, “Issa is a great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas. He is greater than any one of all the Dalai Lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality of our Lord. It is he who has enlightened you, who has brought back within the pale of religion the souls of the frivolous, and who has allowed each human being to distinguish between good and evil. His name and his acts are recorded in our sacred writings. And in reading of his wondrous existence, passed in the midst of an erring and wayward people, we weep at the horrible sin of the pagans who, after having tortured him, put him to death.”

‘The Daemonic Mucosal’ - Patricia MacCormack

MacCormack’s illustrated lecture ‘The Daemonic Mucosal’ explores, via Irigaray and Deleuze and Guattari, the role of the vulvic fold, the mucosal and daemonic unions in chaos magick.

Patricia MacCormack is Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University. She is the author of Cinesexuality (2008) and Posthuman Ethics (2012), the editor of The Animal Catalyst: Toward Ahuman Theory (2014) and the co-editor of Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema (2008) and Deleuze and the Animal (2017). MacCormack is also the co-founder of the occult-inspired club night Occulture in London.

CUNTemporary
CUNTemporary is a non-profit organisation that works with individuals and groups that explore feminist and queer art practices and theories. CUNTemporary provides a newsletter and daily listings of events related to feminist and queer art practices in the UK. The events team curates talks, screenings, exhibitions, performances, events and club nights with the participation of a multidisciplinary and international group of artists, performers and theorists, mainly in London, but also around the UK and abroad. We welcome networking and collaborative opportunities from curators, academics, artists, activists, institutions and alternative venues.


General Information
CUNTemporary
Arts | Feminism | Queer
info@cuntemporary.org | www.cuntemporary.org
Deep Trash: https://www.facebook.com/DeepTrashClub

Soulwax - Part of the Weekend Never Dies

Part of the Weekend Never Dies is a rockumentary film depicting the worldwide concert tour of the Belgian band Soulwax.

Director Saam Farahmand filmed Soulwax on their 2007 international tour dates, capturing all the excitement, chaos and humour of the world tour. Whereas the Beastie Boys filmed one gig with 50 cameras, Soulwax filmed 120 shows with one camera in Europe, Japan, the US, Latin America and Australia. This resulted in 2 films: a live music film and a documentary which includes 2manydj’s and Soulwax Nite Versions, and features James Murphy, Nancy Whang, Erol Alkan, Tiga, Boys Noize, Justice, Busy P, So-Me, Peaches, The Naked Guy, Kitsuné, Klaxons in behind the scenes footage, interviews and music.

BBC The Story Of Skinhead - Don Letts

Documentary in which director and DJ Don Letts looks at a very particular and very provocative British subculture - skinhead. He explores how skinhead has become associated with street fighting, trouble on the football terraces and violent racism in the public consciousness in Britain and around the world, but reveals that its origins lie in a cultural coming together that could not be further from its tarnished image.

Don shows in fascinating detail how the roots of skinhead are in a brilliant cultural collision between the young white working-class kids and their Jamaican counterparts in British inner cities, a moment of multicultural harmony. He traces the history of skinhead from the late 60s to the present, looking at the music and styles of skinhead from the reggae-influenced ska to the punk-influenced Oi. Throughout Don meets people who were committed members of various skinhead scenes, and he considers the conflicts and the contradictions that skinhead has attracted over five decades.

FLÂNEUR III — BENJAMIN`S SHADOWS (1998)

In the 1998 film above, Flâneur III: Benjamin’s Shadow, Danish director Torben Skjodt Jensen and writer Urf Peter Hallberg collaborate on an impressionistic black-and-white meditation on Paris, overlaid with Hallberg’s ruminations and quotations from Benjamin. Benjamin’s fascination with nineteenth-century Paris drove his massive, unfinished Arcades Project, an excavation of the inner workings of modernity. Where One Way Street is marked by a very dated 90’s aesthetic (which may look chic now that the decade’s back in fashion), the above film is both classical and modernist, a testament to the beauties and contradictions of Paris. I think in this respect, it is a more fitting tribute to the critical and contradictory aesthetic theory of Walter Benjamin. -- Open Culture

Mind Control Made Easy

This is an educational training video for all you wannabe cult leaders out there courtesy of Mind Deprogramming Inc.

Tripping (1999 Ken Kesey / Merry Pranksters documentary)

Broadcast by Channel 4 in August 1999 in anticipation of Ken Kesey's trip to the UK for the total eclipse, this is a well constructed documentary look at Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, the bus trip, the Acid Tests and all the other fun they got up to. It features lots of great archive footage; contemporary (late 90s) footage filmed at Kesey's home and on the road with the latest bus; and interviews with the relevant (Hunter S. Thompson, subtitled!) and curious (Fatboy Slim?).