Nestor Ivanovych Makhno, commonly known as Bat'ko Makhno, was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of an independent anarchist army in Ukraine from 1917–21. Makhno was the commander of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, commonly referred to as the Makhnovshchina.
The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Революційна Повстанська Армія України), also known as the Black Army or as Makhnovtsi (Ukrainian: Махновці), named after their leader Nestor Makhno, was an anarchist army formed largely of Ukrainian peasants and workers during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. They protected the operation of "free soviets" and libertarian communes in the Free Territory, an attempt to form a stateless libertarian communist society from 1918 to 1921 during the Ukrainian War of Independence. They were founded and inspired based on the Black Guards.
The economic collapse of 2008 scared us. But little has changed since then. This 2012 film explains in fine detail why and how the global society operating within a system of neoclassical economics is in grave peril. All for the sake of a relatively small percentage of the population which controls the means of production, transport and resource extraction. The banks are complicit but they are not driving the system. It is a complex and complete network of actors, institutions, unsustainable laws, practices and methods.
A debt/credit cycle that is now a growing negative equation. Resources are in decline. Investment is no longer needed to be productive. Banking is a pyramid scheme. The rich have access to government support while the middle and working classes are forced to fend for themselves with welfare dismantled globally. The housing crisis - which spiked in 2009 but is still ongoing - is a well known example of how this system functions.
The situation with the ecology of the planet and its limited resources is the frame to this crisis that has not (yet) ruptured completely. The WWF’s Living Planet Report 2020 identifies five major categories of threat to biodiversity: land and sea changes, pollution, species overexploitation, invasive species and disease, and climate change. The size of the problem is illustrated by the report’s data that suggests 23 percent of land is now degraded (for example, the Amazon rainforest has lost 17 percent of its area in the last 50 years), while agricultural-land use is responsible for 80 percent of global deforestation. The oceans’ “dead zones” already encompass an area larger than the United Kingdom. A draft UN agreement envisages that in the next decade, at least one-third of the planet should be put under nature-conservation protection. This plan also includes targets for reducing the use of pesticides, cutting plastic waste, channeling some US$200 billion into developing countries and reducing harmful government subsidies by $500 billion per year.
If the global economic system is not dramatically reformed within the next decade the results will be catastrophic for hundreds of millions of people, if not the entire world's human population. There will be nowhere to go to avoid it.
Ross Ashcroft's Four Horseman (2012) does a good job of examining the vast system that is the global economy. But on the micro and personal levels the film does not sufficiently question the ethics of wealth and accumulation. Innovation is seen as a ends in itself, rather than a focal point within the overall system of human society and how it relates to the limited resources of the planet. Four Horsemen uses a Christian ethic to justify wealth and a modernist interpretation of time to qualify a future that continues the exploitative motives of the present system but just with better rules (a 'salvation'). The film posits a capitalism managed better will be both sustainable and fair and that a two-party representative political system can still deliver the best for the majority of the population if we just get rid of lobbyists and money. I doubt these assumptions but unless action is taken to change these elements we will never know. Time is running out.
Sebastian leads a group of mathematically minded dolly girls in a quasi futuristic 1960s London as they decode Cold War secrets. He falls in love with one of his new recruits. Swinging London forms the backdrop for this strange somewhat pointless but very groovy film from 1968.
Complete Cast and Crew
Starring, Dirk Bogarde, Susannah York, Lili Palmer, John Gielgud, Janet Munro, Ronald Fraser, Margaret Johnston, Nigel Davenport, John Ronane, Hayward Morse, Donald Sutherland, Ann Beach, Susan Whitman, Ann Sidney, Veronica Clifford, Louise Purnell, Portland Mason, James Belchamber, Charles Farrell, Charles Lloyd Pack, Alan Freeman, Sally Douglas, Stuart Hoyle, Lynn Pinkney, and Jeanne Roland.
Directed by David Greene. Released in New York on January 24, 1968.
The notion that capitalism treats people as things while things take on quasi-human attributes is nothing new: Marx was writing about reification (sometimes translated as ‘thingification’) and commodity fetishism more than 150 years ago. But we’re also coming at this from another angle. In The Order of Time Carlo Rovelli explains that “the world is made of events, not things.” He goes on to say that there is “the simple fact that nothing is: that things happen instead.” If we stop thinking about being, and start thinking about becoming, then our emphasis switches from permanence to change. Put bluntly, the world doesn’t have to be like this. There are echoes here of the way E.P. Thompson insists that ‘class’ is not a structure or a category, but “something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships.” In Crack Capitalism, John Holloway goes even further and suggests that a self-determining society would probably have a language where verbs are primary. It sounds like a crazy idea, but is it really any crazier than the fucked-up way we live today?
***
We live in an upside-down world.
People (living, breathing human beings) are treated as things – as figures in a report, as numbers on a spreadsheet. At the same time, inanimate objects (cars, phones, a company logo) are treated as more important than people.
How does this happen? It happens because capitalism is above all a process of double separation.
First, through the organisation of work, human activity is turned into things to be bought and sold. Verbs (our activity) are turned into nouns (commodities).
And then those commodities are used to divide and separate us. Our relations with each other are mediated through things.
In this world of nouns, everything seems fixed. The economy. Profits. Business. Normality. “Things are the way that they are,” we sigh, as if change is impossible. “It is what it is.”
But it is the world of nouns itself which is the problem. It obscures our escape route.
If we think of a phone as a noun, we don’t think of the processes that lie behind it. We don’t think of the mining, the manufacture, the marketing. We don’t think of how the phone is to be used, or what happens to the phone when it’s finished. The phone just “is”.
It’s the same with poverty. If we think of poverty as a thing, we imagine that “the poor have always been with us”, as if poverty is a simple fact of life.
But poverty is not just a “thing”. It involves some people actively denying other people the means to provide for themselves – and many other people actively refusing to care about this ongoing denial.
When we think in the world of nouns, we think of definition. We think of “this side” and “that side”, of Brexit and Remain, of vaxxers and anti-vaxxers. We lose sight of the fact that real social change comes about when people leave those fixed identities and start to form new collective bodies.
When we think in the world of nouns, we imagine Covid is a thing which has just appeared from nowhere. It has a beginning and an end. We can “send it packing”. We lose sight of the fact that zoonotic diseases, like Covid, will persist as long as humans share the planet with other species – constantly mutating and evolving, not simply being, always in the process of becoming something new.
When we think in the world of nouns, we lose sight of the fact that the society we live in is one that is made – and re-made – every day by us.
Capitalism – this system that dominates and destroys – is not a “thing” at all. Capitalism is a social relation between people.
When we think in the world of nouns, we remain trapped inside this social form that systematically tries to hide the fact that we are its creators.
We can start to turn the world the right way up if we begin again with verbs.
In this story of emancipation and freedom in the face of the Syrian war, Commander Arian guides a women's battalion towards Kobane with the mission to liberate the population living under the yoke of Daesh (ISISIS). Arian, who when very young witnessed the viscous treatment that victims of sexual violence received, does everything possible to make her comrades discover the true meaning of their struggle: freedom for the next generation of women. After living for months with the commander and her troops, filming with an unprecedented intimacy that includes raw sequences of Arian's slow recovery from wounds, Sotorra makes a fascinating portrait of a woman on a mission.
2018 Duration: 77 min.
País: España
Dirección:Alba The Warrior Guion: Jesper Osmund, Alba Sotorra, Steffano Strocchi
In the 1960s and 70s thousands of hippies journeyed east to India in search of enlightenment. Hippie Masala is a fascinating chronicle about flower children who, after fleeing Western civilization, found a new way of life in India.
It is with love we announce that Baba Cesare has left his suffering body today 29 December 2018.
“I'm nine, it's my first time in India. I don't like it at all: dirt everywhere, poverty, lepers in the streets pushing themselves on trolleys with bloody stumps. We go to visit a large temple in Delhi. To enter you have to take off your shoes and that's the last thing I want to do. I walk barefoot, with the terror of getting some kind of disease. I am shocked and lock myself in the hotel to watch television and eat peanuts. I don't want to go out anymore.
Then shortly before leaving, I put my head back out and in a square, in the midst of the large moving crowd, I see three men crouched, practically naked. They look serene, composed, and their very long hair wrapped over their heads like a kind of crown. One of them is holding a very simple musical instrument, with only one string. They have fewer than beggars, but they look like kings. "Who I am?!" We get closer and people explain to us that they are ascetics. They live alone in the jungle. It seems incredible to me that such people exist. I never forget them " [Folco Terzani from the book, A Barefoot on the Earth]
Baba Cesare felt he was not suitable to have a normal family or a normal job, he wanted something different, another life, always on this Earth, but different, not interested in material issues and needs, but made only of spiritual fulfillments. And so, Cesare leaves Italy to go to India dressed only with rags and begging along the streets. Step by step, people start to trust him, step by step Cesare also learns to speak Hindi and this makes him more reliable as an Indian guru, or rather, Sadhu. A Sadhu is a person who lives with no possessions, such as a home or money.
A Sadhu always enjoys the greatest respect of his fellows and common people who help him to have food, clothes and a place where he can sleep. Cesare attends other Indian gurus to learn the secrets of a spiritual life, showing that an alternative way to live is always possible. Until when, thanks to his knowledge, Cesare is really regarded as an Indian guru and he can live a wonderful life with no goods or other possessions. This story can be read like an educational or spiritual journey, the reflections about the meaning of life are amazing and gripping, the style is sharp, but always true.
Cesare’s life is fully different from the Western life where people are accustomed to seek saints and angels inside the beatification procedures of the Church. Humbleness and patience are the unique ingredients in Cesare’s life, but thanks to them, his life is totally fulfilled. Maybe for us it will be impossible to live like Baba Cesare, but this book reveals that nothing is impossible when accomplished with the true essence of our soul. Nothing is impossible, even with no money, no home, no jobs. This book shakes our sensitivity, screams, make us cry, and shapes a unique book, an adventure novel, but, above all, a spiritual journey inside the real meaning of life on the Earth.
Johann Hari on Lost Connections 9/6/21
Author and journalist Johann Hari talks about his book, Lost Connections: Why You Are Depressed and How to Find Hope with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hari, who has suffered with depression as a teenager and an adult, offers a sweeping critique of the medical establishment's understanding of depression and the frequent reliance on pharmaceutical treatments. Hari argues that it is our lost connections with each other, with our work, and with ourselves that explains the rise in depression in recent times.
Streamed live on May 5, 2023
Johann Hari: Lost Connections - a Lecture sponsored by Tommy G. Thompson Center
“What if depression is, in fact, a form of grief—for our own lives not being as they should? What if it is a form of grief for the connections we have lost, yet still need?”
Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions.
"Let the months and the years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear."
This film adaptation of the combat veteran Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel (the book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany) was made in 1979, in that small window of American film history when war suddenly was fully exposed for the obscenity it is and always has been, between the end of the Vietnam War and the election of Ronald Reagan. The Deer Hunter came out the year before in 1978. Apocalypse Now the same year. It was a time when the United States as a culture was seriously questioning the concept of international conflict and military power. Compare a few of the war films of 1980, the year Ronnie Raygun took office:
The Dogs of War: "Mercenary James Shannon, on a reconnaissance job to the African nation of Zangaro, is tortured and deported. He returns to lead a coup."
Private Benjamin: "When her husband dies on their wedding night, Judy decides to join the United States Army. She realizes that she has never been independent in her entire life. What looks like a bad decision at first, turns out not so bad at all."
The Big Red One: "Director Samuel Fuller's autobiographical tale of a special infantry squad and its intrepid sergeant during WWII follows the men from D-Day to the liberation of the Nazi death camps."
There was one last echo of horror in war in this time before the heroics became the standard again. It was far away in Australia, where Gallipoli by Peter Wear was released in 1981. Like another Australian film, The Odd Angry Shot from 1979, it depicted war as pointless.
War steals life. Not just through death and killing and cost. But it takes youth, it takes laughter, it takes passion and creativity. It kills thought and contemplation. It destroys love. It smashes families, hopes, desires, ambitions. It takes everything and turns it into waste and decay. This film is a brilliant study in that ancient horror.
Politicians start wars
Generals organise them
The people pay for them.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a television film produced by ITC Entertainment, released on November 14, 1979, starring Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine. It is based on the book of the same name by Erich Maria Remarque. The film was directed by Delbert Mann. A joint British and American production, most of the filming took place in Czechoslovakia.
Uncut footage that was not used in the Channel 4 Arena documentary about William S. Burroughs from 1982. William visits Francis Bacon in his home studio in London. They drink tea and have an interesting conversation about art and Tangier. There is a lot of name dropping - asking if such and such a person is still alive, or "did you know" so and so.
At the about 30 minute mark Burroughs elucidates on some of his ideas about immortality and the escape from the body. He references Mayan and Egyptian ideas on the subject and talks a bit about physics.
Burroughs was originally made in 1983 by Howard Brookner and Alan Yentob, as part of the BBC’s art strand Arena, and repeated after Burrough’s death in 1997. It is an exceptional documentary, one that gives an intimate and revealing portrait of Burroughs, as he revisits his childhood home; discusses his up-bringing with his brother, Mortimer; his friendship with Jack Kerouac, Allen Gisnberg, and Brion Gysin; and has a reunion with artist Francis Bacon, who Burroughs knew in Tangier. Other contributors include Terry Southern, Patti Smith, and James Grauerholz.
Aldous Huxley: The Gravity Of Light incorporates rare archival footage, computer rendered 3D animation, speculative fictions, and selections from his essays. The film begins by reflecting upon that crucial, prophetic work "Brave New World" (1932, Aldous Huxley) and then moves to a further inquiry into the human ramifications of current technological change. The film also recalls the impact of Huxley's LSD-25 and mescaline experimentations and writings for a generation of youth and examines the utopianistic impulses associated with the Rave scene.
A documentary about the brilliant and versatile cult figure Harry Smith (1923-1991) – compiler of a famous three-part folk album, film-maker, painter, anthropologist, obsessive collector and thinker.
The films, paintings, and recordings of Harry Smith pay tribute to his genius. Filmmaking, painting, anthropology, musicology, and the occult. His knowledge of each was encyclopedic and firsthand. As might befit a man of such varied interests, his circles of friends were large and, for the most part, wholly independent. This film demonstrates how differently Smith appeared to friends from each circle, offering personal recollections that present a multidimensional, largely contradictory picture of the man. Together with artwork, the interviews director Paola Igliori conducted with such friends as William Breeze, Robert Frank, John Cohen, Jonas Mekas, and Allen Ginsberg make up a sizable portion of the film.
HISTORY of INDIA LEH LADAKH full length new edit, better colours, photos, longer documentary 1979. This is Ed van der Kooy's video diary made with an 8 mm camera in 1979. Ed made his first trip to Ladakh and filmed and photographed a beautiful country. He hopes you like it. The music is added later but the movie was shot just after the Indian government opened the road to the capital Leh, Ladakh in 1978. The 1979 8mm film The Last Shangri La by Ed van der Kooy is a 1950s Old Nepal full documentary.
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat ... Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade
English Subtitles
Cast:
Ian Richardson as Jean-Paul Marat
Patrick Magee as Marquis de Sade
Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday
Susan Williamson as Marat's mistress
Clifford Rose as Asylum director
production:
Royal Shakespeare Company
Directed by:
Peter Brook
Based on the play by:
Peter Weiss
The Marquis de Sade is locked in the Charenton mental hospital and decides to put on a play. His overseers agree as long as he follows certain conditions. He writes and directs the other mental patients in a play based on the life of the Jean-Paul Marat. As the play progresses, the inmates become more and more possessed by the violence of the play and become extremely difficult to control. Finally, all chaos breaks loose.
Shortly before dawn on August 21, 1992, six heavily armed U.S. marshals made their way up to the isolated mountaintop home of Randy and Vicki Weaver and their children on Ruby Ridge in Northern Idaho. Charged with selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns to an undercover agent, Weaver had failed to appear in court and law enforcement was tasked with bringing him in. For months, the Weavers had been holed up on their property with a cache of firearms, including automatic weapons. When the federal agents surveilling the property crossed paths with members of the family, a firefight broke out. The standoff that mesmerized the nation would leave Weaver injured, his wife and son dead, and some convinced that the federal government was out of control. Drawing upon eyewitness accounts, including interviews with Weaver's daughter, Sara, and federal agents involved in the confrontation, Ruby Ridge is a riveting account of the event that helped give rise to the modern American militia movement.
This film is a glimpse of the traditional life of the Afghan people, their culture and their music, just before the Russian invasion in 1979.
About Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion in Dec.1979. Border unrest, trade routes blocked and the Afghan mujahideen is about to take up arms against the intruder. In April 1978, the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in a bloody coup d'état against then-President Mohammed Daoud Khan, in what is called the Saur Revolution. The PDPA declared the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, with its first leader named as People's Democratic Party general secretary Nur Muhammad Taraki.
The Saur Revolution (/saʊər/; Dari: إنقلاب ثور or ۷ ثور (literally 7th Saur); Pashto: د ثور انقلاب), also romanized Sowr Revolution, and alternatively called the April Revolution or April Coup, was the process by which the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew Afghan President Mohammed Daoud Khan on 27–28 April 1978, who had himself taken power in the 1973 Afghan coup d'état. Daoud Khan and most of his family were killed at the presidential palace by military officers in support of the PDPA. The revolution resulted in the creation of a Soviet-aligned government with Nur Muhammad Taraki as President (General Secretary of the Revolutionary Council). Saur or Sowr is the Dari (Persian) name of the second month of the Solar Hijri calendar, the month in which the uprising took place.
The revolution was ordered by PDPA member Hafizullah Amin, who would become a significant figure in the revolutionary government; at a press conference in New York in June 1978, Amin claimed that the event was not a coup but a revolution by the "will of the people". The coup involved heavy fighting and resulted in many deaths. The Saur Revolution was a significant event in Afghanistan's history, marking the onset of 43 years of conflict in the country.
Bygones from 1975 - Documentary series exploring East Anglian history and traditional rural crafts. Meet Ernie James, the last Fen Tiger who made a living by eel catching and punt gunning. Ernie shares with us some of his centuries old knowledge about living self-sufficiently on the Fens.
Ernie James was born on January 8, 1906 in Welney, Norfolk, England. He died on July 5, 2005 in Norfolk.
He was one of the last (some said the last) of the legendary "Fen Tigers" - the elite breed of men who scratched a seasonal living on the Fens of East Anglia. He was born in Welney on 8th January 1906. His parents lived in a cottage that had been home to several previous generations of the James family, on land they owned between the rivers Delph and Old Bedford, close to the two bridges.
The cottage was known as Ferry House because Ernie's father operated a ferry service across the Washes in winter when the Wash Road (the A1101) road was impassable. Ernie took over the service in 1922 when only 16 and continued it right through the 2nd World War.
He spent all his life in Welney, working for his father on his smallholding when he left school until his 20s, then making a living from a square mile of land and water close to his cottage. At the age of 21 he married Doris, a local Welney girl whose father was employed as a mole-catcher by the local drainage authority.
Ernie never had a 'regular' job - his work, in deed his whole life, was ruled by the seasons. Winter was for punt gunning and his shooting skills were recently recognised by the Shooting Times which listed him as one of the 12 great shooting eccentrics. His greatest achievement was killing 48 birds with a single shot one morning and another 30 in the afternoon.
Shortly after his marriage, his father-in-law became ill and Ernie inherited his job and worked for many years between October and February as a mole-catcher along the banks of the Delph and the Old Bedford rivers. Winter recreation was ice-skating when the washes froze over, and he and his friends would skate for miles on wooden "fen runners".
Springtime saw him busy in his osier beds along the River Delph cutting willows to make eel traps and griggs. He caught thousands of eels during his lifetime, and continued to catch them until he was in his early 90s. One of his great pleasures was to walk along Welney high bank observing the movement of the wild fowl and changes in the scenery of the washes as the seasons passed. Summertime was ditching in the washes and harvest work.
Autumn saw the start of plover-catching which continued until the frost came, and the cycle began again. Although he never travelled far from home he gained a reputation as a master of country lore. People came to visit him from all corners of the world to listen to his stories, view his collection of photographs, and learn about calling birds, trapping eels and catching moles.
In the 1950s he began a media career which lasted for almost 40 years. In 1975 Anglia Television made this documentary about his life in the Fens and he worked with personalities including Dave Allen, David Bellamy and Harry Secombe.
In 1986 his daughter-in-law Audrey James wrote his biography “Memoirs of a Fen Tiger” which not only chronicles his life but also a good deal of Welney's history too.
He left a son, two daughters, two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His wife of 72 years, Doris, died in 2000.
His funeral service and burial were at St Mary's Church, Welney, on Monday 11th July 2005.
Promiscuous drunk who liked guns, and incarnated Bodhisattva.....
A provocative account of Trungpa’s global odyssey, Crazy Wisdom offers a perceptive, if one-sided, perspective on Trungpa’s impact on American spirituality and the arts. Well before American Buddhists and New Age acolytes began flocking to the feet of Tibet’s Dalai Lama, hippies and spiritual seekers were following in the footsteps of Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan lama who took up residence in the U.S. during the 1970s.
Born in Tibet in 1939, Trungpa was identified as a reincarnate lama (“rinpoche”) before he was two years old and completed ecclesiastical studies within the Kagyu branch of Tibetan Buddhism before escaping his homeland in 1959 and resettling in India following China’s invasion of Tibet. A move to London to study at Oxford University eventually led him to Scotland to cofound the first Tibetan Buddhist center in the West and the decision to give up his monastic robes to become a lay teacher and marry Diana Pybus, a 16-year-old follower.
In 1970, Trungpa and Pybus moved to the U.S., where they settled rather incongruously in Vermont, establishing a rural meditation center. Trungpa began teaching a growing following of lay meditation practitioners, many of them counter-culture refugees seeking spiritual inspiration, and expanding his interest in the arts. Wherever he traveled around North America, however — eventually settling for a time in Boulder, Colo., where he founded the renowned Naropa University — Trungpa provoked controversy and intense curiosity, as well as devotion.
He freely slept with other women besides Pybus — many of them his students — and smoked and drank openly. Trungpa’s spiritual methods were often as divisive as his lifestyle, prompting followers to identify him as an embodiment of “crazy wisdom,” a traditional teaching style involving unconventional ideas and practices that shock students into new realizations of Buddhist principles.
Whether a lifestyle or a religious choice, Trungpa’s excesses led to his death in 1987 from cirrhosis of the liver at age 48, after he had established a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, a network of Shambala meditation centers and published dozens of English-language books on Buddhism.
Jetsun Milarepa (Tibetan: རྗེ་བཙུན་མི་ལ་རས་པ, Wylie: rje btsun mi la ras pa, 1028/40–1111/23) was a Tibetan enlightened Yogi, who was famously known as a murderer when he was a young man, before turning to Buddhism and becoming a highly accomplished Buddhist disciple. He is generally considered one of Tibet's most famous yogis and spiritual poets, whose teachings are known among several schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He was a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is also famous for the feat of climbing Mount Kailash.
In 1997 three travelling techno sound systems combined to travel overland from Europe to India and back again, staging parties as they went. FACOM (France) OKUPE (France) and TOTAL RESISTANCE (Great Britain) were at the forefront of the European underground free party movement. The three joined up to make raves in Italy in 1997 as an experiment. However the vive between the crews and the parties were so wicked they combined to create something more permanent; SOUND CONSPIRACY. After touring Italy for nearly a year and putting on increasingly successful raves every weekend, the alliance decided to leave western Europe and spread the vibe further, beginning with Bosnia in July 1998. This film is the story of SOUND CONSPIRACY and their journey.
Among the ruins of a London devastated by nuclear war, the survivors ineffectually cling to increasingly meaningless social structures. While radioactivity randomly transforms various people into animals and inanimate objects, an absurd election for prime minister takes place. And the parents of Penelope (Rita Tushingham), a young woman who's been with child for nearly a year and a half, want her to marry a man with a promising future, though the fate of the world itself is rather dim.
After the successes of his Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965), director Richard Lester was given a degree of free reign by United Artists, and was able to use Spike Milligan’s one-man show as the basis of this sharply satirical end-of the-world comedy starring a Who’s Who of British acting talent.
In a vividly-realised post-apocalyptic London, Mrs Ethel Shroake is crowned Queen, and Lord Fortnum awaits his imminent transformation into a bed sitting room. Meanwhile, seventeen-months pregnant Penelope and her parents leave the safety of their underground carriage to find her a husband, and finally reclaim their baggage.
Part Goons, part Samuel Beckett, The Bed Sitting Room’s acerbic wit and bleak outlook confused audiences and led to it falling out of circulation for decades.
The aftermath of the Apocalypse has been explored many times on screen across a variety of genres, including Mad Max (1979), 28 Days Later (2002) and Children of Men (2006).
Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег, Russkij Kovcheg) is a 2002 experimental historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. In Russian Ark, an unnamed narrator wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, and implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler.
The film was recorded entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum on 23 December 2001 using a one-take single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, whilst at other times they pass unnoticed. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
Hype! (1996) is a documentary directed by Doug Pray about the popularity of grunge rock in the early to mid-1990s United States. It incorporates interviews and rare concert footage to trace the development of the grunge scene from its early beginning in neighborhood basements to its emergence as an explosive pop culture phenomenon. Hype! attempts to dispel some of the myths of the genre promulgated by media hype by depicting the grunge subculture from the point of view of people who were active in the scene. The film generally portrays this mythos in a satirical way while acknowledging that it was media hype that helped propel some of these obscure bands to fame.
Hype! includes interviews and performances from bands (primarily oriented with the Sub Pop Records axis) such as TAD, Blood Circus, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Coffin Break, The Gits, Love Battery, Flop, The Melvins, Some Velvet Sidewalk, Mono Men, Supersuckers, Zipgun, Seaweed, Pearl Jam, 7 Year Bitch, Hovercraft, Gas Huffer, and Fastbacks. It also features interviews with band manager Susan Silver, record producers Jack Endino and Steve Fisk, and photographer Charles Peterson.
It is one of the few films to contain video footage of Nirvana's first performance of their breakthrough hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
In the film, Seattle producer/engineer Jack Endino is humorously referred to as "the godfather of grunge."
A 1992 documentary that presents a musical journey through the area surrounding the Ganges. Focuses on Benares, Ustad Bismillah Khan, a musician influenced by Indian musical traditions, and the Shehnai, an oboe-type instrument. Other masters performing are Girja Devi, Lacchu Maharaj, Jotin Bhattacharya, N. Rajam.
The Other Side of Madness is a 1971 film directed by Frank Howard and produced by Wade Williams. The film is based on the crimes of the Manson Family, made while the trial was still ongoing. The film was briefly re-released in 1976 under the title The Helter Skelter Murders.
The majority of the film takes place in flashbacks from the perspective of various witnesses during the Manson trial. The entire second half of the film is dedicated to the Tate murders, attempting to recreate them based on the evidence and testimony available to the public at the time.
Several scenes of the film were shot at Spahn Ranch, the location used as the primary residence of the Manson Family, making it possibly the last film to contain footage of the ranch before it was destroyed by a wildfire in September, 1970. The film features the song Mechanical Man written and sung by Charles Manson. A promotional record featuring both Mechanical Man and another Manson song, Garbage Dump, was later released.
Due to legal issues, no names, with the exception of "Charlie", are mentioned in the film at any point. Produced Wade Williams claimed that legal difficulties threatened any sort of release until he showed the film to the lawyers in the Tate murder trial, all of whom he claimed were "impressed with its accuracy". Williams claimed that the film would utilise a technique known as "Auramation" which was described as a "special cellular film treatment designed to heighten or depress the emotions of the viewer by subliminal monochromatic suggestion", although in a 2020 interview, Williams reveled that this was simply fabricated in an attempt to get the film more press attention.<7p>
On the occasion of the death of Can bassist Holger Czukay, we are showing the legendary Cologne experimental collective in full length at a concert in Soest in 1970. Click on the image and you will be taken there.
Paul Bowles, who lived in Tangier, Morocco and died there in 1999 at the age of 88, was the quintessential iconoclast. He left the United States for good in the 1940s after building an illustrious career as a composer, rejected the heroic identity requisite to expatriate American writers and buried himself in the culture of North Africa. A writer's writer, his associations span the elite cultural circles of this century. At twenty, he was an intimate of Gertrude Stein and Aaron Copeland; at thirty the peer of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal; at forty, literary godfather to Beat writers William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. His unorthodox marriage to writer Jane Bowles - both were gay and had significant relationships with others throughout their marriage - is legendary. Together they formed the magnet which drew an extraordinary group of writers and artists to the exotic freedoms of Morocco before independence.
In this definitive film biography, the notoriously laconic and reclusive Bowles finally speaks out on the subjects he has remained silent about over the years. Lying in bed at his home in Tangier and smoking kif with an elegant black cigarette holder, he reflects on his life, his work, Jane, love and his friends with unprecedented candour. His tone is almost omniscient, as though he is surveying both life and death from some lofty interim vantage point. The film is built around this self-revealing monologue, with various voices breaking in to comment, dispute and clarify. Chief among these is William Burroughs, who acts as a sort of commentator on Bowles’ version of his life.
Director Jennifer Baichwal's association with Bowles dates back to her early twenties when she ran away to Morocco, drawn by his dark, sinister prose. Subsequent visits deepened their friendship, culminating in the interview which is the basis of the film. Breathtaking footage of Morocco, from the twisted medinas of Tangier and Fez to the hypnotic beauty of the desert, becomes a metaphor for Bowles' interior world. Diverse archival material evokes the atmosphere of North Africa in the '30s and '40s.
The film includes interviews with Bowles' late friends William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and David Herbert, as well as analysis -- some of it harsh -- from Moroccan writer Mohammed Choukri. There are compelling scenes of Bowles translating storyteller Mohammed Mrabet from Dharisian into English, exclusive footage of the last meeting of Bowles, Ginsberg and Burroughs in New York and unprecedented footage of Jane Bowles’ lover Cherifa, who is rumoured to have poisoned Jane to death. Filling this out are readings from celebrated Canadian actor Tom McCamus and detailed treatment of Bowles’ work as a composer.
Lefties is a three-part 2006 BBC documentary series investigating some aspects of the left of British politics in the 1970s. Lefties was produced and directed by Vanessa Engle. Lefties was produced as a companion series to Tory! Tory! Tory! an overview of the New Right and Thatcherism. It was commissioned by Janice Hadlow as part of her tenure at BBC Four under the belief that 'serious television' was vital in driving ideas.
This edition recalls Villa Road, a street in Brixton where squatters lived by their left-wing beliefs - communal living, collective action and an unswerving commitment to Marxist ideology.
Little Big Man is a 1970 American Western film directed by Arthur Penn and based on the 1964 novel Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. While broadly categorized as a western, or an epic, the film encompasses several literary/film genres, including comedy, drama and adventure. The film follows the life of a white man who was raised by members of the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century. The film is largely concerned with contrasting the lives of American pioneers and Native Americans throughout the progression of the boy's life. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Chief Dan George, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Jeff Corey and Richard Mulligan.
Little Big Man is an early revisionist Western in its sympathetic depiction of Native Americans and its exposure of the villainous practices of United States Cavalry. The revision uses elements of satire and tragedy to examine prejudice and injustice. Little Big Man is an anti-establishment film of the period, indirectly protesting America's involvement in the Vietnam War by portraying the United States Armed Forces negatively.
The end of the film is flawed in my opinion. The Chief Dan George character does not finish the story as he should. There should be no nostalic silence from Jack Crabb at the end. It makes too much sense and the events it depicts are not sensical, but horror, emotion and violence. I believe the ending was adapted later in the production process. But you be the judge.
In 2014, Little Big Man was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Burden of Dreams is a 1982 "making-of" documentary film directed by Les Blank, shot during and about the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, and filmed on location in the jungles of Peru.
Throughout production, director Les Blank and his small crew became exhausted and exasperated from the stress of the work. Blank said that he felt “unconnected to the people around me”. Keeping up with the antics of Herzog and Klaus Kinski (the film’s star) proved difficult for the reserved, introverted Blank. By the last week of production, he was so burnt out that he feared coming out of production "like some Viet Nam veterans, horribly calloused". He wrote in his journal, "I'm tired of it all and I couldn't care less if they move the stupid ship – or finish the fucking film".
Blank would often ask Herzog to repeat statements while being filmed that he originally made off-camera. In a 2009 interview with Jesse Pearson for Vice magazine, Blank was asked to recall a scene in the documentary showing Herzog delivering a monologue about the violence and destruction of the jungle around him. Blank says that the scene originally took place in the middle of a canoe ride, away from cameras, but he liked the speech enough to coax it out of Herzog again. "When the moment was right," Blank told Vice, "I pulled him aside and said, 'Can I do a little interview?' And he said, 'Sure.' Goodwin led him around to something that sparked him off on that tangent again. That's how we got the speech."
Into the Abyss, subtitled A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life, is a 2011 documentary film written and directed by Werner Herzog about two men convicted of a triple homicide that occurred in Conroe, Texas. Michael Perry received a death sentence for the crime.
The film profiles Michael Perry (April 9, 1982 – July 1, 2010), a man on death row convicted of murdering Sandra Stotler, a 50-year-old nurse. He also confessed to two other murders which occurred in Conroe, Texas. Perry was convicted of the October 2001 murder 8 years before filming; the crimes apparently were committed to steal a car for a joyride. Perry denies that he was responsible for the killings.
Perry's final interviews for the film were recorded only eight days before his execution on July 1, 2010. The film also includes interviews with victims' families and law-enforcement officers.
The film does not focus on Perry's guilt or innocence and features a minimal amount of narration, with Herzog never appearing onscreen, unlike in many of his films.
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Werner Herzog. In it, Herzog ponders the existential impact of the Internet, robotics, AI, the Internet of Things, and more on human life. The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.The film contains interviews with Bob Kahn, Elon Musk, Sebastian Thrun, Ted Nelson, and other leaders of the technology world.
Vinyl is a 1965 American black-and-white experimental film directed by Andy Warhol at The Factory. It is an early adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, starring Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Ondine, and Tosh Carillo, and featuring such songs as "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas, "Tired of Waiting for You" by The Kinks, "The Last Time" by The Rolling Stones and "Shout" by The Isley Brothers.
The film is about the youth perpetrator Victor, who spends his time lifting weights, dancing and torturing people. When he hits his friend Scum Baby, he calls the police. Victor gets the choice to go to jail or undergo a behavioral change. Victor decides on the treatment and is bound to a chair by a doctor. He has to watch violent videos and describe what is happening on the screen while warm wax from a candle runs over his hand. After a while Victor swears off the violence and is unbound. He rejects the doctor's request to beat him and take drugs. Victor is cured.
On her twenty-first birthday in April 1964, Edie Sedgwick received an $80,000 trust fund ($689,171 in today's money which she spent in 6 months) from her maternal grandmother. Soon after, she relocated to New York City to pursue a career in modeling. In March 1965, she met artist and avant-garde filmmaker Andy Warhol at a party at Lester Persky's apartment, and began frequently visiting The Factory, Warhol's art studio in Midtown Manhattan. During one of her subsequent visits, Warhol was filming Vinyl (1965), his interpretation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. Despite Vinyl's all-male cast, Warhol put Sedgwick in the movie. Around this time, she also made a small cameo appearance in another Warhol film, Horse (1965). Sedgwick's appearances in both films were brief but generated enough interest that Warhol decided to cast her in the starring role of his next films.
“La Frequenza Fantasma (The Ghost Frequency)” is a feature film that paints a non-hierarchical portrait of a crumbling village nestled on the mountains of Calabria, in the south of Italy, balanced precariously between life and death.
Engaging with time as physical matter through a careful and protracted period of observation framed through the lens of an animator’s eye (keen on allowing for minute transformations to occur and unlock all kind of quiet epiphanies), this film attempts to uncover at once the layers of historical sediment that have accumulated in a particular space through time, and to reap new myths through a personal interpretation and direct encounter with place and narrative.
It is the story of a village, suspended in time and space, a place of sounds, smells and numberless thresholds where the memory of a mythical past and the present are inextricably intertwined. It is an investigation into the nature of collective and personal history, into the origin and preservation of memory- how it is etched and perpetrated, both in the minds of the people who still live there, and in that of the soil, the ruins, matter itself. It is the story of the relationship between animate and inanimate matter and of how this relationship turns into the motor and purpose of existence, the search for the sacred patterns of the quotidian within the rhythms of nature.
The physical presence of the body and the overwhelming power of a wild and untamed nature are the two forces which dominate all belief in this secluded and anachronistic stretch of land, where faith and superstition are the binding elements that help the continuation of identity and collective history. The survival of community relies on it. The few testimonies gathered in the film are the voices of the village’s guardians and have the power of an incantation, that grants survival and continuation to what would otherwise crumble into oblivion and loss.
The title of the film refers to the role that the telegraph, the radio, and the transmission of sound signals played in the studies of different dimensions and the otherworld, allowing to tune into frequencies that, although invisible to the eye, are nevertheless a fundamental aspect of our collective subconscious, following the understanding that sound, once released, will never disperse but will continue to haunt the ether, invisible and inaudible but an unquestionable trace of lapsed presence.
For more information about the film and the author please visit acuriousroom.com
“You may think that you do not know Verbicaro. Never set foot or imagined it. But you are wrong and The Ghost Frequency will prove it. This haunting epic poem of shadows and echoes will dream you every time it flickers inside a screen or whispers the ages under your approach. Don't be shocked by your knowing, unsettled by the familiarity, because it is tuned to your recognition and the phantom of your returning.”
- Brian Catling, artist, author and professor of Fine Art at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
"A compelling, lyrical and beautifully realized portrait of people and place, of the universal need for home and roots and at the same time a precisely calibrated site-specific exploration, La Frequenza Fantasma marks the emergence of a bold new film essayist in Chiara Ambrosio."
- Gareth Evans, Film Curator, Whitechapel Gallery
"A seance, an eavesdropping, a mysterious bolero: LA FREQUENZA FANTASMA is a striking essay film that enshrines and expands the poetics of place, people and memory."” –Sukhdev Sandu, NYU
"The Ghost Frequency- You have to make the journey. You can't bring it home. Look back and it dissolves into light.
Hideous Kinky is a 1998 drama directed by Scottish director Gillies MacKinnon. Based on Esther Freud's semi-autobiographical 1992 novel of the same name, it follows a young English mother who moves from London to Morocco with her two young daughters in the early 70s. The film stars Kate Winslet and French-Moroccan actor Saïd Taghmaoui. The soundtrack mixes original music with songs from the 60s, including tracks from Canned Heat, Richie Havens and the Incredible String Band.
Written and Directed by Peter Watkins for the BBC in a quasi-newsreel style and with nonprofessional actors. It first aired in the UK on December 15th 1964. It is a highly detailed and authentic reconstruction of the April 16, 1746 Battle of Culloden - the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Here, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force under William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, on Drummossie Moor near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. It was the last pitched battle fought on British soil. The documentary was unique at the time as it broke the “fourth wall” with historical participants commenting as if modern TV cameras were present.
With a shoe-string budget and a troop of amateur actors, Peter Watkins created a controversial and grim look at the decaying Scottish clan system and the British occupation of Scotland. During the duration of the film Mr. Watkins takes no side and scathingly shows how both sides of the battlefield are morally and socially corrupt. Prince Bonnie Charles Stuart (pretender to the throne) on the battle field against the superior forces of the House of Hannover. The Jacobites didn't really stand a chance against the World's greatest army. Stupidity and jealousy ruined any chance they had.
Peter Watkins also showed the aftermath of the battle and the devastating effects the battle had on the surrounding communities. He shot this film in his trademark faux-documentary style. Even with a small budget, Mr. Watkins still manages to create a very important film. One that he spent months on researching and planning. The film also reflects how the media treated combat as we have one the field reports from the attacking army and interviews with the soldiers and their views on the enemy.
Culloden Moor, known then as Drummossie Muir, was the site of the last pitched battle on the British mainland on 16 April 1746.
The Jacobites were pulling back into the Highlands, ending their siege of Stirling as they headed for Inverness. Despite their victory at Falkirk, Jacobite morale was declining. Hunger saw the men spreading out wide to find their own food, some of them breaking ranks for home.
Most of their artillery had been ditched since reinforcements from France were growing more unlikely.
Things were very different for the Duke of Cumberland, now leading the Hanovarian army. His army was being well supplied by sea as he followed Prince Charles up the east coast.
Lord George Murray advised his Prince that the Jacobites would be best dispersing into the hills to use guerrilla strikes, bringing the army back together in the summer. Charles chose however, to reject the tactics the Highlanders knew best and opted to meet the enemy again in an open area.
On the night of the 15th, a mismanaged strike was launched on Cumberland’s camp which achieved nothing, resulting only in sleepless, hungry Highlanders for the next day. When they met on the Moor near Culloden, the Jacobites numbered four and a half thousand to Cumberland’s nine thousand Hanovarians.
Restricted by flanking dykes, the Jacobites presented a narrow, dense front. For the first twenty minutes of the hour-long battle the Hanovarian cannons pummelled the crowded area. When the Jacobites advanced the men in the centre found themselves having to squeeze to the right to avoid soft ground. There were so many men in such a small area that muskets could not be used. Nevertheless they butchered on through the Hanovarian left only to meet another regiment behind.
The Jacobite left had not joined the attack, and with two-thirds of the men now in difficulties, Cumberland’s cavalry had little trouble sweeping in to end the battle by two’o’clock. Working at their leisure, they proceeded to slaughter every Jacobite they had until the following day and continued to kill in round-ups for weeks following.
The fatalities numbered three hundred Hanovarians and two thousand Jacobites.
An exploration of Mark Fisher's concept of capitalist realism as it manifests itself in the films of the New Hollywood, such as The Godfather and Five Easy Pieces. The New Hollywood at once reveals the dominance of capitalist realism and, at times, attempts to pose a challenge to it.
Slint was a band that broke new ground. Their album Spriderland leaked its way across the Pacific Ocean to us in the early 90s. We were blown away. Spiderland created a sonic landscape. It bent time, added a surreal fragmented narrative, more chanted and spoken than sung, and lulled us into relaxed by uneasy states before building into sublime peaks of intense sound that seemed to go deep into a dreamlike collective memory.
Breadcrumb Trail focusus on Slint's seminal album, Spiderland, and the Louisville music scene from which the band originated. Appearances are made by former members of Slint, their friends and family, Steve Albini, Brian Paulson, and other musicians. The film includes songs, demos, and live performances from Slint and other bands; most of these bands had contained one or more members from Slint's lineup.
Come and See (Russian: Иди и смотри, Idi i smotri; Belarusian: Ідзі і глядзі, Idzi i hliadzi) is a 1985 Soviet anti-war film directed by Elem Klimov and starring Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova. Its screenplay, written by Klimov and Ales Adamovich, is based on the 1978 book I Am from the Fiery Village (original title: Я из огненной деревни, Ya iz ognennoj derevni, 1977), of which Adamovich was a co-author.Klimov had to fight eight years of censorship from the Soviet authorities before he could be allowed to produce the film in its entirety.
The film's plot focuses on the Nazi German occupation of Belarus, and the events as witnessed by a young Belarusian partisan teenager named Flyora, who—against his mother's wishes—joins the Belarusian resistance movement, and thereafter depicts the Nazi atrocities and human suffering inflicted upon the Eastern European villages' populace. The film mixes hyper-realism with an underlying surrealism, and philosophical existentialism with poetical, psychological, political and apocalyptic themes.
Adapted from the novel by René Barjavel of the same name, Le Chemins De Katmandu or The Pleasure Pit (1969) tells the story of a man who joins a group of hippies who live and travel in Nepal, where they take drugs and practice free love in the belief that it will free them from materialism, only to meet disappointment. The Pleasure Pit (French: Les Chemins de Katmandou, Italian: Katmandu, also known as Dirty Dolls in Kathmandu, The Road to Katmandu and Ways of Katmandu) is a 1969 French-Italian crime-drama film written and directed by André Cayatte.
Oliver is a rebellious socially-conscious young man and activist who despises overt materialism, but dates a model. He tries to convince her to leave her materialistic and exploitative profession, but he can barely support himself, let alone her as well. That's when he decides to leave Paris where he lives with his mother to find his deadbeat dad who moved to Nepal some time ago and made good business as a professional hunter. Oliver wants to try to convince him to help him with his financial situation. Almost broke, Oliver manipulates his friend who works on a relief program in India to get the money to travel to Nepal. Once there, he's picked up by a band of hippies from Europe. One of them is Jane, a beautiful young carefree girl who practices free love. He falls for her immediately, but moves on, since he's not that anti-materialistic. When he finally finds his dad, he discovers that his father is in fact almost broke and working for a sleazy businessman who deals with stolen artifacts. Oliver is forced to steal artifacts for him as well to support himself. On one mission he meets Jane again, now a total drug addict. His new mission becomes to save her, but she doesn't want to be saved. Meanwhile, his dad is openly having an affair with the sleazy businessman's wife which complicates things even more for Oliver and everyone involved.
It stars Renaud Verley (Olivier), Jane Birkin (Jane), Elsa Martinelli (Martine), Serge Gainsbourg (Ted) and Pascale Audret (Yvonne). Large portions of the film were shot in the Katmandu Valley. Serge Gainsbourg did the music to it. This is a psychedelic trash masterpiece.
Directed by: André Cayatte
Written by: René Barjavel, André Cayatte
Starring: Renaud Verley, Jane Birkin, Elsa Martinelli
The first in a series of three documentaries (all featured here) where British journalist Kate Humble lives with different nomadic groups still practicing their traditional life. In this first episode Kate lives with the Mongolian nomads from the secluded Hugh land steppe, where she will learn about the challenges faced by these ancient nomadic tribes.
Kate Humble and a camera crew enter the rugged and nomadic life of the Nepalese Raute people, roaming the altitudes of Nepal's mountains. They are not immediately welcomed into the tribe but as Kate proves helpful in moving the camp and as a contributing part of the workforce, she is able to get closer to the tribe - and by that closer to an understanding of the Raute people's way of life, including the challenges and possible new lessons for Kate to learn.
In Afghanistan, Kate Humble meets traditional shepherds in the remote Wakhan Corridor.
A nomad (late 16th century: from French nomade, via Latin from Greek nomas, nomad- ‘roaming in search of pasture’, from the base of nemein ‘to pasture’) is a member of a community without fixed habitation which regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), and tinkers or trader nomads. In the twentieth century, population of nomadic pastoral tribes slowly decreased, reaching to an estimated 30–40 million nomads in the world as of 1995.
Nomadic hunting and gathering—following seasonally available wild plants and game—is by far the oldest human subsistence method. Pastoralists raise herds, driving or accompanying in patterns that normally avoid depleting pastures beyond their ability to recover.
Nomadism is also a lifestyle adapted to infertile regions such as steppe, tundra, or ice and sand, where mobility is the most efficient strategy for exploiting scarce resources. For example, many groups living in the tundra are reindeer herders and are semi-extra nomadic, following forage for their animals.
Sometimes also described as "nomadic" are the various itinerant populations who move among densely populated areas to offer specialized services (crafts or trades) to their residents—external consultants, for example. These groups are known as "peripatetic nomads".
The Occult Experience is a 95 minute documentary on the international occult scene, filmed in 1984-85 and screened initially by Channel 10, Sydney, in 1985.
This digitised copy was made from a high quality VHS recorded directly from the original film print.
It was filmed in Australia, England, Switzerland, Ireland and the United States. The director was Frank Heimans.
Nevill's role was co-producer, researcher and interviewer. The Occult Experience won a Bronze Award at the 1985 International Film and Television Festival of New York and was released in the USA on Sony Home Video (second hand copies on Amazon).
The documentary did not screen on television in either the UK or USA unfortunately, so uploading a really good copy will interest a lot of people in those countries especially.
Producer, director, Richard Corfield ;
series producer, Ken Dyer ;
editor, John Pleffer ;
photography, Laurence McManus, Chris Davis ;
sound, Peter Steege, Colin Jones
Also a book by Nevill Drury, Ken Dyer, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Publisher - Hale & Iremonger in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corp., 1983
ISBN 0868061069, 9780868061061
Documentary presented by Anglican priest Pete Owen Jones which explores the huge number of ancient Christian texts that didn't make it into the New Testament. Shocking and challenging, these were works in which Jesus didn't die, took revenge on his enemies and kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth - a Jesus unrecognisable from that found in the traditional books of the New Testament.
Pete travels through Egypt and the former Roman Empire looking at the emerging evidence of a Christian world that's very different to the one we know, and discovers that aside from the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, there were over seventy gospels, acts, letters and apocalypses, all circulating in the early Church.
Through these lost Gospels, Pete reconstructs the intense intellectual and political struggles for orthodoxy that was fought in the early centuries of Christianity, a battle involving different Christian sects, each convinced that their gospels were true and sacred.
The worldwide success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code sparked new interest, as well as wild and misguided speculation about the origins of the Christian faith. Owen Jones sets out the context in which heretical texts like the Gospel of Mary emerged. He also strikes a cautionary note - if these lost gospels had been allowed to flourish, Christianity may well have faced an uncertain future, or perhaps not survived at all.
The documentary, although a great feat of scholarship falls short of exploring some other important manuscripts such as the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Barnabas. It also fails to explore the evidences in the gospels of the other possibility of Christ's nature: that he was entirely human.
The interpretive and rhetorical elements of this program build in intensity. It chooses its issues carefully. It only mentions once the political and state related issues that were being played out as a backdrop to the early history of the Christian Church (You guessed it, Constantine and his efforts to unite the Empire). In short, building a hierarchical state or imperial apparatus on the mystical elements that defined so much of the Gnostic branch of Christianity would have been impossible. But Pete mostly limits his examination to the textual and then leaves out the most heretical ones, and only uses those he does discuss to clarify orthodox Christian belief today. For example the neglected "The Thunder : Perfect Mind" begins
I was sent forth from the power, and I have come to those who reflect upon me, and I have been found among those who seek after me. Look upon me, you who reflect upon me, and you hearers, hear me. You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves. And do not banish me from your sight. And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing. Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard! Do not be ignorant of me. For I am the first and the last. I am the honoured one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am <the mother> and the daughter. I am the members of my mother. I am the barren one and many are her sons. I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband. I am the midwife and she who does not bear. I am the solace of my labor pains. I am the bride and the bridegroom, and it is my husband who begot me. I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband and he is my offspring. I am the slave of him who prepared me. I am the ruler of my offspring. But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday. And he is my offspring in (due) time, and my power is from him. I am the staff of his power in his youth, and he is the rod of my old age. And whatever he wills happens to me. I am the silence that is incomprehensible and the idea whose remembrance is frequent. I am the voice whose sound is manifold and the word whose appearance is multiple. I am the utterance of my name.
How can this intense introspection, almost meditative and Zen-like, be reconciled with the sort of Christianity we have today, where the Pope wrote so recently as the 2013 encyclical, Lumen fidei against “a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism. In this model, salvation consists in elevating oneself by knowledge beyond “the crude faith of the masses” and “the flesh of Jesus” towards “the mysteries of the unknown divinity” (n. 47). The Church of Peter is still very much in control of doctrine. The idea of a lessened Christianity if the doctrine had not followed the path it had, as this video argues (see 1:19:16), is not particularly relevant to understanding the Gnostic texts. I would like to see more examination of the connections to Platonic and eastern thought.....maybe next time.
The resultant show was an odd mix of uncompromising music-for-music’s-sake and a well-nigh circus-esque determination to entertain. Right off the bat Can breaks into the hit, “Spoon,” and proves they’re not fucking around by expanding it from its tidy three-minute length on record into a full-blown 18-minute jam. The concert starts out with a juggler named Fred Ray joining Can on the stage; at the end of the show, during “Full Moon on the Highway,” Ray returns and does a bunch of impressive things with three brightly colored umbrellas.
After “Bring Me Coffee or Tea” about halfway through, a troupe of acrobats called Oberforstbach comes out and does their thing while Paul Joho plays the saw. (I know, right?) And of course Damo himself was not exactly boring to watch in his own right.
Early in the morning of July 1, 1916, a mist blanketed the lolling hills of the Somme region of northwestern France. Larks flittered and sang in the air as the haze burned off to reveal a brilliant summer’s day. On the British side of the front lines, crimson poppies and yellow grass swayed in a slight breeze. Across the wire, however, the earth heaved and shook as artillery shells slammed into the German trenches. The barrage rose to a shrieking fury as British troops, gathered in their jumping-off trenches, pressed into the chalky earth awaiting the shrill whistles of their officers telling them to go over the top.
At 7:30, the devastating barrage lifted as British officers, eyes on their watches, blew their whistles and the men crawled up ladders, walking shoulder to shoulder into No Man’s Land. After a few yards, undamaged German machine guns opened up, catching the neat rows of slowly moving troops by surprise as they attempted to weave through the barbed wire emplacements, cutting them down in droves. “I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell,” observed 2nd Lt. Siegfried Sassoon as he watched the attack unfold. Within a few hours 60,000 men had fallen, 20,000 never to rise again, in the worst single day of action in British military history. [To put this in some perspective, the Allies on D-Day 1944 attacked with 170,000 airborne and infantry, suffering 10,000 casualties, of which 4,000 were deaths; on America’s bloodiest battle day, the Battle of Antietam, 4,700 soldiers died.]
Thinking Allowed
Also emerging from the discursive cradle of the counterculture, John C. Lilly worked as a neuroscientist, focusing on interspecies communication, specifically dolphins, before expanding his intellectual scope to become a consciousness researcher. Much of his work on human-nonhuman communication would serve as the basis for his self-experiments over the course of the ’70s with a systematic mapping of states of consciousness.
Through a series of books—part documentation, part mysticism, part autobiography—Lilly would attempt to chart psychic topographies within “quantitative systems of mind-consciousness.” His methods were notorious, involving extreme dosages of psychoactive substances such as LSD, DMT, PCP, and ketamine, as well as his development of the sensory isolation tank. In fact, Lilly’s lab experiments were one of the inspirations for the 1980 science fiction horror film Altered States. Picking up on the argument proposed in the previous video, Lilly’s conclusions are decidedly cosmo-informatic: the human mind is a “biocomputer” which can, through meditative techniques and self-experimentation, be reprogrammed to its optimal operational capacity.
In many ways Lilly exhibits the merging of the “scientific” (objective) with the “mystical” (subjective) within the noopolitical turn, as the modern glorification of “scientific truth” finds itself reappropriated within the capitalist imagination as pseudo-scientific speculation. Of note in this interview is Lilly’s belief in ECCO—the Earth Coincidence Control Office—an extraterrestrial cosmic agency, “one of God’s field offices,” responsible for programming long-term coincidences (that is, history) on planet earth.
Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1999) developed the term Noopolitik as a political strategy focusing on the use, and denial thereof, of information. The term, reminiscent to Realpolitik, was informed to establish a policy, that of “Being in Athena’s camp”, in the sense that the practitioner of Noopolitik should belong to the side that handles, correlates and uses the maximal amount of information in a rather decentralised fashion. The emergence of Intellipedia, the crowdsourced intelligence database, is a textbook example of Noopolitik. What this conception of Noopolitik did not, however, is codify a more general geopolitics of knowledge, in which power would not be subserving knowledge, but rather knowledge subserving power. The development of such a paradigm is the purpose of this article. It is especially important to focus on knowledge since early Noopolitik almost only focused on information, which is of a lesser quality than knowledge. Knowledge is intrinsically less perishable than information, for example, and wisdom, which is self-knowledge, is not information. Besides, well-informed is not synonymous with sage; a state or an individual can be erudite but foolish, and to this early Noopolitik offers no particular cure.
Though Lilly always couches his ideas in the idiosyncratic language of his personal explorations, his conceptualization of ECCO has much in common with simulation theory in physics, as well as with arguments from critical theory, such as Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra and the Real. Indeed, Lilly’s intentions are to stimulate transformative modes of embodiment, and yet when approaching his work from a contemporary perspective in which notions of self-realization and substance-consumption are standardized and commodified, a decidedly neoliberal, micropolitical agenda is revealed: molecular technologies of mind, materialized as chemical supplementation, can permanently reprogram consciousness, whilst the body finds itself increasingly pushed to its limits of disembodiment, in which information flows reassemble the traces of the flesh—its affects, its soul—into virtual data.
John was 83 when this interview happened. He died 3 years after in 2001. He took his body and mind to the absolute limits of spatiotemporal awareness countless times during his long life. It is therefore not surprising that he mumbles a bit in this interview. A full transcript of it is available here.
Ilsa, She Wolf of the SSis a 1975 Canadian exploitation film about a sadistic and sexually-voracious Nazi prison camp commandant. The film is directed by American filmmaker Don Edmonds and produced by David F. Friedman for Cinépix Film Properties in Montreal. The film stars Dyanne Thorne in the titular role, who is loosely based on Ilse Koch, the wife of a real-life commandant at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Upon its release in early 1975, the film was immediately met with widespread controversy and critical derision, with Gene Siskel calling it "the most degenerate picture I have seen to play downtown". Particular criticism was directed at the film's graphic violence; which includes depictions of castration, flogging, human experimentation, and many other forms of torture. Word-of-mouth quickly spread, and the film was a considerable financial success, becoming a staple of grindhouse and drive-in theatres.
The popularity of the film led to the creation of three sequels, each of which saw Thorne reprise her role. The film's infamy eventually evolved into a considerable cult following, with the character of Ilsa becoming a pop cultural icon ubiquitous with “strong, aggressive” female authority. The film is considered one of the prominent entries of the Nazisploitation sub-genre, and to a lesser degree the sexploitation sub-genre.
“I kill with my cunt.” So says Margaret, a gender fluid Connecticut-bred WASP-turned New York fashion model caught in an unusual dilemma. Her predicament: aliens from outer space, who have come to Earth in search of poaching the pleasure effects of a heroin high, have perched on the roof of her grittily appointed penthouse. As it turns out, pheromones released via human orgasm are more potent. Margaret’s new neighbors are killing every sexual partner she takes. Anne Carlisle, a School of Visual Arts student and model who was hanging out at places like the Mudd Club, co-wrote the film and stars as Margaret—and, in a dual role twist, an androgynous junkie male model named Jimmy.
Set against a psychedelic, orange-soaked cityscape, where the Empire State Building appears as a foreboding monolith, and with a cast of high-camp, dramatically attired downtown club kids, Liquid Sky is one of those rare, much-talked-about cult films that has become a treasured artifact of a certain time in New York, exhibited in late-night theatrical showings, passed around VHS tapes, and poorly done YouTube rips. Its premise is so seemingly random—and preposterous—that it works, dealing with the romantic mythology of doomed, ascending beauties, their vices, and their art. It’s something that could only happen in New York.
