Can Live in Soest in 1970

 

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.

Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998)

Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998)

Directed by Jennifer Baichwal

(click on the image to 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 - Property is Theft (BBC)

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

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

Burden of Dreams-720p from Juan C. Gargiulo on Vimeo.

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

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

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.

Andy Warhol - 1965 - Vinyl

 

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

"La Frequenza Fantasma (The Ghost Frequency)" EXCERPT from Chiara Ambrosio on Vimeo.

“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

For an interesting discussion about the ideas behind the film see Federico Campagna in Conversation with and Chiara Ambrosio Part I

“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.

- Tony Grisoni, screenwriter and filmmaker