Dreadheads: Portrait of a Subculture

Dreadheads: Portrait of a Subculture. The award-winning documentary by Steven R. Hurlburt and Flournoy Holmes provides a fun, witty, incisive trip down an unexplored tributary of Grateful Dead fan culture. Featuring interviews with authors (David Gans, Blair Jackson, Steve Silberman), musicians (Bob Weir, Jimmy Herring, Dave Schools, John Bell), academics and the heads who populate the scene. Original soundtrack music by Spunhuny.

Wooks (2022)

We live in an age of the Spectacle. Where looking like something means you 'are' it. A wook is short for wookie. Plural: wooks. The dirty, vagranty variety of hippy. Almost always unemployed, following around jambands or festivals, and ripping people off. It is clearly a negative term (which I had never heard before now). But watching this short doco that takes 'wooks' as its subject, I have another issue with the culture the term represents. These people seem to be very isolated in themselves. They don't even seem really to relate to each other, outside the visual of looking at one another. They are compared online to jugaloos, but I think even those that are 'down with the clown' have a more cohesive community. Wooks is about the remnants of a dream, that actually died for those not willing, or unable, to leave mainstream society behind IN THEIR HEADS, sometime around 1969. Wooks is a portrait cast in a dirty pool by the roadside of a society that values appearance and distraction over substance.

The Doors Are Open 1968

The Doors Are Open is a 1968 black-and-white documentary about the American rock group the Doors. It was produced by Jo Durden-Smith for Granada TV and directed by John Sheppard and first aired in the United Kingdom on 4 October 1968. The programme combines footage of the Doors playing live at London's Roundhouse venue, interviews with the band members and contemporary news snippets of world current affairs - protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention, French riots, statements from politicians and footage of the Vietnam War etc.

The Outback Eclipse Story Psytrance Goa Festival Last Light Films (Full Movie)

The 'Outback Eclipse Story' follows the story of a festival..to celebrate the unique natural phenomenon that is a total solar eclipse. Set deep in the heart of the South Australian outback this feature length documentary details what happens when thousands of global citizens travel to one of the harshest environs on earth to experience a total eclipse and the magic and freedom that surround it. It tells the tale of a pilgrimage, that of a collective people who long to experience the mysterious in an unknown land far from the realms of restrictive socio-cultural communities to a place of freedom where laughter, love, magic and natural phenomenon find a home

Syd Barrett: Up Close and Personal

A 2007 documentary. The rise and fall of original Pink Floyd front man Syd Barrett is charted in this documentary, which tells the whole story from the formation of Pink Floyd, through Barrett's creative genius, his shocking slide into psychiatric illness and finally to his tragic and untimely death. Includes interviews with many who knew and worked with him.

Hvíti víkingurinn (The White Viking) (1991) 5 Hour Version

Norway in the 10th century. Askur, son of the powerful Thorgeir marries Embla, daughter of one of the few remaining landowners in Norway, in a pagan ceremony. King Olav, a ruthless Christian, wants to remove all traces of non-Christian beliefs and captures the two of them during the ceremony. In order to free Embla, Askur must go to Iceland and convert the people there to Christianity.

Grateful Dead England 1970 (The Lost Film)

The lost documentary of the Grateful Dead's first trip to England in May of 1970. As the story goes, the camera crew was dosed during filming and the project was abandoned. Leaving the film in a rough unfinished state.

The film features some great interviews and dialogue with the Dead, including the most extensive interview I have ever seen with Pigpen. There is a long sequence with Jerry and Micky before playing at the Hollywood 70 festival where they are clearly tripping. Jerry inparts some wisdom according to how the world looks for him. The fashion and the recording and music gear featured are a treat as are the amazing old cars in the background along with shots of London at the time.

The Hollywood Music Festival was held at Leycett in an area called Hollywood on the grounds of Ted Askey's Lower (pig) Farm at Finney Green, between Silverdale and Leycett, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England, on 23 and 24 May 1970. It was notable for the first performance of Grateful Dead in the UK and also for the performance of Jose Feliciano and Mungo Jerry, and featured such notable bands as Free, Ginger Baker's Air Force, Colosseum, Family, Black Sabbath and Traffic. The company responsible for the festival was Onista Ltd, who promptly went bankrupt unable to pay festival staff. Onista was an offshoot of Eliot Cohen's Red Bus company, with Ellis Elias and Elliot Cohen as the promoters.

Count Dracula (1977)

Count Dracula is a British television adaptation of the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Produced by the BBC (in the then standard video/film hybrid format), it first aired on BBC 2 on 22 December 1977. It is among the more faithful of the many adaptations of the original book.

Fringe | Window on Collections: Vali Myers

Explore the life and work of beloved Melbourne artist, dancer and free spirit Vali Myers in this special Window on Collections event.

Cutting her own unique path, Vali Myers lived a bohemian life that was true to herself. With her bright red hair, dramatic eyeliner and facial tattoos, Vali turned heads wherever she went. She was known not only for her exquisite art but for an approach to life that continues to captivate our imaginations.

Join us for a screening of The painted lady (2002) documentary, in which director Ruth Cullen captures Vali Myers at her iconic studio in the Nicholas Building in the heart of Melbourne, a lively environment where she painted, drew, drank and danced with those who her rare soul enchanted. In Vali’s own words, ‘When you’ve lived like I have, you’ve done it all.’

The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Library staff member Fiona Jeffery with guests Ruth Cullen and art historian Tracy Spinks. A viewing of Vali’s artworks, diaries and artefacts in the State Collection will also be available, as well as live folk and Romany music performed by Vardos, who feature in the film. Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about an incredible figure in Melbourne’s art history.

Please note: this event will be livestreamed and recorded, including the film screening. The 26-minute film will be available to watch online for one week after the event, after which it will be removed. The panel discussion will remain online to watch at any time.

If you would like to know more about the film The Tightrope Dancer, or purchase the film, please head to Ruth Cullen's website: www.ruthcullen.com/product-page/the-tightrope-dancer-the-painted-lady

This film is unrated and includes sexual references. Viewer discretion is advised.

Jimi Hendrix Experience | Live in Maui | Full Concert 1970

 

The Jimi Hendrix Experience on July 30, 1970 live in Maui. Some footage and audio has never been heard in 50 years. Just click on the image and it will take you there.......

Begotten (Full Film 1990)

Begotten is a 1989 American film written, produced, edited, shot, and directed by Edmund Elias Merhige. It stars Brian Salsberg, Donna Dempsy, Stephen Charles Barry, and members of Merhige's theatre company, Theatreofmaterial. The film contains no dialogue and employs a style similar in some ways to early silent films. Its enigmatic plot, drawn from elements of various creation myths, opens with the suicide of a godlike figure and the births of Mother Earth and the Son of Earth, who set out on a journey of death and rebirth through a barren landscape. According to art historian Scott MacDonald, the film's allegorical qualities and purposeful ambiguity invite multiple interpretations.

Begotten was first conceived as an experimental theatre piece with dance and live musical accompaniment, but Merhige switched to film after deciding that his vision would be too expensive to achieve as a production for live audiences. Antonin Artaud and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche were major influences on Begotten, as Merhige believed their ideas and theories had not been explored in film to their full extent. The film's visual style was inspired by Georges Franju's documentary short Blood of the Beasts, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, and the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Begotten was shot on location in New York and New Jersey over a period generally thought to have been three and a half years – although, in an interview, Merhige said filming took only five and a half months.

Once the film was finished, Merhige spent the next two years trying to find a distributor willing to market it. Following its debut at the Montreal World Film Festival, it was screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where it was seen by film critics Tom Luddy and Peter Scarlet. They brought it to the attention of fellow critic Susan Sontag, whose enthusiastic praise and private screenings of the film in her own home were instrumental to its eventual release. Though largely ignored by main-stream critics, it attained cult film status and influenced several avant-garde film-makers, visual artists and musicians. The film's scarcity on home video prompted its fans to spread their own bootleg copies, a phenomenon described as a "copy-cult" by film studies scholar Ernest Mathijs. As the first part of a planned series, Begotten was followed in 2006 by Din of Celestial Birds, a short sequel with the theory of evolution as its dominant theme.

Trouble (1993)

Berlin, 1992 - squats, music and the global mind.

Trouble (1993)

The story centers on a young Canadian woman who lives in a politically active flat-sharing community in Kreuzberg Berlin and works in a squat bar whilst also singing in a rock band. Due to the new capital situation, occupied buildings suddenly become sought-after investments. The living and working situation of the musicians and other scene-people deteriorates massively. The band wants to draw attention to their situation with a street concert, so the apartment community hijacks the entire broadcasting van of a television station. The film was broadcast on TV on 23 March 1993 and was released on DVD a few years later. The film culminates in an act of broadcast signal intrusion. An authentic neighborhood portrait of Berlin at the time with an excellent soundtrack. The 'Rockhaus' squat of the film is actually the Køpi squat at 137 Köpenicker Straße in Mitte, that was first occupied in 1990 and continues today. 

Køpi was squatted on 23 February 1990 by Autonomen from West Berlin . Despite the terrible state of the building, the squatters were attracted by the large rooms. The police did not attempt to evict the occupation, which marked the first time people from West Berlin had squatted in East Berlin. The squatters legalized their occupation with the district council of Mitte in 1991.

From the very beginning, Køpi was a radical left space where anarchists , socialists , queers and musicians were welcome. The building itself is covered in banners and graffiti. It became known as Køpi because the squatters chose to use the Danish ø despite the name coming from the name of the street (Köpenicker Straße). Køpi is also spelled Koepi, Köpi and even occasionally Kopi in English or Spanish texts. Køpi has become an important symbol for the radical left in Berlin, linked to projects elsewhere such as the Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen and Rozbrat in Poznań.

"Whoever buys Køpi, buys trouble".

Director - Penelope Buitenhuis

Writers - Penelope BuitenhuisMaureen KelleherIlja Schellenschmidt

Stars - Yvonne Ducksworth, Jan Erik Engel, Gode Benedix

German with English subtitles. 

Syd Barrett - Under Review

 

Syd Barrett - Under Review features rare live and studio performances from this hugely influential and legendary musician, interspersed with the independent review and criticism from a panel of esteemed experts.

Pink Floyd - On Thin Ice Documentary 1965-1985

A nice fan produced 'documentary' that features a lot of rare interviews and footage. The Pink Floyd formed in 1965 with leader Syd Barrett, along with Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. An era often overshadowed this documentary covers each time period and album of the band from 1965-1985.

Credited John Edginton Roger Waters and Richard Wright and Bob Klose interviews conducted by John.

Charles Miller/Worldman (Cincinnati 1977 & Audio Sync)

ScrappahNikolai (The Wall Live Footage 1980)

Pink Floyd (All Music including grantchester video.)

Xnicko378X (Pigs On The Wing Promo Video)

Nelson Bastias (Atom Heart Mother footage)

Pink Floyd Turk. net (Atom Heart Mother Interview)

Live in Pompeii DVD interview 1972

DSOTM DOCUMENTARY (2003)

The Mudman 1984 Interview Pink Floyd The Early Years 1967-1972

234Cheech 1969 Interview

The Pink Floyd formed in 1965 with leader Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. An era often overshadowed this documentary covers each time period and album of the band from 1965-1985 as well as an inside look at rare interviews and footage.

Credited John Edginton Roger Waters and Richard Wright and Bob Klose interviews conducted by John.

Charles Miller/Worldman (Cincinnati 1977 & Audio Sync)

ScrappahNikolai (The Wall Live Footage 1980)

Pink Floyd (All Music including grantchester video.)

Xnicko378X (Pigs On The Wing Promo Video)

Nelson Bastias (Atom Heart Mother footage)

Pink Floyd Turk. net (Atom Heart Mother Interview)

Live in Pompeii DVD interview 1972

DSOTM DOCUMENTARY (2003)

The Mudman 1984 Interview Pink Floyd The Early Years 1967-1972

234Cheech 1969 Interview

Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London (1967)

Tonite Let's All Make Love In London (1967) from Will Andrade on Vimeo.

Legendary document from Swinging London. Peter Whitehead's Swinging London documentary, subtitled "A Pop Concerto," comprises a number of different "movements," each depicting a different theme underscored by music. A early version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe's rendition of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time" accompanies a young woman's description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic "Changing of the Guard" to shots of Buckingham Palace's changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) - and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O'Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones' 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert

Unmade Beds (Amos Poe, 1976)

The film debut of Blondie¨s Debbie Harry. Rico is a cool photographer who pretends he’s a bigshot Hollywood director. He imagines New York is Paris. His inner world of mission, fantasy and obsessions are magnified when he falls in love with the adorable Blondie, played by Debbie Harry. America’s answer to France’s Jean Luc Godard, this film parallels the French movie Breathless.

Earth First - Australian Environmental Activism in 1970s and 80s

A history of the Australian environmental activist movement in the 1970s & early '80s, focusing on the Terania Ck, Franklin River & Daintree rainforest eco-blockades. Narrated by Jack Thompson.

Earthdream 2000

 

Europe 1988: Mutoid Waste founder Robin Mutoid conceives a journey across the Australian desert, which will fuse a 'mader than Max' blend of theatre. protest, lifestyle and performance. 12 years later Robin heads to Port Augusta in Australia's far south to see who will answer the call. Those who come will be challenged on every conceivable level on their 20,000km journey, bringing them together as a community and allowing them all to participate in a fascinating study into 'lateral human governance'. Sometimes violent, often humorous and always passionate, this is their story.

The Human Be-In Full Film 1967

The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word "psychedelic" to suburbia.

The Grateful Dead, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder appear in this short film documenting the Human Be-In that took place on Saturday 14 January 1967 in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Gary and Allen are chanting individually and together in front of a crowd of thousands.

The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the fifth issue of the San Francisco Oracle as "A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In". The occasion was a new California law banning the use of the psychedelic drug LSD that had come into effect on October 6, 1966. The speakers at the rally were all invited by Bowen, the main organizer. They included Timothy Leary in his first San Francisco appearance, who set the tone that afternoon with his famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and Richard Alpert (soon to be known as "Ram Dass"), and poets like Allen Ginsberg, who chanted mantras, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure. Other counterculture gurus included comedian Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jerry Rubin, and Alan Watts. Music was provided by a host of local rock bands including Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Blue Cheer, most of whom had been staples of the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom. The "Underground chemist" Owsley Stanley provided massive amounts of his "White Lightning" LSD, specially produced for the event, as well as 75 twenty-pound (9 kg) turkeys, for free distribution by the Diggers.

The Human Be-In was later recalled by poet Allen Cohen (who assisted the artist Bowen in the organizational work), as a meld that brought together philosophically opposed factions of the San Francisco-based counterculture at the time: on one side, the Berkeley radicals, who were tending toward increased militancy in response to the U.S. government's Vietnam war policies, and, on the other side, the rather non-political Haight-Ashbury hippies, who urged peaceful protest. Their means were drastically different, but they held many of the same goals.

According to Cohen's own account, his friend Bowen provided much of the "organizing energy" for the event, and Bowen's personal connections also strongly influenced its character.

A Human Be-In was put on in Denver, Colorado in July 1967 by Chet Helms and Barry Fey to harness the energy of the famed San Francisco event that occurred in January and promote their new Family Dog Productions venue, The Family Dog Denver. The event attracted 5,000 people and featured performances by the Grateful Dead, Odetta and Captain Beefheart. Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were said to have also been in attendance.

The Posters from the Be-In by Stanley Mouse and Anton Kelley (signed by many of the participants)

Jerry Garcia Explains Life Mind and Music

An interview with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia for the mini-series "The History of Rock 'N' Rolll". I believe this was from Volume 6. This is the unedited interview. A brief tour of the GD Vault with Dick Latvala is an added bonus at the end of the interview.

Jerry speaks about the counter culture, his journey through music and his career with The Grateful Dead. Witty, reflective and exteremly profound.

Zachariah (1971)

Two gunfighters separate and experience surreal visions on their journey through the mythical American Wild West.

The film is loosely based on Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel Siddhartha, and 1930 novel Narcissus and Goldmund (wherein two young friends take divergent paths in life, to reunite and share similar perspectives); surrealistically adapted as a musical Western. Lead writer Joe Massot said his inspiration came from when he joined the Beatles in India, when they were studying Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in early 1968. Massot said he arrived to find only George Harrison and John Lennon there, after their bandmates had left the course early, and the two Beatles "locked into some sort of meditation duel ... to see who was the stronger character".

Massot initially asked Harrison to provide the film's soundtrack, following his work on Wonderwall, which Massot directed. According to Levon Helm of The Band, Harrison discussed making Zachariah as an Apple Films project starring Bob Dylan and The Band, in late 1968. The following April, Rolling Stone announced that Cream's drummer Ginger Baker and The Band were to be major players in the film.

This film was billed as "The first electric Western". It features appearances and music supplied by rock bands from the 1970s, including the James Gang, New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, White Lightning and Country Joe and the Fish as "The Cracker Gang". Fiddler Doug Kershaw has a musical cameo as does Elvin Jones as a gunslinging drummer named Job Cain.

Pina Bausch "Barbe Bleue" (1977)

Bausch’s powerfully dramatic, dreamlike work, which has come to define the genre of tanztheater, or dance theater, over the last 40 years.

But when Bausch created “Bluebeard,” there was no concept of tanztheater. This mixture of dance, theater, fragmented music and patchworked scenes was new and a turning point in her career — a departure from straightforwardly expressive dance pieces, like “The Rite of Spring,” which she had created after taking over the Wuppertal company in 1973.

When it was first presented “Bluebeard” astonished and angered many spectators, who were disturbed by Bausch’s stop-and-start use of the score and her relentless depiction of male-female violence. Audiences screamed abuse at the dancers and slammed the doors of the theater as they departed in droves.

The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant is a 1975 made-for-television biographical comedy-drama film directed by Jack Gold and produced by Verity Lambert. It was adapted for film by Philip Mackie, based on Quentin Crisp's 1968 book of the same name. The movie stars John Hurt, Patricia Hodge and John Rhys-Davies. It was originally broadcast on 17 December 1975 on the British channel ITV. In 1976, it was shown on the US channel WOR and later PBS when Thames Television and WOR-TV exchanged programming for one week. For his performance, Hurt won the BAFTA for Best Actor in 1976 and the production also won the 1976 Prix Italia. The title of the book and the film (naked civil servant), is derived from his time working as a nude model in a government-funded art school.

Chomsky Explaining Real Anarchism

"Power prefers darkness. If it is exposed to light, it erodes."

Here's a transcription of a key part of his replies to the questions around how an anarchist society work, and how to communicate anarchist ideas. There are several comment threads below that present interpretations that are quite different than what he actually said here. He doesn't describe a final, utopian, end-state, and admits that he doesn't know what that would look like, but recognizes the on-going human tendency to question, challenge and dismantle illegitimate 'structures of authority, domination and hierarchy.' Some may disagree that this describes their own understanding of anarchism, but it seems to represent Chomsky's sense of the term.

"It's not a specific set of doctrines but a tendency in human thought and action which tries to detect and discover structures of authority, domination and hierarchy and challenge them - ask them to demonstrate their legitimacy, recognizing that they are not self-justifying. They have a burden of justification. That’s true all across the spectrum of human life, from patriarchal families to imperial systems, and everything in between. Wherever you find a structure of domination, hierarchy, someone giving orders, someone taking them, you have to ask if that’s legitimate. You cannot assume and you shouldn’t assume that it’s legitimate because it’s been like that. That’s not a justification. You have to ask, “is it legitimate?“ When you do, you generally find that it can’t be justified. There are cases where you could make up a justification, but try it. It’s pretty hard. Most of the time the justification is around the way power is distributed, but that’s not a justification. Anarchism is the effort to discover such systems, and when they can’t justify themselves, to dismantle them and to move towards greater freedom, justice, opportunity, individual creativity, cooperative activity, and so on. It’s just a tendency in history and I don’t think it’s hard to communicate to people. I think they take it for granted if it’s brought to their attention. You see it.

Take for example: one of the major achievements of the last 50 years in many societies - in the United States and in many others - has been the expansion of women’s rights. It’s changed enormously. How did it happen? Well, as soon as the structures of oppression were identified, they kind of disappeared. Not instantly of course. There’s still plenty of resistance. It’s a general truth that power prefers darkness. If it’s exposed to the light it erodes. This happens all through history.

Where does this lead? What will the final goal be? I don’t think anyone is smart enough to say that, to see what that will be. This is a constant, ongoing effort to expand the realm of justice, freedom, independence, breakdown of authority and so on, and I don’t see that it should have any limits."

"Hopefully, it would be like your describe it, but I still have a little doubt. And...um...isn't it too demanding, you know? It's easier to be led by authority. I'm, myself, sort of an activist, and sometimes I regret it...uh...all the time. It's terribly time-consuming, uh, it costs me a lot of energy, the outcome is very uncertain, it's not very rewarding, not all the time. It's easier to be led by authorities. So, isn't the idea...too much demanding?"

"That's basically an argument for slavery." - Chomsky

King Street Newtown 1995 - full documentary

 

A 25 minute documentary focusing on the characters that inhabit King Street in Newtown, Sydney Australia - aired on ABC TV 9.2.95. Newtown at the time was a 19th century workers suburb that had been taken over by diverse counter culture, artistic, punk and outsiders in the 1980s. By 1995 it was in full bloom and was about to enter a 5 year decline of gentrification and real estate market ethics. I highly recommend this film to capture something of the energy and spirit that was the inner city of Sydney in the 1980s and 90s. The film was raised in a Senate committee hearing regarding its rating, as it features some queer content.

Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste - Epitomes of 1920s Wiemar Republic Excess

In this video, there are two different dance sequences performed by extreme Wiemar Republic cabaret dancer, actress, and extreme performance artist Anita Berber. Each sequence is from a silent German film - the first from ‘Unheimliche Geschichten' ['Eerie Tales'] (1919) and the second from 'Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler' (1922).

While the second dance sequence is known, I believe that the first has never been noticed before. And it is this first performance that takes us a little nearer to the extraordinarily extreme Berber of the decadent 'Die Weisse Maus' [‘White Mouse’] cabaret in Friedrichstrasse, Berlin.

Sebastian Droste and Anita Berber in 1922

Finally, there is a single dance sequence by Sebastian Droste, Anita Berber’s husband and collaborator, extreme dancer, gay poet and actor. It is a performance that seems to capture something of one of the kinds of perfume exuded in Berlin cabaret clubs during the Wiemar Republic. The fragment comes Hans Werckmeister’s 1920 'Algol - Tragödie der Macht' ('Tragedy of Power'), a film thought lost until a print was discovered in 2010.

Anita Berber, more than almost anyone, epitomises for me the excesses and decadences of the German Roaring Twenties, with its fascination with addiction, morbidity, narcissism, ecstasy and horror.

Addicted to cocaine and morphine, the bisexual Berber's drug of choice was equal parts of chloroform and ether. She would dip a white rose into the potentially lethal concoction and slowly chew off each of the petals. She later segued into a cocktail of cocaine, opium and cognac.

As a stage performer, Berber gave extreme erotic fantasy pieces with dancer, poet and husband Sebastian Droste - 'Suicide', 'Morphium' and 'Mad House'.

She famously appeared, often naked, at 'Die Weisse Maus' ('The White Mouse') cabaret in Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. This was a small exclusive cabaret club of ninety-nine seats, where the audience wore masks for anonymity.

Of her performances there, it has been written:

"After midnight, the guests were ready for the apocalyptic moment when the blouse-less girls pranced up the stage ramp. Anita's girls were powdered in deadly pallid shades and appeared like figures of death incarnate. 

But Anita performed with bitter sincerity. Each intrusion annoyed her. She responded to the audience's heckling with show-stopping obscenities and indecent provocations. 

Berber had been known to spit brandy on them or stand naked on their tables, dousing herself in wine whilst simultaneously urinating. It was not long before the entire cabaret one night sank into a groundswell of shouting, screams and laughter. Anita jumped off the stage in fuming rage, grabbed the nearest champagne bottle and smashed it over a businessman's head.' 

It was Anita's last evening, she was sacked without notice.'

Berber's relationships were as unconventional and complicated as her stage endeavours.

Berber in the 1920s

She married wealthy young screenwriter Eberhard von Nathusiu in 1919, but soon after began a series of lesbian affairs, including one with the young Marlene Dietrich. At the same time, she explored the world of free-lancing S and M sex. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1921.

In the following year, Berber met dancer and poet Sebastian Droste and understood that together they could create something theatrically bold, new and shocking, such as their production 'The Dances of Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy'. They married in 1923. However, the pair drifted into greater cocaine use and the relationship failed.

Then in 1924, she married American dancer Henri Chatin-Hoffman, whom she'd met at Berlin's Blüthne-Saal. They began performing through Europe and the Middle East with their new production 'Dances of Sex and Ecstasy'. But in Zagreb, Berber publicly insulted the King of Yugoslavia and was imprisoned for six weeks. Returning to Berlin, the pair returned to the cabaret circuit.

Almost appropriately Anita Berber died in 1928, surrounded by statues of the Virgin Mary and empty morphine syringes. Or so the myth went -- in fact she collapsed while performing at a Beirut nightclub. She was diagnosed with a state of advanced pulmonary tuberculosis, and died four months later in Bethanien Hospital in Kreuzberg.

There is not a large visual record of this extraordinary Wiemar Republic icon.

While in Düsseldorf in 1925, Otto Dix painted her portrait 'The Dancer Anita Berber', unofficially known as 'The Scarlet Whore of Babylon'.

Berber also appeared in nine silent films in the teens and twenties.

She played Else (with Conrad Veidt) in the 1919 Richard Oswald film 'Anders als die Anderen' ('Different From The Others'), a film based on the work of famed pioneering sexologist Magnus Hirshfeldt.

She also appeared briefly and uncredited as the tuxedo-ed dancer in Fritz Lang's 1922 four hour silent epic 'Doktor Mabuse Der Spieler' ('The Gambler').

In 1925 in New York City, dancer Sebastian Droste met Francis Bruguière (1879 – 1945) a photographer from San Francisco, and together they composed over 60 photographs for a project they titled The Way, part of the promotional material for a proposed Expressionist film starring Droste.

The film never got made, but Droste sent a handful of the stills to Die Dame magazine with an article titled Photography As Art: Remarks on Recent Photographs by Francis Bruguière. Bruguière made his living photographing for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar and as the official photographer of the New York Theatre Guild.

Droste is rarely remembered anymore except in the context of his brief collaboration with Weimar, Berlin’s most notorious cabaret performer.

He was born Willy Knobloch in Hamburg in 1898. His father owned a silk-stocking factory in Chemnitz, and Droste lived a privileged life growing-up. As a teenager he attended an art school where he excelled in languages and dance. He was drafted into the army in 1915 and fought on the Western Front. When he turned 27-years-old in 1919, he moved to Berlin and changed his name to Sebastian Droste.

He was hired by Celly De Rheidt as a lead dancer in her cabaret show Dance Of Beauty. He became a moderately successful ”naked” dancer, choreographer and poet. His first poem appeared in Der Sturm magazine in 1919, which published 15 more of his pieces in the following years.

He took the name of the near-naked, arrow-pierced saint whose martyrdom he burlesqued in his stage act. In costume or as a civilian, he embodied a dark, calculated glamour inspired the nightmarish contemporary expressionistic German cinema. His drug taking was the greatest factor in the success or failure of a any given night’s performance of his stage act.

In the summer of 1922, he met the decadent, androgynous Anita Berber; both were fame hungry cocaine addicts. Berber’s hair was fashionably cut into a short bob and was frequently bright red, seen in the 1925 portrait of her by the German painter Otto Dix. Droste was skinny and had black hair with gelled up curls that looked like sideburns. In their act neither of them wore much more than G-strings, or even that, and Berber occasionally wore a corsage, placed below her boobs. She wore heavy make-up with jet black lipstick painted across the heart-shaped part of her skinny lips, and charcoaled eyes.

Their dances, with titles such as Cocaine and Morphium, broke boundaries with their androgyny and total nudity, but it was their public appearances that really challenged the social taboos of the era. Their bisexuality was much gossiped about. In addition to cocaine, opium and morphine, one of the pair’s favorite forms of inebriation was chloroform and ether mixed in a bowl, stirred with a white rose, the petals of which they would then eat.

Droste was the perfect partner for Berber. He became her manager and together they produced The Dances Of Depravity, Horror And Ecstasy which was staged in a theatre in Vienna and then toured in 1922 and 1923.

Droste and Berber were combustible in combination. He was as much a hustler as an artist, finding a way to repackage Expressionism and other avant-garde trends in a way that could be absorbed by the club-hopping bourgeoisie. The 1920s were a decade whose excesses were reflected, exaggerated, and grotesqued in the clubs and cabarets of Germany.

Aside from her addiction to narcotic drugs, Berber was also an alcoholic. In 1928, at the age of 29, she suddenly gave up alcohol completely, but died later the same year. According to Mel Gordon, in The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess of Debauchery, she had been diagnosed with severe tuberculosis while performing abroad. After collapsing in Damascus, she returned to Germany and died in a Kreuzberg hospital on 10 November 1928, although rumour had it that she died surrounded by empty morphine syringes. Berber was buried in a pauper's grave in St. Thomas Cemetery in Neukölln.

Sebastian Droste and Anita Berber, The Way, 1926

Britain's Outlaws: Highwaymen, Pirates and Rogues

This documentary begins with the arrival of a new breed of gentleman criminal out of the ashes of the English Civil War - the highwayman. Heavily romanticised in literature, these glamorous gangsters became a social menace on the roads and a political thorn in the side of the creaking British state - threatening to steal our wallets and our hearts. But underneath the dashing image of stylish robbers on horseback lay a far darker reality.

Then, we take to the high seas in search of the swashbuckling pirates of the golden age of piracy during the early 18th century. Following in the wake of the infamous Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, Calico Jack and others, we see the devastating impact these pirates had during an era of colonial expansion and how, by plundering the vast network of seaborne trade, they became the most wanted outlaws in the world.

Finally, we get a look at urban crime, fraud and corruption in the 18th century, uncovering a fascinating rogues gallery of charmers, fraudsters and villains. Charmers like thief and serial escapee Jack Sheppard, so notorious that almost a quarter of a million people turned up to witness his hanging.

Aquarius Rising : Hippie life in California, 1967

This is six parts of a 7 part film made in 1967 documenting the Height Ashbury scene and cultures.

Aquarius Rising Chapter 1: Hippie life in California, 1967 by filmmaker Pierre Sogol. Chapter 1 starts with a lot of statements, then documents a Be-In in Orange County, Various festivals in LA, the Sunset Riots (in 1966?) and the resulting hearings (?). This is Sogol's 1992 edit of the original footage. Note: Pierre Sogol may not be the filmmaker's real name. We are trying to find the filmmaker.  Pierre Sogol 

Filmmaker: Pierre Sogol 

Video Producer: Al Lundell 

Source: Rob Menzies 

Curator: Bruce Damer

A soundtrack playlist for the six parts can be found here

Aquarius Rising Chapter 3: Hippie life in California, 1967 by filmmaker Pierre Sogol. In this episode, the gang goes to the "New Mecca" (San Francisco). Scenes from the Haight, hippie wedding, Summer of Love, Natasha's tale, Oregon LSD trip, Nancy (who reappears frequently in other chapters), July 4th in Golden Gate Park. This is Sogol's 1992 edit of the original 1967 footage.

 
Aquarius Rising Chapter 4: Hippie life in California, 1967 by filmmaker Pierre Sogol. Here we hear from Nancy, and witness open drug dealing on the streets of Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love. This is Sogol's 1992 edit of the original 1967 footage.

 
Aquarius Rising Chapter 5: Hippie life in California, 1967 by filmmaker Pierre Sogol. In this episode we have more scenes from OM Commune (Ben Lomond). Next we go to Love Street to Betty's house for a group discussion. Then jump to a public hearing about hippies, end with Stephen on guitar.
 
Aquarius Rising Chapter 7: Hippie life in California, 1967 by filmmaker Pierre Sogol. This last chapter or "appendix" shows various scenes and rolls credits and opinions.

Ira Cohen compilation 'Optredens Ruigoord' 1999

Ira Cohen, the poet, publisher and mystic, at the squatted village of Ruigoord outside Amsterdam in 1999.

Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Cohen lived in Morocco and in New York City in the 1960s, he was in Kathmandu in the 1970s and traveled the world in the 1980s, before returning to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Cohen died of kidney failure on April 25, 2011. Ira Cohen's literary archive now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

In early 1964, Cohen visited Amsterdam (during the same trip up from Tangier when he arranged for the printing of Gnaoua in Antwerp, Belgium). He befriended writer Simon Vinkenoog, who would later translate many of Cohen's writings into Dutch. Ira was also in Amsterdam in 1974, having visited Paris and the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky with an intention to involve his partner, Petra Vogt, in Jodorowsky's forthcoming film Dune. Unfavorably received, he traveled to Amsterdam, again in the company of Simon Vinkenoog, Louise Landes Levi - poet, musician & translator with whom he would later collaborate on many projects – and Gerard Bellaart (Cold Turkey Press - Rotterdam, publisher of Burroughs, Bailes, Pound et al.), who became Ira's first publisher in the West & a lifelong friend, as was Levi. However his most continuous Amsterdam period began in the spring of 1978. It was then that he met Caroline Gosselin, a French girl who was making and selling life masks at the Melkweg (Milky Way) multimedia center. She and Cohen expanded this into Bandaged Poets - a series of papier-mâché masks of dozens of well-known poets that he subsequently photographed. He also reconnected with Eddie Woods, whom he had first met in Kathmandu in 1976. Woods, who co-founded Ins & Outs Press with Jane Harvey, was preparing to launch Ins & Outs magazine. Cohen's work appeared in every issue and he regularly served as a contributing editor. He performed at the first of Benn Posset's long-running One World Poetry festivals, P78. Cohen (and Gosselin) lived in Amsterdam for the next three years; and even after leaving he made several return visits to the city, often staying for long spells. Ins & Outs Press, which had already published postcards of the Bandaged Poets series, produced three limited-edition Kirke Wilson silkscreen prints of the photographs, including those of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. His film Kings with Straw Mats was also edited, in collaboration with Ira Landgarten, at Ins & Outs. In September 1993 Cohen returned to Amsterdam from New York to participate in a Benn Posset-organized tribute to Burroughs, along with Woods, the American writer William Levy, the German translator & publisher Udo Breger, and others.

Cohen further developed a close association with the artists colony village of Ruigoord (eight miles west of Amsterdam) and is one their very few non-Dutch trophy holders

The Story of The National Black Theatre in Redfern Australia

The National Black Theatre was a theatre company run by a small group of Aboriginal people based in the Sydney suburb of Redfern and which operated from 1972 to 1977. The original concept for the theatre grew out of political struggles, especially the land rights demonstrations, which at the time were being organised by the Black Moratorium Committee. The centre held workshops in modern dancing, tribal dancing, writing for theatre, karate and photography, and provided a venue for new Aboriginal drama. It also ran drama classes under Brian Syron, whose students included Jack Davis, Freddie Reynolds, Maureen Watson, Lillian Crombie, and Hyllus Maris. The company ran the Black Theatre Arts and Culture Centre from 1974 to 1977.

Paul Bowles Biography

“If I am here now, it is only because I was still here when I realized to what an extent the world had worsened, and that I no longer wanted to travel. In defense of the city I can say that so far it has been touched by fewer of the negative aspects of contemporary civilization than most cities of its size. More important than that, I relish the idea that in the night, all around me in my sleep, sorcery is burrowing its invisible tunnels in every direction, from thousands of senders to thousands of unsuspecting recipients. Spells are being cast, poison is running its course; souls are being dispossessed of parasitic pseudo consciousness that lurk in the unguarded recesses of the mind.

There is drumming out there most nights. It never awakens me; I hear the drums and incorporate them into my dream, like the nightly cries of the muezzins. Even if in the dream I am in New York, the first Allah akbar! effaces the backdrop and carries whatever comes next to North Africa, and the dream goes on.” . Paul Bowles

Full Moon Party - documentary about travellers to Thailand & Ko Phangan parties

"Bangkok 1996 alone at two in the morning bought back that same feeling I had on the first day at school. My mother released my hand and she walked back toward the gate from where we had arrived together at the huge strange building. The night seems to be oily about me with humidity, the airport is a reasonably calm environment with a yellow electric hum reflecting off huge windows all around you. There are uniforms framing many faces, some questions, a stamp, and nobody bothers to check baggage on the way in. Then the final set of doors open and you are standing on the other side, in the black spicy hot box of Asian night and a thousand taxi drivers are yelling at you, someone wants to carry your bag, and you know there is a bus station around here somewhere. But then you learn that the busses stop at midnight, and with safety being in numbers and with my American friend emerging from the crowd, we begin negotiations with a cheerful beetle stained mouth. The taxi takes us to Thanon Koa San, or Khao San Road, the tourist ghetto of Bangkok where all budget backpackers and twisted travellers gather. Fresh off the plane and with suburban stories of kidnap, theft and corruption running in my mind, I insisted upon taking my rucksack inside the taxi, making the journey a cramped one. My face pressed against the dirty glass I watched the scenes of black smoking buses, families on scooters, pedestrians in single file and single light bulb-lit eating places flash by. Pitch black canals crossed by crazy drivers and the gilded flat portraits of the asthmatic looking king everywhere, flashing bursts of radio fly by as our driver takes every opportunity to keep moving in the solid traffic, occasionally mounting the median strip or sidewalk." - from an almost finished novel about the global rave freak scene in the 90s. Another short section published here.

The Net - the Unabomber, LSD and the Internet

 

Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck's THE NET explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology - a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.

The Life and Politics of Monica Sjöö

Monica Sjöö, (December 31, 1938 – August 8, 2005), was a Swedish painter, writer and a radical anarcho/ eco-feminist who was an early exponent of the Goddess movement.

Her most famous painting is the controversial God Giving Birth (1968), which depicts a non-white woman giving birth; it was censored multiple times and at one art show, Sjöö was reported to the police for blasphemy.

Sjöö was the main author of Towards a Revolutionary Feminist Art (1971) one of the first, and most militant, feminist art manifestos. It was discussed widely in the feminist press, and The Guardian published an article in response. Ann Pettitt, one of the founders of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, contributed to a later iteration.

In 1976 Sjöö was the subject of a film documentary shown at the ICA and NFT.

Sjöö wrote the original pamphlet that, with Barbara Mor's re-write and expansion, would become the book The Great Cosmic Mother (1987). It covers women's ancient history and the origin of religion, and is one of the first books to propose that humanity's earliest religious and cultural belief systems were created and first practised by women. It is currently in print and has been, and still is, a part of many women's studies, mythology and religious studies syllabi. Her research and writing helped uncover the hidden history of the Goddess. Sjöö's successful use of interdisciplinarity in her research has led to its acclaim within the Goddess movement.

Her art and writing became well known outside of the UK, and throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s she corresponded with influential American writers, artists and pagans such as Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, Starhawk, Zsuzsanna Budapest, Lucy Lippard, Alice Walker, and Judy Chicago.

Some of Monica Sjöö's writings:

• —— (1977). "Women's Spirituality" (PDF). Goddess Shrew. Vol. 1. London: London Matriarchy Study Group. pp. 5–6.
• —— (1978). "Some Thoughts on Menstruation" (PDF). Menstrual Taboos. Vol. 2. London: London Matriarchy Study Group. pp. 11–13.
• —— (1979). "An Avebury Experience" (PDF). Politics of Matriarchy. Vol. 3. London: London Matriarchy Study Group. p. 55. ISBN 978-0906663004.
• —— (Fall 1980). "Art is a Revolutionary Act". WomanSpirit.
  • Excerpted in: (2001). In Robinson, Hilary. Feminism Art Theory: An Anthology 1968–2000. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ISBN 9780631208495.
  • (2015). In Robinson, Hilary. Feminism Art Theory: An Anthology 1968–2014. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 9781118360606.
• —— (1983). "Sagan om St. Göran och kvinnan". Hertha (in Swedish). 70 (2): 2–4, 38.
• —— (Summer 1984). "The Bleeding Yew Mother and Pentre Ifan Cromlech" (PDF). Wood and Water. 2 (12): 6–8.
• —— (1998). "Sinister New Age Channelings: Who or What is Speaking?". From the Flames – Radical Feminism with Spirit. 22. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
• ——. "The Unofficial Herstory of the Externsteine, Ancient Sacred Rocks of Germany". The Pipes of Pan. 19. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
• ——. "Challenging New Age Patriarchy". Women of Power (19). Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
• —— (May 28, 1993). "Going To Church: Breaking the Taboo – doing the unthinkable". Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
• ——. "The Artist As Reluctant Shamanka". Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
• ——. "St Non's Well, Pembrokeshire". Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.
• ——. "On Death and Dying". Archived from the original on March 14, 2016.