Raga A Journey Into The Soul Of India (1971)

Raga is a 1971 documentary film about the life and music of Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, produced and directed by Howard Worth. It includes scenes featuring Western musicians Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison, as well as footage of Shankar returning to Maihar in central India, where as a young man he trained under the mentorship of Allauddin Khan. The film also features a portion of Shankar and tabla player Alla Rakha's acclaimed performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

The majority of the documentary was shot in the late 1960s, during a period when Shankar's growing popularity saw Indian classical music embraced by rock and pop musicians and their audiences. Financial problems then delayed production until Harrison provided assistance through the Beatles' company Apple Films. In addition to actively promoting Raga, Harrison produced the soundtrack album – a project that led directly to he and Shankar staging the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971.

The film's working title was alternately East Meets West and Messenger Out of the East. In 2010, to coincide with celebrations for Shankar's 90th birthday, East Meets West Music released a fully remastered version on DVD, titled Raga: A Film Journey into the Soul of India. The expanded soundtrack album was also made available, via digital download.

In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones

In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones is a 1989 Indian English-language television film written by Arundhati Roy and directed by Pradip Krishen. It stars Arjun Raina as the title character, with Roshan Seth and Arundhati Roy in key roles. The film also features Shahrukh Khan and Manoj Bajpayee, both then struggling actors in the Delhi theatre circuit, in small but significant roles. Set in the 1970s, in the National Institute of Architecture, New Delhi, the plot revolves around Anand Grover, known as Annie, a misguided visionary who gets into trouble for making fun of the principal, Y.D. Billimoria known as Yamdoot.

The film was the recipient of two National Awards in 1989.[3] It acquired a cult status in the years after it was made. The original print of the movie is lost. Previously, the only copies of the film in circulation were those that were recorded on Video Cassette Recorder when the film was screened on Doordarshan. However, camera recordings of these video cassette tapes were also made, and subsequently posted on YouTube to where they are still available now. The film was made for TV and never released theatrically. It was shown on Doordarshan in 1989.

The film was part autobiographical with Roy recounting her own experiences of studying in the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, a leading architecture institute in India. This was the first screenplay by Roy, the second movie by Krishen after his colonial-period drama Massey Sahib (1985). The film is noted for one of the earliest cinematic appearances of Shahrukh Khan.

The Beatniks (1960)

THEIR PASSWORD WAS MUTINY AGAINST SOCIETY! A young singer's chance at fame is threatened by his hoodlum pals.

Director: Paul Frees Writer: Paul Frees Stars: Tony Travis, Karen Kadler, Peter Breck Genres: Crime, Psychotronic film.

The Beatniks is an American crime film in the teensploitation genre directed by Paul Frees that was filmed in 1958 and released in 1959. It was also featured on the movie-mocking program Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Eddy Crane is the leader of a gang that robs small businesses for petty cash. At one point, his gang accosts the broken-down car of a music business executive, Harry Bayliss. Afterward Bayliss wishes to call a tow truck, so he goes into the diner where Eddy's gang is celebrating. Bayliss overhears Eddy singing to the jukebox and offers him a chance to audition for his variety program. Eddy accepts, passes his audition, and is given a spot on television. Eddy sings a two-minute song that is apparently stupendously successful, with Bayliss calling Eddy an "overnight sensation" and prophesying an astounding rise to fame, complete with a hit record, "a guest spot on every top show," and eventually culminating with "The Eddy Crane Show." Atop Eddy's newfound success, he also immediately begins making advances at Bayliss's secretary, Helen Tracy, in preference over his long-suffering girlfriend, Iris.

Andra takter (1985)

Sixten är punkare och spelar i bandet Anti-Cimex. Filmen följer honom och hans vänner - unga människor som inte vill leva det vanliga Svensson-livet, de vill festa och protestera mot svensk vapenexport.

Swedish film about punk culture and the band Anti-Cimex. The film follows Sixten and his friends, young people who will not live the orginary suburban life, and will party and protest against the Swedish weapons industry.

Ort

Göteborg

Längd

27 minuter

Medverkande

Sixten Andersson, Marie-Louise Waldestam, Subhumans, Peter and the Testtube Babies

Regi

Benny Frick

Manus

Benny Frick

Foto

PeO Olsson

Musik

Anti-Cimex

Producent

Benny Frick

Rättigheter

Tenfilm

Produktionsbolag

Frick Film

Produktionsland

Sverige

Utgångsmaterial

16 mm, normalbild (1,37:1), optisk mono, färg

Arkiv

Svenska Filminstitutet Läs mer om filmen i Svensk Filmdatabas

Musik delas ofta upp i kategorier och subkategorier. I slutet av sjuttiotalet exploderade punken i Sverige och övergick snart i postpunken, som inte var lika kompromisslös, men desto viktigare för svenskt musikliv på åttiotalet. Men det fanns de som höll sig kvar vid den hårda punkmusiken och mer anarkistiska livsideal. I Sverige kom en sådan kategori att kallas kängpunk och där brukar gruppen Anti-Cimex placeras. 

Detta är en kort bakgrund till musiken i Andra takter. Fast filmen handlar mindre om kängpunk och den svenska musikscenen på åttiotalet, och mer om två unga människor som inte kände sig bekväma med det vanliga Svensson-livet med arbete från åtta till fem. De ville inte arbeta, de ville festa och protestera mot svensk vapenexport. De ville åka till Jönköping och spela på en musikfestival, där bland andra det engelska bandet Peter and the Test Tube Babies stod på scen. 

Att frivilligt ställa sig utanför, att med dagens terminologi vara del av utanförskapet, var vid den tiden och i den miljön inte nödvändigtvis något negativt, ibland till och med ideologiskt förankrat. Rädslan för det vanliga knegarlivet och viljan att revoltera mot den äldre generationen är återkommande i andra svenska skildringar av punken, som Stig Larssons halvtimmesdokumentär Punkrock från 1978 och Johan Donners Ebba-the movie om punkbandet Ebba Grön

Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965)

Is a campy, low- budget, Avant-garde science fiction film directed by American underground Pioneer Mike Kuchar.

Set one million years in the future , the story unfolds in a dystopian world where humans have grown lazy and self-indulgent, relying entirely on robotic servants knowned as Fleshapoids to furfill their every need.

However one of this Robots rebels ,driven by a forbidden desire for freedom and love .

Blending melodrama ,satire and surrealism,the film explores themes of decadence ,rebelion and unchecked hedonism. With a visual style that embraces kitsch,exaggerated performances and hand crafted aesthetics ,the movie has gained a cult following as a quintessential example of 1960's underground Cinema.

The Kuchars playful use of narration ,campy costumes and DIY special effects highlight the film's charm.

Sins of the Fleshapoids is celebrated for its quirky ,subversive storytelling and remains a touchstone of experimental filmaking.

Otto Rahn - The Secret Glory

The complex story of Otto Rahn (18 February 1904 – 13 March 1939), who grew up amidst the ruins of Germany following its defeat in World War One. His parents awoke an interest in nature, myth and legend in him. At the time in Europe, the narratives of Christianity were being challenged and changed. He took up the legend of the Holy Grail and the heretical Christian sects that lasted up until the Inquisition from the 12th to the 15th centuries. The nature cults of the early 20th century that developed in northern Europe also no doubt fed into his thinking. Rahn wrote books about the Grail and the Cathars, one of the last mass manifestations of Gnosticism in Europe.

It seems Rahn was an outsider queer poet who was given a blank cheque by the Nazis to do his research. Of course, the Nazis wanted a particular result from the research; Aryan primacy and the negation of the dominant Christian morality. Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and the "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as dangerous obstacles to his planned battle with "subhumans". Rahn's work proved to be more complex and ephemeral than that. Rahn was also expected to participate in the theatre of horror that was developed by the Nazis. Rahn was a poet who dwelt in myth, a product of people like James Frazer and Robert Graves (who's book The White Goddess would not be published until 1948). But at the same time Rahn was within the inner circle of the SS, he participated in the establishment of the vast death machine that is now called the Holocaust and in the Nazi eugenics breeding program. But his mother was Jewish.

Rahn's homosexuality had been known to Himmler but, in 1937, it became the subject of difficulties with other SS officers, who had long contrasted their conduct with the open homosexuality common in Ernst Röhm's Sturmabteilung. Following a "drunken homosexual scrape", Rahn was assigned guard duty at the Dachau concentration camp in order to "toughen him up".

Deeply concerned by what he had witnessed in Dachau, Rahn offered his resignation from the SS in February 1939. This was accepted by Himmler. On 13 March, Rahn's body was found by local children in the forest near Söll (Kufstein, Tyrol), in Austria. Sixty years later, in an interview, one of those who found Rahn's body described finding "two empty bottles" next to it. He had frozen to death while under the influence of the sleeping pills. Rahn's death was privately ruled a suicide but was presented by Himmler to the SS as having occurred following a "mountaineering accident".

The film is made by Richard Stanley, a South African filmmaker, known for his work in the horror genre. He began his career making short films and music videos, and subsequently directed the feature films Hardware (1990) and Dust Devil (1992), both of which are considered cult classics. He was the original director of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), but was fired early into principal photography due to creative differences, an episode recounted in the 2014 documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau. In 2019, he returned to feature films after more than 20 years, directing the H. P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space.

Simon of the Desert (1965) - Luis Buñuel

 

Simon, a deeply religious man living in the 4th century, wants to be nearer to God so he climbs a column. The Devil wants him to come down to Earth and is trying to seduce him.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

Turkey Shoot is a 1982 Australian dystopian future movie where ordinary people are thrown into camps and hunted by the rich.

In the near future, after an unspecified holocaust, survivors are herded into prison camps. There, they are hunted for sport by the leaders of the camp. Paul, one of the newest prisoners, is determined not to go down as quietly as the others. 

 Cast: Steve Railsback, Olivia Hussey, Michael Craig 

Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith

The film features rape, cannibalism, torture, gun violence, mutilation and some pretty bad acting. Filmed on location near Cairns, Turkey Shoot underwent a troubled production as a result of a budgetary shortfall that reduced the shooting schedule; this also necessitated multiple scenes being rewritten or cut entirely, extensive simultaneous second unit photography directed by executive producer David Hemmings, and use of stock footage during post-production.

Widely considered to be a seminal example of the Ozploitation cycle, the film is notable for its extreme depictions of graphic violence and sadism; Time Out declared that the film "makes modern day grindhouse imitations such as Machete and Planet Terror seem like anaemic shadows in comparison". Despite receiving negative reviews from such Australian critics as David Stratton and Phillip Adams, Turkey Shoot is recognised as a cult film

Bob Marley: The Lost Tapes

This is a collection of long television interviews done with Bob Marley between 1974 and 1978. The man with the mostache and Australian accent is George Negus, a legend of Australian TV. I remember when this was shown on '60 Minutes' and the scandal that was associated with Bob Marley, when he was treated like a wild man in Australian media. Bob Marley and the Wailers toured Australia in 1979 and they had a big impact on the Aboriginal people, with their songs of freedom.

Bob talks about his ideas and philosophy. He shows himself to be a profound thinker. He is humble, wise and funny.

Bob Marley is one of the most influential men in music. Born on a farm in Saint Ann Parish Jamaica, he committed his life to the freedom of people all around the world. To date he has sold over 75 million albums worldwide, making him one of the worlds best-selling artists of all time. In this riveting documentary, packed with unreleased interviews, we explore the revolutionary ideologies of the legend Bob Marley.

DECLASSIFIED The Mutoid Waste Files - 1989 - 1994

DECLASSIFIED: THE MUTOID WASTE FILES The Mutoid Waste Company 1989 - 1994 D 1989/2015 Duration: 91′ Director: Uli Happe Camera: Uli Happe Editor: Uli Happe & Bernd Böhlendorf Producer: Uli Happe Music: Mutoid Waste Company, 7 Kevins, Spiral Tribe, DNTT.

The Mutoid Waste Co. are a group of sculptors, musicians, performance and multidisciplinary artists. As the group’s name suggests, they mutate waste, which then sets as the background for their installations, performances, parties and events. With the use of all types of scrap as their raw material, from industrial to domestic and from huge derelict military machines to small everyday items, they have created a new form of art crossing boundaries of sculpture, mechanical-art, performance, theater and music. Founded in 1984 by the London artists Joe Rush and Robin Cooke, the Mutoids had a significant impact everywhere they worked and performed, from legendary London warehouse raves to the ‘Car Henge’ sculpture in Glastonbury 1987. They went on world tour in 1989 and have been mostly a mobile crew since, traveling and leaving their unmistakable mark around the world, including London, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Italy, Japan, Australia and more. Being so visually unique, the Mutoids have attracted many photographers and film makers who tried to capture the Mutoid experience on film. None was allowed a deeper entry to their world than the Berlin film maker Uli Happe, whose film shows the most intimate and most spectacular moments of these adventurous times

The Camera That Changed the World (2011)

The summer of 1960 was a critical moment in the history of film, when the fly-on-the-wall documentary was born. The Camera that Changed the World tells the story of the filmmakers and ingenious engineers who led this revolution by building the first hand-held cameras that followed real life as it happened. By amazing co-incidence, there were two separate groups of them - one on each side of the Atlantic.

In the US, the pioneers used their new camera to make Primary, a compelling portrait of American politics. They followed a then little known John F Kennedy as he began his long campaign for the presidency. Meanwhile, in France, another new camera was inspiring an influential experiment in documentary filmmaking. Chronique d'un Ete captures the real lives of ordinary Parisians across the summer of 1960.

Both these extraordinary films smashed existing conventions as handheld cameras followed the action across public spheres into intimate and previously hidden worlds.

The cinema of today owes so much to these film makers and technicians. This was the audiovisual revolution that made the 1960s and 70s what they were.

Psychomania

Psychomania (U.S. title:The Death Wheelers) is a 1973 British outlaw biker horror film directed by Don Sharp, and starring Nicky Henson, Beryl Reid, George Sanders (in his final film), and Robert Hardy.

The plot follows the adolescent leader of a biker gang, who has started practicing black magic. After meeting the Frog God, which his mother worships, the leader commits suicide on his 18th birthday. His mother resurrects him as one of the undead, and the process grants superhuman abilities to the boy. He proceeds to turn most of his gang into fellow undead, but his mother petrifies them all in a magic ritual.

The Land Speaks Arabic

The Land Speaks Arabic. A Film by Maryse Gargour

Reviewed by Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh:

'La Terre Parle Arab' (2007). Director Maryse Gargour. Arabic, French, English audio with English subtitles, 61 minutes. Winner of several European awards (ASBU, Prix France 3 Medirerranee, Prix Memoire du Medirerranee).

This excellent documentary on one of the most pressing issues of our time brings together rarely seen footage of Palestine before 1948 juxtaposed with historical research, eyewitness accounts, stunning choreography, moving testimonials, and historical documents.

We can state the fact that before the Zionist project began in Palestine it was more heavily populated than the United States of today. We can state that Palestine 20 years or even fifty years after the Zionist project was launched was still predominantly Arab. But it is one thing to state a fact and another to have seen it or lived it. The next best thing is to have a film that shows you a video of the era and pictures of the documents of the era. That is what this film does in a very professional, practical, and effective way.

... Letters in European languages exchanged between European Zionists and European imperialists are read followed by scenes of the impact of these blueprints of social engineering. Articles from newspapers of the late 19th century and early 20th century report on the progress (a poor choice of word in this context) of the colonisation project. We see through documents, including news reports and letters, that the word colonisation was used by the Zionist colonizers, when their writings and their speeches expressed the ideas of replacing the natives with the new population from Europe. We hear from Ahad Haam, Israel Zangwill, Yosef Weitz, Chaim Weitzmann, Theodor Herzl, and David Ben-Gurion. 

Initiation of a Yanomami Shaman

A Channel 4 production that features a lot of incredible footage from the Yanomami people. Released in 1981 this astounding film documents the intensity of a shamanic initiation among the Yanomami. A 7 day ordeal that involves a form of ritual that is almost extinct in the so-called 'modern world'.

The main aim of shamanic initiation among the Yanomami people of the Upper Orinoco River region in Venezuela is the metamorphosis of the human body into a cosmic body, or what Jokic in a 2008 paper terms “corporeal cosmogenesis.” During the initiatory ordeal, the neophyte undergoes an intense experience of death through dismemberment by the spirits and subsequent rebirth, thus overcoming the human condition and becoming an individual living spirit. But, at the same time, he becomes a “collection” of other spirits who leave their natural habitats—located on the mountaintops and in the forest—and move into the initiate's body, which becomes their abode. As the candidate surrenders his soul and humanness to the spirits, the latter become his personal allies and sources of power while imbuing the shaman's postmortem ego with certain properties that can best be described in holographic terms. After the shaman's biological death, his personal spirits become disembodied again and disperse back into the forest and on the mountaintops. When the shaman dies, his soul multiplies, as each of the disembodied spirits becomes a carrier of the shaman's soul image. In this way, through initiations, the shaman becomes a part of a dynamic cosmic circuity, as his hekura can be called upon to invade the bodies of new shamans, and start a cosmogonic initiatory act anew. (Zeljko Jokic, "Yanomami Shamanic Initiation: The Meaning of Death and Postmortem Consciousness in Transformation". May 2008. Anthropology of Consciousness 19(1):33 - 59.)

Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg

Catching Fire (2024) was online for a short time. I will keep this post active and see if another copy comes up. Anita Pallenberg (6 April 1942 – 13 June 2017) was an Italian-German film actress, artist, and model. A style icon and "It Girl" of the 1960s and 1970s, Pallenberg was credited as the muse of the Rolling Stones: she was the romantic partner of the Rolling Stones founder, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, and later, from 1967 to 1980, the partner of Stones guitarist Keith Richards, with whom she had three children.

Pallenberg appeared in over a dozen films over a 40-year span. One of her first appearances was as the Great Tyrant in Roger Vadim's science fiction film Barbarella (1968); however, the character's actual voice was dubbed by Joan Greenwood. She played the sleeper wife of Michel Piccoli in Dillinger Is Dead (1969), directed by Marco Ferreri. Pallenberg also had roles in the German crime thriller A Degree of Murder (1967), which featured music composed by Brian Jones; the cult film Candy (1968) as James Coburn's possessive nurse; Volker Schlöndorff's Michael Kohlhaas – Der Rebell (1969), which was filmed in Slovakia; and the avant-garde Performance (1970), in which she played the role of Pherber. Performance was shot in 1968, but a nervous studio delayed its release.

Pallenberg appeared in a documentary about the Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil (1968), directed by French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. In an interview she gave The Independent, which published it on 16 March 2007, she related her encounters in Rome while La Dolce Vita (1960) was being filmed, with its director Federico Fellini, other filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and with the novelist Alberto Moravia.

In 1985, for the video of "Wild Boys," Duran Duran used a clip of Pallenberg from Barbarella. She portrayed "The Queen" in the comedy-drama Mister Lonely by Harmony Korine, and played a character named Sin in Go Go Tales (both 2007).

In the 1990s, Pallenberg returned to education to study fashion. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in London in 1994 with a fashion and textile degree. However, she decided not to forge ahead with a career in fashion, finding it too cutthroat and cruel.

Pallenberg has been portrayed several times by other performers. Monet Mazur played a young Pallenberg in the film Stoned (2005), a biographical film about the last year of Brian Jones's life, while the NBC television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006) included a story arc in which the character Harriet Hayes was hired to play Pallenberg in a film.

Pallenberg's burgeoning relationship with Jones encouraged him to experiment musically in their 1966 album Aftermath, while her intelligence and sophistication both intimidated and elicited envy from the other Stones. Pallenberg played an unusual role in the male-dominated world of rock music in the late 1960s, with Jagger respecting her opinion enough for tracks on Beggars Banquet to be remixed after she criticised them. In the 2002 compilation release of Forty Licks, Pallenberg is credited as singing background vocals on "Sympathy for the Devil".

Tony Sanchez's account of his time as Richards's bodyguard and drug dealer mentions Pallenberg's spiritual practices: "She was obsessed with black magic and began to carry a string of garlic with her everywhere—even to bed." Sanchez goes on to describe Pallenberg as having been "like a life-force, a woman so powerful, so full of strength and determination that men came to lean on her".

Jo Bergman, who was the band's personal assistant from 1967 to 1973, said of Pallenberg: "Anita is a Rolling Stone. She, Mick, Keith and Brian were the Rolling Stones. Her influence has been profound. She keeps things crazy."

In the 1977 Toronto heroin arrest, Pallenberg pled guilty to marijuana possession and was convicted and fined several weeks after Richards' arrest.

Pallenberg was a friend of singer Marianne Faithfull, Jagger's girlfriend in the late 1960s. They appeared together in the fourth series (2001) of the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous in episode four, "Donkey", with Faithfull playing God and Pallenberg the Devil.

Pallenberg died on 13 June 2017, aged 75, due to complications from hepatitis C.

This films is based on an autobiographical manuscript titled Black Magic discovered by Pallenberg's children after her death in 2017.

Anarchism in America

"Anarchism in America" is a 1983 documentary directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, and produced by Pacific Street Films. It was re-released on DVD by AK Press. The film includes interviews with influential anarchists such as Murray Bookchin, Paul Avrich, Jello Biafra, Mollie Steimer, and Karl Hess, as well as the poet Kenneth Rexroth. "The state is essentially violent"

Milk & Serial

Milk & Serial is a 62-minute, found-footage horror by YouTuber Curry Barker, and it manages to be at once ruthlessly effective and wonderfully authentic. Racking up 348,000 views in the two weeks since its release, its popularity has been supercharged by raves on Reddit that have since crossed over into traditional media. Bloody Disgusting called it “one of the year’s best-kept secrets” and this week Barker found himself being interviewed by no less than Variety.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone

 

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone is a 2013 British music documentary on the acclaimed band The Stone Roses directed by Shane Meadows. The film stars band members Ian Brown, John Squire, Gary Mounfield and Alan Wren. The film was released on 5 June 2013 in the United Kingdom.

The film, which has received positive reviews from critics, follows the band reforming in 2012 after a 16-year split, capturing the band at work and in their everyday lives as they practise for their much-anticipated reunion on a tour across Europe, which culminated in three triumphant homecoming gigs at Manchester's Heaton Park.

The Quiet American (2002)

 

The Quiet American is a 2002 political drama film directed by Phillip Noyce, and stars Michael Caine, Brendan Fraser, and Do Thi Hai Yen. The screenplay by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan is adapted from Graham Greene's bestselling 1955 novel of the same name set in Vietnam.

In contrast to the prior 1958 film version, which abandoned Greene's cautionary tale about foreign intervention in favor of anticommunist advocacy of American power, the 2002 film is faithful to the source novel, illustrating the moral culpability of American agents in arranging terrorist actions aimed at the French colonial government and the Viet Minh. Going beyond Greene's original work, the film utilizes a montage ending with superimposed images of American soldiers from the intervening decades of the Vietnam War.

Miramax paid $5.5 million for distribution rights in North America and some other territories, but the film was shelved after test audiences perceived it as unpatriotic in the wake of the September 11 attacks.[1] The film finally received an Oscar qualification release in November 2002 and went on to gross US$12.9 million in limited theatrical release in the United States. The film received positive reviews from critics and Caine was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

The Quiet American (1958)

The Quiet American is a 1958 American drama romance thriller war film. It was the first film adaptation of Graham Greene's bestselling 1955 novel of the same name, and one of the first films to deal with the geo-politics of Indochina. It was written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and stars Audie Murphy, Michael Redgrave, and Giorgia Moll. It was critically well-received, but was not considered a box-office success.

The film flips the plot of the novel on its head; it turns a cautionary tale about foreign intervention into an anticommunist advocacy of the use of American power abroad. In writing the script, Mankiewicz received uncredited input from CIA officer Edward Lansdale, who was often said to have been Greene’s inspiration for the American character he had called "Pyle" in the novel. (In the 1958 film, this character, though unnamed, was played by Murphy). However, in fact, Greene did not meet Landsdale until after completing much of the novel. According to Greene, the inspiration for the character of Pyle was Leo Hochstetter, an American serving as public affairs director for the Economic Aid Mission in Indochina who was assumed by the French to “belong to the CIA”; they had lectured him during the “long drive back to Saigon on the necessity of finding a ‘third force in Vietnam.’”

The film stirred up controversy. Greene was furious that his anti-war message had been excised from the film, and he disavowed it as a "propaganda film for America."

Click on the image above for the entire film.

Human Traffic

Human Traffic a 1999 British-Irish independent film that perfectly captures the essence of the 90s rave culture. Directed by Justin Kerrigan, this cult classic dives into the lives of five friends as they navigate a wild, drug-fueled weekend in Cardiff, Wales. The film brilliantly explores the highs and lows of the club scene, relationships, and the desire to escape the monotony of daily life. Featuring a talented cast, including John Simm and Danny Dyer in his film debut, Human Traffic stands out for its raw portrayal of youth culture and its iconic soundtrack.

Begotten (1990)

Begotten. God dies, Mother Earth, the Son of Earth, Flesh on Bone.

Presented in a surreal, gory and entirely visual manner, Begotten tells of the death of religion, the abuse of nature by Man and a nihilistic outlook on what life ultimately is.

Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

1990 / 89 min. / color
Directed by Michael Blackwood

Min Tanaka and Maijuku; Yoko Ashikawa and Hakutobo; Akaji Maro and Dai Rakuda Kan; Kazuo Ohno; Isamu Ohsuka and Byakko-sha; Natsu Nakajima and Muteki-sha; Sankaijuku; and Tatsumi Hijikata.

Butoh, a unique theater of improvisation, places the personal experiences of the dancer on center-stage. A Dionysian dance of nudity, eroticism, and sexuality, Butoh’s scale of expression ranges from meditative tenderness to excessive grotesqueness. Through a recalling of the Buddhist death dances of rural Japan, and use of music and masks Butoh is able to incorporate aspects of traditional theater into its extreme performances. An alliance of tradition and rebellion, Butoh is one of the most fascinating underground dance movements. Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis is a visually striking film portrait shot on location in Japan with the participation of the major Butoh choreographers and their companies.

Harry Smith, American Magus

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.

NickCave - Straight To You - documentary

Spanning Nick Caves career from Birthday Party to 1993. First authorized Nick Cave documentary. Broadcasted on TV stations in various countries (Germany, Australia, Israel, Switzerland, Austria, Italy).

Vampyr (1932)

 

Vampyr (German: Vampyr – Der Traum des Allan Gray, lit. 'Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray') is a 1932 gothic horror film directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly. Vampyr was funded by Nicolas de Gunzburg who starred in the film under the name of Julian West among a mostly non-professional cast. Gunzburg plays the role of Allan Gray, a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire.

Vampyr was challenging for Dreyer to make as it was his first sound film and was required to be recorded in three languages. To overcome this, very little dialogue was used in the film and much of the story is told with title cards like a silent film. The film was shot entirely on location and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, soft focus photographic technique. The soundtrack was created in Berlin where the characters’ voices, sound effects, and score were recorded.

Vampyr had a delayed release in Germany and opened to a generally negative reception from audiences and critics. Dreyer edited the film after its German premiere and it opened to more mixed opinions at its French debut. The film was long considered a low point in Dreyer's career, but modern critical reception to the film has become much more favorable with critics praising the film's disorienting visual effects and atmosphere.

Sassy the Sasquatch

Sassy the Sasquatch, commonly known as just 'Sassy' is the deuteragonist in The Big Lez Show, a minor character in both the spin-off/prequel miniseries The Mike Nolan Show and the Mike Nolan’s Long Weekend and the titular main protagonist in the spin-off series, Sassy the Sasquatch. He is Lez's best friend and next door neighbour. Sassy lives and hangs out with a group of three other Sasquatches - Donny, Wayno, and Scruffy - as well as Owlanox and reside in a run down house next door to Lez.

One of Sassy's defining character traits is his ability to take excessive amounts of drugs without being injured or dying as a result. He is shown as being constantly high, whilst accusing other characters around him for being 'druggos' in the meantime.

Sometime after parting ways with Scruffy, Sassy is walking aimlessly around Antarctica watching the auroras, when suddenly a giant orb of light (which he encountered and involuntarily ate earlier in the show) erupts out of him and consumes him. He arrives in another dimension. After figuring out how to break free from this place, by using his imagination, he meets his Higher Self, who explains what he and his purpose are.

His Higher Self explains that he keeps erasing his memories and reliving his past. Confused at which past he's reliving, Higher Sassy shows Sassy all the experiences he forgot, including the universe in which The Big Lez Show occurred. After quickly (in our perspective) reliving through the events of The Big Lez Show, Sassy remarks how sad he feels about Lez's death. Higher Sassy is struck with the idea to send Sassy into the Jez universe, so he can have some closure and leave with the knowledge that Big Lez is alive and living his best life in another dimension. Returning with some proper closure and satisfaction with Lez's story, Sassy returns to his Higher Self. After Higher Sassy asks Sassy what he wants to do now, Sassy's last request is to relive the story once more. Higher Sassy is surprised but obliges, allowing Sassy to return to Earth in the year 1991, in a forest beside Nigel's ranch outside of Brown Town. After arriving, Sassy uses his interdimensional portals to retrieve Owly, Wayno, Scruffy, and Donny from their respective timelines. The five of them return to Nigel's property through the portal. The sight of this understandably freaks Nigel the fuck out who requests them to go back to wherever they came from. However Sassy's portal seems to break down, preventing them from leaving. With the five of them arriving on Earth in 1991, so begins their lives in Brown Town, which many years later, leads to the events of the entire Big Lez Show.

As his Higher Self reveals, Sassy is an interdimensional time traveler, or 'observer'. Sassy was splintered from his higher self (which is a sort of deity) for the purpose of exploring the multiverse, collecting memories and experiences, with which to ultimately return to his Higher Self to learn more about the multiverse. However after living through the events of The Big Lez Show, Sassy misses Lez after his death, and wishes to relive the story again. Sitting at the fire, after recounting the story to Nigel, Sassy eats his "magic jelly bean" which erases all his memories (and gives him a bit of a buzz), after which all he wants is to see a dinosaur. Right after this the aforementioned grey aliens arrive out of an interdimensional portal. Seeing this as his opportunity to see a dinosaur, he barges into the spacecraft and starts pressing buttons and generally fucking around with the alien tech. Obviously pissed off by this, the four aliens handcuff him and oblige to take him back to dinosaur times. They drop him off in handcuffs on Earth on the day of the KT mass extinction event 66 million years ago, completing the cycle which the series started off at.

It's unknown how long Sassy spent reliving this cycle of experiencing and forgetting, but he definitely did it a fuck-ton of times. Eventually however, after god knows how many cycles, Sassy makes the ultimate decision to cast his magic jelly bean into the campfire, finally breaking the cycle and allowing Sassy to live on to see and experience new things. After this he presumably returns to and becomes one with his Higher Self again, though it's never explicitly shown in the show.

BE PEACE

"D.I.Y. or Die How to Survive as an Independent Artist"

 

D.I.Y. or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist is a low-budget documentary film released by Music Video Distributors in 2002. The film is a "celebration of the underdog" and deals with why artists do what they do, regardless of the lack of a continuous paycheck.

The film features some artists that define the DIY ethic and speaks to the overall DIY culture. It features interviews with Steve Albini, Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye, J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Jim Rose, J. G. Thirlwell of Foetus, Mike Watt, Eric McFadden, Richard Kern (filmmaker), Ron Asheton of The Stooges, Madigan Shive of Bonfire Madigan, Lynn Breedlove of Tribe 8 and Dave Brockie of Gwar, among others.

Alicia Dattner appears in the credit sequence as a punk street artist stapling DIY flyers. Original artwork for the credits drawn by Attaboy, co-founder of Hi-Fructose Contemporary Art Magazine.

The DVD was released (under the title "D.I.Y. or Die: Burn This DVD") with no region restrictions or copy protection. Director Michael W. Dean allowed and even encouraged people to make copies for non-commercial use.

With Out Walls "Jean-Michel Basquiat"

WITHOUT Walls: Shooting Star (1990 Channel 4) chronicles the rapid rise and tragic fall of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Ten years ago he was an anonymous teenage graffiti artist. By 1985 he was one of the most celebrated painters of his generation selling work at $30000 a canvas. Today his paintings change hands for millions of dollars each. But Basquiat cannot reap the rich rewards of his success. He died from an heroin overdose in 1988 the victim of a £l000-a-day habit funded by his success as an artist. New Yorker Basquiat was one of the most successful black artists ever but throughout his short life he complained bitterly that he and his work were never taken seriously enough. He became a close friend of Andy Warhol and was rumoured to be Madonna's lover. But beneath the glittering surface he was a serious artist who spoke for the victims of the destructive power of racism.

Erik Satie: Things Seen to the Right and the Left

Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. He was the son of a French father and a British mother. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, but was an undistinguished student and obtained no diploma. In the 1880s he worked as a pianist in café-cabaret in Montmartre, Paris, and began composing works, mostly for solo piano, such as his Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes. He also wrote music for a Rosicrucian sect to which he was briefly attached.

After a spell in which he composed little, Satie entered Paris's second music academy, the Schola Cantorum, as a mature student. His studies there were more successful than those at the Conservatoire. From about 1910 he became the focus of successive groups of young composers attracted by his unconventionality and originality. Among them were the group known as Les Six. A meeting with Jean Cocteau in 1915 led to the creation of the ballet Parade (1917) for Serge Diaghilev, with music by Satie, sets and costumes by Pablo Picasso, and choreography by Léonide Massine.

Satie's example guided a new generation of French composers away from post-Wagnerian impressionism towards a sparer, terser style. Among those influenced by him during his lifetime were Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Francis Poulenc, and he is seen as an influence on more recent, minimalist composers such as John Cage and John Adams. His harmony is often characterised by unresolved chords, he sometimes dispensed with bar-lines, as in his Gnossiennes, and his melodies are generally simple and often reflect his love of old church music. He gave some of his later works absurd titles, such as Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) ("True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog)", 1912), Croquis et agaceries d'un gros bonhomme en bois ("Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Man", 1913) and Sonatine bureaucratique ("Bureaucratic Sonatina", 1917). Most of his works are brief, and the majority are for solo piano. Exceptions include his "symphonic drama" Socrate (1919) and two late ballets Mercure and Relâche (1924).

Satie never married, and his home for most of his adult life was a single small room, first in Montmartre and, from 1898 to his death, in Arcueil, a suburb of Paris. He adopted various images over the years, including a period in quasi-priestly dress, another in which he always wore identically coloured velvet suits, and is known for his last persona, in neat bourgeois costume, with bowler hat, wing collar, and umbrella. He is believed to only have had one intimate relationship with another person. A passionate four month affair with the painter Suzanne Valadon (who painted Satie's portrait in 1893-94, shown below).

Despite being a musical iconoclast, and encourager of modernism, Satie was uninterested to the point of antipathy about innovations such as the telephone, the gramophone and the radio. He made no recordings, and as far as is known heard only a single radio broadcast (of Milhaud's music) and made only one telephone call. Although his personal appearance was customarily immaculate, his room at Arcueil was in Orledge's word "squalid", and after his death the scores of several important works believed lost were found among the accumulated rubbish. He was incompetent with money. Having depended to a considerable extent on the generosity of friends in his early years, he was little better off when he began to earn a good income from his compositions, as he spent or gave away money as soon as he received it. He liked children, and they liked him, but his relations with adults were seldom straightforward. One of his last collaborators, Picabia, said of him:

"Satie's case is extraordinary. He's a mischievous and cunning old artist. At least, that's how he thinks of himself. Myself, I think the opposite! He's a very susceptible man, arrogant, a real sad child, but one who is sometimes made optimistic by alcohol. But he's a good friend, and I like him a lot."

Throughout his adult life Satie was a heavy drinker, and in 1925 his health collapsed. He was taken to the Hôpital Saint-Joseph in Paris, diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. He died there at 8.00 p.m. on 1 July, at the age of 59. He was buried in the cemetery at Arcueil.

Suzanne Valadon - Portrait d'Erik Satie 1892-93

Max. Mon Amour / Max My Love (1986)

Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) a British diplomat in France, suspects his wife Margaret (Charlotte Rampling) of having an affair. He hires a private detective, who reports that Margaret has rented an apartment. It then turns out that her live-in lover is a pet chimpanzee she calls Max. A bizarre love triangle comedy in the surreal style of Buñuel. Directed by Nagisa Oshima (In The Realm Of The Senses, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), written by Jean-Claude Carrière (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie).

The Sapphire Room

The Sapphire Room from Sean O'Brien on Vimeo.

The famous Les Girls 'All Male Review' in the heart of Sydney's Kings Cross since 1963 was still going strong in the 1990s, headed up by the performer Carlotta. Capitalising on the sudden success of the feature film 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' (Stephan Elliott, 1994), Les Girls went on tour, leaving their night club vacant. Sean O'Brien, and his fellow filmmaker colleague Robert Herbert took advantage of the vacant Sunday night spot at Les Girls (2a Roslyn Street Kings Cross) to run their own fun spot.

Tender Trap was for the emerging scene of easy listening, lounge, cocktail, exotica, and incredibly strange music experiencing an enormous international resurgence in the mid 1990s. With the filmic by-line, 'A celebration of cocktail culture at its most sophisticated and savage', O'Brien and Herbert developed a narrative arc to each evening evening – 'First the cocktails and sophisticated conversation, then the live performance, then the wild dancing shall begin'. The sleaze, gangs and drugs of 1990s Kings Cross were left outside the doors of Tender Trap. Soft, pastel lighting, a very vintage sound system, and hand-made stage designs for the cabaret acts all gave Tender Trap the feeling of an oasis in the centre of the Cross, for those who were seeking it. (I attended several events there, including a performance by Japanese ambient noise legend K.K. Null in 1995). 

After running Tender Trap for eight years, in January 2000 the club had its final night, as the historic Les Girls building was shut down for major renovations, becoming yet another inner-city hotel. 

This film by Sean O'Brien is a  portrait of the twilight world of the Sapphire Room, the last of Sydney’s legendary cabaret nightclubs. The film blends candid footage of local “exotic” cabaret artists with a dramatic plot which follows the characters and actions over one eventful night at the club. It features Johannes K. Drinda, the World's Greatest Whistler, who performed his unusual repertoire outside the Sydney Opera House for many years. Filmed on location at the Tender Trap club, in the Les Girls building, during the mid 1990s.

Writer/Director: Sean O'Brien 

Camera: Simon Von Wolkenstein, Tristan Milani, Sean O'Brien 

Editor and sound design: Nick Meyers 

Cast: Rowan Woods, Sauly Saul, Sasha Madaluno, Ali Higson, and a scintillating line-up of Sydney's cabaret stars.

The Children of the Stones

 

The series follows the adventures of astrophysicist Adam Brake and his teenage son Matthew after they arrive in the small village of Milbury, which is built in the midst of a megalithic stone circle.

Filmed at Avebury, Wiltshire during the hot summer of 1976, with interior scenes filmed at HTV's Bristol studios, it has sinister, discordant wailing voices heightening the tension in the incidental music. The music was composed by Sidney Sager who used the Ambrosian Singers to chant in accordance with the megalithic rituals referred to in the story. Director Peter Graham Scott was surprised on seeing the script that the series was intended for children's airtime due to the complexities of the plot and the disturbing nature of the series.

Cast as the leader of the village, Hendrick, was Iain Cuthbertson, while the leading role of Adam Brake was filled by Gareth Thomas. Cuthbertson and Thomas had previously worked together on the TV series Sutherland's Law. Veronica Strong (the wife of series co-writer Jeremy Burnham)[6] played Margaret Smythe, the curator of the local museum, who partners with Brake to solve the mystery. The child actors Peter Demin (aged 17 at the time of filming) and Katharine Levy played the teenage leads, Matthew (Brake's son) and Sandra (Smythe's daughter). Freddie Jones and John Woodnutt were cast as poacher Dai and butler Link.

Jimi Hendrix (1973)

 

Jimi Hendrix (1973) from Robert Alan (Scoobzy) McDowell on Vimeo.

This documentary was made three years after Jimi Hendrix's untimely death. At the time it was an example of how a visual biography should be done, but some of the information in it needs revising in the light of new information uncovered over the years. The film contains concert footage spanning the Marquee in 1967 to his last UK performance at the third Isle of Wight festival in 1970; along the way we see classic performances at Monterey (1967), Woodstock (1969), Fillmore East (1969/70), and Berkeley (1970). A double album was released to tie-in with the film, containing the complete performances in the film, along with interviews with people in the film (not necessarily the same interviews). The film is worth seeing for Jimi's performances, and to hear what his contemporaries have to say about him (Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Pete Townsend, and others).

Citizen Smith

Citizen Smith is a British television sitcom written by John Sullivan, first broadcast from 1977 to 1980.

It starred Robert Lindsay as Walter Henry "Wolfie" Smith, a young Marxist "urban guerrilla" in Tooting, south London, who is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara. Wolfie is a reference to the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, who used the pseudonym "Citizen Smith" in order to evade capture by the British. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (the TPF, merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are "Power to the People" and "Freedom for Tooting".

Wolfie dresses in a stereotypical fashion for rebellious students of the period: logoed T-shirt, denim jeans, Afghan coat and black beret. He supports Fulham F. C. and occasionally wears a Fulham scarf. He rides a scooter and spends most of the time at his girlfriend's house, which means he constantly clashes with her parents.

Anchoress (1993)

In the 14th-century, a visionary girl is to become an Anchoress, a walled-in recluse, so that she can live in the Virgin's house forever. Over time she awakens to her own sensuality and explores her own female, earth-based spirituality.

The screenplay is partly based on accounts of an historical female anchorite, Christine Carpenter, who was walled into her anchorhold in a village church in Shere, Surrey, in southern England, in 1329. The story revolves around the girl's mystical visions of the Virgin Mary, the local reeve who wants to marry her, and the priest who walls her into his village church and his dislike of her mother, a midwife whom he regards as a witch.

Vali: The Witch Of Positano (1967)

A psychedelic documentary portrait shot in Positano, Italy in 1965 about Australian artist and occultist Vali Myers.

Punk 76: The Birth of Anarchy

Punk 76: The Birth Of Anarchy (2013) is one of the best docu/films about the Punk Rock explosion circa 76. Too many productions of this type fail to acknowledge and interview many of the big players outside of the usual suspects (Clash/Pistols), but this gets it right.

Outsiders - Freaks - Runts.

Enter a roll call featuring Gene October, Steve Severin, Tony James, Marco Pironi, Viv Albertine, Rat Scabies, Jah Wobble and Charlie Harper. While the literary aspects are covered by luminaries such as Caroline Coon and John Savage.

We are taken through the journey via the fashion side of things - from the safety pin/bondage era - to the leather jackets and the shock tactics involved. The social period is captured, with caustic asides to the music of the time and thus why these punkers felt a change was needed.

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers" (Voltaire)

Of course much of the thrill for old punks and prospective newbies, comes with the live clips we get. Always great to see the likes of Chelsea, The Lurkers, Subway Sect and The Adverts get an airing, while there's a lovely bonus that sees The Electric Chairs as well. While naturally the big players are of course featured prominently.

There's something of a hard sell going on as regards The Great Rock "N" Roll Swindle, which annoys since it's awful and full of untruths. While more time could have been afforded the rivalry with the Teddy Boys and the future influences of Punk. But this film gets pretty much most things right.

Because Gene October and the gang here are correct, Punk never went away, you see it every day, coloured hair, piercings and studs were once not the norm, and this film shows how that wave in 76 is still being felt today. 9/10

The Tudor Farm Series

Tudor Monastery Farm is a British factual television series, first broadcast on BBC Two on 13 November 2013. The series, the fifth in the historic farm series, following the original, Tales from the Green Valley, stars archaeologists Peter Ginn and Tom Pinfold, and historian Ruth Goodman. The team discover what farming was like during the Tudor period at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum. The program also recurringly features other historians, such as Colin Richards (an expert on rural crafts), and Professor Ronald Hutton (who specializes in folklore and religious beliefs).

The team move in, coppice hazel, build a pig enclosure, commission a guild, plough using oxen, make rushlights, make wattle-and-daub barriers, sow peas and barley using broadcasting, and celebrate religious festivals. They take custody of some Tamworth pigs. They hire workmen to scribe and illuminate documents as well as turn wooden bowls and plates.

The team work with sheep: driving, milking and shearing them; make cheese from the milk; sort, grade, card and spin wool. Additional they produce a period cold treatment from herbs, steam-bend wood, and celebrate Whitsun. They take custody of geese and drive them to market. They observe the smelting of iron as well as the weaving and fulling of cloth.

The team wean piglets, cultivate wild yeast, malt barley, make ale and bread, harvest honey and beeswax, dip candles, shave their sheep's hooves, demonstrate period hair care methods, roast lamb, and celebrate both a mass and the midsummer festival. They take custody of a boar to service their sows. They observe the shaping, moulding, and pouring of a bell, learn about period clock mechanisms and observe a wind-powered grain mill.

The team mine, smelt and cast ingots of lead; plait eel baskets and harvest eels; shape stained glass; patronize a pub; pasture their piglets in the forest; paint cloth and manage their garden. Tom sits for a camera obscura portrait.

The team launder bed linen, serve as cooks and stewards, calcine and slake lime, build a lime-ash floor, churn, press, and salt butter; sanitize the dairy, plait rushes for floormats, lay and press rag paper; prepare lye from ash; harvest tree hay for the animals; harvest and thresh their pea crop, cook a feast and make brandy. They observe period typesetting, printing and bookbinding.

The team harvest and stook and store their barley; extract salt from brine, celebrate Michaelmas, carve decorative stone, form and decorate floor tiles, produce blackpowder for Roman candle fireworks, a Damson and Bullace Melomel beverage, and perform a mystery play. The Christmas Special On 25 November 2013, the BBC announced that Tudor Monastery Farm would have a Christmas special which explored the festive season as part of BBC Two's Christmas scheduling. The episode was broadcast on 31 December 2013 and overnight figures showed that it attracted 1.57 million viewers (8.06% of the viewing audience). Official figures raised the number of viewers to 1.76 million.

Isabelle Eberhardt (1991)

Isabelle Eberhardt is a 1991 Australian-French biographical drama film directed by Ian Pringle. The film follows the adult life of Isabelle Eberhardt and was filmed in Algiers, Paris and Geneva. It stars Mathilda May as Eberhardt and Peter O'Toole as Hubert Lyautey. It received financial backing from the Film Finance Corporation Australia and was nominated for three awards at the 1991 Australian Film Institute Awards.

Isabelle Eberhardt was screened at the 1991 Melbourne International Film Festival and was also released in cinemas in Australia, though did not have a home media release. The film received generally negative reviews. Click on the image above for the complete film.

Desperate Teenage Lovedolls

 

Desperate Teenage Lovedolls was received as an instant cult classic when first self released within the Los Angeles punk underground in 1984. Since then, the no budget Super-8 film has gained international and above ground praise. Bunny, Kitty and Patch (Hilary Rubens, Jennifer Schwartz and Janet Housden) are three teenage runaways who form the hottest all-girl band of all-time, The Lovedolls. Their meteoric rise to the top comes not without a price, thanks to sleazy rock manager, Johnny Tremaine (Steve McDonald). Rival all-girl gang The She Devils and their leader Tanya Hearst (Tracy Lea) have it in for our heroes, as do annoying mothers and psyche ward doctors. The film also features Jeff McDonald, Phil Newman, Kim Pilkington, Vicki Peterson, Annette Zilinskas and Dez Cadena. Directed by David Markey.

"Good Morning Mr Hitler"

"The people were so enthusiastic. They were completely taken in by all the pomp and grandure"

Recently-discovered color footage tells the story of an extraordinary Munich weekend when Adolf Hitler and nearly the entire Nazi leadership attended a three-day national cultural festival - including concerts, dancing, exhibitions and a five-mile-long parade - titled "2,000 Years of German Culture".

The film was shot in July 1939, just six weeks before the Second World War began, by an amateur film buff who wangled a special pass to shoot the event in close-up on color 16-millimeter Kodachrome. It was first shown only to the film maker's family, then hidden in the family cellar, where it lay for many years before one of his sons retrieved it. English film makers Luke Holland and Paul Yule assembled an audience of elderly Germans, framing them watching themselves in the 1939 footage and reminiscing about their experiences. Among them were sons of the unofficial cameraman who shot the 16-millimeter film and the daughter of the publisher of Hitler's Mein Kampf, who in deference to Hitler's wish for "privacy" on frequent visits to the publisher's home never said "Heil, Mein Führer", but always "Good Morning, Mr. Hitler."

The remarkable color footage presents a rarely-seen view of Adolf Hitler and of the Munich crowds (cast not in the role of anonymous adoring masses, as in Third Reich propaganda films, but as complicit participants, sharing with their leader the excitement of the parade).

The film provides a clear and chilling account of how culture, and in particular art is used to manipulate public opinion and national self-image. Numerous interviewees speak about their pride and joy in how Nazi art was "upliftning" and provided them with strength and happiness through a sense of "order". As the 93 year old artist Günter Grausmann (born 1900) says, artists subordinated themselves to ideology because they believed they would become great because they thought (or were told/ordered) that the ideology was great. But what they produced was actually 'non-art'. They have nothing to do with art. If someone gives you a commission, you must not subordinate yourself to the ideas of the commission. That is not art. That is prostitution.

A contemporary example of an artist resisting ideology in their professional work is Laurie Anderson withdrawing from a guest professor appointment at Essen’s Folkwang University in Germany in 2024.

Late last week the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen said it had “engaged in talks” with Anderson – whose works include the 1981 single O Superman and the 2015 film Heart of a Dog, dedicated to her late husband, Lou Reed – after her name surfaced among the thousands of artists who had backed the open letter, which called for “an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinians”.

The university said it believed that art, culture and science are places “where contentious issues are kept in check”.

Its statement continued: “It has now become apparent that, in 2021, Laurie Anderson publicly supported the Palestinian artists’ ‘Letter Against Apartheid’ appeal, which, among other things, takes up calls for boycotts by the anti-Israel BDS movement,” it said. “In light of the now public question regarding her political stance, Laurie Anderson has decided to withdraw from the professorship.”

The idea "that art, culture and science are places 'where contentious issues are kept in check'" belies a denial of history and the continuation of culture in the service of power.

Massive Attack: The Documentaries

Massive Attack is an English musical group formed in 1988 in Bristol, consisting of Robert "3D" Del Naja and Grant "Daddy G" Marshall. Their debut album Blue Lines was released in 1991, with the single "Unfinished Sympathy" reaching the charts and later being voted the 63rd greatest song of all time in a poll by NME 1998's Mezzanine, containing "Teardrop", and 2003's 100th Window charted in the UK at number 1. The group has won numerous music awards throughout their career, including a Brit Award—winning Best British Dance Act, two MTV Europe Music Awards, and two Q Awards.They have released 5 studio albums that have sold over 11 million copies worldwide.

DJs Daddy G and Andrew Vowles and graffiti artist-turned-rapper Robert Del Naja met as members of partying collective The Wild Bunch. One of the first homegrown soundsystems in the UK, The Wild Bunch became dominant on the Bristol club scene in the mid-1980s.

Massive Attack started as a spin-off production trio in 1988, with the independently released song, "Any Love", sung by falsetto-voiced singer-songwriter Carlton McCarthy,and then, with considerable backing from Neneh Cherry, they signed to Circa Records in 1990 – committing to deliver six studio albums and a "best of" compilation.

Circa became a subsidiary of, and was later subsumed into, Virgin Records, which in turn was acquired by EMI. Blue Lines (1991), was co-produced by Jonny Dollar and Cameron McVey, who also became their first manager.

Geoff Barrow, who went on to form Portishead, was an intern and trainee tape operator at Bristol's Coach House studio when the album was recorded.

McVey (credited at the time as 'Booga Bear') and his wife, Neneh Cherry provided crucial financial support and in-kind assistance to the early careers of Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky during this period, even paying regular wages to them through their Cherry Bear Organisation.

Massive Attack used guest vocalists, interspersed with Del Naja and Marshall's (initially Tricky's) own sprechgesang stylings, on top of what became regarded as an essentially British creative sampling production; a trademark sound that fused down-tempo hip hop, soul, reggae and other eclectic references, musical and lyrical.

In the nineties, the trio became known for often not being able to easily get along with one another and working increasingly separately.

Andy Vowles (Mushroom), who had once thought of himself as the trio's musical director, acrimoniously left Massive Attack in late 1999, after an ultimatum from the other two members to end the group immediately if he did not. Despite having taken Del Naja's side in the effective firing of Vowles and then participating in a show-of-unity webcast as a duo the following year, Grant Marshall (G) had also effectively left by 2001 in that he abandoned the studio altogether. Marshall returned to a studio role in 2005, having joined the touring line-up in 2003/4

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) from irenebeatriz on Vimeo.

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thai: ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ; RTGS: Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat) is a 2010 Thai drama film written, produced, and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The film, which explores themes of reincarnation, centers on the last days in the life of its title character, who is played by Thanapat Saisaymar. Together with his loved ones—including the spirit of his dead wife, Huay, and his lost son, Boonsong, who has returned in a non-human form—Boonmee explores his past lives as he contemplates the reasons for his illness.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives was inspired by the 1983 book A Man Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Buddhist abbot Phra Sripariyattiweti. The film is the final installment in a multi-platform art project by Apichatpong Weerasethakul called "Primitive". It premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d'Or, becoming the first Thai film to do so.

Cecil Taylor - All The Notes (2006)

Cecil Taylor is the grand master of free jazz piano. All the Notes captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded one of the true giants of post-war music. Taylor is first seen musing over Santiago Calatrava's architecture; the pianist's famed eclectic interests extend from soloing, combo and small orchestra work to spoken word performance.

''All the Notes'' captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.

Utøya: July 22 (Subtitles)

A teenage girl struggles to survive and to find her younger sister during the July 2011 terrorist mass murder at a political summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utøya.

Jesus is a Palestinian / Jezus is een Palestijn

Unsettled: From Tinker to Traveller

Forty years ago two USF anthropologists George and Sharon Gmelch lived for one year in a barrel top wagon with travellers on a halting site in Dublin. Four decades later they have returned to Ireland with a huge archive of photographs to find the people they once knew to learn what has happened in their lives in the intervening years. When the Gmelch's first came to Ireland in 1970 accommodation for travellers was a big issue. They were young anthropology students looking for an area of Irish culture to study. They became interested in travellers and soon they were living among them in order to study their culture close up. They carried out some of the first academic research into travellers and published a number of books including 'The Urbanisation of an Itinerant People', 'Tinkers and Travellers' and 'Nan-The Life of an Irish Travelling Woman'. Now, in their mid 60's, the Gmelchs return to a very different Ireland to undertake their final 'field study' with Irish Travellers.