The Magical Writings of Ithell Colquhoun

She was too surreal… even for the Surrealists. Ithell Colquhoun stepped into a movement built on dreams, rebellion, and the subconscious—and still managed to make them uncomfortable. While others flirted with mysticism, she went all in, studying the occult and refusing to separate her art from her inner life. That’s where the tension began. The Surrealists, led by André Breton, wanted control over the movement, and Colquhoun refused to choose between their rules and her beliefs. So they made the choice for her—and expelled her.

But she didn’t disappear. She kept creating, developing her own techniques, building a visual language that was entirely her own, and pushing deeper into the subconscious without permission or approval. For years, she was overlooked while others became icons. Now, her work feels more modern, more fearless, and more honest than ever—because she wasn’t trying to fit into a movement, she was building something beyond it. Some artists wait to be accepted. Others redefine what acceptance even means.

Ithell Colquhoun’s reputation as a provocative and accomplished visual artist and writer is becoming well established. However, less is known about her work as an occult and esoteric essayist, primarily because many of her essays were published in occult ephemera, and limited run local and specialist magazines. This illustrated talk will be an introduction to the wide range of topics that Colquhoun masterfully tackled, ranging from primers on the Kabbalah to Celtic spirituality, meditation, mysticism, and magical color theory.

Jessica Hundley Series Editor for TASCHEN Publications multivolume collection, The Library of Esoterica, a book series exploring the visual history of Tarot, Astrology and other esoteric traditions introduces the event.

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic. She has a PhD in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and has published academic and popular articles on a wide range of topics such as Paganism and the New Right, women’s esoteric art, Cornish cultural nationalism, Arthuriana, color theory, and occult performance art. She has written widely on artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, notably the biography Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently editing a selection of Colquhoun’s esoteric essays. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and Spike Island, Bristol.

F for Fake Orson Welles (1973)

F for Fake (French: Vérités et mensonges, "Truths and lies") is a 1973 docudrama film co-written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles who worked on the film alongside François Reichenbach, Oja Kodar, and Gary Graver. Initially released in 1973, it focuses on Elmyr de Hory's recounting of his career as a professional art forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art. Far from serving as a traditional documentary on de Hory, the film also incorporates Welles's companion Oja Kodar, hoax biographer Clifford Irving, and Orson Welles as himself. F for Fake is sometimes considered an example of a film essay.

In addition to the 88-minute film, in 1976, Welles also shot and edited a self-contained nine-minute short film as a "trailer", almost entirely composed of original material not found in the main film itself. Here is that trailer:

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles looks at the remarkable genius of Orson Welles on the eve of his centenary - the enigma of his career as a Hollywood star, a Hollywood director (for some a Hollywood failure), and a crucially important independent filmmaker. Orson Welles's life was magical: a musical prodigy at age 10, a director of Shakespeare at 14, a painter at 16, a star of stage and radio at 20, romances with some of the most beautiful women in the world, including Rita Hayworth. His work was similarly extraordinary, most notably Citizen Kane, (considered by many to be the most important movie ever made), created by Welles when he was only 25. In the years following Citizen Kane, Welles's career continued to change as he made film after film (some never finished, many dismissed) and acted in other projects often to earn money in order to keep making his own films. Magician features scenes from almost every existing Welles film, from Hearts of Age, (which he made in a day when he was only 18 years old) to rarely-seen clips from his final unfinished works like The Other Side of the Dream, The Deep, and Don Quixote, as well as his television and commercial work

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV is a 2023 documentary film by Amanda Kim about video artist Nam June Paik. The film traces the life of the artist from his privileged childhood in Japanese-occupied Korea up until his death in 2006. The films uses archival footage, interviews with fellow artists who knew him best and written letters to personal friends John Cage and others narrated by Academy Award-nominated actor Steven Yeun.It premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival before being acquired by PBS Films and Greenwich Entertainment as an episode of American Masters. Click on the above image for the full film.

Brazil (1985) Full movie English

In a retro-future world, Sam Lowry, a clerk in the ministry department, is given the task to rectify an administrative error. However, in the process, he becomes an enemy of the state.

There is so much I could say about this film. It has shaped my life in some ways. This film is a work of genius.

Outer and Inner Space (1966)

Outer and Inner Space is a 16mm film of Edie Sedgwick sitting in front of a television monitor on which is playing a prerecorded videotape of herself. On the videotape, Edie is positioned on the left side of the frame, facing right; she is talking to an unseen person off-screen to our right.

Outer and Inner Space is a groundbreaking multimedia document. Edie Sedgwick appears to have a conversation with herself. Time is compressed into the moment and we read a face in four parts which seems to be communicating with itself.

"As spectacularly beautiful as it is a fascinating spectacle, Warhol’s spatially dynamic and dramatically lit film-and-video portrait of Sedgwick, Outer and Inner Space, 1965, is perhaps his most brilliant articulation of the schism between private self and public image, as well as a further exploration of the serial imagery in his paintings. Shot during the summer of 1965, publicly screened in 1966, and recently rescued from oblivion, this was his first double-screen film—The Chelsea Girls would follow in September 1966—and his initial foray into video. Given the chance by Norelco to experiment with a prototype home-video recorder, Warhol used the camera to create a half-hour portrait of Sedgwick (as well as other Factory denizens). He then shot two thirty-three-minute 16 mm reels of the actress sitting in front of a television playing her videotaped image. In the final product, the two reels are shown side by side." ArtForum

Atman (1975)

 

An experimental short film by Toshio Matsumoto.

The film depicts a figure sitting in an outdoor environment and wearing a robe and a Hannya mask. The film features receding and shifting images captured in a frame-by-frame manner; though these shots resemble zooms and pans, they were actually derived from positioning the camera on a series of a points.

Atman is a visual tour-de-force built on the idea of a subject fixed at the center of a circle created by 480 camera positions. Filmed frame by frame, the sequence accelerates into an increasingly rapid circular motion, turning stillness into disorienting rhythm.

The seated figure wears the devil mask of Hangan from Noh theater, accompanied by Noh music and the principle of acceleration often tied to Noh drama. The title itself, Atman is a Sanskrit term for "self," sometimes linked to destruction, infuses the film with spiritual unease.

What begins as meditation collapses into disintegration: a hypnotic, unsettling ritual where cinema dismantles identity through repetition, motion, and the terror of looking too long.

"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

"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.

With BRION GYSIN in Paris - from Genesis P-Orridge's lost UK-archive

Brion Gysin (19 January 1916 – 13 July 1986) was an english painter, sound poet, and writer of the Beat generation who lived right across Museum Pompidou, in Paris, when UK-Avantgarde artist and Industrial music founder Genesis P-Orridge visited his mentor.

Gysin is best known for his discovery of the 'Cut-up'-technique, used by his friend and collegue, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville Gysin invented the Dreamachine - a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed - as a proto-type of modern, electronic mind- or brain-machines.

In this raw documentary Genesis and Gysin talk about the alchemy of making a good tea, the rhizomatic character of their music and art … while listening to Throbbing Gristle and testing and filming the Dreamachine.

Source/Archive: 

Genesis P-Orridge by courtesy of Boris Hiesserer (c) Pyromania Arts Foundation 

The Koumiko Mystery - 1965

 

While filming the Olympics, a filmmaker encounters a Japanese girl. Manchurian born and French educated, she's an intriguing anomaly. He films her around Tokyo, as she speaks of Japan, being Japanese and her unique perspective on life.

French documentarian Chris Marker and his rare, early 46-minute The Koumiko Mystery, screening here in a new restoration. It’s 1964, and Marker has just made his iconic La Jetée (1962) and Le Joli Mai (1963).

He’s filming in Japan for the first time, where the Summer Olympics are in full swing. There in the stands he unexpectedly discovers a subject more entrancing than any of the relay runners below: Koumiko Muraoka, a charming, elusive and inquisitive young poet, raised in colonial Manchuria and educated at a French-Japanese school. Their mutually fascinated dialogue about nationality, identity, aesthetics and, of course, cats is at the heart of this rapturously shot early jewel by the great director.

In a film that, with its Japanese setting and female co-narrator, often plays as a trial run for his masterpiece, Sans soleil (1983), we find Marker excitedly discovering many of the themes he would return to throughout his work. But nowhere else do we find a character as touching, elegant and compelling as Koumiko – or one who inspires Marker so much. His 16 mm Bolex seems to find an unforgettable image everywhere Koumiko goes, building an extraordinary portrait of a woman and her world. It’s also a remarkable document of Tokyo — a glimpse of a people, their architecture, customs and culture during a period of massive transition and through the eyes of a perceptive, questioning outsider.

Often credited with the invention of what is now called the “essay film”, Chris Marker’s influence is unmeasurable, as much for his formal innovations as for the boundless curiosity and warmth of his work. An enigma to many, this subtle and deeply private artist was called “the prototype of the twenty-first-century man” by his close friend and collaborator Alain Resnais. He described himself simply as a “bricoleur” – a collector of pre-existing material.

The P-Orridge family (and guests) at Beck Road London 1985

The P-Orridge family (and guests) at Beck Road London 1985 from Thee MediaShaman on Vimeo.

"It teaches that mind is the sovereign power of the universe, and that when its forces are properly concentrated upon any particular object, the true nature of that object will be revealed. Instead of using" How To Be A Yogi by Swâmi Abhedânanda

[1902] p. 66

Genesis P-Orridge at home speaking about culture, art, magick and revolution. Say what you want about Genesis, (self-absorbed, demanding, greedy, attention seeker, martyr syndrome, opportunist and performance junkie?), they were not stupid. The ideas and actions were forerunners and templates for millions of people who woke up and saw through the consumption and lies of post-Industrial culture.

This was filmed at 50 Beck Road, in the poorest East-London district Hackney, winter 1984/85. An italian film-crew makes a spontaneous visit to the family and home of UK-avantgarde musician and industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge. Throbbing Gristle had split up and Genesis and Sleazy aka Peter Christopherson were committed to their new band-project Psychic TV and launching the Temple Ov Psychick Youth as a worldwide network system.

This unedited open talk interview-documentary includes Gen's beautiful wife Paula - highly pregnant with her second daughter Genesse - and friends discussing society and (po-)culture, religion, art, fear, media- manipulation, the heroin-boom and Dr. Margaret Patterson who treated drug addiction using electric stimulation aka "neuro-electric therapy", as well as war and existentialism during England's Thatcher aera ... and how it feels as a young family.

Participants and guests were Monte Cazazza, co-founder of the Industrial Records music label from the US who phrased the slogan "Industrial Music for Industrial People", as well as Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Jym Daly and Dorothy Max Prior, who released her song 'I Confess' (1980) on industrial records. youtube.com/watch?v=35ONE_dc2pQ

The original of this privat recording got confiscated when Scotland Yard raided the family's home in Brighton (1991) due to absurd accusations made in UK-tabloid newspapers and a 100 % fabricated one hour TV documentary (Channel 4, Dispatches). The Orridge's and their kid were touring through Nepal at that time and went into exile to the United States (California), where the father of Wyona Rider, US-publisher Michael Horowitz, helped them to settle down.

The VHS-tape was copied and archived by Boris Hiesserer aka. Eden 123, founder of the Pyromania Arts Foundation, a former german access point to the TOPY.

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.

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.

Russian Ark (2002) (20 Subtitle Languages)

 

Russian Ark (Russian: Русский ковчег, Russkij Kovcheg) is a 2002 experimental historical drama film directed by Alexander Sokurov. In Russian Ark, an unnamed narrator wanders through the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, and implies that he died in some horrible accident and is a ghost drifting through the palace. In each room, he encounters various real and fictional people from various periods in the city's 300-year history. He is accompanied by "the European", who represents the Marquis de Custine, a 19th-century French traveler.

The film was recorded entirely in the Winter Palace of the Russian State Hermitage Museum on 23 December 2001 using a one-take single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot. Russian Ark uses the fourth wall device extensively, but repeatedly broken and re-erected. At times the narrator and the companion interact with the other performers, whilst at other times they pass unnoticed. The film was entered into the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

Andy Warhol - 1965 - Vinyl

Vinyl is a 1965 American black-and-white experimental film directed by Andy Warhol at The Factory. It is an early adaptation of Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, starring Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Ondine, and Tosh Carillo, and featuring such songs as "Nowhere to Run" by Martha and the Vandellas, "Tired of Waiting for You" by The Kinks, "The Last Time" by The Rolling Stones and "Shout" by The Isley Brothers.

The film is about the youth perpetrator Victor, who spends his time lifting weights, dancing and torturing people. When he hits his friend Scum Baby, he calls the police. Victor gets the choice to go to jail or undergo a behavioral change. Victor decides on the treatment and is bound to a chair by a doctor. He has to watch violent videos and describe what is happening on the screen while warm wax from a candle runs over his hand. After a while Victor swears off the violence and is unbound. He rejects the doctor's request to beat him and take drugs. Victor is cured.

On her twenty-first birthday in April 1964, Edie Sedgwick received an $80,000 trust fund ($689,171 in today's money which she spent in 6 months) from her maternal grandmother. Soon after, she relocated to New York City to pursue a career in modeling. In March 1965, she met artist and avant-garde filmmaker Andy Warhol at a party at Lester Persky's apartment, and began frequently visiting The Factory, Warhol's art studio in Midtown Manhattan. During one of her subsequent visits, Warhol was filming Vinyl (1965), his interpretation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. Despite Vinyl's all-male cast, Warhol put Sedgwick in the movie. Around this time, she also made a small cameo appearance in another Warhol film, Horse (1965). Sedgwick's appearances in both films were brief but generated enough interest that Warhol decided to cast her in the starring role of his next films.

Click on the image for the full film.

La Frequenza Fantasma / The Ghost Frequency

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

“La Frequenza Fantasma (The Ghost Frequency)” is a feature film that paints a non-hierarchical portrait of a crumbling village nestled on the mountains of Calabria, in the south of Italy, balanced precariously between life and death.

Engaging with time as physical matter through a careful and protracted period of observation framed through the lens of an animator’s eye (keen on allowing for minute transformations to occur and unlock all kind of quiet epiphanies), this film attempts to uncover at once the layers of historical sediment that have accumulated in a particular space through time, and to reap new myths through a personal interpretation and direct encounter with place and narrative.

 

It is the story of a village, suspended in time and space, a place of sounds, smells and numberless thresholds where the memory of a mythical past and the present are inextricably intertwined. It is an investigation into the nature of collective and personal history, into the origin and preservation of memory- how it is etched and perpetrated, both in the minds of the people who still live there, and in that of the soil, the ruins, matter itself. It is the story of the relationship between animate and inanimate matter and of how this relationship turns into the motor and purpose of existence, the search for the sacred patterns of the quotidian within the rhythms of nature.

 

The physical presence of the body and the overwhelming power of a wild and untamed nature are the two forces which dominate all belief in this secluded and anachronistic stretch of land, where faith and superstition are the binding elements that help the continuation of identity and collective history. The survival of community relies on it. The few testimonies gathered in the film are the voices of the village’s guardians and have the power of an incantation, that grants survival and continuation to what would otherwise crumble into oblivion and loss.

 

The title of the film refers to the role that the telegraph, the radio, and the transmission of sound signals played in the studies of different dimensions and the otherworld, allowing to tune into frequencies that, although invisible to the eye, are nevertheless a fundamental aspect of our collective subconscious, following the understanding that sound, once released, will never disperse but will continue to haunt the ether, invisible and inaudible but an unquestionable trace of lapsed presence.

 

For more information about the film and the author please visit acuriousroom.com

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

“You may think that you do not know Verbicaro. Never set foot or imagined it. But you are wrong and The Ghost Frequency will prove it. This haunting epic poem of shadows and echoes will dream you every time it flickers inside a screen or whispers the ages under your approach. Don't be shocked by your knowing, unsettled by the familiarity, because it is tuned to your recognition and the phantom of your returning.”

- Brian Catling, artist, author and professor of Fine Art at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford

"A compelling, lyrical and beautifully realized portrait of people and place, of the universal need for home and roots and at the same time a precisely calibrated site-specific exploration, La Frequenza Fantasma marks the emergence of a bold new film essayist in Chiara Ambrosio."

- Gareth Evans, Film Curator, Whitechapel Gallery

"A seance, an eavesdropping, a mysterious bolero: LA FREQUENZA FANTASMA is a striking essay film that enshrines and expands the poetics of place, people and memory."” –Sukhdev Sandu, NYU

"The Ghost Frequency- You have to make the journey. You can't bring it home. Look back and it dissolves into light.

- Tony Grisoni, screenwriter and filmmaker

Vali's World (1984)

Filmed in New York, Positano, and Naples, featuring Vali Myers, George Plimpton, Gianni Menichetti, and Arden Mason. Directed by Caterine Milinaire. Music by Arden Mason. Telltale Associates Inc. © 1984 Vali Myers (1930-2003) was an Australian born, global artist who lived the natural world through an artistic and magical vision. Vali embodied her art in a total awareness of her surroundings and its experience. She bonded with animals and people on a single level. Her art production is a mapping of these worlds where spirits evolve and communicate with each other through forms.