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

Summer Storm - Tatsumi Hijikata (1973)

“A Summer Storm by Hijikata Tatsumi” primarily consists of the legendary Japanese dancer Hijikata Tatsumi's legendary performance shot in Kyoto in 1973, and is a tribute to this extraordinary talent. Now, thirty years later, it is still funny, sad, and infinitely gripping. Hijikata was the pioneer of the reputed Butoh dance. Butoh, performed in slow, unique movements by dancers, with their bodies painted white and bent-forward, is an antithesis of the traditional Western dance. As the only remaining footage in color of his performance, the film shows Hijikata as an eternal punker, rebel, and sufferer.

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.

Antonin Artaud's The Theatre and the Plague

Antonin Artaud’s The Theater and the Plague is an international cinematic reading of the essay "The theater and the plague“ by the French poet Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Directed by Wolfgang Pannek, co-director of Taanteatro Companhia (São Paulo, Brazil), the project is a collaboration of artists and academics from five continents and engaged in multiperspectivist reflection on the critical tension between „death and cure“.

In The Theatre and the Plague, the first, now prophetic-iconic text from his best-known book, The Theater and its Double, originally presented as a peformative lecture on April 6, 1933, at the Sorbonne, Artaud develops the foundations of the „Theater of Cruelty“ by establishing an analogy between the rupture of the civilizational order caused by the "plague" and the "convulsive passions" triggered by the virulence of his transgressive theatrical poetics.

The Artaudian text was divided into 8 distinct segments (in turn divided into sub-segments), each with a specific thematic focus. Each collaborating artist accepted the challenge of developing an audio-visual dramaturgy (and recording Artaud's text in their respective language), corresponding to the segment to be addressed. The only creative indication given to the artists was to perform a cinematographic reading of Artaud's text in the light of their subjective experiences conected to their respective geographical locations, and under the conditions of limited circulation and social distancing in pandemic times. This work process, recorded with simple digital cameras, cell phones or IPads, resulted in a set of 18 films, lasting between 4 and 11 minutes each).

In addition, the audio-visual collection of these cinematic narratives was re-edited for the feature film Antonin Artaud's The Theater and the Plague (62 min., 11 languages, English subtitles). The film presents the text of “The Theater and the Pest ”in its entirety and brings together people, landscapes and sensibilities ranging from São Paulo to Paris, from Brisbane to Garðabær, and from Maputo to Khon Kaen.

Einsturzende Neubauten - Halber Mensch (1986, full film remastered)

The ruins have been prepared for us by master artists. Civilisation has granted us enough pause to consider its making. The rhythm of your heart, breath and organs are the beginnings of music. Where there was once nature, there is now the silence of cement, or the scream of steel and the bone shaking clang of iron, electricity and skin.

Halber Mensch (or 1/2 Mensch; English: Half Man) is the third studio album by German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten. It was released on 2 September 1985, through record label Some Bizzare Records.

Halber Mensch (also known as 1/2 Mensch) is a 1986 film by Japanese director Sogo Ishii with German band Einstürzende Neubauten. It was originally released on VHS, and re-released on DVD in 2005. The film's title comes from the album of the same name.

The one-hour film documents Einstürzende Neubauten's visit to Japan in 1985. It includes concert footage along with scenes of the band performing in an industrial building. Several songs from the "Halber Mensch" album are presented as music videos, some with accompanying Butoh dancers.

Klaus Kinski - Jesus Christus Erlöser (1971 komplett)

Klaus Kinski’s infamous intensity and lunacy are both on vivid display in Klaus Kinski: Jesus Christ the Savior, a recently recovered record of a 1971 theatrical performance by the Aguirre, The Wrath of God star. On a German stage outfitted with only a microphone stand, Kinski steps into a lone spotlight and begins reciting an extended monologue about a persecuted, angry Jesus Christ: “Wanted: Jesus Christ. Charged with seduction, anarchistic tendencies, conspiracy against the authority of the state.” From the outset, Kinski’s own god-complex association with his divine subject, whose role he soon assumes via speaking in first-person, is clear, and immediately rankles segments of the crowd who’ve attended simply to heckle. As audience members cry out, “I want my 10 marks back!,” and call out Kinski for what they see as the hypocrisy of his performance (the wealthy star extols anti-materialism and nonviolence, while also railing against his tormentors with threats of physical aggression), the show’s powder keg atmosphere ignites. Kinski storms off stage, albeit not before screaming, “You stupid pig!,” to a young man who tries, and fails, to command the mike before being removed by a security guard—to predictable audience objections to Kinski as a “fascist!”

A version of this scenario repeats throughout the night, as Kinski returns to the mike, only to be browbeaten by certain audience members convinced that they have a role to play in the evening. Director Peter Geyer’s archival footage, comprised of material from a select few cameras, has a fixated gaze that mirrors Kinski’s ferocity, which escalates as his performance forcefully mutates hallowed scripture into messages about contemporary flashpoints, be they Vietnam, hippies, or a more general strain of post-Woodstock opposition to institutional government and church power. Confronting taunts and ridicule with disgust and fury, Kinski becomes a bipolar figure, at once justified in his rage and clear-sighted in his condemnations, and yet the antithesis of the very virtues he so extols. Jesus Christ Savior, however, is mostly the portrait of the artist as an empathetically committed zealot and hotheaded madman, of a star attempting to communicate (and expunge from within) ideas and emotions that seemingly animate and torment him. And it ultimately proves a quite riveting one at that, even if its dynamite volatility and hypnotic momentum drains by Kinski’s third walkout and final, triumphant, post-credits recitation of his divine dissertation.

War of the Worlds musical by Jeff Wayne

Stage production of the classic War of the Worlds musical, retelling the story of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, released September 6, 1978. A concept album, its main format is progressive rock and string orchestra, using narration and leitmotifs to carry the story via rhyming melodic lyrics that express the feelings of the various characters. The two-disc album remains a bestseller, having sold millions of records around the world, and by 2009 it was the 40th best selling album of all time in the UK with sales of 2,561,286.

Cast

·       Richard Burton – narration (The Journalist) (via a "virtual" Richard Burton: a large bust of the Journalist plus a projected image)

·       Liam Neeson – narration (The Journalist) (The New Generation 2012, 2014 and the Dominion Theatre stage production 2016)

·       Justin Hayward – vocals (The Sung Thoughts of the Journalist) (all tours: 2006, 2007 Australian, 2007 UK, 2009 30th Anniversary, and 2010 tour)

·       Alexis James – dialogue and vocals (The Artilleryman) (2006, 2007 UK, and 2009 30th Anniversary tour)

·       Michael Falzon – spoken words and vocals (The Artilleryman) (2007 Australian tour)

·       Jason Donovan – dialogue and vocals (The Artilleryman) (2010 tour)

·       Chris Thompson – vocals (The Voice of Humanity) (all tours: 2006, 2007 Australian, 2007 UK, 2009 30th Anniversary, and 2010 tour)

·       Russell Watson – dialogue and vocals (Parson Nathaniel) (2006 tour)

·       Shannon Noll – dialogue and vocals (Parson Nathaniel) (2007 Australian and first half of 2009 30th Anniversary tour)

·       John Payne – dialogue and vocals (Parson Nathaniel) (2007 UK tour)

·       Damien Edwards – dialogue and vocals (Parson Nathaniel) (second half of 2009 30th Anniversary tour)

·       Rhydian Roberts – dialogue and vocals (Parson Nathaniel) (2010 tour)

·       Tara Blaise – dialogue and vocals (Beth) (2006 tour)

·       Rachael Beck – dialogue and vocals (Beth) (2007 Australian tour)

·       Sinéad Quinn – dialogue and vocals (Beth) (2007 UK tour)

·       Jennifer Ellison – dialogue and vocals (Beth) (2009 30th Anniversary tour)

·       Liz McClarnon – dialogue and vocals (Beth) (2010 tour)

·       Carrie Hope Fletcher – dialogue and vocals (Beth) (2014 tour)

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·       Daniel Boys – dialogue and vocals (Male Understudy) (all tours: 2006, 2007 Australian, 2007 UK, 2009 30th Anniversary, and 2010 tour)

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell - Peter O'Toole

Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell is a play by Keith Waterhouse about real-life journalist Jeffrey Bernard. Bernard was still alive at the time the play was first performed in the West End in 1989.

Bernard wrote the "Low Life" column in The Spectator. The play's title refers to the magazine's habit of printing a one-line apology on a blank page when he was too drunk or hung-over to produce the required copy and a substitute article could not be found before the deadline for publication. Its premise is that Bernard has found himself locked in overnight at his favourite public house, the Coach and Horses, Soho, and uses the occasion to share anecdotes from his life with the audience. A highlight of the play is a trick involving a glass of water, a matchbox, and an egg which must remain unbroken at the end of the trick. This trick is more fully described in an obituary of Keith Waterhouse in The Guardian.

Often remembered as a one-man show, but in fact packed with characters performed by a versatile supporting cast of four, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell was a highly successful vehicle for its original star Peter O'Toole. The show opened in Brighton in September 1989, moved to Bath and made its triumphant London debut at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in October. O'Toole also appeared in a later revival at the Old Vic. The Old Vic run was totally sold out and on August 23, 1999, the London Evening Standard published a 'Bluffer's Guide' to enable readers to pretend they had seen it: "thereby allowing dinner party conversations and watercooler debates to run their course unhindered by ignorance."

A filmed version of the stage play was shot at the Apollo Theatre with a live audience and was released in both full and abridged versions.

O'Toole was followed in the part by Tom Conti who starred in a revival of the play until September 2006 at the Garrick Theatre in London. The part has also been played by James Bolam, Dennis Waterman, Robert Powell, and most recently Simon Hill in the Frayed Knot Production of the play.

Antonin Artaud

This is perhaps why such issues cannot simply, for Artaud, ever be discussed in pure abstraction from their scenic singularity. It could also explain why some of the most powerfully theatrical articulations in his writing were not written "for" theater, not at least in the dramatic sense of the term. One such instance is his celebrated essay on "The Theater and the Plague". Neither purely theoretical nor purely theatrical, this text demonstrates most forcefully what Artaud elsewhere, in "The Alchemical Theater", calls "the virtual reality of theater" (49/60).

In "The Theater and the Plague", which he first delivered in April of 1933 at the Sorbonne, Artaud recounts the spread of the plague in Marseille in 1720. After a brief discussion of plagues and their possible etiologies, Artaud describes the stages through which the plague passes as it spreads throughout the city. It is here that we encounter an allegory of the origin of theater. This consists of four stages, which at the same time and perhaps above all mark what can be called the theatricalization of the stage (temporal as well as spatial). As we shall see, this theatricalization also involves a kind of virtualization, although it is one that contrasts in certain decisive aspects with virtualization as it is generally understood and practiced today. Let us begin, however, by retracing Artaud's account of the four stages of the plague. "The Greatest Thing of All" The Virtual Reality of Theater by Samuel Weber

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (September 4, 1896, in Marseille – March 4, 1948 in Paris) was a French playwright, poet, actor and director. Antonin is a diminutive form of Antoine (little Anthony), and was among a long list of names which Artaud used throughout his life.

Artaud's parents, Euphrasie Nalpas and Antoine-Roi Artaud, were of Greek origin (Smyrna), and he was much affected by this background. Although his mother had nine children, only Antoine and two siblings survived infancy.

At the age of four, Artaud had a severe attack of meningitis. The virus gave Artaud a nervous, irritable temperament throughout adolescence. He also suffered from neuralgia, stammering and severe bouts of depression. As a teenager, he was allegedly stabbed in the back by a pimp for apparently no reason, similar to the experience of playwright Samuel Beckett.

Artaud's parents arranged a long series of sanatorium stays for their disruptive son, which were both prolonged and expensive. They lasted five years, with a break of two months, June and July 1916, when Artaud was conscripted into the army. He was allegedly discharged due to his self-induced habit of sleepwalking. During Artaud's "rest cures" at the sanatorium, he read Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Poe. In May 1919, the director of the sanatorium prescribed laudanum for Artaud, precipitating a lifelong addiction to that and other opiates.

In March 1920, Artaud moved to Paris. At the age of 27, Artaud sent some of his poems to the journal La Nouvelle Revue Française; they were rejected, but the editor, Jacques Rivière, wrote back seeking to understand him, and a relationship in letters was born. This epistolary work, Correspondence avec Jacques Rivière, is Artaud's first major publication. In November 1926, Artaud was expelled from the surrealist movement, in which he had participated briefly, for refusing to renounce theater as a bourgeois commercial art form, and for refusing to join the French Communist Party along with the other Surrealists.

Artaud cultivated a great interest in cinema as well, writing the scenario for the first Surrealist film, The Seashell and the Clergyman, directed by Germaine Dulac. He also acted in Abel Gance's Napoleon in the role of Jean-Paul Marat, and in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc as the monk Massieu. Artaud's portrayal of Marat used exaggerated movements to convey the fire of Marat's personality.

In 1926-28, Artaud ran the Alfred Jarry Theater, along with Roger Vitrac. He produced and directed original works by Vitrac, as well as pieces by Claudel and Strindberg. The theatre advertised that they would produce Artaud's play Jet de sang in their 1926-1927 season, but it was never mounted and was not premiered until 40 years later. The Theater was extremely short-lived, but was attended by an enormous range of European artists, including André Gide, Arthur Adamov, and Paul Valéry.

The 1930s saw the publication of The Theatre and Its Double, his most well-known work. This book contained the two manifestos of the Theater of Cruelty, essential texts in understanding his artistic project. In 1935, Artaud's production of his adaptation of Shelley's The Cenci premiered. The Cenci was a commercial failure, although it employed innovative sound effects--including the first theatrical use of the electronic instrument the Martenot--and had a set designed by Balthus.

After the production failed, Artaud received a grant to travel to Mexico where he gave lectures on the decadence of Western civilization. He also studied the Tarahumaran people and experimented with peyote, recording his experiences which were later released in a volume called Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara. The content of this work closely resembles the poems of his later days, concerned primarily with the supernatural. Artaud also recorded his horrific withdrawal from heroin upon entering the land of the Tarahumaras; having deserted his last supply of the drug at a mountainside, he literally had to be hoisted onto his horse, and soon resembled, in his words, "a giant, inflamed gum". Artaud would return to opiates later in life.

In 1937, Artaud returned to France where he obtained a walking stick of knotted wood that he believed belonged to St. Patrick, but also Lucifer and Jesus Christ. Artaud traveled to Ireland in an effort to return the staff, though he spoke very little English and was unable to make himself understood. The majority of his trip was spent in a hotel room that he was unable to pay for. On his return trip, Artaud believed he was being attacked by two crew members and retaliated; he was arrested and put in a straitjacket.

The return from Ireland brought about the beginning of the final phase of Artaud's life, which was spent in different asylums. When France was occupied by the Nazis, friends of Artaud had him transferred to the psychiatric hospital in Rodez, well inside Vichy territory, where he was put under the charge of Dr. Gaston Ferdière. Ferdière began administering electroshock treatments to eliminate Artaud's symptoms, which included various delusions and odd physical tics. The doctor believed that Artaud's habits of crafting magic spells, creating astrology charts, and drawing disturbing images, were symptoms of mental illness. The electro-shock treatments have created much controversy, although it was during these treatments — in conjunction with Ferdière's art therapy — that Artaud began writing and drawing again, after a long dormant period. In 1946, Ferdière released Artaud to his friends, who placed him in the psychiatric clinic at Ivry-sur-Seine. Current psychiatric literature describes Artaud as having schizophrenia, with a clear psychotic break late in life and schizotypal symptoms throughout life.

Artaud was encouraged to write by his friends, and interest in his work was rekindled. He visited an exhibition of works by Vincent van Gogh which resulted in a study Van Gogh le suicidé de la société (Van Gogh, The Man Suicided by Society), published by K éditeur, Paris, 1947 which won a critics´ prize. He recorded Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu (To Have Done With the Judgment of god) between November 22 and November 29, 1947. This work was shelved by Wladimir Porché, the director of the French Radio, the day before its scheduled airing on February 2, 1948. The performance was prohibited partially as a result of its scatological, anti-American, and anti-religious references and pronouncements, but also because of its general randomness, with a cacophony of xylophonic sounds mixed with various percussive elements. While remaining true to his Theater of Cruelty and reducing powerful emotions and expressions into audible sounds, Artaud had utilized various, somewhat alarming cries, screams, grunts, onomatopoeia, and glossolalia.

As a result, Fernand Pouey, the director of dramatic and literary broadcasts for French radio, assembled a panel to consider the broadcast of Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu. Among the approximately 50 artists, writers, musicians, and journalists present for a private listening on February 5, 1948 were Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Raymond Queneau, Jean-Louis Barrault, René Clair, Jean Paulhan, Maurice Nadeau, Georges Auric, Claude Mauriac, and René Char. Although the panel felt almost unanimously in favor of Artaud's work, Porché refused to allow the broadcast. Pouey left his job and the show was not heard again until February 23, 1948 at a private performance at the Théâtre Washington.

In January 1948, Artaud was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He died shortly afterwards on March 4, 1948. Artaud died alone in his pavilion, seated at the foot of his bed, allegedly holding his shoe. It was suspected that he died from a lethal dose of the drug chloral, although it is unknown whether he was aware of its lethality. Thirty years later, French radio finally broadcast the performance of Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de Dieu.