Legendary document from Swinging London. Peter Whitehead's Swinging London documentary, subtitled "A Pop Concerto," comprises a number of different "movements," each depicting a different theme underscored by music. A early version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" plays behind some arty nightclub scenes, while Chris Farlowe's rendition of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time" accompanies a young woman's description of London nightlife and the vacuousness of her own existence. In another segment, the Marquess of Kensington (Robert Wace) croons the nostalgic "Changing of the Guard" to shots of Buckingham Palace's changing of the guard, and recording act Vashti are seen at work in the studio. Sandwiched between are clips of Mick Jagger (discussing revolution), Andrew Loog Oldham (discussing his future) - and Julie Christie, Michael Caine, Lee Marvin, and novelist Edna O'Brien (each discussing sex). The best part is footage of the riot that interrupted the Stones' 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert
The film debut of Blondie¨s Debbie Harry. Rico is a cool photographer who pretends he’s a bigshot Hollywood director. He imagines New York is Paris. His inner world of mission, fantasy and obsessions are magnified when he falls in love with the adorable Blondie, played by Debbie Harry. America’s answer to France’s Jean Luc Godard, this film parallels the French movie Breathless.
A history of the Australian environmental activist movement in the 1970s & early '80s, focusing on the Terania Ck, Franklin River & Daintree rainforest eco-blockades. Narrated by Jack Thompson.
Europe 1988: Mutoid Waste founder Robin Mutoid conceives a journey across the Australian desert, which will fuse a 'mader than Max' blend of theatre. protest, lifestyle and performance.
12 years later Robin heads to Port Augusta in Australia's far south to see who will answer the call. Those who come will be challenged on every conceivable level on their 20,000km journey, bringing them together as a community and allowing them all to participate in a fascinating study into 'lateral human governance'. Sometimes violent, often humorous and always passionate, this is their story.
The Human Be-In was an event held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Polo Fields on January 14, 1967. It was a prelude to San Francisco's Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word "psychedelic" to suburbia.
The Grateful Dead, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder appear in this short film documenting the Human Be-In that took place on Saturday 14 January 1967 in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Gary and Allen are chanting individually and together in front of a crowd of thousands.
The Human Be-In was announced on the cover of the fifth issue of the San Francisco Oracle as "A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In". The occasion was a new California law banning the use of the psychedelic drug LSD that had come into effect on October 6, 1966. The speakers at the rally were all invited by Bowen, the main organizer. They included Timothy Leary in his first San Francisco appearance, who set the tone that afternoon with his famous phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out" and Richard Alpert (soon to be known as "Ram Dass"), and poets like Allen Ginsberg, who chanted mantras, Gary Snyder and Michael McClure. Other counterculture gurus included comedian Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jerry Rubin, and Alan Watts. Music was provided by a host of local rock bands including Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Blue Cheer, most of whom had been staples of the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom. The "Underground chemist" Owsley Stanley provided massive amounts of his "White Lightning" LSD, specially produced for the event, as well as 75 twenty-pound (9 kg) turkeys, for free distribution by the Diggers.
The Human Be-In was later recalled by poet Allen Cohen (who assisted the artist Bowen in the organizational work), as a meld that brought together philosophically opposed factions of the San Francisco-based counterculture at the time: on one side, the Berkeley radicals, who were tending toward increased militancy in response to the U.S. government's Vietnam war policies, and, on the other side, the rather non-political Haight-Ashbury hippies, who urged peaceful protest. Their means were drastically different, but they held many of the same goals.
According to Cohen's own account, his friend Bowen provided much of the "organizing energy" for the event, and Bowen's personal connections also strongly influenced its character.
A Human Be-In was put on in Denver, Colorado in July 1967 by Chet Helms and Barry Fey to harness the energy of the famed San Francisco event that occurred in January and promote their new Family Dog Productions venue, The Family Dog Denver. The event attracted 5,000 people and featured performances by the Grateful Dead, Odetta and Captain Beefheart. Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey were said to have also been in attendance.
The Posters from the Be-In by Stanley Mouse and Anton Kelley (signed by many of the participants)
An interview with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia for the mini-series "The History of Rock 'N' Rolll". I believe this was from Volume 6. This is the unedited interview. A brief tour of the GD Vault with Dick Latvala is an added bonus at the end of the interview.
Jerry speaks about the counter culture, his journey through music and his career with The Grateful Dead. Witty, reflective and exteremly profound.
Two gunfighters separate and experience surreal visions on their journey through the mythical American Wild West.
The film is loosely based on Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel Siddhartha, and 1930 novel Narcissus and Goldmund (wherein two young friends take divergent paths in life, to reunite and share similar perspectives); surrealistically adapted as a musical Western. Lead writer Joe Massot said his inspiration came from when he joined the Beatles in India, when they were studying Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in early 1968. Massot said he arrived to find only George Harrison and John Lennon there, after their bandmates had left the course early, and the two Beatles "locked into some sort of meditation duel ... to see who was the stronger character".
Massot initially asked Harrison to provide the film's soundtrack, following his work on Wonderwall, which Massot directed. According to Levon Helm of The Band, Harrison discussed making Zachariah as an Apple Films project starring Bob Dylan and The Band, in late 1968. The following April, Rolling Stone announced that Cream's drummer Ginger Baker and The Band were to be major players in the film.
This film was billed as "The first electric Western". It features appearances and music supplied by rock bands from the 1970s, including the James Gang, New York Rock & Roll Ensemble, White Lightning and Country Joe and the Fish as "The Cracker Gang". Fiddler Doug Kershaw has a musical cameo as does Elvin Jones as a gunslinging drummer named Job Cain.
Bausch’s powerfully dramatic, dreamlike work, which has come to define the genre of tanztheater, or dance theater, over the last 40 years.
But when Bausch created “Bluebeard,” there was no concept of tanztheater. This mixture of dance, theater, fragmented music and patchworked scenes was new and a turning point in her career — a departure from straightforwardly expressive dance pieces, like “The Rite of Spring,” which she had created after taking over the Wuppertal company in 1973.
When it was first presented “Bluebeard” astonished and angered many spectators, who were disturbed by Bausch’s stop-and-start use of the score and her relentless depiction of male-female violence. Audiences screamed abuse at the dancers and slammed the doors of the theater as they departed in droves.
The Naked Civil Servant is a 1975 made-for-television biographical comedy-drama film directed by Jack Gold and produced by Verity Lambert. It was adapted for film by Philip Mackie, based on Quentin Crisp's 1968 book of the same name. The movie stars John Hurt, Patricia Hodge and John Rhys-Davies. It was originally broadcast on 17 December 1975 on the British channel ITV. In 1976, it was shown on the US channel WOR and later PBS when Thames Television and WOR-TV exchanged programming for one week. For his performance, Hurt won the BAFTA for Best Actor in 1976 and the production also won the 1976 Prix Italia. The title of the book and the film (naked civil servant), is derived from his time working as a nude model in a government-funded art school.
"Power prefers darkness. If it is exposed to light, it erodes."
Here's a transcription of a key part of his replies to the questions around how an anarchist society work, and how to communicate anarchist ideas. There are several comment threads below that present interpretations that are quite different than what he actually said here. He doesn't describe a final, utopian, end-state, and admits that he doesn't know what that would look like, but recognizes the on-going human tendency to question, challenge and dismantle illegitimate 'structures of authority, domination and hierarchy.' Some may disagree that this describes their own understanding of anarchism, but it seems to represent Chomsky's sense of the term.
"It's not a specific set of doctrines but a tendency in human thought and action which tries to detect and discover structures of authority, domination and hierarchy and challenge them - ask them to demonstrate their legitimacy, recognizing that they are not self-justifying. They have a burden of justification. That’s true all across the spectrum of human life, from patriarchal families to imperial systems, and everything in between. Wherever you find a structure of domination, hierarchy, someone giving orders, someone taking them, you have to ask if that’s legitimate. You cannot assume and you shouldn’t assume that it’s legitimate because it’s been like that. That’s not a justification. You have to ask, “is it legitimate?“ When you do, you generally find that it can’t be justified. There are cases where you could make up a justification, but try it. It’s pretty hard. Most of the time the justification is around the way power is distributed, but that’s not a justification. Anarchism is the effort to discover such systems, and when they can’t justify themselves, to dismantle them and to move towards greater freedom, justice, opportunity, individual creativity, cooperative activity, and so on. It’s just a tendency in history and I don’t think it’s hard to communicate to people. I think they take it for granted if it’s brought to their attention. You see it.
Take for example: one of the major achievements of the last 50 years in many societies - in the United States and in many others - has been the expansion of women’s rights. It’s changed enormously. How did it happen? Well, as soon as the structures of oppression were identified, they kind of disappeared. Not instantly of course. There’s still plenty of resistance. It’s a general truth that power prefers darkness. If it’s exposed to the light it erodes. This happens all through history.
Where does this lead? What will the final goal be? I don’t think anyone is smart enough to say that, to see what that will be. This is a constant, ongoing effort to expand the realm of justice, freedom, independence, breakdown of authority and so on, and I don’t see that it should have any limits."
"Hopefully, it would be like your describe it, but I still have a little doubt. And...um...isn't it too demanding, you know? It's easier to be led by authority. I'm, myself, sort of an activist, and sometimes I regret it...uh...all the time. It's terribly time-consuming, uh, it costs me a lot of energy, the outcome is very uncertain, it's not very rewarding, not all the time. It's easier to be led by authorities. So, isn't the idea...too much demanding?"
"That's basically an argument for slavery." - Chomsky
