The Birthday Party (live) - April 6th, 1983, First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN

A MESSAGE FROM THE MANAGEMENT: An intense end to a year that has plummeted the depths in so many ways. The raw visceral emotion of The Birthday Party will probably be the last entry on this blog for 2016. Best to everyone for 2017, let's hope it is a year that lifts us all HIIIIGHER!!!

Never Mind The Baubles - Xmas '77 With The Sex Pistols

Julien Temple presents a unique insight into the tradition and transgression of Christmas. Featuring interviews and 70s archive, framing the Sex Pistols' last UK concert with Sid Vicious, for the children of striking firemen in Huddersfield on Christmas Day 1977.

Emily Witt with Dr. Pepper Schwartz ‘Future Sex’

In conversation with University of Washington Professor of Sociology and relationship expert Dr. Pepper Schwartz, Emily Witt discusses her experience researching and writing the book Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love, about the complexities of romance, sex, and intimacy in the digital age.

Future Sex is an important work not as a futurist project, but as evidence of the contemporary changing roles of sexuality and (sub)socially sanctioned relationships. Witt connects these roles to the ubiquity of digital media and access to communities, representations and spaces of individual freedom, even if these are often pursued and participated in under paradigms of marketing, consumption, Information Technology, Power and more general definitions of emerging bourgeois self-identity.

Le Testament d'Orphée "Testament of Orpheus" (1960)

Testament of Orpheus (French: Le testament d'Orphée) is a 1960 film directed by and starring Jean Cocteau. It is considered the final part of the Orphic Trilogy, following The Blood of a Poet (1930) and Orphée (1950). In the cast are Charles Aznavour, Lucia Bosé, María Casares, Nicole Courcel, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Daniel Gélin, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Serge Lifar, Jean Marais, François Périer and Françoise Sagan.

It also includes cameo appearances by Pablo Picasso and Yul Brynner. The film is in black-and-white, with just a few seconds of color film spliced in.

The Lost World of Tibet, BBC

A BBC documentary film produced in conjunction with the British Film Institute. The 90-minute film was broadcast on BBC Two in November 2006. The film is presented by Dan Cruickshank and features footage shot in Tibet prior to the 1950s with commentary from Tenzin Gyatso, the present 14th Dalai Lama, and other people featured. This is one of a number of BFI television series featuring footage from the BFI National Archive and produced in partnership with the BBC.

In The Mood for Love (Chinese: 花樣年華)

Wong Kar-wai is a genius. The scenes flow and it feels like one is breathing in and then breathing out as they change. He seems to sweep us up in a moving painting that is framed by the music. Characters melt into walls and then appear again. All the while they swim in sensuality and passion. Incredible film. Just incredible.

Hong Kong, 1962. The city is tranquil and courteous, but divided between indigenous Cantonese Chinese and immigrants from mainland China. Through coincidence, Chow Mo-wan, a journalist, moves into an apartment building occupied mainly by Shanghainese at the same time as Su Li-zhen, a secretary, while their spouses are away. When Chow finds out their respective spouses are having an affair, the two of them grow closer as they commiserate, finding more and more excuses to spend time with each other.

Click on the image above to watch the entire film.

Heaven and Earth Magic (1962) Full Film

This is a animation film by Harry Everett Smith (May 29, 1923 in Portland, Oregon – November 27, 1991 in New York City). Originally released in 1957, it was re-edited several times and the final version was released in 1962. The first part depicts the heroine's toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel and Montreal. The second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Müller on the day Edward VII dedicated the Great Sewer of London.Re-edited several times between 1957 and 1962. Sixteen millimeter, black & white, mono, initially six hours, later versions of two hours and 67 min. Extended version of Smith's No. 8. Cutout animation culled from 19th-century catalogs meant to be shown using custom-made projectors fit out with color filters (gels, wheels, etc.) and masking hand-painted glass slides to alter the projected image. Jonas Mekas gave the film—which is often regarded as Smith's major work—its title in 1964–65.

Countryman (1982)

An action/adventure film directed by Dickie Jobson. It tells the story of a Jamaican fisherman whose solitude is shattered when he rescues two Americans from the wreckage of a plane crash. The fisherman, called Countryman, is hurled into a political plot by the dangerous Colonel Sinclair. Countryman uses his knowledge of the terrain and his innate combat skills to survive.

The film was shot in Jamaica and featured a reggae soundtrack performed by Lee "Scratch" Perry, Bob Marley & the Wailers, Steel Pulse, Dennis Brown, Aswad, Toots & The Maytals & Rico Rodriguez. It was written by Jobson and produced by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell and has become a cult classic.

The difference between hearing and listening | Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016)

Sounds carry intelligence. If you are too narrow in your awareness of sounds, you are likely to be disconnected from your environment. Ears do not listen to sounds; the brain does. Listening is a lifetime practice that depends on accumulated experiences with sound; it can be focused to detail or open to the entire field of sound. Octogenarian composer and sound art pioneer Pauline Oliveros describes the sound experiment that led her to found an institute related to Deep Listening, and develop it as a theory relevant to music, psychology, and our collective quality of life.

Pauline Oliveros died yesterday, aged 84.

Inside the Making of Dr. Strangelove (2000)

"By the late 1950s Stanley Kubrick had become deeply concerned about the possibility of nuclear annihilation".