Performance

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Instrument is a documentary film directed by Jem Cohen about the band Fugazi. Cohen’s relationship with band member Ian MacKaye extends back to the 1970s when the two met in high school in Washington, D.C.. The film takes its title from the Fugazi song of the same name, from their 1993 album, In on the Kill Taker.
Editing of the film was done by both Cohen and the members of the band over the course of five years. It was shot from 1987 through 1998 on super 8, 16mm and video and is composed mainly of footage of concerts, interviews with the band members, practices, tours and time spent in the studio recording their 1995 album, Red Medicine.
The film also includes portraits of fans as well as interviews with them at various Fugazi shows around the United States throughout the years.Read More »

Featuring Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, Rev. Pearly Brown, Bukka White

Imagine you have stumbled into a juke joint where the mentor of Robert Johnson, Son House, and the idol of the Rolling Stones, Howlin’ Wolf, dis one another. Picture a place where Wolf taunts Bukka White while the robust Parchman Farm alumnus spins his proto-funk dance grooves and the spectral skip James weaves his haunting “Devil Got My Woman.” It’s an archetypal blues “crossroads” where legends of the 1920s Delta and 1950s Chicago share the same musical space, suspended out of time in a super-real present, a non-specific blues time. Read More »

Shuji Terayama and J.A.Seazer’s phantasmagoric folk-psych-symph-prog-rock opera. Historical Tenjo Sajiki performance from 1978. A brief synopsis (for a somewhat different version of the play) is given below. Much of the symbolism of Shintokumaru is shared with Terayama’s earlier masterpiece motion picture Pastoral: to die in the country (also known as Pastoral hide-and-seek).Read More »

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In 1987, Woody Allen was at the height of his fame and adulation: he had just made one of his most popular and acclaimed films, Hannah and Her Sisters, and his relationship with Mia Farrow was the stuff of very carefully crafted legend. Promoting his new film, September, he was profiled for 60 Minutes talking about his work, his life, Farrow, and the upcoming birth of their first child. Like all 60 Minutes profiles, this one lasted about 20 minutes on air.Read More »

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Soderbergh has brought us SPALDING GRAY’S FINAL MONOLOGUE with the film, “And Everything Is Going Fine”. He compiles what is essentially a final autobiographical testament of Gray’s life using rare footage of his TV interviews, recordings of his theatrical monologues, and even some footage taken personally by Gray with his family members. A simple mash-up of such footage gives Gray the oppourtunity to bring us one final monologue- from the grave- speaking about himself, just as he loved to do…for our pleasure, and his sanity!!! He truly was the best monologist, one-man-show and storyteller to ever grace the stage. Read More »

About the film
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In “The Soul of A Man,” director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of ’20s and ’30s events – shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James “Blood” Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.Read More »

Prisoners of Beckett is the meeting of two worlds that never usually converge.

One is comprised of poetry and freedom, the other silence and obscurity.

It’s a true story, which begins in a high security prison in Sweden, where a young actor, Jan Jonson, decides to stage “Waiting for Godot” with a cast of five prisoners.

Their performances turn out to be so unique and genuine that Beckett grants them the right to perform his play and follows the enterprise from his Parisian retreat.Read More »

LESSON BY PIERRE BOULEZ (A) + SUR INCISES (concert) (2000)
Directed By Andy Sommer
With warmth, modesty and infectious enthusiasm, Boulez explains the hidden architecture of his most recent work, Sur Incises, to a non-specialized young audience. On a number of occasions, Pierre Boulez has shown that he can come up with the right words and gestures to throw a light on complex musical scores. Here he demonstrates his teaching talents in talking about his work as a composer: after conducting the nine soloists of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, who follow him with visible pleasure through the mysteries of a spectacular score, he offers a witty exposition of the musical movements that make up its construction.Read More »

A fantasy about a woman’s attempts to exorcise the influence of her sexually domineering father.

“What began as a documentary on sculptress Niki de St. Phalle finished up as a fantasy about a woman’s attempts to exorcise the influence of her sexually domineering father. It provides an excuse for a whole ragbag of Freudian neuroses, six-foot phalluses in coffins, nubile girls in nun’s habits stripping in front of altars, masturbation, some obvious jokes, pretty photography, abysmal acting, and a commentary that reads and sounds like a Home Service children’s story for adults” (Chris Petit, Time Out)Read More »