He came from outer space to save the human race!

Looks like an alien, sings like a diva – Klaus Nomi was one of 1980’s most profoundly bizarre appearances. He was a cult figure in the New Wave Underground scene who sang pop music like opera and brought opera to club audiences. He was a performer with a “look” so strong, that his first audiences went wild before he even opened his mouth. On the verge of international fame as a singer, he instead became one of the first prominent artists to die of AIDS. But the reaction Klaus Nomi provoked was so strong, that he is still unforgettable, even 20 years after his death.

Nomi constructed his own myth out of elements so completely “wrong”, yet so deliberate, that it all seemed oddly possible. He was an alien amongst the outcasts, a tortured soul who also radiated optimism at a time when optimism was “officially” out of fashion. He was as much a genuine talent as he was the engine of his own destruction. His appeal is not easy to explain in words. He has to be seen – and heard – to be believed.

It is hard to limit this film to being called a documentary. It is rather a non-fiction film, maybe even an oral history. But it’s also visual, partly because Nomi himself was so visual, someone who’s main concern was putting forth an image of himself in everything he did – literally illustrated by the photos, films, videos and artworks that go with it.

What unifies the various stylistic elements is Klaus Nomi himself, not only the all pervasive image he put out, but more importantly, his effect on others. It’s a story that grows out of a group of people who influenced him, loved him, felt pity for him or betrayed by him, yet above all, were inspired by him.

The Nomi Song is a story of love of music and love of performing at a time when it seemed as though everyone was struck by a sense of urgency to make something – anything – simply because “somewhere in the great cosmic plan we all knew that we only had a finite amount of time together and we had to make the most of it.”

693MB | 1:35:57 | 512 x 272 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/A5D6E011F185952/The_Nomi_Song.avi

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Andrew Horn – The Nomi Song (2004) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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Sara Driver’s first feature–a luminous, oddball comic fantasy about ancient Chinese curses and Xerox machines, set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and its immediate environs–may well be the most visually ravishing American independent film of its year (1986). Set in an irrational, poetic universe that bears a certain relationship to Jacques Rivette’s Duelle, this dreamy intrigue breaks a cardinal rule of fantasy by striking off in a number of directions: an executive barks in the street, a young Frenchwoman (Ann Magnuson) loses her hair, and machines in a copy shop start to purr and wheeze on their own initiative.The moods that are established are delicate, and not everyone will be able to go with them, but Driver, the producer of Stranger Than Paradise, sustains them with beauty and eccentric charm. Suzanne Fletcher, who also starred in Driver’s previous 50-minute You Are Not I, makes a compelling (if unconventional) heroine, and Lorenzo Mans’s screwball dialogue develops some engaging hallucinatory riffs.

While we can readily speak about the surrealist “worlds” of a Buñuel, a Lynch, or even an Akerman (at least if we think of Belgian surrealism), the three films of Driver, even if we can easily call them all surrealist as well as “Driveresque,” clearly take place in three distinctly different worlds. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t various stylistic, thematic, and temperamental connections between them going well beyond the recurrence of various collaborators. Think of the dense and hyperactive soundtracks of all three, the downscale milieus, the trancelike rhythms, the layered relation of distant past to present (bringing to mind the fact that Driver spent her junior year in college abroad, studying archeology in Athens), the depictions of bullying power-mongers and solitary children, the dreamy passivity of seemingly hapless protagonists and the prominent attention given to their dreams, and chaotic eruptions of various kinds occurring in the midst of their compulsive routines, leading to the major plot developments in all three cases.
Perhaps an even more singular common trait in You Are Not I (1982), Sleepwalk (1986), and When Pigs Fly (1993) is the simultaneous urge to follow characters conceived in unabashed fantasy terms … while charting their various interrelations with the world and each other with a great deal of plausibility. Put another way, she knows how to get the poetic and the prosaic, the supernatural and the mundane, to rub shoulders with one another.
…You Are Not I …registers unapologetically like an art film, and so, in a very different way, does Sleepwalk (this time working closer to Jacques Rivette than to a Georges Franju, integrating choreography rather than literary narration into the mise en scène).
… even though Sleepwalk is set in its entirety in the neighborhood of lower Manhattan where Driver lives, the film belongs more to the free-wheeling trappings of what the French call “fantastique”–which includes surrealism without being limited to it–than to any particular national or ethnic tradition. Could this be because the Bowery is itself a cultural melting pot, like much of New York? Significantly, the Chinese text being translated by the heroine derives from four separate fairy tales: one Chinese, one African, one by the Brothers Grimm, and one made up by Driver herself.

1.14GB | 1h 14mn | 851×460 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D7D74182B6843F4/Sara_Driver_-_(1986)_Sleepwalk.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Sara Driver – Sleepwalk (1986) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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Directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, BLANK CITY captures the idiosyncratic, explosive energy of the “No Wave Cinema” and “Cinema of Transgression” movements. Stark and provocative, the films drew name and inspiration from the French New Wave, as well as Film Noir, and the works of Andy Warhol and John Waters. Filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, Eric Mitchell, Beth B, Charlie Ahearn, Lizzie Borden and Amos Poe showcased the city’s vibrant grit, and bore witness to the rising East Village art and rock scenes and the birth of hip hop. Short, long, color or black-and-white, their stripped-down films portrayed themes of alienation and dissonance with a raw and genuine spirit, at times with deadpan humor or blurring lines between fiction and reality. From Amos Poe’s enigmatic The FOREIGNER to James Nares’ comedic ROME 78 to Beth B & Scott B’s political BLACK BOX — the No Wave Movement was as varied as it was lively.

Time Out calls BLANK CITY a “who’s who primer” for the last 30 years of Downtown culture. Danhier crafts an oral history of No Wave Cinema and the Cinema of Transgression through compelling interviews with the luminaries who began it all. Featured players include acclaimed directors Jim Jarmusch and John Waters, actor-writer-director triple threat Steve Buscemi, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Hip Hop legend Fab 5 Freddy, and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. Fittingly, the punk rock that galvanized the scene is now the soundtrack to BLANK CITY: Patti Smith, Television, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, The Contortions, The Bush Tetras, and Sonic Youth.

1.33GB | 1:35:30 | 704×384 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/6DD36BF633F4EEB/Blank_City.avi
https://nitro.download/view/8CC9391BA639506/Celine_Danhier_interview.avi
https://nitro.download/view/CC449F7A758AC1E/trailer.avi

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https://rapidgator.net/file/450dbd809cbd3f17c4e45a5f685c3d2b/Celine_Danhier_interview.avi
https://rapidgator.net/file/d5fbf86a9a5610aad5ef872de16cdb84/trailer.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:none

The post Celine Danhier – Blank City (2010) first appeared on Cinema of the World.