On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono’s art, designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art, in New York. On the same day an unusual group of John’s and Yoko’s friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Krasner, and many others, gathered to celebrate John’s birthday. This film is a visual and audio record of that event.

MUBI wrote:
On October 9th, 1972, half of the music world gathered in Syracuse, N.Y. to celebrate the opening of the John Lennon/Yoko Ono Fluxus show. This film shows how on the same day, a smaller group gathered in a local hotel room to celebrate John Lennon’s birthday.

512MB | 23m 16s | 770×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F9E8072B93C1AD5/Happy.Birthday.to.John.1997.576p.BluRay.AAC.2.0.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English,French,German,Chinese,Korean,Lithuanian

The post Jonas Mekas – Happy Birthday to John (1997) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

One of the most radical and influential works of experimental television produced by the famous couple of the late 60s, Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

In November 1968 work began on one of one of John & Yoko’s most ambitious film ventures, a 75-minute mini-feature called Rape. It starred Eva Majlata, a 21 year old Hungarian actress who couldn’t speak English. She cannot escape the prying attentions of the camera which follows her around the streets of London, through a park, allowing her no privacy and almost causing her to walk into the path of a truck. She attempts to escape in a taxi, but is still followed. She is eventually cornered in an apartment from which she apparently cannot escape and her tearful pleas to the camera remain ignored. Rape was shot when John and Yoko were both at Great Charlotte Street Hospital following Yoko’s miscarriage. The cameraman was Nick Knowland, who worked on most of John and Yoko’s productions.

The film received its world premiere on Austrian Television on 31st March 1969. That year it was also shown at the Montreux Television Festival and the Mannheim Film Festival. A day after the Austrian TV broadcast John and Yoko held a press conference in Vienna. John commented: “We are showing how all of us are exposed and under pressure in our contemporary world. This isn’t just about the Beatles. What is happening to this girl on the screen is happening in Biafra, Vietnam, everywhere.” The theme of the relentless, clinical camera lens, ‘raping’ the privacy of individuals or groups for the entertainment of the viewing public intrigued critic Willie Frischauer, who wrote in the Evening Standard; “This film does for the age of television what Franz Kafka’s The Trial did for the age of totalitarianism.”

1.40GB | 640×480 | mpg

https://nitro.download/view/0ABA498DDB857B3/YOKO_ONO_RAPE.mp4
https://nitro.download/view/EFA108F35E4E535/Rape.1969.Eng.srt

Language:English, Hungarian
Subtitles:English

The post Yoko Ono & John Lennon – Rape (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

The same year the The Beatles? second film, HELP!, premiered,
John Lennon?s future soul mate, avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, made her
acting debut in the twisted sickie SATAN’S BED. Ono, in a kimono, plays
the Japanese bride-to-be of a drug smuggling immigration agent who
wants to abandon crime crime for life with Yoko. But Lou, a small-time
drug dealer, doesn’t want to lose his main supplier so he cancels the
wedding by kidnapping Ono. And when he also hires three psychos –
Snake, Dip, and Angel – to rough her up, they create a mini-crimewave
that culminates in a wild attack upon… the wrong woman. Oy. So join
Yoko for a typical day in Sin City that starts when you climb under the
sheets of SATAN?S BED!

Comments:
Exploitation at its finest, This amazing time-capsule is a must-see primer for psychotronic movie fans. Like many other 60s grindhouse efforts, it outrageously combines more serious footage from an unreleased pic with unrelated and mismatching exploitation fare. In this case, the exploitation is provided by the incomparable Findlays (of “Flesh” trilogy fame), whose shadowy lit rape-fantasy shenanigans provide a stunning example of the “roughie” genre, mixed precariously with j.d. and lesbian-leather elements. Add to this the bizarre celebrity angle (a young Yoko Ono, threatening to, but thankfully never appearing in the nude), the lack-of-live sound and filmed-in-someone’s backyard technique common to such features, and you have an absolute compendium of 60s sleaze stylings. The naked-girl-tied-to-a-pool-table opening itself is worth the price of the video, not to mention the half-naked girls hiding in trees.

797MB | 1h 12m | 576×432 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/0E187BFBC2A1AA8/Satan’s_Bed_(1965)kg.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Marshall Smith – Satan’s Bed (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

It’s 1969 and headlines blare war and civil unrest while John Lennon and Yoko Ono -rock ‘n’ roll’s most eccentric couple- are in love. They have just gotten married,they are happy to be together and they see that the world needs some changew. They announce their mission for peace and they invite the rest of the world to do the same as they do: they are lying on their bed. But people call them silly and naive they see clowns instead of true believers.
John and Yoko just do not care…

Rare footage from that amazing time, including footage from John and Yoko’s wedding, the infamous bedside confrontation between John and conservative cartoonist Al Capp, Lennon debating media expert Marshall McLuhan, and meeting Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Almost 30 years have passed since Lennon was shot dead in Manhattan, thos documentary seems more contemporary than any other.

https://nitro.download/view/88D24E110850A63/John_and_Yoko_s_yaer_of_peace.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Paul McGrath – John & Yoko’s Year of Peace (2000) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
What a perfect film…..short and simple, Ono takes a camera and a boom mike onto a hot air balloon, kicks the rope, and starts the camera and lets us watch as it goes above the clouds for a 17 minute shot. Key things to notice: A roll of 16mm film films only 14 minutes yet the film runs for 17, meaning somewhere in the clouds Ono had another camera loaded and started when the first one ran out, yet somehow the splice is not noticeable and there weren’t any computers at the time to fix this sort of thing…..all i can say is optical printing tricks at its best. The last shot, as the balloon rises above the clouds, the wind silences, and the sun becomes visible, is alone worth checking out this timeless classic of experimental film.

https://nitro.download/view/3C0E96FA3200116/Ono,_Yoko_-_1970_-_Apotheosis.mpg

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Apotheosis (1970) first appeared on Cinema of the World.