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The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.
A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).
H(o)me(o)pa®t(h)y is a home entertainment healing system based on Homoeopathic medicine which one can at least to a certain extent autonomously manage as first aid tool, if you are skilled enough. As an allusion to David Cronenberg's Videodrome where the president of a trashy TV channel, Max Renn is desperate for new programming to attract viewers by establishing a new TV show dedicated to torture and punishment, H(o)me(o)pa®t(h)y instead is based on joy and healing. But will there be an overdose of globules? Insert 1 globules and start your solo home party! Cure yourself on so many occasions and relive a full relief. Your own H(o)me(o)pa®t(h)y kit is now available. Don't worry, be homoeopathic!
IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.
Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.
A kinetic prayer and structuralist intervention. Shot entirely on an iPhone 11 in a desolate Midwest laundromat, 108 spin documents the mechanics of impermanence. The film shifts from heavy turbulence to suspended repetition—not as a path to completion, but as a study of the loop itself. Featuring a layered soundscape, the work asks the viewer to stare into the rotation until the noise becomes a mantra.
A continuously running installation of two video monitors on pedestals, overlooked by a green Kit-Cat clock. A 9" and a 13" CRT display two different video collages of footage from the Emerald Square Mall and the strike during its 1989 construction with remixed interferences of Channel J's Emerald City TV (1976-1979): the self-proclaimed "world’s first television show for gay men and women", Huge Video's Heat in the Night (1989), Genet's Un Chant D'Amour (1950), various cigarette commercials, The Wizard of Oz (1939), and a performance of a mylar-clad entity wrapping up one of the televisions in videotape.
After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.
In Junior War, a throng of highschoolers congregate at night for a party in the woods sometime in the year 2000. A band plays, the kids get drunk, the boys and girls tepidly flirt, and groups deploy into cars for the purpose of destroying mailboxes, tee-peeing houses, breaking lawn ornaments, and sparring with the police. The film is composed entirely of footage Trecartin took during his senior year of high school in exurban Ohio; as such, it baits the viewer with genealogical significance.
In the present work, the artists appears lying on his back, his eyes mostly closed, dreamingly listening to a walkman that plays, a recording of 'The Best of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground'. The artist can hear the music through his earphones, but as viewers we are only privy to the sound of his voice that whispers the melody. As we listen to the hypnotic interpretion of the familiar songs - as emblematic for pop music history as 'Psycho' is for film - we are forced to mentally 'reconstruct' the remaining orchestration, instrumentation and vocals. We must attempt to reassemble something we already know to be a fact by negotiating the sticky mess of interpretation, meaning, and memory.
One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles.
This live show features the energetic analysis of television network news by Brian Winston. Winston looks at the news as a unique institution, governed by its own conventions and constraints.
How does the "cultured" gorilla, i.e. Koko, come to represent universal man? Author and cultural critic Donna Haraway untangles the web of meanings, tracing what gets to count as nature, for whom and when, and how much it costs to produce nature at a particular moment in history for a particular group of people.
The Machine That Killed Bad People is about the cultural and political history of the Philippines leading up to the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. It also addresses the role of electronic media in the struggle for power, and more broadly, American intervention in the Third World. Using a structure that emulates the way television news programs construct meaning through fragmentation, the tape interweaves clips of Filipino activists and reporters, a fictional television anchorwoman and correspondent, commentary by independent filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, Fagin's off-camera voice and script, and anonymous excerpts from commercial television.
In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).
The quixotic journey of Nam June Paik, one of the most famous Asian artists of the 20th century, who revolutionized the use of technology as an artistic canvas and prophesied both the fascist tendencies and intercultural understanding that would arise from the interconnected metaverse of today's world.
From his photo-text canvases in the 1960s to his video works in the 1970s to his installations in the 1980s, John Baldessari’s (b.1931) varied work has been seminal in the field of conceptual art. Integrating semiology and mass media imagery, he employed such strategies as appropriation, deconstruction, decontextualization, sequentiality, and text/image juxtaposition. With an ironic wit, Baldessari's work considers the gathering, sorting, and reorganizing of information. “Something that is part of my personality is seeing the world slightly askew. It’s a perceptual stance. The real world is absurd sometimes, so I don’t make a conscious attempt, but because I come at it in a certain way, it seems really strange,” Baldessari says in this interview with Nancy Bowen. A historical interview originally recorded in 1979 and re-edited in 2003 with support from the Lyn Blumenthal Memorial Fund.
A film exploration of the work and aesthetic concepts of Yayoi Kusama, painter, sculptor, and environmentalist, conceived in terms of an intense emotional experience with metaphysical overtones, an extension of my ultimate interest in a total fusion of the arts in a spirit of mutual collaboration. —Jud Yalkut
Experimental video art compiled from video taken on an LG Env3 flip phone circa 2009-2010
For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By presenting a record of this dramatic action alongside footage of its reenactment, Alÿs blurs the boundaries between documentation and fiction. Questioning the concept of authenticity, this work demonstrates “how media can distort and dramatize the immediate reality of a moment,” the artist has said. Gallery label from Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception, May 8–August 1, 2011.
A look at the work of two stand-up comics, Jerry Seinfeld and a lesser-known newcomer, detailing the effort and frustration behind putting together a successful act and career while living a life on the road.
Richard Pryor's stand-up act includes his frank discussion about his freebasing addiction, as well as the infamous night on June 9, 1980 that he caught on fire.
Stand-up comedian Kevin Hart talks about his family, travel and a year full of reckless behavior in front of a live sold-out crowd in London.
The comedic stylings of four sort-of famous funnymen are brought to the big screen courtesy of this 2002 documentary.
Jerry Seinfeld returns to the club that gave him his start in the 1970s, mixing iconic jokes with stories from his childhood and early days in comedy.
Fresh off the heels of appearing in movies like Superhero Movie and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, fast-talking comedian Kevin Hart stars in his second live stand-up performance in Cleveland, Ohio, where he makes fun of everything and everybody - especially himself.
An inspiring, triumphant and wickedly funny portrait of one of comedy’s most enigmatic and important figures, CALL ME LUCKY tells the story of Barry Crimmins, a beer-swilling, politically outspoken and whip-smart comic whose efforts in the 70s and 80s fostered the talents of the next generation of standup comedians. But beneath Crimmins’ gruff, hard-drinking, curmudgeonly persona lay an undercurrent of rage stemming from his long-suppressed and horrific abuse as a child – a rage that eventually found its way out of the comedy clubs and television shows and into the political arena.
A behind-the-scenes mockumentary of Tropic Thunder.
The first entry in the CKY series of skateboarding programs and extreme stunts, directed by Bam Margera and featuring Margera, Brandon DiCamillo, Ryan Dunn, Chris Raab and Rake Yohn.
What does it mean to be a successful comedian? How far can the boundaries of taste be pushed to get a laugh? Four top comics, Ricky Gervais, Louis C.K., Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, discuss and debate their craft.
Comedian Kevin Hart performs in front of a crowd of 50,000 people at Philadelphia's outdoor venue, Lincoln Financial Field.
Patton Oswalt, despite a personal tragedy, produces his best standup yet. Focusing on the tribulations of the Trump era and life after the loss of a loved one, Oswalt continues his journey to contribute joy to the world.
Kevin Hart serves up laughs and brick oven pizza from the comfort of his home, and dishes on male group chats, sex after 40 and life with COVID-19.
Time to hassle the Hoff at the rudest, raunchiest television event of the year--The Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff. From running in slo-mo on the beach to inspiring Germany with the power of cheesy pop--it's almost too easy.
In the world of stand-up comedy in South Africa, Trevor Noah uses his childhood experiences in a biracial family during apartheid to prepare for his first one-man show.
In this special live event, giants of stand-up come together to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Russell Simmons's groundbreaking "Def Comedy Jam."
The Comedians of Comedy is an occasional stand-up comedy tour featuring Patton Oswalt, Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn and Maria Bamford that was documented in a 2005 film and 2005 Comedy Central television series of the same name, both directed by Michael Blieden.
An exposé of comic proportions that only Chris Rock could pull off, GOOD HAIR visits beauty salons and hairstyling battles, scientific laboratories and Indian temples to explore the way hairstyles impact the activities, pocketbooks, sexual relationships, and self-esteem of the black community.
You will see Travis Pastrana and the whole Nitro Circus crew perform some of the most ridiculous, awe-inspiring, and simply insane stunts ever caught on camera. Coming to you in three dimensional glory, it will feel like you are there sitting shotgun with the crew.
Declared to be the funniest Robin Williams video made, this is a don't-miss comedy.