New Arrivals
Sonic territories
'Sonic Territories is 12 works for 12 distinct acoustic spaces. Composer -performer Jonas Braasch utilizes soprano saxophone, field recordings, and electronic processing. Sonic Territories investigates the creative potential that various acoustic environments can unleash. Opposed to the current ideal of quiet recording studios that do not distract the performer from inner thoughts, I was looking for spaces that inspire and mess around with me, by influencing and guiding my performance. A n…
4 American composers
Produced by Revel Guest. Directed by Peter Greenaway. New York, N.Y.: Mystic Fire Video, 1991. Originally produced by Transatlantic Films in 1985. Vol. 1: John Cage. Vol. 2: Philip Glass. Vol. 3: Meredith Monk. Vol. 4: Robert Ashley. 'Based on London performances under the aegis of the New York/Almeida Festival, this set of four one-hour documentaries, originally produced in 1983, introduced these avant-garde composers and their music to general audiences. Compared to Meredith Monk and Rob…
Experimental Films (1943-1959)
"From the early 1940's until her death in 1961, Maya Deren evoked and exemplified the American avant-garde movement virtually by herself. Her first film, Meshes Of The Afternoon, set the tone for the decade and linked the movement to the older European avant-garde films of Cocteau and Bunuel". -- Cecil Starr, The New York Times. "Intensely personal, symbolic and surreal films that reveal her deepest, darkest fantasies. She's Fellini and Bergman wrapped in one gloriously possessed body. Watching …
Trimpin: The Sound Of Invention
Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is an amusing exploration of the sonic world of an eccentric creative genius. Artist/inventor/engineer/composer Trimpin shuns the hype and hyperbole of the commercial art world -- yet his freewheeling sculptures and outrageous musical experiments are cherished by museums all over the planet. Filmed over two years, this documentary feature follows the artist/inventor as he designs a 60-foot tower of more than 500 automatic electric guitars; builds an ensembl…
An Evening Of Dance Constructions
In the spring of 1961 Simone Forti presented a program titled Five Dance Constructions and Some Other Things in a concert series organized by her friend, composer La Monte Young, at the New York loft studio of Yoko Ono. These radically new dances created circumstances for the performers' direct, non-stylistic actions. Each of the pieces was performed in a different place in the loft, with the audience moving from location to location to view them. Some of the pieces required elementary structure…
Trash Humpers
In the Summer of 2010, the underground trend of 'trash-humping' JUMPED the NASHVILLE CITY LIMITS as the film Trash Humpers spread across the nation, screening in movie theaters, galleries, bars and grills and anyplace, really, indoors or out, that could draw a crowd to see the thing. Filmmaker Harmony Korine often accompanied the film, standing around and answering questions when he wasn't doing something else. It was something to see, but the only problem was, all you could do once you'd …
Rewriter
2009 release. Subtitled: Early (conceptual) photographs, (expanded) films, (body) videos and (contextual) works, 1964-1975. "This video archive with accompanying essays traces internationally-renowned media and conceptual artist Peter Weibel's artistic developments from his beginnings through 1979. Weibel started out in 1964 as a visual poet, and was soon transferring the structures of the visual culture from the page to the screen, while still retaining the model of language as one of perceptio…
Soundtracks
Richmond-based artist and musician Stephen Vitiello transforms environments with the physicality of sound. His installations have been presented in New York's Whitney Museum, London's Museum 52, Paris' Cartier Foundation, and dozens of other sites around the globe. His music has been released by labels like 12k, New Albion, and Sub Rosa, and has included collaborations with Machinefabriek, Lawrence English, Pauline Oliveros, Scanner, and Anduin. This DVD, however, is his first commerciall…
A History Lesson Part 1: Punk Rock in Los Angeles in 1984
Videographer Dave Travis grew up in Los Angeles where his dad worked as a cameraman for NBC and CBS news as well as TV shows such as “Chips” and “Fantasy Island.” When he was 15 his dad handed down to him an old video camera and he began shooting punk rock shows in Los Angeles. He eventually became a freelance video editor, working on projects such as Black Flag’s “Slip It In” video as director and editor, “1991 the Year Punk Broke” featuring Sonic Youth and Nirvana as editor, the Kurt C…
Ström
Ström is a 45 minute piece for five loudspeakers, live-electronics and live-video, based on an openminded, artistic approach towards electricity. The piece is an attempt to transfer electric current via sound to the audience. The five speakers in the surround system struggle to take over the sonic stream like electro-magnets. Sine waves and noises rotate at breakneck speed around the listeners, try to charge them with static electricity, and, as an ultimate goal, even make them levitate. The vid…
Interstices
Through these interstices, when conscience — this present to one’s self — falls asleep; through this tiny little interval between two instants, something arises, something you had never thought of; The erring ways of thought; through the cracks thus created, we lend our voice to the characters that rule over an unknown existence. These sounds are too rich of all their possible existence…
Live in Japan
"Live In Japan is the first official domestic live Boris DVD to be unleashed! The power, majesty and unique psychedelia that only Boris can deliver is perfectly captured in this stunning visual document. Professionally filmed on the last show of the their worldwide Smile tour 2008. Light dazzled eyes, cut off the view a lot of smoke, and making loud noise can destroy the delicate environment can monitor everything that is Boris.” (label)
Disintegration loop 1.1
Disintegration Loop 1.1 consists of one static shot of lower Manhattan billowing smoke during the last hour of daylight on September 11th, 2001, set to the decaying pastoral tape loop Basinski had recorded in August, 2001. Shot from Basinski's roof in Williamsburg Brooklyn, this is an actual documentary of how he and his neighbors witnessed the end of that fateful day. It is a tragically beautiful cinema verite elegy dedicated to those who perished in the atrocities of September 11th, 2001
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This untitled work presents the first digital collection of visual work by the collaborative artists Sandra GIBSON and Luis RECODER, and what may be described as a 'site specific' musical composition by Olivia BLOCK. The footage documents a version of a performance piece that was later presented and experienced as an installation. An earlier, different incarnation of this work was premiered at the Kill Your Timid Notion festival located in Dundee, Scotland, in 2006.' SoSeditions. 'Special note m…
Synchronator
Synchronator is a video and audio research project by Gert-Jan Prins and Bas van Koolwijk in an attempt to use a combination of current digital and analogue means in order to make more use of the characteristic visual qualities of such techniques. Included are the 2006 Synchronator video and nine new tracks. Original recordings were produced with the Synchronator device for PAL video. Although especially adapted versions of all tracks are included for flatscreen monitor, to properly experience t…
Divine Horsemen - The Living Gods of Haiti
Maya Deren takes us on a journey into the fascinating world of the Voudoun religion, whose devotees commune with the cosmic powers through invocation, offerings, song and dance. In 1947 filmmaker she received the first Guggenheim Fellowship for creative work in motion pictures based on a proposal for a film on Haitian dance. On trips to Haiti in 1947, 1949 and 1954, she shot several thousand feet of "Voudoun " rituals. The Voudoun pantheon of deities, or loa, is witnessed as being living…
Kick that habit
Made in 1988/89 (16mm), a film around Voice Crack (Andy Guhl, Norbert Möslang + Knut Remond) in trheir daily work. A great film now on DVD!
Seven Easy Pieces
Belgrade-born Marina Abramovic, the subject of a recent New Yorker profile, is the first performance artist to be honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. To coincide with "The Artist is Present," Microcinema has released Seven Easy Pieces, a document of Abramovic's week-long residence at the Guggenheim in 2005, in which the artist spent seven hours a day performing one of five landmark performance art pieces by other artists and two of her own.Performance art is by nature ephem…
VISIONARY - Contemporary Short Documentaries and Experimental Fi
This compilation offers an opportunity for a substantial view of Austrian experimental and documentary film´s varied status quo. The works on this DVD range from subjective to rigidly structural documentary approaches, from abstract music videos and conceptual architectural studies to elaborate computer animations. The amount of formal innovation manifest in all these films and videos is outstanding."A number of the works have enjoyed success at international festivals, in this way helping to en…
135 Grand Street, New York, 1979
AMAZING!!! Dug out of storage after 30 years in a basement, Soul Jazz present '135 Grand Street New York 1979', Ericka Beckman's thrilling document of downtown New York during the infamous No Wave period of late 1970s. Over 60 minutes she features better known names like Rhys Chatham and the legendary Ut next to lesser known but no less intriguing acts like A Band, Chinese Puzzle and the brilliant Youth In Asia. On 8mm film she captures the raw energy of a scene in the ascendant, in flux b…