New Arrivals
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…
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…
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
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…
'Evelyn Glennie - Fred Frith. Touch the sound'
Subtitled A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer's exquisite Touch the Sound is nominally a portrait of the Scottish musician known as the first full-time solo percussionist. Glennie is certainly a fascinating subject. Profoundly deaf since childhood, she disdains the use of hearing aids and sign language, relying instead on lip reading and, more crucially, on the use of all of her senses, especially touch, to hear with her entire body. The film reveals …
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 …
The Things That We Used to Do
The Things That We Used to Do is a very special, intimate performance DVD of Jack Rose and Glenn Jones, each artist playing solo and together. The footage was shot expressly for this project in a loft in Brooklyn, NY. The takes are live, but the performances are not in front of an audience, but rather in front of the camera. The result is both a crucial document and a total celebration of two artists, collaborators, best of friends whose art serves to illuminate the breadth of solo guitar, from …
This World Is Unreal Like A Snake In A Rope
A film by Robert Millis. Folk cinema from the eternal never-ending collage that is India. A journey through the ancient Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring Hindu trance ceremonies, street music, festivals, nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, ancient temples, processions, devotions, decay, fireworks, abstractions and more. India is impossible to know: it is impossibly old and impossibly new, impossibly rich and impossibly poor, quiet and chaotic. Offered here is on…
FLicKeR
“Really, I think, behind everything, he was trying to teach people to see differently.” Genesis P-Orridge, on Brion Gysin...This award-winning documentary about poet, artist, calligrapher and mystic Brion Gysin, portrays the life and legacy of an artist who believed art could revolutionize human consciousness. FLicKeR chronicles Gison’s complex ideas, friendships and influence with some of the 20th century’s key counterculture figures, such as William Burroughs, Kurt Corbain and Marianne Faithfu…
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…
Convoy Tour DVD
The adventure of 35 of our favourite, very different musicians in a bus on tour in France. It was the first time Getatchew Mekuria was in Europe, there is Zu from Italy, Silent Block from France, Hisako Horikawa, a danser from Japan, John Butcher (GB), The Jimmy trio (Ethiopia) with Han Bennink, Zea, Anne-James Chaton (F), The Evens (Ian Mackays new band) a living Ex jukebox, and much more. A film about far too long drives, amazing combinations and incredible musical adventures. Filmed by Emma …
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…
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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…
From Straight To Bizarre
Subtitled: Zappa, Beefheart, Alice Cooper And LA's Lunatic Fringe. "Desperate to remove himself from his original deal with Verve Records, in 1968 Frank Zappa set up the Bizarre and Straight labels in league with manger Herb Cohen, and so began a string of releases which remain extraordinary in the extreme. This film revisits and reviews the astonishing music that came out on Bizarre and Straight, and reveals the background, operations and, crucially, the lives of the musicians, performer…
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…
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…
III Tagofest
Filmed during the 3rd edition of a most important independent festival in Italy: Tagofest @ Tagomago (Massa-Italy). With: afraid!, airportman, almandino quite deluxe, be invisible now!, dadamatto, fuzz orchestra, harschcore, i/o, jealousy party, larsen lombriki, miranda, musica da cucina, ovo, tiger!shit!tiger!tiger!, with love.
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)
Live at Cosmopolite
Celebrating their fifteenth anniversary, Norwegian fusionists Jaga Jazzist present their first ever live concert DVD, filmed at Cosmopolite in Oslo on the 4th April 2005. This recording was made around the same time as the release of Jaga's What We Must, and features material from throughout their career, all replicated with remarkable levels of precision on the live stage. In addition to the excellent 80-minute concert the DVD comes with bonus features that include …
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…