New Arrivals
Dada Cinema
With Viking Eggeling : Symphonie diagonale (1921-24), Hans Richter : Rythmus 21 (1921-24), Hans Richter : Fimstudie (1926), Man Ray : Retour à la raison (1923), Fernand Léger & Dupley Murphy : Ballet mécanique (1924), René Clair & Francis Picabia : Entr'acte (1924), Hans Richter : Vormittagsspuk (1927) et Man Ray : Emak Bakia (1926). Contains a 36-page booklet about the films and the Dada movement, with texts by Philippe-Alain Michaud and Hans Richte
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
'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 …
Words Of Advice: William S. Burroughs On The Road
In 1983, the counter culture icon and author of the cult classic Naked Lunch (1959), William S. Burroughs (1914-1997), traveled throughout Scandinavia making a series of personal appearances. Twenty years later, filmmakers Lars Movin and Steen Moller Rasmussen found never-before-seen footage of his Copenhagen visit and set out on the road to record new material, telling the story of the acclaimed author's later work -- especially what is known as The Last Trilogy -- and his unique perform…
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
Charisma X
A documentary film by Efi Xirou with composers George Apergis, François Bernard Mâche, Gerard Pape, Curtis Roads and featuring Françoise xenakis, Makis Solomos, Sharon Kanach, Mâkhi xenakis. Charisma X presents the visonary work and ideas of Greek composer and architect iannis xenakis structured around musical performances, interviews and testimonies from xenakis' collaborators and those with a deep understanding of his work. Musical performances and recollections are presented from percussionis…
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…
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…
Rapture adrenaline
Originally released on a limited critically acclaimed VHS edition, this succulent re-issue present an exclusive extra, WELCOME TO CANDYLAND, an interview with the author and, at the same time, an exciting voyage through some cult virtual-hyper-reality-simulacro. The OJ chase, Hollywood forever cemetery, Dr. Phil are just some ingredients of this delicious visual trippy cake. The movie RAPTURE ADRENALINE is an educational mixtape program, a cyber marine combat training video designed through…
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!
Narratives1: Dreams
"Narratives" is a series of "music text films" that centre on the experience of music mediated through animated text. Kyriakides has developed this form over the years, encompassing about 15 works ranging from orchestral, chamber, to electronic music. In the next year Unsounds will publish the whole collection in a series of DVDs. The first edition: "Dreams", collects the large scale ensemble works - "Dreams of the Blind", "The Arrest" and "Subliminal: The Lucretian Picnic" performed by E…
Maurice Lemaitre
Maurice Lemaître is amongst one of the most important and creative artists of the second half of the 20th century. His cinematic work has led to a fundamental questioning of the relationship between film and spectator, image and sound, art and criticism, cinema and other types of images. His art is characterized by its inventiveness, it's joy of creating, and a radical and loud critique allowing for Lettrism to flourish as an avant-garde movement.OUR STARS A chronicle of the fantasies and dream …
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…