In these uncertain, ever evolving and changing times, inspiration and entertainment come from equally bizarre places. People long for togetherness and one thing that always brings out the best in experiencing something together, is food. But what happens when you twist around some of the core ideas of enjoying food, and what “a meal” even means? What if you have a bizarre curiosity to see someone eat really weird food combinations, and actually have someone provide you with that? What if what you’re looking for isn’t comfort and relaxation, but something that will make you question what your self-isolation mind finds as entertainment?
Himself
In these uncertain, ever evolving and changing times, inspiration and entertainment come from equally bizarre places. People long for togetherness and one thing that always brings out the best in experiencing something together, is food. But what happens when you twist around some of the core ideas of enjoying food, and what “a meal” even means? What if you have a bizarre curiosity to see someone eat really weird food combinations, and actually have someone provide you with that? What if what you’re looking for isn’t comfort and relaxation, but something that will make you question what your self-isolation mind finds as entertainment?
2020-06-12
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An absurd meal mukbang
In 2012 two members of anarchistic female band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a Mordovian labor camp for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Russian film collective Gogol’s Wives follow each step of the feminist punk band’s battle against Putin including their first disruptive performances on a trolley bus, shooting a video about transparent elections, a controversial performance in a Red Square cathedral, and footage shot in a jail cell. Support comes from many corners including Madonna who painted the words "Pussy Riot" on her back and wore a balaclava during her Moscow show. The documentary portrays the grim state of present-day Russia, a country starkly divided between conservatism and anarchy. Pussy Riot believes that art has to be free and they're willing to take it to extremes. "Pussycat made a mess in the house," they say, and the house is Russia. The filmmakers do not seek to moralize, they simply edit events and leave viewers to draw their own conclusions.
A remarkable walk through the life and work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), one of the most important creators of the 20th century, revolutionary of arts, aesthetics and pop culture.
Bas Jan Ader's first fall film shows him seated on a chair, tumbling from the roof of his two-storey house in the Inland Empire.
Shot in his garage-studio, the camera records Ader painstakingly hoisting a large brick over his shoulder. His figure is harshly lit by two tangles of light bulbs. He drops the brick, crushing one strand of lights. He again lifts the brick, allowing tension to accrue. The climax inevitable—the brick falls and crushes the second set of lights. Here the film abruptly ends, all illumination extinguished.
In 2003, Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh became the first World Champion of Chessboxing. This brain-busting combination of alternating rounds of chess and boxing was in fact an art performance calling for more balance in a world of extremes, and the audience reaction was so electric that it inspired Rubingh to push it as a real sport. Rubingh’s methodical ability to achieve balance in the ring is put to the test outside of it when impulsive British TV Producer Tim Woolgar takes up the sport and his opposing vision for success creates a rift between them, endangering chessboxing’s future.
As Cirque du Soleil reboots its flagship production, O, more than a year after an abrupt shutdown, performers and crew members face uncertainty as they work to return to their world-class standards in time for the (re)opening night in Las Vegas. With unfettered access, filmmaker Dawn Porter captures the dramatic journey of the world's most famous circus act on its way back from the brink.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
Art dealer Salvatore Viviano and director Angela Christlieb embark on a search for the lost artist collective Gelitin, which since the 1990s has shattered the borders of "good taste" again and again with extravagant actions and installations. Interviews with old companions and artist friends in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are linked with anarchically montaged Gelitin archive material: intense, transgressive, experimental, gaudily colorful, funny, and virulent.
“In this legendary sculpture/performance Acconci lay beneath a ramp built in the Sonnabend Gallery. Over the course of three weeks, he masturbated eight hours a day while murmuring things like, "You're pushing your cunt down on my mouth" or "You're ramming your cock down into my ass." Not only does the architectural intervention presage much of his subsequent work, but all of Acconci's fixations converge in this, the spiritual sphincter of his art. In Seedbed Acconci is the producer and the receiver of the work's pleasure. He is simultaneously public and private, making marks yet leaving little behind, and demonstrating ultra-awareness of his viewer while being in a semi-trance state.” – Jerry Saltz (via: http://www.ubu.com/film/acconci_seedbed.html)
Ulysses Jenkins composed "Dream City" from documentation of a twenty-four-hour performance he organized in collaboration with David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, and Senga Nengudi. A discordant, absurdist, and poetic montage, the video weaves together jazz and punk shows, recitations by Jenkins, and shots of the Los Angeles skyline and oil wells to comment on power and nation in the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency.
An intimate, affecting portrait of the life and work of ground-breaking performance artist and music pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) and their wife and collaborator, Lady Jaye, centered around the daring sexual transformations the pair underwent for their 'Pandrogyne' project.
Dragphoria is a short film about drag and identity, finding yourself in a noisy crowd, and slowly accepting yourself after a long-awaited denial.
Summer 1991. The last days of the Soviet Empire. Dark clouds gathered over Moscow as the Soviet government prepared to turn back the clock of history. While the world focused on the crashing Soviet Empire, this film focuses on the people who would've been among the first to suffer repression - the women and men who have broken sexual taboos in a consummate act of liberation against a rigid, crippled world. This is a view from their vantage point, unveiling the shadow-side of Soviet culture in the wake of the revolution, where the real provocative nudity is the nakedness of the soul.
Feature documentary on the pioneering life and work of iconoclastic filmmaker/musician/composer/artist Tony Conrad.
In the spotlight of global media coverage, the first transgender woman ever to perform as Don Giovanni in a professional opera, makes her historic debut in one of the reddest states in the U.S.
Balkan Baroque is a real and imaginary biography of the Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic. Rather than a mechanical reproduction of the artist's work, the film tries to create a new reality by translating the performances into cinematographic images that intensify the fictional context of the film. Abramovic plays herself, but ,appearing in multiple forms, blurs her own identity. Memories and fantasies intermingle with day to day rituals. The chronological narrative often breaks to reflect the interior voyage of the protagonist from the present to the past and back to the present. The result is a visually impressive film. Balkan Baroque had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999.
Nobody captured the atmosphere of 1990s Berlin better than German photographer Daniel Josefsohn, who died in 2016 at the age of 54, leaving his mark in advertising with his irreverent aesthetic and punk sensibility. It was his spontaneous, imperfect images shot for an MTV campaign in 1994 that first made him famous.
How far are you willing to go to enhance your body and your life? Testing a diverse cocktail of illegal performance enhancing drugs throughout his life - bodybuilder an entrepreneur Tony Hughes, also known as Dr. Tony Huge, aims to prove that steroids are the next logical step to further human evolution. Chronicling a civil and criminal case against his controversial supplement company Enhanced Athlete, Enhanced is a documentary that explores the immense psychological depths of a man who believes that the government has a conspiracy against him and other like-minded individuals. Individuals who are fighting to prove that steroids are not only healthy, but essential if used correctly, and should be legal in the United States to improve our quality of life.
A young drag queen from Andalusia exposes the difficulties of adding aspects of her homeland culture to her artistic expression.