Xanadu is a 4-channel video installation by Robert Boyd that represents a history of apocalyptic thought as a series of MTV-style music videos.

Xanadu is a 4-channel video installation by Robert Boyd that represents a history of apocalyptic thought as a series of MTV-style music videos.
2006-01-10
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5.9In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.
6.0After her boyfriend ends their relationship, the dreamself of a heartbroken woman floats through the air over an industrial wasteland singing ballads of love.
6.3A man whose brain becomes magnetized unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films.
6.0More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
6.8Al 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."
6.5In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
7.2Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
6.2Inside a darkened house looms a column of TVs littered with VHS tapes, a pagan shrine to forgotten analog gods. The screens crackle and pop endlessly with monochrome vistas of static white noise permeating the brain and fogging concentration. But you must fight the urge to relax: this is no mere movie night. Those obsolete spools contain more than just magnetic tape. They are imprinted with the very soul of evil.
7.5As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
6.9The film goes behind the scenes of the 1999 sci-fi movie The Matrix.
6.4A documentary on the last remaining Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon.
7.9Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
7.2A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
5.8The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
7.1This visual album from Beyoncé reimagines the lessons of "The Lion King" (2019) for today's young kings and queens in search of their own crowns.
7.2Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
8.6Nearly 2 hours of the short films that made HIStory... Including never before released short films.
7.0Grindhouse combines Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, a horror comedy about a group of survivors who battle zombie-like creatures, and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, an action thriller about a murderous stuntman who kills young women with modified vehicles. It is presented as a double feature with fictitious exploitation trailers preceding each segment.
8.7The Immaculate Collection is the first commercially released greatest videos compilation by singer Madonna. Released on November 13, 1990 to accompany the audio CD, it contained hits spanning 1983-1990. The collection won "Best Long Form Video" category at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. Includes the following videos: 1. Lucky Star 2. Borderline 3. Like a Virgin 4. Material Girl 5. Papa Don't Preach 6. Open Your Heart 7. La Isla Bonita 8. Like a Prayer 9. Express Yourself 10. Cherish 11. Oh Father 12. Vogue 13. Vogue (1990 MTV Awards Show Performance)
5.2A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.
6.0A 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).
10.0If a machine would possess a soul it might be a beach. Every single sand corn symbolizes a data-set of a memory captured in the world wide web saved deep down in the ocean. From there the bytes condense and finally reach the cloud. But how would it feel for a machine to see the glitch waves and feeling the shore stones on its case? What would be the colours of the coastline? Glitching Offshore tries to portrait the soul of an AI and the universe behind it. Glitching offshore, alike drifting away as in a psychogeographical dérive (furthermore, away from the "rive": bank) where human intentional yet chaotic action is substituted by pixels' stirrings of the soul.
10.0Pegasus viz. incorruptibility undergoes a stress test to prove its name. Will his code of chivalry stand the attempts at corruption? Here we have four situations in which he gets proved. Criminal solicitations interfere digitally in the shape of data moshing. He takes a rough ride onto the mosh pit of the blockchain. Cybercryptocy video art meets classical Greek mythology.
0.0HIDEO, It's Me, Mama is a psychological melodrama that introduces narrative and structural devices that are integral to Idemitsu's work. Exploring the flawed universe of the contemporary Japanese family, she focuses on a woman's identity as mother through mother-child and husband-wife relationships. Hideo, a young man living away from his parents, is kept under constant surveillance by his doting mother via an omnipresent television monitor. In a cogent metaphor for familial relations in the media-saturated culture of contemporary Japan, Mama can only communicate with her beloved, absent son through the video screen. Idemitsu's poignant irony is embodied in the scene in which Mama, blind to her husband's needs, caresses Hideo's video image. (Electronic Arts Intermix)
0.0After 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.
0.0Jim 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.
7.0Although Gainsbourg and Birkin had appeared in a string of films since their magnetic collision in Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan, Melody was a bit of diversion from their collaborations since it’s a series of interwoven videos inspired by the Gainsbourgalbum. For '71 it’s a novel concept to bring visual life to an LP, but even more surprising are the short film’s amazing visuals that director Averty crafted using a wealth of video filters, overlays, camera movements and chroma key effects. Averty applies these in tandem with the increasing tone of Gainsbourg’s songs, which more or less chronicle an older man's affair with a young girl. Each song is comprised of steady, sometimes brooding poetic delivery, with refrains timed to the phrase repeats of each song, while Alan Parker’s buzzing guitar accompanies and wiggles around Gainsbourg’s resonant voice. The bass is fat and groovy, the drums easy but steady, and the periodic use of strings or rich vibrato makes this short a sultry little gem.
10.0TEMPORALLY tells the story of an Italian thunderstorm through the eyes of a Japanese painter. The lightning itself fusions with its environment and creates a hypnotic point of view. The sound in the video was recorded on the occasion of the exceptionally high water alert in Venice, Italy. The alarm is composed of two parts. The first was the sirene in use under bombardments during WW2, whereas the second is designed by the University of Venice and should be heard during all the sleep phases, yet not causing any panic. The images themselves were shot during multiple thunderstorms in the mountains between Lake Lugano and Lake Como. So, an interplay of salt and sweet water. Furthermore, the title TEMPORALLY is a combination of the Italian word for storm "temporale", and the word for atmospheric weather "tempo" which in English means rhythm and rally, thus a race of lightning, in the end, following in a recovery.
7.0Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.
9.0The 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.
3.3Best known for his work in video, Richard Fung has made the politics of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation his central focus. Chinese Characters (1986) examines the ambiguous relationship of gay Asian men with white gay porn.
10.0White Homeland Commando takes the familiar terrain of network action drama and tilts the playing field. Reminiscent of today's popular reality-based cop shows, White Homeland Commando offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organization. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in a highly textured visual style, the colors are subdued yet somehow garish, and the sound is deliberately just out of sync with the speaker's lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot — the editing is reminiscent of a television viewer flipping channels.
2.0An experimental film comprised of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING played forwards and backwards at the same time on the same screen, creating bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities.
0.0Originally produced anonymously and distributed by RTMark, Untitled #29.95 tells the story of the commercial art establishment's attempt to turn video art into a precious commodified object through the release of limited editions during the nineties.
7.3'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.
0.0"Three Women, is an ambitious work designed to be shown on multiple screens in a movie theater. Moving a step forward from the use of multiple screens as an expansion of cinema as exemplified by Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927), it presents what is literally a conceptual expansion of cinema in the form of a filmic work experienced in a theater in which the 15-channel, surround-sound audio constructed by Araki Masamitsu and Ito’s visuals organically intertwine."
6.6CREMASTER 3 is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect...
0.0The Karikpo masquerade - a traditional dance of the Ogoni tribe - is transposed onto the remnants of a faded oil industry programme in the Niger delta.