The 29-minute experimental film Christmas on Earth caused a sensation when it first screened in New York City in 1964. Its orgy scenes, double projections and overlapping images shattered artistic conventions and announced a powerful new voice in the city's underground film scene. All the more remarkable, that vision belonged to a teenager, 18-year-old Barbara Rubin. A Zelig of the '60s, she introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan to Kabbalah and bewitched Allen Ginsberg. The same unbridled creativity that inspired her to make films when women simply didn't, saw her breach yet another male domain, Orthodox Judaism, before her mysterious death at 35. Lifelong friend Jonas Mekas saved all her letters, creating a rich archive that filmmaker Chuck Smith carefully sculpts into this fascinating portrait of a nearly forgotten artist. An avante-garde maverick, a rebel in a man's world, Barbara Rubin regains her rightful place in film history.
A group of musicians seem isolated from the world playing beautiful pieces. But in the darkness of the night, and from their minds, there are melancholies on earth, loves and families that they left behind. Their silences, their letters, these elements shape the poetic intention of this documentary.
The video revolution of the 1970s offered unprecedented access to the moving image for artists and performers. This Is Not a Dream explores the legacies of this revolution and its continued impact on contemporary art and performance. Charting a path across four decades of avant-garde experiment and radical escapism, This Is Not a Dream traces the influences of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Jack Smith to the perverted frontiers of YouTube and Chatroulette, taking in subverted talk shows and soap operas, streetwalker fashions and glittery magic penises along the way.
Nan Goldin's slide show “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” converted, mixed and screened as a film by the artist, portraying the American underground culture, the no wave scene, post-Stonewall gay subculture, among others.
A collection of footage and interviews with strange people and their exploration into the unusual and extreme side of body modification.
When looking at Pedro Almodóvar’s filmography, it becomes evident that women are everywhere; in fact, his work revolves around them. His divas are the best to create a real portrait of Almodóvar and evoke the emotional power of his films. These women are the ideal observers of a cinematic career that, from La Mancha to Hollywood, has changed the image of Spain in the world.
A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the “New American Cinema,” that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in “underground film,” including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.
The first American documentary about Traditional (Non-Racist) Skinheads. Focuses on the 'cross of cultures' that came together to form the Skinhead identity: The origins of the Skinhead scene in England, its roots in Jamaican Reggae and Ska (mid-'60s) to its revival and global impact with 2 Tone, Punk, Oi, and Hardcore (late '70s to present day). Features interviews and live concert footage by current bands across these various musical genres in the United States, England and Germany; discussing their viewpoints on Skinhead, its Working Class values, and its continuing relevance around the world.
"(On the Quest for) Beograd Underground" is an independent documentary film in the form of a sequence of interviews with alternative artists from Serbia who have dedicated their lives to the creation of one (sub)culture, very rich in its nuances, yet very precarious in its existence. Numerous artists speak of their conceptions of the underground as a movement, a way of perceiving reality, a way of social engagement, and even a way of living. The specific socio-historical condition in the '90s resulted in intensive artistic activity as a response to the totalitarian regime. This film is a collection of the personal experiences of artists who were involved in the underground scene since the '90s until the first decade of the new millennium.
A strange story from Somerset, England about a filmmaking farmer and the inspiring legacy of his long-lost home movies.
Servais Mont, a freelance photographer who works taking compromising photos, gets fascinated by Nadine Chevalier, a tormented low-budget movie actress married to an eccentric film photo collector.
The Cavalcade of Perversion, a traveling freak show, acts as a front for Divine, who is out for blood after discovering her lover's affair.
Mr. Jaffee is a curious but closeted married man, who decides to take a walk on the wild side one night over to the local bath house located in Times Square, New York. When he is a approached by Thomas, a swinging regular who takes an interest in Mr. Jaffe as the new face "on the scene", a deep discussion about marriage, connection and loss begins to unexpectedly unfold. The two become emotionally intimate in a very short time, with no sexual contact of any sort, while everyone around them are screwing like rabbits.
Enter the bizarre world of Thraxton Hall, where Jarvis, Lord of the Manor, indulges in his wildest, darkest fantasies! Part torture chamber, part Turkish bath, part homicidal nightmare, this ramshackle monstrosity is actually his imaginary creation, his escape from a dead-end existence, fueled by his passion for silent horror films. But maybe his fantasies are real… this passive video geek turns out to be a bit more then we bargained for! And to this crazy mix a beautiful, buxom blond, scantily clad in black lace and garter belt, who is terrorizes by Jarvis, and Nightslave explodes into reality with terrifying results. A black comedy with an edge, this is one-of-a-kind thriller takes you on a sexy horror ride you don’t want to miss.
Three hit people - two men, one woman, who have never met before are placed on a road trip down the East Coast together. The only thing they have in common is that they have all worked for the same boss - and, as they swap stories, discover that they have all screwed up for this same boss in the past. As they share their stories of errors on the job - seen through visual, stirring flashbacks - they begin to wonder why it was they were put together in the first place and what might be waiting for them at the end of their little road trip.
A bored insurance salesman quits his job to go into politics. He first starts preaching about how man is greater than he thinks and that man can live forever. He ends up forming his own political party, "The Eternal Man" party. He begins to be referred to as "God". Then he starts having doubts about the eternalness of man.
A gang of Nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual, sadistic, and occult images are cut together.
A gang of leather-clad, powerful women take over a traditionally male domain, and hairspray, eyeliner, and bare flesh are on full display in Beth B’s music video for the Arthur Baker–produced club hit from synthpop band Dominatrix. Banned at the time of release, it was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art.
A young man's struggle with his sexuality overtakes his life, driving him deep into his subconscious where guilt and fears of physicality chase him still further. Cornered by an intangible terror, he realises he must either break out or break down.
Loosely based on an infamous 1984 Long Island murder case involving Satan-worshiping, teenage drug freaks (Knights of the Black Circle), David Wojnarowicz and Tommy Turner’s Where Evil Dwells is a low-budget D.I.Y. movie that walks the jagged lines between splatter flick, experimental film and transgressive art. The original footage was destroyed in a fire and the only footage that survived is this 28 minute preview that was put together for the Downtown New York Film Festival in 1985.