John Zorn's Naked City

The Way It Is(en)

A group of actors in the East Village of New York City have been rehearsing for a play when the lead actress in the play turns up dead.

Vortex(en)

A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real "corporate wars" and the manipulation of politicians.

Milford Graves Full Mantis(en)

Weaving blistering performance footage from Europe, Japan, and the U.S. with a sublimely restrained, intimate glimpse into a world-renowned jazz percussionist’s singular voice and complex cosmology.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency(en)

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.

Only You(en)

In this ostensible murder mystery, the genre elements are merely a pretext for the series of haunting (if inconclusive and only mildly erotic) homo-social encounters he stages. Starting with the familiar premise of the absent woman, so popular with Downtown filmmakers, Vogl drains his storytelling of any hints of noir stylization. Instead of nighttime scenes, slick streets, and dark alleys, he shoots documentary-style on the nondescript, sunlit streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and City Island in a manner that casually references the art-film angst of Michelangelo Antonioni.

The Trap Door(en)

A Nietzschian parable on the fate of innocence, THE TRAP DOOR follows the mishaps of Jeremy (John Ahearn) as he is fired by his boss (Jenny Holzer), gets laughed out of court by Judge Gary Indiana, loses his girlfriend to sleazy Richard Prince, is hustled by prospective employer (Bill Rice) and mauled by predatory bird-women. Finally, he seeks the help of a shrink (the legendary Jack Smith) who turns out to be the most demented of all.

Streetwalkin' Cowboy(en)

A delusional man in a modern day city dresses, acts like, and has the mindset of a cowboy.

Fire Music(en)

Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and '70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers - brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane - are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America's most innovative art form. FIRE MUSIC showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries, and produced landmark albums like Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane's Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement's key players.

Vincent Gallo as Flying Christ(xx)

PINK MOVIE(vi)

A teen is locked in a room with a monitor lizard

Ornette: Made in America(en)

Shirley Clarke's frenetic documentary about multi-talented musician Ornette Coleman.

Put More Blood Into the Music(en)

PBS produced documentary in two parts: the first is dedicated to saxophonist and composer John Zorn; the second is about Sonic Youth at the height of their powers in 1988.

The Right Side of My Brain(en)

Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern's first collaborative effort, The Right Side of My Brain, is a glimpse into the world of unsatiable female lust, narrated by Lydia Lunch. The film was initially dismissed and dismayed by critics such as J. Hoberman, but the criticism of The Right Side of My Brain received only pushed the two to go one step further with Fingered (1986).

The Cry of Jazz(en)

Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.

Visiting Desire(en)

Complete strangers meet in a room to act out their sexual desires.

How to Fly(en)

With HOW TO FLY, Bowes abandoned plot entirely, finding other forms of structure. He wanted to show that stories do not have to obsessively organize and explain data, and that television’s hundreds of simultaneous, fragmented narratives – news, fiction, commercials, sports, etc. – had prepared audiences for this new type of structure. — Charles Ruas

A French Cigarette(en)

Two New York poets talk about art, poetry, and smoke in this French New Wave inspired short.

Lydia Lunch: Video Hysterie: 1978 - 2006(en)

This fascinating and retrospective look at the music of the outspoken and multitalented Lydia Lunch represents every stage of her varied career, with featured songs such as "I Woke Up Screaming" from her Teenage Jesus and the Jerks days. Other songs spanning the decades in this collection include "Freud in Flop," "Sorry for Behaving So Badly," "Dead River," "Solo Mystico," "Summon," "Violence Is the Sport of God" and many more.

Destruction(en)

The aftermath of an experience with Heroin causes a man to destroy anything within his path.

Arto Lindsay, Forgive the Beauty: The Love Factory(it)

In the void created ad hoc to throw us into desperation, fear, shock, the torment of an infinite present, Arto Lindsay sings with words, silences and small gestures of/with/for/about love, a force that is so violent that nothing will ever be the same again.