A jazzy film in which the spectator is forced to look with the ears and listen with the eyes. An abstract film drawn directly on the computer.
1999-06-16
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Reissue of Standards Trio concerts; originally released separately as Live at Open Theater East and Trio Concert 1996
Jake Blues, just released from prison, puts his old band back together to save the Catholic home where he and his brother Elwood were raised.
The mutating forms of Tensai Banpaku, or “Genius Expo” create a stunning abstract orchestra.
High Voltage is constructed from footage James Whitney contributed to Belson for use in one of his Vortex concerts.
In the 1930s, jazz guitarist Emmet Ray idolizes Django Reinhardt, faces gangsters and falls in love with a mute woman.
Music: Carl Stone. Colored pen-and-ink drawings, like topological maps of biomorphic objects, grow and evolve from the red star. Once the master image is formed, this continuously throbbing, pulsating sight is used to ring changes based on years of optical work. Music and picture work together to create a mood of ecstatic tranquility. The bright colors, beautiful music, surprise at the end, etc. make this a good film for young children. Awards: Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival, 1973; Washington National Student Film Festival, 1974; Brooklyn Independent Filmmakers Exposition, 1974; Vanguard Int'l Competition of Electronic Music for Film, 1974; Humboldt Film Festival, 1974. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.
Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.
What happens when two hands touch? How close are they like? And how can proximity be measured, and even more so, in times of a pandemic and distancing? We think we touch things, that we can take other people by the hand, but physics tells us quite another story.
A documentary about the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). There exist many myths and legends about the Jazz Singer Billie Holiday — one of the greatest voices of the last century. Most of them tell the story of the tragic victim of drugs, alcohol, men, color, or the circumstances of her upbringing. To some extent she contributed herself to these legends, especially in her autobiography "Lady Sings the Blues". In recent years, more and more records and reports have shown a different picture of her. These statements of confidants, colleagues and friends clean up with many of the legends and show a strong personality who has been anything but a pitiable victim. Billie Holiday was a strong-willed and determined person and a very complex personality who did not correspond to the classic victim type.
Confined to an endlessly burning waiting room, a dying sedentary woman experiences herself blurring in and out of her body. In her last remaining fragments she tries to make amends with her spirit before her remaining fragments either decay or create.
American dancer and choreographer Hermes Pan recalls his life and work as he relives the glorious history of the Hollywood musical.
An account of the life of the brilliant jazz musician John Coltrane (1926-67), a gifted saxophonist, an extraordinarily talented thinker whose original, avant-garde work has impacted and influenced people all over the world. A story about music's ability to entertain, inspire and transform.