CAIN’S FILM Production: UK, 1969 Director: Jamie Wadhawan Category: Documentary Biographical documentary on Scottish beat/junkie writer Alexander Trocchi, author of Cain’s Book, which deals with drug addiction. The film details how the book was banned for its sex and drug references, and features commentary from William S. Burroughs, who described Trocchi’s Continue Reading
Documentary
L’AVENTURE PRODIGIEUSE DE LA DENTELLIÈRE ET DU RHINOCÉROS
L’AVENTURE PRODIGIEUSE DE LA DENTELLIÈRE ET DU RHINOCÉROS “The Prodigious Adventure Of The Lacemaker And The Rhinoceros” Production: Spain/France, 1954-62 Director: Salvador Dalí & Robert Descharnes Category: Surrealism One of the legendary uncompleted art films of the 20th century, this collaboration with Robert Descharnes was conceived as a cinematic exploration of Dali’s previous Continue Reading
AMERICAN DREAMER
AMERICAN DREAMER Production: USA, 1971 Director: L.M. Kit Carson & Lawrence Schiller Category: Documentary An amazing documentary on actor/director Dennis Hopper, shot at the time he was editing his oblique masterwork, The Last Movie, and was generally wasted on drugs and alcohol. Hopper is filmed at his home in Taos, New Continue Reading
DES MORTS
DES MORTS (“The Dead”) Production: France/Belgium, 1981 Director: Jean-Pol Ferbus, Dominique Garny & Thierry Zeno Category: Mondo/Death A documentary that examines the burial and disposal of dead bodies according to differing customs and circumstances. In sharp contrast to American practices, where the deceased are eviscerated, drained and then sewn up to Continue Reading
POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL
POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL Production: USA, 1965 Director: Andy Warhol Category: Underground The definitive Edie Sedgewick vehicle. Sedgewick was a socialite and heiress from one of the oldet families in America; she first started hanging out at Warhol’s Factory early in 1965, and made brief, non-speaking appearances in the films Continue Reading
BRUTALITÄT IN STEIN
BRUTALITÄT IN STEIN (“Brutality In Stone”) Production: Germany, 1961 Director: Alexander Kluge & Peter Schamoni Category: Documentary/Architecture The first short film by Kluge, later a key signatory to the Oberhausen Manifesto that helped revolutionise the German film industry, is an eerie montage of structural ruins left behind by Hitler and the Continue Reading
BRUJO
BRUJO (“Shaman”) Production: Mexico, 1978 Director: Georges Payrastre & Claudine Viallon Category: Documentary/Witchcraft A powerful 55-minute documentary on shamanism amongst the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico, and among two groups of Mayan Indians in southern Mexico and Guatemala. Sequences show a shaman exorcising a spell from a woman by a Continue Reading
VASE DES NOCES + 1
VASE DES NOCES (“Wedding Vase”) Production: Belgium, 1974 Director: Thierry Zeno & Dominique Garny Category: Sexual Perversion Bizarre film about a disturbed man’s relationship with a sow; features acts of bestiality and coprophilia amongst other delights. As well as raping the sow and fondling its nipples, he likes to defecate in Continue Reading
SPACE IS THE PLACE
SPACE IS THE PLACE Production: USA, 1974 Director: John Coney Category: Avant-Jazz/Black Power An incredible vehicle for the psychedelic talents of Sun Ra, the radical space-age free-jazz philosopher. Performance footage of his amazing Intergalactic Solar Arkestra is inserted into a plot that mixes a 1950s SF aesthetic with revolutionary politics and elements of Continue Reading
NIHONTO MONOGATARI
NIHONTO MONOGATARI (“Japanese Sword Story”) Production: Japan, 1957 Director: Asano Tatsuo Category: Documentary/Martial Arts Sacred film dedicated to the samurai sword, showing its crafting, its many uses, and its cultural and symbolic significance, all accompanied by spiralling Wagnerian music. It was the Japanese sword that allowed the Shogun’s samurai to Continue Reading