
06 Dec 2013

The Improv: 50 Years Behind the Brick Wall
Several comic greats pay tribute to the legendary stand-up stage founded by Budd Friedman in 1963.
An important audio-visual record of a landmark series of four concerts staged in London in 2022 when more than 30 musicians joined improviser, percussionist and animateur Eddie Prévost to mark his 80th birthday. The film takes a close look at improvisers who create music in the moment, free from the authority of a composer, score or conductor. Ranging from profound delicacy to subversive atonality, the “awkward wealth” of this music raises vital questions about artistic freedom, individual responsibility and what it means for people to make music together in the 21st Century. Featuring performances by John Butcher, Sue Lynch, Ute Kanngiesser, Marjolaine Charbin, Nathan Moore, Seymour Wright, Veryan Weston, Alan Wilkinson, John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost amongst others. Plus readings by musician and author David Toop. The film includes the last ever concert by AMM, the pioneering improvising group co-founded by Eddie Prévost in the mid-1960s.

06 Dec 2013

Several comic greats pay tribute to the legendary stand-up stage founded by Budd Friedman in 1963.

09 Aug 2019

After 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.

29 Mar 2024

An exploration of the individual components that make up a jazz improvisation, told in 13 parts.

16 Oct 1985

Tom Waits 1985 performance of "16 Shells From A 30.6" and “In the Neighborhood” from the album 'Swordfish Trombones' and "Cemetery Polka" and “Walking Spanish” from the album 'Rain Dogs' Live On The Tube.

18 Apr 2024

This short documentary film captures the natural movement of the moon mixed with an experimental musical track that accompanies the rhythm of the "walk" on the stage that the protagonist occupies, the sky.

01 Jan 2005

Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.

13 Mar 2024

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

01 Jan 2005

Over two hours of rare performances, interviews, animations, and experimental video. Milton Babbit’s discussion of the difficulties of working with archaic synthesizers in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in the 1950s and ’60s is a firm reminder of just how foreign electronic sounds were to even the academic community only 40 years ago. Likewise, Paul Lansky’s private lesson with theremin inventor Leon Theremin is an example of how non-user friendly electronic musical instruments could be, even to people who should have the best sense of how to approach them.

11 Feb 2025

Outtakes, commentary from Zefier's third film: Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike.

17 Sep 1992

This live recording was culled from seven September 1992 concerts given in Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based chamber orchestra that performs only contemporary music. Composed and conducted by Frank Zappa.

21 Aug 1996

Aspiring director Corky St. Clair and the marginally talented amateur cast of his hokey small-town musical production go overboard when they learn that Broadway theater agent Mort Guffman will be in attendance.
01 Jun 1966
Orson Welles pitches to potential investors his vision of a largely improvised bullfighter movie about an existential, James Dean type troubadour who sets himself apart from other matadors. In front of an audience of wealthy arts patrons, Welles pontificates on the state of cinema, the filmmaking process, and the art of bullfighting.

04 Dec 1936

At an orphanage, the children are sad because they received used defective toys as gifts. Professor Grampy sees the children while passing by in his sled and has an idea on how to give them a merry Christmas.

01 Sep 2021

Think of early electronic music and you’ll likely see men pushing buttons, knobs, and boundaries. While electronic music is often perceived as a boys' club, the truth is that from the very beginning women have been integral in inventing the devices, techniques and tropes that would define the shape of sound for years to come.
Hanoise is a portrait of the little known, but very rich, experimental music scene from Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. It showcases a diverse array of the city's musical mavericks and avant-garde explorers, merging the sounds of the city and the experimentations of a young community braving the local cultural prohibitions.

21 Feb 2025

Under the relentless sun, a killer stalks through the mountains, where the innocence of a young couple becomes prey. With no shadows to hide their fate, the hunt is a macabre game in broad daylight, where fear is not hidden in the darkness, but burns with the rawness of the unperturbed noon.

08 Feb 2008

In 1989, a collective of young hip hop artists gathered at a health food café in South Central Los Angeles. Their mandate? To reject gang culture and expand the musical boundaries of hip hop. DuVernay's documentary chronicles the historic legacy of the Good Life Cafe — the open mic nights that became an L.A. institution, the eclectic array of talented young MCs that emerged there, the alternative hip hop movement they developed, and their worldwide influence on the artform.

21 Sep 2024

No overview found

08 Mar 2012

An intimate, affecting portrait of the life and work of ground-breaking performance artist and music pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) and their wife and collaborator, Lady Jaye, centered around the daring sexual transformations the pair underwent for their 'Pandrogyne' project.

14 May 2024

An indie film crew throw caution to the wind when they attempt to shoot a completely improvised drama where the film's big twist is being kept secret from their lead actress, while also navigating on-set mishaps, bizarre twists of fate, and the first year of a global pandemic.