Second-hand Reading

"Assassination" - Adaptation of Hermann Hesse's novel "Demian". A young man's detachment from and revolt against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self. Max Demian is his childhood friend and mentor.

A surreal musical comedy set in a world where the avant-garde and the mainstream are reversed.

Pis

Philosophical excerpts breaking the rules of language overlapped with footage of nature, inscrutable voice recordings, strange noises, and classical music.

Dark blood red slow shifting tones (often embedded in dark) / (often shot-thru with parallel wave-like lines) composed of all previous shapes and flowers as if trying, linearly, to evolve a glyph-script. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Speaking upon the release of ‘Bodyguard’, Black Dahlia said: “Bodyguard is a theatrical exploration of gaining a new body but your soul remains. It is a sonnet to your past physical body in this realm and the new union that will inevitably be formed. A harsh and gentle celebration of your capabilities, your limits, and your destiny.” As well as being the Director for the music video, Black Dahlia was also Producer, Art Director, Choreographer, and Concept creator for the project. Donning various characters, Black Dahlia embodies performance art and its mediums such as contortion, mime, surrealism, Dada, the avant-garde, and body horror. ‘Bodyguard’ follows Black Dahlia in various theatrical forms and her journey to transformation through reanimation that looks reminiscent of a John Waters film. It also features cameos from Melbourne-based artists, Bura Bura as Dr Barget Hower, Manda Wolf as Dr Avanti and Cong Josie as Dr Cong.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

After the sunset, a man wonders between the edges of the highways gathering edible roadkill animals.

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Frank Scheffer's (collage like) documentary on the American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa, as broadcast by VPRO in the Netherlands April 22,2007. Most of what’s on here is seen before, particularly in Roelof Kier’s 1971 documentary and/or Scheffer’s own documentary “A present day composer refuses to die”. But there is some new stuff too, particularly interviews with Denny Walley, Haskell Wekler, Elliot Ingber and Bruce Fowler.

Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.

A love story for the 90s: Valery falls in love with an identical twin, a virtual reality scientist, and finds she can have a more intimate relationship with him through the computer screen than in person. Or is it really him?

Tom is a young guy from Zagreb, completely without money, trying to make films in Belgrade. He somehow manages to survive with a help of women. He doesn't believe in anybody, respects no one and is in constant conflict with the ruling system and order. After being left by a silly American girl, Tom binds with a woman whose husband is abroad. When she kicks him out, he moves in with her husband's sister, who later kills him in the attack of jealousy. All this is shown in the context of major historical events prior to 1968. with lots of archive footage of world leaders.

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

The 1980s, the Tuscan countryside. Two young lovers are driving east to enjoy the dawn but they end up at the scene of a crime and become the new target of the criminals

The creative processes of avant-garde composer Philip Glass and progressive director/designer Robert Wilson are examined in this film. It documents their collaboration on this tradition breaking opera.

Avant-garde composer John Cage is famous for his experimental pieces and "chance music" but temporarily branched into video in 1992 with this art film about meaningless activity. The work is composed of two segments that are supposed to be played simultaneously: "One 11" contains the artistic statement, and "103" is a 17-part orchestral piece. Also included is a revealing documentary about Cage and director Henning Lohner.

Made during the height of the Vietnam War, Stan Brakhage has said of this film that he was hoping to bring some clarity to the subject of war. Characteristically for Brakhage there is no direct reference to Vietnam.