Plague Mass

This programme tells the story behind the conception, recording and release of this groundbreaking album. By use of interviews, musical demonstration, performance, archive footage and returning to the multi tracks with Ahmet Zappa and Joe Travers we discover how Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention created the album with the help of legendary African- American producer Tom Wilson.

Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.

Black people, red dwarfs, idols on bronze steeds, shadow of geniuses and heroes. This is not story about Hades from an ancient history textbook. This is Sankt-Petersburg In mystical literary tradition such as he is. A pomposity, an open space and - deathness. There is no gleam in the sky, Neva looked like poured by a lead, a crude air presses and can not pass through lungs, which are already struck by bacillus Kochii, and there are around ominous frights, threatening to punish for an unknown offence. And even white nights are bad. It looks as if you can meet phantom of a Poet which was tortured at thirtieth years of any of the last centuries. Be careful with monuments. They fond of walk along town quays (as told us Poushkin - he brings luck!). And do not trust this Neva prospectus. City - phantom, evolved from a bog which is refuge of evil spirits. Brilliant St.-Petersburg.

Saw and imagined in the children's fantasy the story of grandmother of Christ and the Apostles a little girl. Today few people remember that just a few decades ago in the village houses next to the icons you could still see the popular prints on religious themes. They finally disappeared from use only in the 60-ies of the last century. Of course, their creators were not professional painters or connoisseurs of theology. Drew, as best they could, she felt, not knowing neither rules nor laws. Simple uneducated people, nuggets, sought to glorify God with their creativity, that resonates in the hearts of those of peasants or artisans as they are.

The plot begins with them and ends with humanity. This author wanted to show continuity: the first love and the supposed last is an indivisible whole of one eternal Love.

The film is an allegory in which the attempt is made to show the inner process of movement of the composer's soul at the time of the birth of music.

Sex as dance and comedy: in Progressive Touch Portnoy studies and expands the relationship between sex, choreography and composing music. He introduces complex compositions from progressive rock and math metal during sex, thereby combating the ostensible simplification of rhythm in human movements and gestures. A group of actors perform the new moves in three slapstick-like scenes. Worth trying at home.

"There will be no winters" - a film consisting of 14 short novels, each with its own plot and a musical theme. In fact, this is a screen version of the same album of Russian avant-garde singer Leonid Fedorov.

A cinematic meeting point between nature and technology, Doug Aitken’s unearthly short is enfolded in evocative hymns whose voices are eerily AI-generated. Glimmering phone screens might have replaced the starry Milky Way, yet the famous Venice Beach still hums with the vibrancy of human activities.

Several fragments of one day in Leningrad in the autumn of 1989, refracted in the imagination of the artist.

Deemed "too ambient for broadcast" by MTV's AMP, Thaemlitz' first video "Silent Passability (Ride to the Countryside)" contrasts cinematic footage from drag performances in upstate New York with highly processed digital audio from his CD "Couture Cosmetique" (US: Caipirinha/Japan: Daisyworld, 1997). Thaemlitz is known for his fusion of computer synthesis techniques with non-essentialist transgenderism as two methodoligies which appropriate and critically recontextualize cultural signifiers, whether they be audio sources or gender constructs. The audio for "Silent Passability" deals with fears of violence while travelling in 'passable' drag between safe zones, and Thaemlitz' unsettling compulsion to remain silent in such circumstances so as to avoid confrontation. Antithetically beatific images from the transgendered stage question posturing as a means for alieviating and/or concealing such oppressive circumstances.

Quintessential alternative rockers, Sonic Youth, celebrate free-form experimentalism while reinforcing their performance-art driven tradition in this Soundstage performance, recorded on May 7, 2003 at WTTW Grainger Studio in Chicago. The band, which settles just outside the realm of definition, delivers a part rock, part free-form noise, part avant-garde punk performance which features a new song "Sympathy for the Strawberry."

October 5th, at 10.30 pm , after pope John-Paul II`s blessing of Lyon from the top of Fourvieres hill, Rendez-Vous Lyon got under way, a concert performed for more than 800,000 people on the banks of the river Saone. Fourvieres hill was ablaze for ninety minutes, fired on by cannons of light, fireworks and images synchronised to music being performed live on the central stage by Jean-Michel Jarre, 60 musicians and 120 choristers. A baroque feast, blending classical and avant-garde, workmanship and high-tech, past and future, Rendez-Vous Lyon will long be remembered as an exceptional event.

Animation by japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami for John Lennon's song "Oh Yoko!" -- the song was released in 1971, and the animation made in 1973. Keiichi Tanaami (田名網 敬一, Tanaami Keiichi, born in 1936 in Tokyo) was one of the leading pop artists of postwar Japan, and was active as multi-genre artist since the 1960s as a graphic designer, illustrator, video artist and fine artist until his death in 2024.

Halloween, New York City, 1981 Live at The Palladium with Ray White, Steve Vai, Bobby Martin, Tommy Mars, Ed Mann, Scott Thunes, Chad Wackerman

This animated short is a play on motion set against a background of multi-hued sky. Spheres of translucent pearl float weightlessly in the unlimited panorama of the sky, grouping, regrouping or colliding like the stylized burst of some atomic chain reaction. The dance is set to the musical cadences of Bach, played by pianist Glenn Gould.

A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.

In 2017, a short anime film called Hypersonic Music Club was produced in Japan. It was directed and written by Osamu Kobayashi, a veteran of the industry who passed away in April 2021. For various reasons, this short anime was never released. It was made public on August 1, 2023.

An omnibus film based on Kim Oki's album Hip Hop Retreat. Twenty characters share the same table at different times, in different emotional states, each with their own story. Shot in one day, edited in one day.

An experimental short film exploring themes of depression and existentialism through various empty spaces and poetic narration by a young French-speaking woman.