John Zorn's Naked City

"Sax Maniac: The Life and Times of James Chance" delves into the groundbreaking career of James Siegfried, better known as James Chance or James White, a seminal figure in the late 1970s and early 1980s New York City "No Wave" music scene. Produced and directed by his brother, David Siegfried, the documentary chronicles James's journey from his early days in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he first explored jazz and protopunk.

The aftermath of an experience with Heroin causes a man to destroy anything within his path.

A 2004 documentary on thirty years of alternative rock 'n roll in NYC.Documenting the history from the genuine authenticity of No Wave to the current generation of would be icons and true innovators seeing to represent New York City in the 21st century

This fascinating and retrospective look at the music of the outspoken and multitalented Lydia Lunch represents every stage of her varied career, with featured songs such as "I Woke Up Screaming" from her Teenage Jesus and the Jerks days. Other songs spanning the decades in this collection include "Freud in Flop," "Sorry for Behaving So Badly," "Dead River," "Solo Mystico," "Summon," "Violence Is the Sport of God" and many more.

A teen is locked in a room with a monitor lizard

Complete strangers meet in a room to act out their sexual desires.

A young artist is followed by his friend in New York. A Tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat

Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and '70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers - brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane - are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America's most innovative art form. FIRE MUSIC showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries, and produced landmark albums like Coleman's Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane's Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement's key players.

Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.

PBS produced documentary in two parts: the first is dedicated to saxophonist and composer John Zorn; the second is about Sonic Youth at the height of their powers in 1988.

No-Wave film directed by Gordon Stevenson from Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. Mirielle Cervenka (Exene's sister) plays a young woman named Rose who is afflicted with a case of extreme stigmata.

Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern's first collaborative effort, The Right Side of My Brain, is a glimpse into the world of unsatiable female lust, narrated by Lydia Lunch. The film was initially dismissed and dismayed by critics such as J. Hoberman, but the criticism of The Right Side of My Brain received only pushed the two to go one step further with Fingered (1986).

Two aimless psychics develop a strange relationship as they come to terms with having been groomed for espionage as children in the Gifted and Talented Education program.

In the void created ad hoc to throw us into desperation, fear, shock, the torment of an infinite present, Arto Lindsay sings with words, silences and small gestures of/with/for/about love, a force that is so violent that nothing will ever be the same again.

In this ostensible murder mystery, the genre elements are merely a pretext for the series of haunting (if inconclusive and only mildly erotic) homo-social encounters he stages. Starting with the familiar premise of the absent woman, so popular with Downtown filmmakers, Vogl drains his storytelling of any hints of noir stylization. Instead of nighttime scenes, slick streets, and dark alleys, he shoots documentary-style on the nondescript, sunlit streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and City Island in a manner that casually references the art-film angst of Michelangelo Antonioni.

John Zorn: alto sax, vocals Bill Frisell: guitar Wayne Horvitz: keyboards, piano Fred Frith: bass Joey Baron: drums

Two New York poets talk about art, poetry, and smoke in this French New Wave inspired short.

A Nietzschian parable on the fate of innocence, THE TRAP DOOR follows the mishaps of Jeremy (John Ahearn) as he is fired by his boss (Jenny Holzer), gets laughed out of court by Judge Gary Indiana, loses his girlfriend to sleazy Richard Prince, is hustled by prospective employer (Bill Rice) and mauled by predatory bird-women. Finally, he seeks the help of a shrink (the legendary Jack Smith) who turns out to be the most demented of all.

A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real "corporate wars" and the manipulation of politicians.

Weaving blistering performance footage from Europe, Japan, and the U.S. with a sublimely restrained, intimate glimpse into a world-renowned jazz percussionist’s singular voice and complex cosmology.