In 1992, at the height of the AIDS pandemic, activist Terence Alan Smith made a historic bid for president of the United States as his drag queen persona Joan Jett Blakk. Today, Smith reflects back on his seminal civil rights campaign and its place in American history.
A café in the north of Brussels. Days are punctuated by the songs that the customers sing at all hours, to amuse themselves, to remember or to pass the time. Those songs transform the place little by little, making the film a strange musical.
The film depicts young people at various socioeconomic levels presenting their views on the use of marijuana.
After being invited by Benjamin Millepied to a rehearsal for the L.A Dance Project's premiere performance, Oscar-nominated director Alejandro G. Iñárritu was inspired to make a video-exercise that documents movement and dance in an experimental way, with a stream of consciousness narrative. The story takes place in a secluded, dusty space and centers around LADP dancer Julia Eichten who seems to be on an eternal search... for herself.
Retrospective featurette included with the 2014 Blu-ray by Arrow Video.
Retrospective interview with Joe Pantoliano included with the 2014 Blu-ray by Arrow Video.
Derek Jarman's film portrait of American writer William S. Burroughs was shot in September 1982 during his first visit to England to attend the legendary Final Academy events at the South London Ritzy Cinema. These were Burroughs-themed art and performance nights curated by Psychic TV. Jarman’s film shows Burroughs on Tottenham Court Road signing autographs with fans and inside a shop buying alcohol. The industrial soundtrack by Psychic TV features a sample of Burroughs repeating "boys, school showers and swimming pools full of 'em'". Additional footage shot by Jarman during Burroughs' visit is reported to have been confiscated by Scotland Yard in 1991 and remains lost. Jarman and Psychic TV would continue to collaborate (“magic bound us together” Jarman wrote), with Jarman directing the music video for Catalan and staring as the spokesperson in the Psychic TV video A Spokesman for the Temple of Psychick Youth.
Luck of a Foghorn is a documentary featurette about the late Seattle underground animator Bruce Bickford (1947 - 2019), former collaborator of musician Frank Zappa and creator of Prometheus’ Garden, one of the most original stop-motion films in animation history. Interweaving Bickford’s pulsing, violent, magical, and mesmerizing clay animation with atmospheric 16mm and Super 8mm cinematography, home movies, and sparse interviews, Luck of a Foghorn takes viewers behind the scenes and deep into the garden of Prometheus.
A group of kids play in a stream.
Mme. Bob Walter performs the serpentine dance.
Nikolina Kulidžan was twelve years old when she fell in love for the first time. Not long after, the Bosnian War changed her life forever.
The importance of timing in athletics
Three arrested and detained undocumented immigrants must navigate the system to fight impending deportation.
The film, based on the artistic-documentary aesthetics, is about the fate of three sons of the Javanshir dynasty, who are connected to Karabakh and this corner of Azerbaijan - Mahammad bey Ashiq, who lived in the 18th century, Abdussamad bey Ashiq, who lived in the 19th century, and Khosrov bey Javanshir, who lived in the 20th century. These three personalities, influential poets and public figures of their time, were subjected to persecution and repression during the Russian and Soviet empires.
Kyabakura is a type of hostess club in Japan, inspired by French cabaret. There exists an ambiguous relationship between the clients, the men, and the hostesses, that should never materialize into a sexual relationship...There are strict rules, which of course, are designed to be broken.
Body Team 12 is tasked with collecting the dead at the height of the Ebola outbreak. These body collectors have arguably the most dangerous and gruesome job in the world. Yet despite the strain they emerge as heroes while the film explores their philosophy and strength.
Armand Dranem performs The True Jiu-Jitsu ("Le Vrai Jiu-Jitsu", by P. Briollet & G. Fabri / C. D'Orviet) in this phonoscene by Alice Guy. This early form of music video was created using a chronophone recording of Dranem, who was then filmed "lip singing". Guy would film phonoscenes of all three major Belle Époque celebrities in France: Polin, Félix Mayol, and Dranem.
Retrospective interview with Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly included with the 2014 Blu-ray by Arrow Video.
In the decades after Bacon's Rebellion, an African man and an English woman - husband and wife - sing of their fate, their future as law by law, edict by edict, their family, their marriage, their love made illegal.
A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture.