Saturday Matinee: Step Across the Border

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Synopsis from CineNomad:

In “Step Across the Border” two forms of artistic expression, improvised music and cinema direct, are interrelated. In both forms it is the moment that counts, the intuitive sense for what is happening in a space. Music and film come into existence out of an intense perception of the moment, not from the transformation of a preordained plan. In improvisation the plan is revealed only at the end. One finds it. The other connection concerns the work method: the film team as band. Much as musicians communicate via the music, our work, too, was realized within a very small and flexible team of equals. What mattered was exchange. And movement. Sometimes we started filming in the middle of the night, responding to a new idea that had arisen only minutes before. We had a fundamental feeling for what we wanted to do, for what kind of film this should be. And we followed that feeling. It was all very instinctive…


Do you know a white rabbit who, playing trumpet, circles the world on his flying carpet?
May be you have met him somewhere already, in Zurich, London, Leipzig, Tokyo or New York. That at least was about the route we took and what resulted from it was the black-and-white wink of an eye at the symphonic connection between subways, storms and electric guitars.
An American critic wrote: ‘Fred Frith’s music makes your jaw drop, your feet dance, and your neighbours move.’
Also starring: several telephones, puddles, scarecrows, saxophones, orchestrated cities and motors.
A music film.

Saturday Matinee: Dust

220px-Dust2“Dust” (2001) is an audacious Southeastern European Western directed by Milcho Manchevski. The film’s narrative cross-cuts between two stories: one in which a thief is cornered at gunpoint in a New York apartment by an elderly woman and a second involving love and vengeance between two brothers caught up in a revolutionary struggle in Macedonia. The parallel narratives are unified by themes of greed, redemption, and the transformative power of storytelling.

Note: Video may not work on some portable devices.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/316653

Saturday Matinee: Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?

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From Wikipedia:

The Residents had begun a movie in 1972 called Vileness Fats. The concept of the movie was to shoot it on a new media form (reel-to-reel video) and tell most of the story through music. The story itself was about a village under siege by bandits stealing the meat supply, forcing the population to exist on vegetables. Unbeknownst to the population, the leader of the bandits is their own spiritual leader. To take care of things, the village hires Siamese twin tag-team wrestlers to be their saviors. Unfortunately their saviors also have other problems, including an Indian princess whose lovers always die.

The film itself, despite over 14 hours of footage, was never finished. In 1984 it was edited to approx. 32 minutes and released on a VHS videocassette titled Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?; the companion soundtrack was also released the same year. Another re-edited version (approx. 17 minutes) of the footage was released on the Icky Flix DVD in 2002.

Saturday Matinee: Mini Doc Double Feature

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“Our False Reality” and “The Lie We Live”: two recent short videos with a thematic connection. The first was produced by Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton of TruthstreamMedia.com and explores how those who seek power and control use technology to manipulate and engineer the masses right down to the perception of reality. The second film, produced by Spencer Cathcart, offers a brief but expansive overview of systems of control with a reminder of the positive potential of communications technology.

Saturday Matinee: When the Wind Blows

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“When the Wind Blows” (1986) is a British apocalyptic drama directed by Jimmy Murakami based on the 1982 graphic novel of the same name by Raymond Biggs. Peggy Ashcroft and John Mills provide the voices of Hilda and James, an elderly couple whose previously happy and peaceful life in Sussex is shattered by nuclear war. The film is comparable to Grave of Fireflies in terms of themes and emotional impact and is notable for it’s soundtrack featuring David Bowie and Roger Waters and innovative animation technique combining hand-drawn images, live-action and stop-motion camera work.

Saturday Matinee: Wheeler Dixon Triple Feature

indexWheeler Dixon is an author, film historian and professor of film studies at the University of Nebraska. In the late 70s he wrote, produced and directed a series of mind-blowing psychotronic documentaries featuring narration often drifting off on unusual tangents. These films inspired contemporary experimental found footage artists such as Craig Baldwin and are precursors of countless independent conspiracy-related documentaries commonly found on YouTube today.

Saturday Matinee: The Salton Sea

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John Waters Narrates Offbeat Documentary on an Environmental Catastrophe, the Salton Sea

By Dan Colman

Source: Open Culture

In 2004, John Waters narrated Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea, a humorous documentary on the accidental lake created in the desert of Southern California. You can now find the film hosted on the YouTube channel of KQED, the public television outfit in San Francisco (where we’re getting heavy, heavy rains today). They lay the foundation for watching the film as follows:

Once known as the “California Riviera,” the Salton Sea is now considered one of America’s worst ecological disasters: a fetid, stagnant, salty lake, coughing up dead fish and birds by the thousands. Narrated by cult-movie legend John Waters, Plagues & Pleasures is an epic western tale of real estate ventures and failed boomtowns.

Find Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea listed in our collection, 200 Free Documentaries Online.

Dan Colman is the founder/editor of Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus and share intelligent media with your friends. Or better yet, sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox.

 

Saturday Matinee: Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

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“Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees” (1991) is an experimental indie film written/produced/directed by and starring David Blair. The convoluted plot involving Mesopotamian bees, ghosts in the machine, cities of the dead, the Trinity site, the tower of Babel, and a Supranormal Film Society trying to capture footage of the dead is reminiscent of the visions of William S. Burroughs (who makes a cameo appearance in the film). According to wikipedia, Wax is the first independent feature film to have been edited on a digital non-linear system and the first film to have been re-formatted as hypertext and posted on the internet.