Paradise Now: The Living Theater in Amerika

Love and Anger

May 1969 •Italian

Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.

The Connection

May 1961 •English

A title card announces that the film is a result of found footage assembled by cameraman J.J. Burden working for the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn, who has disappeared. Leach, a heroin addict, introduces the audience to his apartment where other heroin addicts, a mix of current and former jazz musicians, are waiting for Cowboy, their drug connection, to appear. Things go out of control as the men grow increasingly nervous and the cameraman keeps recording.

Emergency: The Living Theatre

September 1968 •English

a 32-minute color film by Gwen Brown, featuring precious footage of Living Theatre productions “Mysteries” and smaller pieces, “Paradise Now” and “Frankenstein.” “The fusion of Brown’s freewheeling direct cinema and the Living Theatre’s performance for revolutionary change (amidst the heydays of both) unite as a dynamic concoction of the era, yielding for the viewer a shifting terrain of both critical insight and ecstatic zeal, not as a vacant nostalgia for a pre-commodified radicality, but as tactical inspiration for future days.” – Andrew Wilson (Artist’s Access Television)

Après la Passion selon Sade

January 1968 •French

The Brig

September 1964 •English

An ultra-realistic depiction of life in a Marine Corps brig (or jail) at a camp in Japan in 1957. Marine prisoners are awakened and put through work details for the course of a single day, submitting in the course of it to extremely harsh and shocking physical and mental degradation and abuse.

The Connection

January 1959 •English

A professional recording of the official play. The play has a play-within-a-play format, with characters Jim Dunn as the "producer" and Jaybird as the "writer" attempting to stage a production about the underbelly of society using "real" addicts. Some of the addicts are jazz musicians. They all (except for the "producer", "writer", and two "photographers") have one thing in common: they are waiting for their drug dealer, their "connection". The dialogue of the characters is interspersed with jazz music.

Paradise Now

March 1970 •English

At least forty films have been made about the Living Theatre; it remained to the American underground filmmaker Sheldon Rochlin (previously responsible for the marvellous Vali) to make the 'definitive' film about one of the most famous of their works, Paradise Now, shot in Brussels and at the Berlin Sportpalast. Made on videotape, with expressionist colouring 'injected' by electronic means, this emerges as a hypnotic transmutation of a theatrical event into poetic cinema, capturing the ambiance and frenzy of the original. No documentary record could have done it justice.

Rite of Guerrilla Theater

September 1969 •English

Commissioned work by Julian Beck and members of The Living Theatre (featuring Beck and Judith Malina, co-founders of The Living Theatre, in performance) for broadcast on KQED-TV, San Francisco. The Dilexi Series represents a pioneering effort to present works created by artists specifically for broadcast.

This American Wife

May 2021 •English

The body of a Real Housewife is an apparatus, an assembly of parts—hair, lips, dress, falsies, mic pack, cell phone, wine stem, camera, restaurant, brand, identity. This body is maintained and degraded, intoxicated and cleansed, in seasons and cycles, systems of supply and denial. The self needs a medium. Who cares who you are when you’re alone anymore?

Cour d'honneur de Jérôme Bel - Avignon 2013

July 2013 •French

Jérôme Bel's show features the memories of spectators at the Avignon Festival.

Kissing Cup's Race

November 1930 •English

A drama film directed by Castleton Knight .

My Name Is Costin

June 2016 •Romanian

Rares claims his real name is Costin Dumitru. Six years ago, he was murdered by a neighbour, then buried in the school back-yard. No one believes Rares. But that’s just until the investigation starts…

Figures of the Night

January 1920 •German

"Night people". Thomas Bezug, the richest man in the world, is a solitary, domineering and cruel cripple, who hardly can move on his crutches. He dwells a fanatical love for his son, whom he holds like a monkey in a cage. His servants are defaced dwarfs. His secretary is trying to steal Bezugs assets. These are the night people.

IMT Smile a Lúčnica – Made in Slovakia

November 2016 •Slovak

Buffalo Bill im Wilden Osten

October 2012 •German

Francesco Nuti… e vengo da lontano

November 2010 •Italian

Kinderblock 66: Return to Buchenwald

July 2012 •English

Kinderblock 66 is the story of four men who, as young boys, were imprisoned by the Nazis in the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp and who, sixty-five years later, return to commemorate the sixty-fifth anniversary of their liberation. The film tells the story of the effort undertaken by the camp's Communist-led underground to protect ad save Jewish children who were arriving in Buchenwald toward the end of the Holocaust. Kinderblock 66 also tells the story of Antonin Kalina, the head of the block who was personally responsible for saving 904 boys in Buchenwald.

Fotofinish

October 1986 •German

A man in financial debt is asked by his little son if the photographer of the famous picture which shows the Hindenburg zeppelin going up in flames early this century has become rich by that. The father quickly concludes that he only has to take the right picture in order to be able to pay his debts. After contacting a underground explosives engineer he takes off to the Munich Olympic Tower with his camera...