Put More Blood Into the Music

Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art

November 2019 •English

Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves) explores Video Art, revealing how different generations ‘hacked’ the tools of television to pioneer new ways of creating art that can be beautiful, bewildering and wildly experimental.

Punk's Not Dead

July 2007 •English

On the edge of the 30th anniversary of punk rock, Punk's Not Dead takes you into the sweaty underground clubs, backyard parties, recording studios, shopping malls and stadiums where punk rock music and culture continue to thrive.

Mission of Burma Live at the Bradford

January 1994 •English

In 1983, now legendary post-punk icons Mission of Burma performed two highly regarded farewell shows at the Bradford Hotel in Boston. At the very peak of their power, the band was calling it quits due to guitarist Roger Miller's worsening tinnitus (ringing in the ears), no doubt brought on by their pummeling live performances. Those who were there recall a highly emotional evening: the band and audience were deeply connected through the enormity of what was about to be lost, which inspired Burma to rip through their sets with a passion that was both brutal and bittersweet.

Il est minuit, Paris s'éveille

December 2012 •French

Rock and Cliff: The Geological Surface of Horn Town

December 2019 •Chinese

Video essay ‘Rock and Cliff' investigates the creation of Horn Town, a new model village and centre of large scale tourist development, and the experiences of rural residents moved there through government-led displacement. Horn Town is located in Wulong, a rural district near the Three Gorges Dam administered by the Chongqing municipality (a city of 30 million people). Narrated in the style of a science documentary but using local Chongqing dialect, the video brings a geological and topographical perspective to types of 'rocks' found in the area,from mythological stones from a mountain cliff, to ruins of the original settlement, to a stone sculpture from a dubious 'Land Art Biennial', in order to address issues of land acquisition, top-down development and spatial politic.

The Making of Michel Petite

Invalid date •Turkish

The film shows the behind-the-scenes process of making a documentary about an author known for their autofiction stories. By including its own behind-the-scenes footage, it mirrors the author's storytelling approach, blending the documentary’s creation with the author's narrative technique. In this way, the relationship between reality and fiction is questioned.

Like a Dream that Vanishes

October 1999 •English

"Like a Dream That Vanishes" continues Sternberg’s work in film both thematically and formally: the ephemerality of life echoed in the temporal nature of film, as the stuff of life echoed on the energy, life-force in rhythmic light pulses (Your life is like a candle burning). Imageless emulsion is inter-cut with brief shots of natural elements and mise-en-scene of the stages of human life: a little boy runs and falls; teens hang out together at night smoking; sun shines through tree branches; men pace, waiting; flashes of lightning; an elderly man speaks philosophically about miracles.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett

February 2017 •English

Electro-Pythagorus is an intimate and subjective portrait of the late Martin Bartlett, the Canadian electronic music pioneer who studied with Pauline Oliveros, David Tudor, John Cage, and Pandit Pran Nath. His contribution as an interdisciplinary composer, educator, and founding member of Western Front, though undoubtedly extensive, is in danger of being erased from cultural memory since his death from AIDS in 1993. Navigating an array of archival materials including letters, correspondences, notebooks, personal photos, and a huge body of unreleased music and field recordings held at the archives of Simon Fraser University, Electro-Pythagoras is a journey through the evolution of Bartlett’s musical time and space, softly guided by Luke Fowler’s insightful camera and montage—creating an experimental portrait that defies one-dimensionality.

Burn Gently

March 2023 •English

BURN GENTLY is an exploration into the ins and outs of the music industry, its growth, pressures, expectations and its hardships, through the lens of Australia’s many influential artists, contributors and industry professionals.

PROTOTYPE

September 2017 •English

As a major storm strikes Texas in 1900, a mysterious televisual device is built and tested. Blake Williams’ experimental 3D sci-fi film immerses us in the aftermath of the Galveston disaster to fashion a haunting treatise on technology, cinema, and the medium’s future.

It Might Get Loud

September 2008 •English

A documentary on the electric guitar from the point of view of three significant rock musicians: the Edge, Jimmy Page and Jack White.

Paleo Impulse

July 2018 •English

Paleo is a video clip shoot at the famous homonymous music festival in the French canton of Vaud in Switzerland, where many hippie-techno-pagans gather every summer since 1977. The editing style is a tribute to the reworking of psychedelic theories and the New Age proliferation within rave culture in the early 90s from the perspective of the late second decade of the new millennium. In the footage, the ritual ingestion of psychedelics is symbolically replaced by a liberating dance through a powerful fast montage that epitomizes the frenzy of intoxication achieved through psychedelic plants. A revival of a revival of a revival.

(Always) Next To Me

May 2021 •English

(Always) Next to Me is a 16mm film that pairs abstract sequences of plants developed directly on the film emulsion with intertitles briefly describing what was going on for me personally at the moment the plants were collected. I started the film at the beginning of the pandemic, just after I found out I was pregnant for the first time in April 2020 and finished it just before the birth of my baby in December of the same year.

Taxidrome

January 2021 •English

To fly a – way from/out of death, don’t hire a taxidermist but take a ride in this taxidrome! Series of 41 Moving Images - this analogy is possible being conservation at its core rescuing what really matters in the world, like nature, habitats, science and art. It is vital. Yet in a continuously changing environment, the flipside of conservation becomes and here it is where the vital feature of conservation becomes its lifelike trait, a fictive life, a fake life. The embalming process consists of 1) imparting a balmy essence to the dead body, as in the ancient world, 2) by filling its blood vessels with formaldehyde to prevent putrification, as in the modern world, although recently with more regard towards more natural treatments, as for instance in bio-art. To embalm also means to “preserve from oblivion”, and “to cause to remain unchanged”, “to prevent the development of something”.

Max Ernst: Journey into the Subconscious

January 1964 •English

The inner world of the great painter Max Ernst is the subject of this film. One of the principal founders of Surrealism, Max Ernst explores the nature of materials and the emotional significance of shapes to combine with his collages and netherworld canvases. The director and Ernst together use the film creatively as a medium to explain the artist's own development.

The Decline of Western Civilization

July 1981 •English

The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.

Good Bye G.O.D.

Invalid date •English

"Good-bye G.O.D." was a play written specially for Jack Birkett, 'The INCREDIBLE ORLANDO', to be performed with its author, composer Carlos Miranda. Conceived as a future-fantasy Music Hall operetta, "Good-bye G.O.D." tells the story of General Orson Davis, (known as G.O.D.), one of the heads of the Confederated Armies of the Northern Hemisphere, who have concocted a mass destruction of the world. Sheltered in a bunker in the North Pole, he and his henchmen have saved a chosen team of scientists impelled to work on the vessel that will enable them to eventually evacuate the planet. But he has a secret passion which he will indulge once he encounters Adam, one of his scientists.

Wilderness

July 2022 •English

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.

The Mentors: Kings of Sleaze Rockumentary

April 2017 •English

Documentary on the shock rock group "The Mentors".