The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

The Pervert
The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema -Trailer (2007, 8.97MB, 1:06 min.)

Slavoj Žižek, philosophy’s PT Barnum, struts his stuff
con shed-loads of brio in this Sophie Fiennes directed opus.
Doesn’t seem to be much genuinely new (the terrible fate of
the celebrity academic being to be lionised for what we already
know
they’re going to do/say) but still vastly entertaining.

Peace Not War – Glass Bead Collective

Peace Not War
Peace not War(2007, 33.8MB, 1:06 min.)

Will this action/piece by the Glass Bead Collective hasten the
end of any war? Dunno – nice to think so, but I’m sceptical.
What it certainly does, though, is to add considerably to the
store of human wonder.
When we stop our lords & masters spending money on invasions,
& we’ve fed & housed everyone, then we should definitely
spend some of what’s left on high-powered projectors.

Smolarski/Langager – <em>Robert Roth's 'Health Proxy'</em>

Robert Roth
Readings from ‘Health Proxy’ (2007, 32.7MB, 8:19 min.)

So..declaration of interest..Robert Roth is a friend of mine & I get mentioned in the book.
Nonetheless, if he was my worst enemy, I’d still say watch this, then .
Health Proxy is pretty much sui generis..the only comparisons I can think of being those fragmentary, diaristic things in the Japanese tradition:The Pillow Book or Essays in Idleness.
Of course Kenko & Sei Shonagon never wrote about baseball or AIDS,
nor were they animated by the massively warm oppositional & radical spirit we find here.
The video is a nice job too – not only is it elegantly made, but Langager and Smolarski
pass the documentary acid test of honouring their subject matter whilst still creating
something with a palpable sense of their authorship.

Lyapis Trubetskoy – ‘Capital’

capital_tv
Capital (2007, 55MB, 3:18 min.)

A wonderful surrealistic piece of pop-art with a cynical view of world politics.
Vote for this video clip for MTV Russia !
From cosmosfilm.tv

Saturday Night Live with Al Gore

al_gore
Saturday Night with Al Gore (2002, 7MB, 4:02 min.)

President Al Gore delivers a special message from the Oval Office
in the opening skit on Saturday Night Live.
from del.icio.us

atmo – The Voice

the_voice
The Voice (clip) (2004, 7.9 MB, 1:36 min.)

atmo was founded in 2000 by a handful of friends who shared years
of free-lance filmmaking and reporting from places like Bosnia, Beirut and South Africa.
Johan Söderberg has lip-synced some of the most hated and loved people in history.

La Langue/The Tongue


La Langue/The Tongue

La Langue (2007, 20.2MB, 2:06 min.)

Warning: this piece is genuinely somewhat disturbing…

Beautifully made & also deeply chilling work from French vlogger
jolipunk
. Astonishing.

LA LANGUE est une tentative video sur notre rapport à la liberté d’expression.
Une succession de lents dézooms nous aspire dans une fatalité qui nous échappe
inexorablement.
Un songe qui nous confronte à notre rapport au language où la vision sanglante
de la perte de l’outil de communication est volontairement hypnotique et ésthétisée.
Le spectateur : il detourne le regard ou il contemple avec perversité et impuissance….


THE TONGUE is an attempt at a video about our relation to freedom of expression.
A succession of slow zooms-out draws us in to a destiny which eludes us inexorably.
A dream which confronts us with our connection to language and where the bloody
vision of the loss of our instrument of communication is deliberately hypnotic and aestheticised.
As for the spectator, either they avert their gaze or they stare, impotently and perversely…

Music : M83, Moon Child

Strange Culture

strangeculture
strange culture (2007, 17.7MB, 2:17 min.)

Strange Culture documents the case of artist and professor Steven Kurtz
and geneticist Robert Ferrell, accused in 2004 by the U.S. Justice Department
of “bioterrorism” and currently awaiting trial.
The case threatens to set dangerous precedent by eroding the boundary
between civil and criminal law, and by criminalizing those who legitimately
and legally criticize government policy.
By Lynn Hershman Leeson.

Kev Flanagan

Talking Heads
Talking Heads (2003, 12.8MB, 1:09 min)

Ain
Ain’t Nobody Got It (2006, 18.1MB, 1:35 min)

Two movies from Irish artist & curator Kev Flanagan.
I like them both, but there is something so utterly fuck-off mad
about the Aguilera cover, with its fine disregard to boot for any known
production value, which totally does it for me.
The performers in that are Cian McConn & Stephanie Hough
who as Margaret and Jim have their own neat line in performance…

Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack

preserve_prelinger
Self Preservation in an Atomic Attack (1950, 44.2MB, 17.41 min)

A real winner from the Prelinger Archives, this film is
seventeen funny and frightening minutes of useless
disinformation from the American government.