Chris Marker, writer, photographer, filmmaker and time-traveler created the post-nuclear-war photo-novel-film “La Jetée,” an inventive melange of image and sound, politics and philosophy.
Performance
Performance arts, music, film, drama and literature, creative expressions presented on the world stage seeking earth balance, harmony, dissonance, abstraction and concept.
H. G. Wells on the Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
“Metropolis” hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic industrialist, his spoilt son falls for the working class prophet who envisions some mediation between workers and managers. Noted science fiction author H. G. Wells reviews the controversial 1927 masterpiece.
Jack Kerouac’s Lowell Blues: Cast-off Boots of Time
Jack Kerouac wrote in 1950: “I wish to evoke that indescribable sad music of the night in America–for reasons which are never deeper than the music. Bop only begins to express that American music. It is the actual inner sound of a country.”
William S. Burroughs – Commissioner of Literary Addictions
Burroughs wanted to free people from the slavery of addiction, whether to heroin or money or sex. “The Garden of Earthly Delights” was his shorthand for the diseased saturnalia of American affluence. From his earliest writings Burroughs foresaw a time when human beings, drenched in orgasmic “freedom,” would be reduced to their bodies, their minds completely manipulated by advertising and mass media.
Harry Partch: Genesis of a Musical Outsider
Composer, dishwasher, hobo, fruit picker, sailor, microtonal theorist, instrument builder, writer, visual artist, philosopher, musicologist, iconoclast teacher Harry Partch was one of the first 20th Century composers to work with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation.
Creators of the Cool: Miles Davis and Gil Evans
The collaboration of trumpeter Miles Davis with Gil Evans’ orchestral arrangement and composition elevated “the new thing,” freeing modern jazz from big-band swing with lyrical-literary French horns and tuba and Davis taking up the flugelhorn.
Maya Deren: Divine Horsemen Dance the Living Gods of Haiti
“Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti” journeys into the world of the Vodoun religion, communing with the drums and loa rituals, made by avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren between 1947-1951.