BBC Documentaries Galore

The Power of Nightmares

Documentary film making at it's best; an extensive look at the origins of religious fundamentalism, in both it´s Christian and Islamic form, and it's growing political influence. An examination of the necessity of a binary value system of good and evil, with an enemy figure ever present (being the Soviets or Al-Quaeda) to succeed in maintaining the masses in a state of permanent fear.
Part 1 - Baby, It´s Cold Outside
Part 2 - The Phantom Victory
Part 3 - The Shadows in The Cave

Root of All Evil?

Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist super-star and author of the seminal book "The Selfish Gene", makes the case for the dangers of tolerating religion. An atheist manifesto, his approach may occasionally be somewhat tactless but nevertheless it´s an important and timely reminder of why God is passé.
Part 1 - The God Delusion
Part 2 - The Virus of Faith

Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision

1978 documentary on Hunter S. Thompson where he performs his usual antics, shooting things, taking drugs and mixing chlorophyll with his whisky.

Michel Gondry plays footsy

Michel Gondry solves a Rubik´s cube under 2 minutes. With his feet.

"Beauty Is Looks That You Cannot Forget..."

John Waters and Divine on Letterman (1981). Talking on 'Good Bad Taste' vs 'Bad Bad Taste,' and making people sick to compensate for measly budgets.

Cassavetes vs. Reagan

Ronald Reagan getting punched by John Cassavetes in his last screen appearance, and his only role as a bad guy (in a film). The metaphor would be too easy to make.

Bruce Connor for Brian Eno and David Byrne

A video by artist, filmmaker, friend of Stan Brackage, (and one time Haight Ashbury bead seller) Bruce Connor, for 'Mea Culpa', a track from Brian Eno and David Byrne's seminal album, 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' (1981).

More information here, on the wonderful, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts website.

Meditate with Siegfried and Roy

A heart-rendering tale of the birth of an illusion, after a sublime cross species meditation session. From Siegfried and Roy - Las Vegas stalwarts and Magicians of the Century - prior to Roy celebrating his 59th birthday with an on-stage mauling. An interview with Siegfried and Roy, here, on Roy's oneness with the animal kingdom. Man and Nature in mildly homoerotic harmony.

Noé Does Eva

A series of three 'petit films' by Gaspar Noé (director of Irreversible/Seul Contre Tous). Starring model Eva Herzigova, they were shot in hotels over the period of the Cannes Film Festival in 2005, for transmission during the festival on Canal+.









A series of docu-fictional indents, attempting to "capter la mythologie de la cinématographie de Cannes," they appear like a more brutally sexualised version of the films of the late fashion photographer, Guy Bourdin.


EVA 1 here

EVA 2 here

EVA 3 here


A little more information can be found on the project, here, at Noé's unofficial website, which is worth further exploration.

Zizek-'If somebody tells you Lacan is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy.'

Arch-philosopher Slavoj Zizek, plugging his book, 'The Puppet and the Dwarf,' and way of thinking, on Nitebeat, a U.S cable TV show, probably in 2003. (5 mins 35 secs) Very surreal yet wonderful to see a Lacanian Marxist in this setting, speaking to a ADD riddled host who clearly wishes he was doing his own stand up routine, as Zizek states;

"The final outcome of hedonism is that our lives are more regulated than ever...you can have it all, but in a reduced form deprived of its substance..coffee without caffeine, patisseries without sugar...war without warfare."

Acid Brass

A clip from ITV's 'Here and Now,' from 1997 (4 mins 02 sec), detailing 'Acid Brass,' the artistic project of (the then future) Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller, in collaboration with the Williams Fairey Brass Band. Deller cites Acid House and Brass bands as, "two authentic forms of folk art rooted in specific communities." A collaboration that was also resurrected for the opening of Tate Modern, and a fitting watch after 'Voodoo Ray' below.

Voodoo Ray

A Guy Called Gerald, Voodoo Ray, 1989, Rham Records. The original video; featuring great animation and excellent 'dancing trapped in dense visuals' footage to accompany this acid house staple.

Poème Electronique

The audio-visual spectacle of Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis and Edgard Varese's 'Poème électronique,' conceived for Le Corbusier's Philips Pavilion, at the 1958 World's Fair, Bruxelles. Like an electro-acoustic pondering on evolution, visualised through pages of anthropological books and moving Matissesque collages. (8mins 36secs)

"Le Poème electronique proposes to show, within a distressing tumult, our civilization on her way to conquest modern times" - Le Corbusier.

More images of the pavilion and 'le Poème' as installed in its architecture, here.

Vincent Gallo Mustang Commercial

Vincent Gallo, in what appears to be a commercial for a German (?) brand of jeans. A little like a Midwestern remake of Jonathon Glazer's ad for Guinness. A typically scandalous Gallo in an interview with himself, can be found here via Coulture.

Lance Loud Visits Warhol Exhibition, 1971

As an extension to Phil Collins' work below, here is a scene (1min 33sec) from 'The American Family,' the cited 12 hour PBS documentary on the Loud Family of Santa Barbara. Screened in 1973, it has been hailed as the first piece of 'reality' television. This is a clip of Lance Loud visiting an Andy Warhol exhibition; enabling us to use an archived clip of a televisual documentary, as a partial cataloging of an art event. Mixing up 'reality tv' and art once more...

Phil Collins Turner Prize Talk at Tate - The New Melodrama

2006 Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins' talk at the Tate (1hr 38mins), on Shady Lane Productions, his ongoing research project on the social and personal ramifications of reality TV.

Featuring; A former 'Wife Swap' contestant, talking essentially on class warfare and the 'attempted annihilation of her family;' A researcher on the mutual exploitation of those creating the show, and those participating in it; A 'live cosmetic surgery' TV star on how she now needs glasses and has metal fangs as a result; And Professor Thomas Elsaesser, on the melodramatic notion of 'Serial Suffering' - asserting your virtue through ongoing strife, trauma as a major part of contemporary self-identity, and how "The citizen in us is now competing with the consumer in us." He goes on to describe, turning trauma into narratives through Oprah, and 'harvesting misery.'

Another Phil Collins piece, 'They Short Horses Don't They,' is also on view at Tate Britain , through 04-02-07. More images of Phil Collin's work, here, at Tanya Bonakdar. A Guardian article on the Shady Lane project, here.

Giorgio Moroder Double Bill

From a promotional video care of CBS records, 1979.














From Eurotrash, 1995.