American Gumbo...

Video of the week- "Sleep"

'bone breaking' in N.Y.

'liquid' from Paris

'electro' in Russia

Home grown...

Gotye

Wouter "Wally" De Backer (born 21 May 1980), also known professionally by his stage name Gotye, is a Belgian-Australian multi-instrumental musician and singer-songwriter. 

 He plays drums, percussion and piano, and he writes, sings and produces tracks at his       home, currently in Victoria, Australia. 


Gotye’s sound is a melting pot of samples from sources far and wide, mixed with Wally’s vocals and home recorded sounds to form original songs that are as likely to channel ’80s New Romantic pop or ’60s Motown soul as they are to be experiments in kooky turntablism or progressive trip-hop landscapes. The results are songs that both reference and incorporate styles and sounds of the past, but bear a distinctly contemporary outlook.

He has released three studio albums independently and one remix album featuring remixes of tracks from his first two albums. De Backer is also one-third of Melbourne indie-pop band The Basics, who have independently released three studio albums and numerous other titles since 2002. He has won five ARIA Awards and received a nomination for an MTV    EMA for   Best Asia and Pacific Act.

For more on this artist visit:http://gotye.com/

Life's a Beach...

Bombay Beach


This year's Winner of the Tribeca film festival doc competition and a festival hit around the world. 
The rusting relic of a failed 1950s development boom, the Salton Sea is a barren Californian landscape often seen as a symbol of the failure of the American Dream. A sea in the middle of the Colorado desert.

True to her roots as a photographer, video artist, and music video director, Alma Har'el crafts an adamantly atypical and artistically innovative film telling the story of of three protagonists: Benny Parrish, a young boy diagnosed with bipolar disorder whose troubled soul and vivid imagination create both suffering and joy for him and his complex and loving family. CeeJay Thompson, a black teenager and aspiring football player who has taken refuge in Bombay Beach hoping to avoid the same fate of his cousin who was murdered by a gang of youths in Los Angeles. And that of Red, an ancient survivor, once an oil field worker, living on the fumes of whiskey, cigarettes and an irrepressible love of life.

Together they make up a triptych of American manhood in its decisive moments, populating the Salton Sea's land of thwarted opportunity.

Bombay Beach is a dreamlike poem that sets these personal stories to a stylized melding of observational documentary and choreographed dance, to music specially composed for the film by ZACH CONDON of the band BEIRUT, and songs by BOB DYLAN.

The result is a moving and madly inventive documentary experience—an evocative, symbolic portrait of rural America and its inhabitants.

The Film Maker

Born and raised in Israel Alma Har’el began her work as a photographer and a video artist.

While working in NY and London her live video-art performances with musicians led her to directing music videos and her frequent collaborations with singer Zach Condon of the band Beirut brought her several nominations in film and music video festivals around the world. The video for Beirut’s “Elephant Gun” was chosen as one of the best videos of the decade in 2010 by several publications.

Her work is recognized for her expression through modern dance, landscape and character and for her ability to create images with a striking balance of emotions heavy hearted as much as they are joyful and playful. Currently she lives in Los Angeles. Bombay Beach is her first film."

Atmosphere - She's Enough

For my suspenders... you're enough;)

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)

Melvin Van Peebles created a new style of African-American filmmaking in 1971, when on a shoestring budget he made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, a violent action picture about a sex-show stud on the run from the police that below the surface served as a call for revolution in the black community. But Sweet Sweetback was hardly Van Peebles' first or only bold achievement in the arts. 


After brief careers piloting cable cars in San Francisco and flying fighter planes in the Korean War, Van Peebles moved to Paris, where he wrote five novels, became a regular contributor to an anarchist journal, and directed his first feature film, The Story of a Three-Day Pass. On the strength of its critical acclaim, Van Peebles returned to America and made his first (and only) major studio film, Watermelon Man, which helped him gather the money and connections it took to make Sweet Sweetback. 

Alongside these cinematic triumphs, Van Peebles launched a recording career in the late '60s, making literate but streetwise albums that paved the way for rap and hip-hop, and staged a series of hit Broadway plays including Don't Play Us Cheap and Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death. In the 1980s, Van Peebles switched careers and became a successful Wall Street options trader, and watched his son Mario Van Peebles become a star. (Mario would also go on to make a film about his dad's adventures making Sweet Sweetback, entitled Baadasssss!). 


How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It) is a documentary made with Van Peebles' participation that looks back at his multi-faceted career and the brilliant, uncompromising man behind it all. The film includes interviews with a number of Van Peebles' colleagues and admirers, including Spike Lee, Gil Scott-Heron, Gordon Parks, and Elvis Mitchell.

it will be live...