Two weeks ago I had the pleasure to attend a lecture by Jonathan Katz, art historian, curator and professor at the University of Buffalo about his exhibition “Hide/Seek – Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” and censorship in US museums, which he helt in conjunction with the Mapplethorpe movie series at c/o Berlin. “Hide/Seek” was shown at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington until February 13 and revisited the history of American art from perspective of sexual difference and gender identity. It gained a lot of attention after the museum decided to remove David Wojnarowicz film “Fire In My Belly” after threats by conservative politicians. Katz himself had edited the 4-minute-version of the film shown at Smithsonian. I was really amazed about openly he spoke about the censorship, but also about how clearly he explained the pieces of art shown in conjuntion with “Hide/Seek”. This is why I was glad to find out that even though the exhibition is already finished on the YouTube site of the National Portrait Gallery you still have the possibility to watch a tour through the exhibition by Katz and his co-curator David C. Ward, Historian of the museum. The tour officially starts with an introduction by Katz, but here I’ll post his discussion of two portraits by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and David Wojnarowicz (picture on top) dealing with AIDS, which although kind of old-school-didactical and short are pretty insightful. Click here for an overview of all available videos of the tour.
“Cracked Actor” is an unpublished BBC documentary by Alan Yentob originally made for an arts program called Omnibus. Yentob portrais the post-Ziggy-Stardust-Bowie on his “Diamond Dogs Tour” in 1974 – a time when Bowie had just moved to the US and due to cracks in his relationship with his wife Angie, business problems and his increasing cocain addicton obviously was at a difficult point of his life. It’s an encounter with a very edgy and vunerable artist who aside from his glamourous stage performances appears to be pretty lost, haunted by his own creations and constantly questioning his success and his ambitions. Watch it as long as it is still online.
Robert Mapplethorpe has always been one of my favorites in the field of photography, and especially in the 1980′s New York art scene. Here is a rare chance to watch online the 2007 documentary directed by James Crump, entitled “Black White + Gray”. The documentary focuses not only on Mapplethorpe, but (even more) on his lover, New York socialite and art curator, Sam Wagstaff. Patti Smith, a close friend of both men, interviewed as well. Watch it here.
Pitchfork is currently featuring a recording of The Knife‘s legendary live show “Silent Shout: An Audio Visual Experience”. The concert has been recorded in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2006 and will be only online for one week. Here’s my favourite part of the show, where they are playing an alternative version of “Heartbeats” with a bass line that reminds of the one in the “Twin Peaks” opening theme. You can watch the complete show here. Via YoungCreature.
Thanks to Berlin’s arsenal cinema I’m currently discovering the whole greatness of filmmaker Claire Denis. The cinema is showing a retrospective of the director throughout this October (program in German here). I strongly recommend the two movies I’ve seen there this weekend and which will be shown there a second time this and next week: The first one is “Beau Travail”, a reflection on the everyday life of men in the foreign legion and on masculinity in general (shown on the 22nd), the second one is “Trouble Everyday”, some sort of a vampire movie with Vincent Gallo and Beatrice Dalle, which deals with sexual desire, passion and violence and is tender and disturbing at the same time (shown on the 14th). During my search for trailers of the movies I found out that you can stream “Beau Travail” in a surprisingly good resolution on YouTube. But if you’re from Berlin it’s definately worth buying a ticket to be able to see it on the big screen. I posted the first ten minutes of the film below the jump since the trailer can’t be found in a good resolution online. People who can’t see the trailer of “Trouble Everyday” in their blog reader post can watch it here.
In 1978 David Bowie invited Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias to support him as performers and back-up singers in his appearance on Saturday Night Live. The show was aired in 1979 and helped Nomi, who had already become a small icon of the New York art scene, to get his first record contract. According to Wikipedia, Nomi like the plastic quasi-tuxedo Bowie was wearing during the performance of “The Man Who Sold the World” so much that he commission one to be made for himself. Check out Andrew Horn’sdocumentary “The Nomi Song” if you haven’t seen it yet, it has turned me into a real Nomi fan. You can stream the complete movie here.
Bruce LaBruce‘s theatre project “The Bad Breast” starring Susanne Sachse, Katharina Klevinghaus and Vaginal Davis premiered in December 2009 and was shown at HAU theater, Berlin and at brut, Vienna. For the play La Bruce and his assistant have shot a couple of lo-fi-footage-sequences in the streets of Berlin, which in the play were shown between the scenes and highlight the main motives of Planningtorock’s soundtrack for the project. La Bruce has now re-edited the material into a film, which is currently presented as a stream on Dazed Digital and comes along with an interview with La Bruce. Click here to watch it.
IXE (pronounced Eeks) is an experimental movie from 1980 by a French filmmaker called Lionel Soukaz – an associative collage that feels like a stream of consciousness or a rush. The movie combines different sorts of film and audio material from various sources (mostly the TV) and through this it deals with various topics such as war, sex, religion and drugs while it also has autobiographical elements. Soukat himself describes the movie like this: “Ixe may be (…) an analysis, working on oneself (a mirror), a snapshot of the ’80s, anything you like, it doesn’t matter – but let Ixe be the shiver of life, that thing that gives you goosepimples.” More about the movie here. Thanks Todd for introducing me to this. Click here to watch the movie:
In the documentary “The Legend of Leigh Bowery” from 2002 filmmaker Charles Atlas explores the life of Australian performance artist and fashion designer Leigh Bowery from his early London years to the nineties when he became the muse and subject of British painter Lucian Freud. Bowery died in 1994 from an AIDS-related illness. The video below is just a trailer, the complete version of the movie can be watched here.
“I Want Your Love“, a new new short film by indie director Travis Mattews illustrates very explicitely what it could feel like to fuck a good friend after having a few glasses of wine together. Like the movies Mathews shot for his documentary series “In Their Room” the movie is very tenderly shot, and like other contemporary queer indie movies it combines both narrative and pornographic elements in a way that blurs the borders between a “feature film” and a “porn film”. The whole thing is also part of a bigger film project with the same title Mathews is working on at the moment (the title comes from a song by The Chromatics which is one of that bands that are going to be involved in it). You can watch the entire short for free and in high resolution on NakedSword as well as a little backstage-documentary which features an interview with Mathews. You also find the trailer and some movie stills below. Another interview with Mathews about the movie can be found on Johnny Murdoc’s blog.
There are a whole bunch of classics of the New Queer Cinema that can be watched legally (or at least semi-legally) on YouTube, most of them in a pretty acceptable quality. Since a lot of the ones listed below are already online for a longer time, it seems like their directors and distributors and are tolerating this kind of online broadcasting, which is especially interesting in the case of Todd Haynes’ “Superstar – The Karen Carpenter Story” which has been banned from any kind of broadcasting after Karen’s brother Richard won a lawsuit against Haynes. But you never know – so please write me a message if any of the links doesn’t work properly anymore. So here’s my little video store:
