Tag Archives | Documentary

The Strange World Of Sociopolitical Sex Fetishes

By JacobSloan on August 9, 2013 in News 3

In a segment of the 1996 documentary Fetishes, filmmaker Nick Broomfield uncovers an unsettling realm of human sexuality – fetishes that reflect historical and sociopolitical realities through a twisted mirror:

Just when I thought i’d seen it all, I encountered [fetish] sessions that seemed to stem directly from social and political issues…the dilemma of a white policeman who worked a black area…several Jewish clients were into concentration camp scenarios…some black clients were into plantation scenarios. Most fetishes are the eroticizations of one’s worst fears and nightmares:

Caught on Film: The Dark World of Truck Stop Sex Workers

By Brother Elias on July 14, 2013 in News 2

The_Lot_Lizard_by_Kelii

Lot Lizard is a new documentary by Filmmaker Alexander Perlman about intricate life of truck stop prostitutes, and the odd lonely life of truckers.

via Mother Jones

“The truth is, making the movie was a really traumatic experience. I suspect I may have developed some mild PTSD.” This is how filmmaker Alexander Perlman describes shooting Lot Lizard, his hypnotic new documentary about truck stop prostitution. While his claim might sound hyperbolic—or like a canny bit of marketing—it rings true: He logged thousands of miles and hundreds of hours to make the film, braving roach motels, crack highs, and homicidal pimps. Indeed, what Perlman captures in Lot Lizard is visceral and harrowing.

The film’s three protagonists—Betty, Monica, and Jennifer—work on the fringes of the trucking industry. America’s Independent Truckers’ Association estimates there are nearly 5,000 truck stops across the country, and although many offer nondescript places to sleep, eat, or shower, many others host a bustling shadow economy of sex and drugs.

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Documentary: The History of the Devil

By Brother Elias on July 6, 2013 in News 10

via Top Documentary Films

The History of the Devil is wickedly good, informative and concise. A no-frills Welsh film produced in association with SBS Australia and distributed by Siren Visual, it’s roughly 52 minutes in length and packs a fair dinkum amount of history into its slender running time.

The documentary itself is made up entirely of mostly still images alternating sporadically with talking heads; religious scholars, theologians and reverends.

Directed by Greg Moodie and written and produced by Dave Flitton, it was researched by Eibhleann Ni Ghriofa, Deirdre Learmont and Craig McGregor.

It’s an impressive andvery open-minded account and offers some fantastic insight into the evolution; the hows and whys the specter of the Devil has existed and morphed through the ages from the dawn of civilization through to the new millennium.

So despite its relatively low-fi approach, the richness and diversity of its imagery; the historical plaques, plates, engravings, illustrations, paintings, drawings, and the occasional staged re-enactment (some dude dressed up in rather bemusing demonic attire), keeps the documentary at a high level of beguilement.

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Hofmann’s Potion – Albert Hofmann LSD Documentary

By Brother Elias on July 3, 2013 in News 1

Hofman's Potion

Check out Hoffman’s Potion, a documentary about LSD creator Albert Hoffman:

“I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. I asked my laboratory assistant, who was informed of the self-experiment, to escort me home. We went by bicycle, no automobile being available because of wartime restrictions on their use. On the way home, my condition began to assume threatening forms. Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror. I also had the sensation of being unable to move from the spot. Nevertheless, my assistant later told me that we had traveled very rapidly. Finally, we arrived at home safe and sound, and I was just barely capable of asking my companion to summon our family doctor and request milk from the neighbors.”

That must have been one hell of a bike ride!

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How to Make Money Selling Drugs: The War America Keeps on Losing

By Brother Elias on June 30, 2013 in News 11

How to Make Money Selling Drugs?

via Salon How to make money selling drugs Andrew O’Hehir

A slick documentary with a jokey premise argues that the “war on drugs” has been a soul-destroying disaster

Despite its slick packaging and overtly facetious premise, director Matthew Cooke and producer Adrian Grenier’s faux-educational documentary “How to Make Money Selling Drugs” packs a wallop. While imparting lessons about the economic realities of the drug trade – a thriving, booming and ever-diversifying realm of entrepreneurial capitalism, in spite of the massively expensive attempt to shut it down – Cooke’s film reminds us that America’s destructive global misadventures of the last 20 years have a corollary that’s every bit as bad right here at home.

If anything, the “war on drugs” has been even worse and even stupider than the “war on terror,” although they’ve become so intimately interconnected in moral, technological and philosophical terms that it’s not like we get to choose.

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Woody Harrelson ‘Ethos’ – Time to Unslave Humanity

By Brother Elias on May 20, 2013 in News 9

Woody Harrelson ‘Ethos’ – Time to Unslave Humanity from TheOccultruth on Vimeo.

This documentary examines the flaws in our systems, and the mechanisms that work against democracy and the environment. From conflicts of interests in politics and unregulated corporate power, to a news media that serves the interests of powerful elites; ETHOS explores the systems that lead us into over consumption and warfare. Too often the media celebrates aspects of our society that belong in the dark ages, while at the same time ignoring or ridiculing progressive thinking or ideas. Many aspects of the way our systems work almost guarantee our destruction as a society and that’s what this film is about. Fractured societies, poverty, disparity, pollution, warfare. Is there something inherently wrong with the human race? Is that what we should think of ourselves? We have tried to set up forms of law and government that safeguard the public good.

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Words of Advice from William S. Burroughs

By JoeNolan on May 16, 2013 in stories 13

WSB haunts the entirety of counter-cultural curation like the grey eminence he was often portrayed as, but, it’s important to note that Burroughs rarely portrayed himself this way.

I thought I’d seen every Burroughs documentary, but this one was news to me.

Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs On the Road is a 1983 documentary that finds the Beat Generation icon touring Scandinavia, signing books and giving readings of works like The Place of Dead Roads in his inimical, laconic snarl. Along the way, he waxes philosophical about cats, Hiroshima, Brion Gysin and the illusion of duality. He’s polite and hilarious throughout.

Here Burroughs bemoans the high cost of death in ancient Egypt:

Watch the full movie at the Snag Films website.

Stay Awake!… Read the rest

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

By Brother Elias on May 9, 2013 in News 12

“it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.”

Godfrey Reggio

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May I Recommend a Documentary: ‘The Wobblies’

By salviad on February 12, 2013 in News 11

via chycho

If you want to hear some of the coolest stories that you’ve ever heard from some of the funniest elders that you’ve ever seen then “The Wobblies” is for you. There is so much goodness in this documentary that it’ll put a smile on your face.

The subject matter is the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, formed in 1905, it’s considered to be one of the most important labor movements in the history of the United States…

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