William Rice

In an empty lot in Harlem, an elite group of New Yorkers prepares for a book-signing party given in honor of a writer who never shows up. Local residents, dealing with the practicality of life, look on as the guests obsess about identity, status, and success.

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One of the longest handheld tracking shots in film history, It’s Real documents an hour in the street life of downtown Manhattan. Not only is it a unique record of a particular time and place—July 26, 1990, from 3:45 to 4:45 p.m. in the Lower East Side near Robert Frank’s studio (we note in a Daily News headline that after some 20 years the Zodiac killer still hasn’t been identified)—it’s also an experiment in fragmentary language, gesture, and life caught unawares. Snippets of dialogue captured in passing at phone booths and crosswalks, in alleyways, subways, and diners—chance encounters, only presumably, with people going about their day—have something of the aleatory cut-up technique of the Dadaists in the 1920s and William Burroughs and Byron Gysin in the 1950s, an effort to divine new and deeper meanings in ordinary life. — Museum of Modern Art

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Michael Keenan's film Rain takes us in from the main title to the payoff of its namesake. The heat and the throbbing music provide the indolent rhythm of the troubled life of Alex the cabdriver. The story is simple: New York as Hell. The noise, the sensory intrusions and the blistering heat don't stop those who can't leave from going about their business, forcing them into their own worlds sometimes to extreme degrees. Alex keeps moving, her taxi as metaphor, and waiting. Waiting is an active verb here. The sound effects, score, and chaotic images of New York captured by Robert LoScalzo come alive as the workings of Alex's interior anguish as well as the real exterior of the City.

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Not to be confused with Luc Besson's film of the same title from the same year. Documentarian Andrew Horn's second narrative feature.

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Indian sheriff Thunder is transferred to a small town in the desert. He learns that the corrupt deputy is paid by the drug mob. To protect himself, the deputy sets a trap for Thunder and gets him convicted as dealer. Thunder manages to break out of the brutal prison camp and takes bloody revenge. However he cannot sufficiently protect his pregnant wife.

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A Vermont farmer searches New York City for his dream girl, with his gay neighbor as his guide.

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When Nicole, a young copy-shop employee, is hired to translate an ancient Chinese manuscript, she soon finds that the document has strange powers that little by little begin to exert an eerie influence over her life.

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A fan tries to get an artist's attention by literally coming apart.

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A series of short films by Richard Kern: Stray Dogs, Woman At The Wheel, Thrust In Me, & I Hate You Now.

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F.M. discovers that different sonic frequencies induce different patterns of behaviour in listeners, first in his own studio but later in the local "H-Burger" restaurant where the passive muzak appears to be wiping people's emotions.

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Depressed after losing his lover a long time ago, Andre visits a psychiatrist. While in the doctor's waiting room, he strikes up a friendship with Lois, the doctor's receptionist, and later with Lois' husband, Bob. Although the couple wants to help Andre recover from his depression, Andre finds himself unable to pull his life out of the past.

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A film noirish atmosphere is created to show detective Lunch (a popular underground musician and poet) plow her way through the plans of a corporate businessman who seeks government defense contracts through real "corporate wars" and the manipulation of politicians.

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A psychotic saxophone player lures victims to deserted spots with his music and then guns them down.

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A Nietzschian parable on the fate of innocence, THE TRAP DOOR follows the mishaps of Jeremy (John Ahearn) as he is fired by his boss (Jenny Holzer), gets laughed out of court by Judge Gary Indiana, loses his girlfriend to sleazy Richard Prince, is hustled by prospective employer (Bill Rice) and mauled by predatory bird-women. Finally, he seeks the help of a shrink (the legendary Jack Smith) who turns out to be the most demented of all.

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A punk savage satire about a kidnapping.

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The almost lyrical Letters to Dad, is a meditation on authority that superimposes the spectre of Jonestown over the relatively fresh faces of the parapunk art world; the film takes on a musical form - like a 20th-century ballad composed of subliminal behavior cues, advertising testimonials, and the text of the National Enquirer

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A fascinating drama-document on the punk period.

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An exploration of social schizophrenia in which terrorists consult their mothers before planting bombs, and the head of the New York City bomb squad succumbs to his dominatrix.

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“Inspired by the prose poem by Francis Ponge, SOAP is a series of monologues and stories concerning an object to which everyone has a relationship. Through the vehicle of soap, the actors talk about a variety of other subjects: family relationships, childhood, AIDS, World War II, love. With Alex Melamid, Walter Steding, Laura Cottingham, Bill Rice, Leslie Singer, Stephen Prina, and others.” –PARTICIPANT INC

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