Laurie Anderson

Garland Jeffreys, the mixed-race Brooklyn native whose music defied industry norms, receives long-overdue recognition in this enlightening documentary. His unique fusion of folk, soul, and rock earned him accolades abroad, yet left him underrated at home. Jeffreys’ story, narrated from his NYC home and featuring interviews with fans like Harvey Keitel, Laurie Anderson, and Vernon Reid sheds light on the life and artistry of an unclassifiable talent.

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In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when tours were canceled and all live music went silent, one band refused to stay quiet. The musical duo Buke and Gase performs to the eerily empty, famed hall Basilica Hudson.

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Think of early electronic music and you’ll likely see men pushing buttons, knobs, and boundaries. While electronic music is often perceived as a boys' club, the truth is that from the very beginning women have been integral in inventing the devices, techniques and tropes that would define the shape of sound for years to come.

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"Symphony of the Invisible" is a reflection on creation and how through art, poetry and images you can break the limits that have been imposed on language and life itself.

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An oral history of Artists Space, the legendary New York artists organization. Told through the voices of the artists, critics and curators who formed it, the film is narrated by voiceover culled from 30 hours of archival cassette tape interviews over a 45 year period. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Mike Kelley, Hito Steyerl and David Wojnarowicz walk us through the decades. A formally-experimental and raucously-told chronology composed of rare archival documentation, The Business of Thought... is a reminder of the radical potential of the arts and the importance of collective, cultural spaces.

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A rural American town suffering economically from factory closures finds an unconventional route to recovery with the help of MASS MoCA.

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Each and every year hundreds of people flock to New Bedford, MA in bleak mid-winter to partake in a celebration like none other. They read this single book out loud over the course of two full days without stopping. All of these people have one thing in common: they are obsessed with Moby Dick, the book that most call the Great American Novel.

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In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.

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A chronicle of the personal life and public career of the celebrated artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.

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Yoko Ono Lennon's Courage Awards 2016

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Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.

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This addition to the acclaimed & award winning Classic Albums series tells the story behind the making of Peter Gabriel's 1986 album "So". It was Gabriel's fifth solo album and the first one to have a title (the others all having just been called "Peter Gabriel" ). The album spawned a number of hit singles on both sides of the Atlantic including "Sledgehammer", "Big Time", "Don't Give Up" (a duet with Kate Bush) and "In Your Eyes" which drove "So" to multi-platinum sales, the No.1 spot in the UK and No.2 in the US. So was very much an album of the MTV generation and the distinctive videos for tracks like "Sledgehammer", "Red Rain", "Big Time" and "Don't Give Up" were key factors in the album's success.

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A captivating history of the nation's oldest performing arts center - which largely mirrors the evolution of experimental and progressive performing arts in 20th century America - BAM150 chronicles the vibrant past, present and future of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Through footage of recent performances, intimate interviews, and an astonishing treasure trove of 150 years' worth of archival materials, BAM150 is a testament to the power and stamina of the institution that established Brooklyn as a cultural mecca-serving as a home to such greats as Enrico Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth, Merce Cunningham, Robert Wilson, Mark Morris, Laurie Anderson, and Pina Bausch.

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Launched in 2008, Brainwave pairs celebrities from many walks of life; actors, musicians, comedians, choreographers, filmmakers, artists, and authors, with leading neuroscientists and other experts to explore how the human mind works.

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A riveting and emotional journey into the world of writer William S. Burroughs, a man considered as cold as an iceberg on a winter night.

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The story of music and the music industry told through interviews with musicians, composers and producers across genres.

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A distilled, up-to-the-minute portrait of our agitated nation, its politics, its economics, its delusions and its dreams. Laurie Anderson's tone is less outraged than elegiac, mourning for lives lost, ideals misplaced. The music is dramatically stripped down to a handful of players, centered around Anderson's haunting violin and voice, frequent Bill Frisell band-mate Eyvind Kang's viola and Peter Scherer's keyboards.

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Recorded in 2008, direct from the Knitting Factory stage in downtown Manhattan. This The McGarrigle Christmas Hour features Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Rufus & Martha Wainwright, Emmylou Harris, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson among others.

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Inspired by musician and eco-philosopher David Rothenberg's book of the same title, this documentary explores the intriguing, charming, complex and often conflicting theories on why birds sing like they do and why humans are so attracted to the sound. The film features contributions from musicians including Laurie Anderson, Jarvis Cocker and Beth Orton; enlightening and often startling analysis from some of the world's most eminent birdsong scientists; a literary guide to birdsong in poetry; a bizarre birdsong-themed art 'happening'; the creation of a new musical composition from the Afro-Celt Sound System, entirely made up of manipulated birdsongs; and a strange musical duet at New York's Bronx Aviary, featuring humans and birds.

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Ric Burns unearths rarely seen footage and offers keen observations on the life and artistic influence of Andy Warhol. [Made for and aired on PBS's American Masters series.]

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John Peel's Record Box is a documentary film made by Elaine Shepherd, released on 14 November 2005 on Channel 4. It was nominated for Primetime Emmy Award. It is about a small private collection of the British radio DJ John Peel who died in 2004 at the age of 65. Peel's main archive contained more than 100,000 vinyl records and CDs. This smaller private collection, however, contains 143 singles - some of them doublettes - stored in a private wooden box representing some of his personal favourites. According to the documentary, there are no singles by Peel's favorite group, The Fall, because he kept them in a separate box. The film features interviews with John's wife Sheila Ravenscroft, radio DJs and artists like Mary Anne Hobbs, Sir Elton John, Ronnie Wood, Roger Daltrey, Fergal Sharkey, Jack White, Michael Palin and Miki Berenyi.

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A fascinating clash of philosophy, classical studies and Pop Culture, this film capsulizes a number of "Media Prophet" Marshall McLuhan's conclusions about media.

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Featuring inverviews from: Afrika Bambaataa, Ashford & Simpson, Jackson Browne, Kim Burell, Taylor Dayne, Carmen Electra, Faith Evans, Roberta Flack, Joel Gray, Kc & the Sunshine Band, Eartha Kitt, Patti Labelle, Queen Latifah and more?

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The Pickles family welcome a new arrival, Dil, whose constant crying and need for attention quickly exhaust the other toddlers. Seeking to return the "broken" baby to the hospital, the gang embarks on a journey in a Reptar Wagon that inadvertently veers off course, leaving them stranded in a vast, dangerous forest. While facing off against escaped circus monkeys and a predatory wolf, Tommy must overcome his own resentment to protect his brother and make it back home.

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A documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.

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A cartoon superhero interacts with live guests via his television set in this parody talk show based on 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Space Ghost.

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The Sensual Nature of Sound portrays four New York based composers and performers in terms of their musical lives and artistic passion. Though Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros are all pioneers in American music, each composer pursues a distinct direction of her own. Their rehearsals and performances show a common pursuit of lyrical storytelling through which a new set of contemporary narratives has been forged. Through body, sound, movement and composition, these women have forged their own path through the wild world of modern music.

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Since its inception, performance art provided a forum for those artists whose work challenges the dominant aesthetic and cultural status quo. In "Sphinxes Without Secrets", performers, curators and critics unravel the mysteries of performance art and ponder the world women confront today.

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Featuring The Videos : Beautiful Red Dress / Language Is A Virus / Sharkey's Day / O Superman - Including Excerpts From : What You Mean We / Alive From Off Center / The Eleventh Hour - Plus Never Before Seen Live Footage - Interview Footage - And More...

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Spalding Gray sits behind a desk throughout the entire film and recounts his exploits and chance encounters while playing a minor role in the film 'The Killing Fields'. At the same time, he gives a background to the events occurring in Cambodia at the time the film was set.

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A free-spirited woman "kidnaps" a yuppie for a weekend of adventure. But the fun quickly takes a dangerous turn when her ex-con husband shows up.

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WHAT YOU MEAN WE is a surreal short film by experimental artist Laurie Anderson.

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A concert film directed by and featuring the music of Laurie Anderson, filmed at the Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey, during the summer of 1985. The film includes songs from her 1984 album Mister Heartbreak and selections from her 1983 United States I–IV stage shows, along with eclectic, experimental visuals blending film, animation, dance and electronics.

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An avant-garde omnibus that features works by off-the-wall artists in many different disciplines.

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This performance consists of ten songs in which music, language and images are equally important. In most of these songs, Anderson plays the violin, accompanied by her own singing and an audiotape (with spoken text, more singing or more violin music). Her songs are often combined with a film projection: she is framed by the light from the projection, and is playing with the shadows cast by her body and her violin. Anderson makes experimental music, and she often find solutions in technological inventions, as with the song 'a man, a woman, a house and a tree'. The music for this piece is created with the help of a ‘slow-scan’ machine, which registers visual information and transforms this into sound. These experiments are not only about music, but also abou language: anagrams, play on words and poetic stories. The introductory anecdotes that Anderson tells are just as important as the song itself.

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