Pussy Riot A Punk Prayer - 2013 - Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin

Released in 2013

Directed by Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin

Storyline: Three young women face seven years in a Russian prison for a satirical performance in a Moscow cathedral. But who is really on trial in a case that has gripped the nation and the world beyond, three young artists or the society they live in?

Rik Garrett

Rik Garrett

Rik Garrett was born and raised in Washington State. Against the grey skies and green foliage of the Pacific Northwest he spent his formative years combating the boredom of mundane daily life by creating artwork, writing stories and reading books about the fantastic and mysterious. Garrett was given his first camera at the age of six. He watched his mother study photography and eventually open her own portrait studio.

At the age of 14 he followed her lead and picked up his first real camera – a Nikon that his grandmother had given his father.  Lacking any overt religious or cultural traditions, he latched onto photography as a family heritage. Over the years he found the historical connections between his seemingly divergent interests: the medium of photography being married to esoteric studies throughout history via spirit photography, thoughtography, Radionics and Parapsychology.

Drawing on the historical precedent of the apparently static realm of analog photography having been used to document the invisible, further studies caused him to dedicate himself to exploring the liminal realms between supposed opposites:  documented reality and fantasy, science and the occult, visible and invisible, past and future. His explorations have taken many forms:  photographs exhibited in the United States and Europe, long-range handmade book projects, mixed media pieces and explorations with Kirlian photography.  Long-term fixations on the subjects of witchcraft, feminine archetypes and humankind’s relationship with nature led to the Earth Magic series, photographed with the wet plate collodion process. Garrett currently lives in Chicago with his wife Jane.

The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda - 1968 - Ira Cohen

Released in 1969

Directed by Ira Cohen

Storyline: “Part ‘Dr. Strange,’ part ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome,’ The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda is so High ’60s that you emerge from its 20-minute vision perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana…. ‘Invasion’ is a languidly opiated costume ball in which an assortment of masked and painted bohos, some sporting outsize elf ears, loll about a candlelit, Mylar-lined set, blowing soap bubbles and nibbling majoon. …In lieu of action, 

The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda takes place in a proto-ceremonial setting, in which actors dressed in pseudo-Orientalist garb garther around a human corpde (Cohen him self) to perform a ritual burial.

The corpse rises from the grave and the crowd rejoices in this mystical rebirth. As the music changes, along with the setting, it becomes, clear tha this rebirth is but an entry into an acid-fueles dimension. The actors including Tony Conrad, Angus Maclise, Ziska Baum and others, interact in a world of intensified perception, distorted mirrors and blurred colors, Opium smokers are interspered with distorted shamanic visions of elves, princesses, snake-men, nymphs and other creatures from the1960s-era psychdelic-fairy tale psyche.

Soundtrack remastered by Tim Barnes, featuring The Universal Mutant Repertory Company (Loren Standlee, Ziska Baum, Angus MacLise, Hetty MacLise, Raja Samayana, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt and Jackson MacLow)
*From The Mylar Chamber,” an original slideshow of 60 mylar photographs with soundtrack by Angus MacLise and original poetry by Ira Cohen.

Good Bye, Dragon Inn - 2003 - Ming-liang Tsai

Released in 2003

Directed by Ming-liang Tsai

Storyline: On a dark, wet night a historic and regal Chinese cinema sees its final film. Together with a small handful of souls they bid "Goodbye, Dragon Inn."