Kenneth Anger
INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (1954)
"A convocation of magicians assume the identity of gods in a Dionysian revel. Lord Shiva, the magician, awakes. The Scarlet Woman, whore of heaven, smokes a big, fat joint; Astarte of the moon brings the wing of snow; Pan bestows the grapes of Bacchus; Hecate offers the sacred mushroom, yage, wormwood brew... The orgy ensues - a magick masquerade at which Pan is the prize. Lady Kali blesses the rites of the children of light as Lord Shiva invokes the godhead with the formula Force and Fire."

MAGICK LANTERN CYCLE VOLUME 3 (1954-65)
A collection of 3 short films by Anger. Kustom Kar Komandos deals with a young man who strokes his customized car with a powder puff; Puce Moment is a lavishly colored evocation of the Hollywood now gone, and Anger's most well known work, Scorpio Rising, a death mirror held up to American culture. Brando, bikes, black leather.
PUCE MOMENT (1955), SCORPIO RISING (1956), KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965)

Antony Balc
TOWERS OPEN FIRE, THE CUT-UPS, BILL & TONY, WILLIAM BUYS A PARROT (1962-72)
Featuring William Burroughs , Brion Gysin, Ian Sommerville and Antony Balch. William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin met Ian Sommerville and Antony Balch during their Beat Hotel days in Paris, 1958-59, an amazingly fertile period that saw the publication, and attempted suppression of Burroughs' Naked Lunch. These films convey the conciousness of the period in the visual language of four of the artists that defined it.

Jorden Belson
SAMADHI AND OTHER FILMS (1964-72)
Four films by Jorden Belson "our greatest abstract film poet, he has found how to combine the vision of the outer and inner eye" (Glen Youngblood). The four films in this volume include Re-Entry, an animated metaphor of reincarnation and rebirth; World, a dazzling abstract version of the creation of the world; Samadhi, taken from the Sanskrit term meaning "that state of conciousness in which the individual merges with the univesal soul"; and Charkra, a compelling film re-creating the experience og raising the kundalini through the seven psychic centers in the human being.

Stan Brakhage
DOG STAR MAN (1961-64)
One of the key works of the American avante-guarde of the 1960's. Stan Brakhage'e Dog Star Man is no less than an abstact vision of the creation of the universe, an epic work consisting of a prelude and four parts. Making brilliant use of super impositions, painting on film, distorting lenses and rythmic montage, the film is a compelling and truly an eye-opening experience. Here Brakhage sees with a universal eye the cycles of time and space, the theme of struggle of man to ascend. The film, consisting of a prelude and four parts, weaves the complex story of the mythical Dog Star Man. "Four basic visual themes dominate Prelude: 1. the four elements; 2. the cosmos; 3. Brahage's household; and 4. purely filmic devices such as painting or scratching on film, distorting lenses, double exposures and clear leader." (P. Adams Sitney)

James Broughton
DREAMWOOD (1972)
"... an adventure into the landscape of a dream. The poet hero, setting forth to rescue the bride of his soul, must enter the perilous forest of the Feminine Mysteries. There he encounters various figures of the Great Mother's world such as Artemis, Lilith, Hippolyta, and Hecate. His quest culminates in his union with the Goddess herself, thus bringing about his own rebirth."

Luis Buñuel
UN CHIEN ANDALOU (An Andalusian Dog) (1928)
"This film draws its inspiration from poetry, freed from reason and traditional morality. It has no intention of attracting or pleasing the spectator - indeed, on the contrary, it attacts him to the degree to which he belongs to a society with which surrealism is at war... This film is meant to explode in the hands of it enemies." (Buñuel)

L'AGE D'OR (The Golden Age) (1930)
"It is a work of poetic sensibility, mordantly anti-bourgeois and anti-clerical. Although, as Buñuel put it, its incidents have been freed of the corruption of plausibility, the do counterpose love to the fossilized institutions of bourgeois society... in accord with surrealist ideology, only love-wild, anarchic, irrational love is acceptable. Everything else is subverted; the rich, the church, the state, the military, as well as those bourgeois vices of sentimentality and romanticism, so offensiveto Buñuel throughout his life." (Amos Vogel)

Maya Deren
EXPERIMENTAL FILMS 1&2 (1943-51)
"Maya Deren both evoked and exemplified the American avant-garde movement... to achieve recognition for personal film as the magical creation of the solitary artist. Her first film, Meshes in the Afternoon, set the tone for the decade and linked the movement to the European avant-garde films of Cocteau and Buñuel"
VOLUME 1: MESHES IN THE AFTERNOON, AT LAND, A STUDY OF CHOREOGRAPHY FOR CAMERA, RITUAL AND TRANSFIGURED TIME, MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE, THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT

VOLUME 2: DIVINE HORSEMAN: THE LIVING GODS OF HAITI
Maya Deren takes us on a journey into the fascinating world of the Voudoun religion, whose devotees commune with the cosmic powers through invocation, offerings song and dance. The Voudoun pantheon of dieties, or loa, are witnessed as living gods and goddesses, actually taking possession of their devotees. "Maya first went to Haiti as an artist... but the manifestations of rapture are what seized her, transported he beyond the bounds of any art she had ever known."

Charles and Ray Eames
THE POWERS OF TEN, IBM MATHMATICS, SX-70, PAVEMENT, FIBERGLASS CHAIRS
Charles and Ray Eames are among the finest American designers of this century. They are best known for their ground-breaking contributions to architechture, furniture design (the Eames Chair), industrial design and manufacturing, and the photographic arts. The legacy of theis husband and wife team includes more than 75 films that reflect the breadth and depth of their interests and the integrity of their vision.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss
THE WAY THINGS GO (Der Lauf der Dinge) (1987)
Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss have collaborated on kinetic installations since 1979. All of their work to date whether in photography, film, drawing, or sculpture, has demonstrated a deep interest in the mechanisms that animate the universe of objects.
Fischli and Weiss remove these things that surround us from the context of their daily lives, and then restructure their relationships to one another. The artists' aim is neither to glorify nor to alienate these common objects, but merely to create new references in which they might be considered.

THE WAY THINGS GO - without naration or interviews- simply records the self-destructing performance of Fischli's and Weiss' most ambitious construction: 100 feet of physical interactions, chemical reactions, and precisely crafted chaos worthy of Rube Goldbergor Alfred Hitchcock.

Man Ray
Man Ray is the famous artist who helped found Surrealism and Dadaism. He made these four films in France in the 1920's.
RETOUR A LA RAISON, EMAK BAKIA, L'ETOILE DE MER (1920's)

L'ETOILE DE MER directed and photgraphed by Man Ray, founder of the New York dada movement and an early surrealist. Surrealism shot through a frosted glass, a love story is apparent, but more is intended. Exactly what transpires exists only in the mind of the beholder.

Walter Ruttmann
BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927)
"A cross section of the life and rhythm of a late spring day in Berlin, from dawn to midnight. It is a symphony of visual impressions, admirably edited, and based on the ideas and methods of Dziga Vertov. Some of the sequences are metaphorical: the crowds of cattle; the legs of dancers; two pairs of legs going to a hotel; a montage of legs; a sleeping man compared to an elephant." (George Sadoul)

Harry Smith
EARLY ABSTRACTIONS (1941-57)
Seven abstact animated films described by the filmaker in such terms as: "optically printed Pythagoreanism in four movements supported on squares, circles, grillwork...hand drawn animation of dirty shapes...and exposition of Buddhism and the kabala in form of
collage."

HEAVEN AND EARTH MAGIC (1957-62)
A graphic description of initiation, redemption and spiritual transformation couched in the language of the kabbala, alchemy and experimental psychology. Applying an extension of Surrealist and cut-up techniques to animate collages, Smith extracts the Philosopher's Stone through patience, cinematic pressure and an intense spirituality.

Survival Research Laboratories
VIRTUES OF NEGATIVE FASCINATION (1985-86)
This tape contains highlights of 5 performances by the obsessive SRL...who create amazing, frightening remote-control operated destruction (and self-destruction) machines and robots. During a live performance, which is something like a demolition derby presented as a "happening," ear-piercing sirens go off, a cannon fires, various machines attack each other... What might appear as chaos is actually very well planned.

Bill Viola
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS I AM LIKE (1986)
An epic journey in five chapters, a personal investigation into the inner states and connections to animal conciousness, by one of America's foremost video artists. In a stream of images of striking clarity, depth and beauty, Bill Viola evokes a timeless view of the natural world and our place in it. The five segments are titled Il Corpo Scuro (The Dark Body), The Language of the Birds, The Night of Sense, Stunned by the Drum
and The Living Flame.

HATSU-YUME: FIRST DREAM (1981)
"A spiritual allegory equating light and dark with life and death. Produced in Japan... the title refers to Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of the new year are significant. But the tape is not taken literally as a dream. For Viola, it's more like the aboriginal concept of dreamtime, the creation of the world" (Gene Youngblood)
MIGRATION (1976), THE REFLECTING POOL (1977-79), ANCIENT DAYS (1979)

John Whitney
MOON DRUM (Dream Songs Colored by Memories of Prehistory)
A pioneer in computer graphics, John Whitney is well known for his special effects sequences in 2001 and Star Wars. His latest work, Moon Drum, is an impressionistic evocation of the mood, color and fell of Native American art created by computer graphics. Ancient beliefs that musical tone and color possess a magical affinity have aquired a technical basis of truth. Audio and visual perceptual dynamics and programmed graphic pixels, produce musical figuration - digital patterns of color and tone in a truely interactive, fluid, sculpting in time.