A selection of Survival Research Laboratories early performances, a must for those interested in how such an enterprise ever got started in the first place.
Social & External
The people behind it
Mark Pauline
Factrix
Tana Emmolo Smith
Monte Cazazza
IN 1988, rising star Kenneth Branagh tackled the role of Shakespeare’s prince of Denmark for the first time in his professional career under the guidance of celebrated actor Derek Jacobi. Narrated by Patrick Stewart, this hour-long film documents how Kenneth Branagh and Derek Jacobi, two intelligent and passionate men, found new depths in Shakespeare’s classic drama, Hamlet. Filmmakers Mark Olshaker and Larry Klein follow the company through four weeks of rehearsals, from the first read-throughs to opening night.
Offbeat performance artists The Blue Man Group have finally been captured live on this disc that features concert footage, three full-length music videos and three songs from Blue Man Group's album, "The Complex." The live footage was filmed during Blue Man Group's successful and widely acclaimed August 2003 rock tour, where they wowed 9,000 fans in two sold-out concerts.
"Meat Joy is an erotic rite — excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chicken, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, brushes, paper scrap. Its propulsion is towards the ecstatic — shifting and turning among tenderness, wildness, precision, abandon; qualities that could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent. Physical equivalences are enacted as a psychic imagistic stream, in which the layered elements mesh and gain intensity by the energy complement of the audience. The original performances became notorious and introduced a vision of the 'sacred erotic.' This video was converted from original film footage of three 1964 performances of Meat Joy at its first staged performance at the Festival de la Libre Expression, Paris, Dennison Hall, London, and Judson Church, New York City."
Art dealer Salvatore Viviano and director Angela Christlieb embark on a search for the lost artist collective Gelitin, which since the 1990s has shattered the borders of "good taste" again and again with extravagant actions and installations. Interviews with old companions and artist friends in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are linked with anarchically montaged Gelitin archive material: intense, transgressive, experimental, gaudily colorful, funny, and virulent.
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows the surrealist artist around the streets of New York documenting staged public art events.
Dirty Martini and Tigger!, stars of the New York underground scene, reveal some of the secrets of their provocative and remonstrative forms of artistic expression in New York’s Off-Off-Broadway. Meanwhile, they will help us to understand from their everyday intimacy the reasons, the struggles and the keys that keep them in their place as the figures and references of the burlesque revival, more than 20 years after the phenomenon exploded in the New York of the 90s.
Counter-culture video magazine created by Stuart Shapiro, featuring Bill Hicks, Robert Williams, Public Enemy, Butthole Surfers, Survival Research Labs, and much more! Hosted by Alex Winter!
The film explores the sexual aspects of Serbian folklore. Ancient myths that have trickled into everyday household remedies or explanations are juxtaposed with the joys of the female and male sexual forms from which all human life originates. Functioning as both sexual liberation and reinvented modern myth, Balkan Erotic Epic is a display of the need for a cultural change in viewpoint around sex.
A documentary about the Kosmos collective in Timisoara: a self-organized group of artists, curators, and musicians who revived a former textile factory.
After discovering a stranger’s livestream, a month unfolds under his balcony, through watching and being watched.
The video revolution of the 1970s offered unprecedented access to the moving image for artists and performers. This Is Not a Dream explores the legacies of this revolution and its continued impact on contemporary art and performance. Charting a path across four decades of avant-garde experiment and radical escapism, This Is Not a Dream traces the influences of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Jack Smith to the perverted frontiers of YouTube and Chatroulette, taking in subverted talk shows and soap operas, streetwalker fashions and glittery magic penises along the way.
In 2012 two members of anarchistic female band Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in a Mordovian labor camp for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Russian film collective Gogol’s Wives follow each step of the feminist punk band’s battle against Putin including their first disruptive performances on a trolley bus, shooting a video about transparent elections, a controversial performance in a Red Square cathedral, and footage shot in a jail cell. Support comes from many corners including Madonna who painted the words "Pussy Riot" on her back and wore a balaclava during her Moscow show. The documentary portrays the grim state of present-day Russia, a country starkly divided between conservatism and anarchy. Pussy Riot believes that art has to be free and they're willing to take it to extremes. "Pussycat made a mess in the house," they say, and the house is Russia. The filmmakers do not seek to moralize, they simply edit events and leave viewers to draw their own conclusions.
A collaboration between filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira and performance artist Thomas Pinnock, who performs his "immigrant folktales" using traditional lore of his native Jamaica to dramatize his migration to New York in the 60's.
Following a four-month visit to Taiwan during the pandemic, New York-based artist Yo-Yo Lin shares a first-person account of returning to a place of medical and familial trauma. Moving through the artist’s intimate thoughts, Re:collections melds together new media performance, documentary, Chinese medicine, and Taoist cosmology to question how identity and language are conceived in the context of disability and immigration.
THE ARTIST AND THE FORCE OF THOUGHT, reflects the relationship between balance and imbalance within the partiality of movement of the dancer Marcos Abranches. It oscillates the body to wake up from the emptiness and isolation caused by the imbalance. The movement's lack of aesthetics is felt by abandonment and rejection, understanding that relief is in the support of love. Investigating body movement in a world without anguish, without pain, without despair. Search for life. Find in dance the balance of the body and the beauty of the soul.
"Encouraged by a special encounter between myself and an animal, my research into the “humanimal” began. This is a performative exploration reflecting on the place of animals and humans in their changing relationships throughout time. The research spans from topics like the cohabitation of different human species, the prehuman, the posthuman, to domestication and the numerous animal watching webcams found in zoos and online. Missing Link reflects on the intimacy between the species and how it can be expressed through movement here and now. "
Performance documentation of Mees Joachim's 'Homophobe', a 10 minute live-reenactment of a scene from 'E Kolór Korrá' (2017). A juxtaposition performed as minimally as possible. A destructively interpretive dance, literally shattering bones whilst forcefully dropping on the ground. A pre-cursor to their 'The Scaphoid Fracture' (2017) performance.
"The river Lek reminded me of the river Xiang in my hometown Changsha. I had not been home for 3 years and one of the connections with home was the poems my dad wrote me every day via WeChat. The rivers seemed equally significant for the people in the Netherlands and in Changsha. They are both a romantic connection and an important symbol of daily trade and industry. In a Wechat session my father and I simultaneously read three pairs of poems we wrote for this occasion, he by the Xiang and I by the Lek. Giving the words to the waters that ultimately will meet somewhere in the ocean. The video shows fragments of the performance which took place at the same time in Changsha and Culemborg in June. The full-length documentation is presented as a dual-screen video installation. The three poems written by me can be found on the page "Writing"."
A documentary featuring 30 Argentinian women aged between 4 and 80, sharing their stories of resilience, strength, and unique perspectives on womanhood through performance art.
A witch appears in the south of the city, recites a poem, performs a spell and vomits the world.
Witness the never-before-seen footage and true story behind the John Wick phenomenon – from independent film to billion-dollar franchise.
What happens when a machine makes life-or-death decisions? This documentary explores the dangers of artificial intelligence in military application.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
Jackie Chan is one of the world's biggest action stars, famed for his wacky sense of humor, remarkable martial arts techniques, and willingness to perform incredible stunts without the use of doubles -- or a net. This video takes a personal look at Chan as he works on screen projects in Hollywood and Beijing and candidly discusses his life and work.
The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.
The elite pilots of the Air Force Thunderbirds display exceptional skill, trust and courage during a high-stakes training season.
Daniel Craig candidly reflects on his 15 year adventure as James Bond. Including never-before-seen archival footage from Casino Royale to the upcoming 25th film No Time To Die, Craig shares his personal memories in conversation with 007 producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.
A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.
A documentary about ten very different lives connected by having appeared onscreen wearing masks or helmets in Star Wars.
This essential new documentary pays tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty and shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
As the front man of the Clash from 1977 onwards, Joe Strummer changed people's lives forever. Four years after his death, his influence reaches out around the world, more strongly now than ever before. In "The Future Is Unwritten", from British film director Julien Temple, Joe Strummer is revealed not just as a legend or musician, but as a true communicator of our times. Drawing on both a shared punk history and the close personal friendship which developed over the last years of Joe's life, Julien Temple's film is a celebration of Joe Strummer - before, during and after the Clash.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.
Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs, the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.
The Official Golden Harvest tribute to the Master of the Martial Arts Film, Bruce Lee.
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
Captured during Billie Eilish's sold-out world tour, a concert experience from one of the most celebrated and successful artists of her generation, presented in immersive 3D.