AMG plot
It makes sense that an offbeat director such as Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero’s Books) would be attracted to a project such as 4 American Composers, a 1983 British television special profiling John Cage, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley, four U.S. musical artists who haven’t been content simply to entertain, but feel compelled to “push the envelope” of music.Read More »
AMG plot
It makes sense that an offbeat director such as Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero’s Books) would be attracted to a project such as 4 American Composers, a 1983 British television special profiling John Cage, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley, four U.S. musical artists who haven’t been content simply to entertain, but feel compelled to “push the envelope” of music.Read More »
PLOT: This documentary by Oscar-winner Allan Miller and Emmy-winner Paul Smaczny pays tribute to the most fascinating American avant-garde composer John Cage. Shot in America, Germany and Japan, the program premieres rare archival footage; presenting concert excerpts and a set of short episodes, featuring associates of Cage and contemporary artists, playfully delineating different aspects of John Cage. The documentary features interviews with Yoko Ono, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Steffen Schleiermacher, Irvine Arditti, Toshio Hosokawa, Mayumi Miyata, Calvin Tomkins and many others. “John Cage – Journeys in Sound“ will delight and enthral both Cage novices as well as die-hard fans.Read More »
This rare documentary, simply called “John Cage”, was made in 1966 for the German TV station NDR and is one of the earliest films devoted entirely to the work of Cage and his collaborators. It was made on the occasion of the Cage and Cunningham European tour in that year, and instead of fully explaining the music and philosophy of the composer, we get a fascinating glimpse at the work process of the dance troupe and of Cage himself. Most of the film is concerned with showing us how they set up a performance for the Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, and there is a lot of interview and everyday material with Cage, Merce Cunningham, David Tudor, Gordon Mumma and Carolyn Brown, to name just the best known artists here. It’s also nice to see a rather youthful looking Cage (though he was 54 at the time!), still wearing the famous tie that had been cut off by Nam June Paik a few years earlier. There’s also some archival footage from Tudor’s and Cage’s very first German performance in Darmstadt in 1954.Read More »
Silently, a woman wakes on a beach as the tides go in reverse. Her dreamscape unfolds as she tries to locate a chess piece traveling from the beach to a party to a country road and then back.Read More »
Description:
Turning the camera on himself and his 10,000-page FBI file, radical documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio skewers the legacy of FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover while offering up a fascinating self-portrait in his final film. A lengthy conversation with the composer John Cage, a discussion with a college crowd about McCarthyism and numerous witty observations by de Antonio himself also contribute to this discursive yet sharply observed documentary.Read More »