1. Marepe (Marepe)
Marepe, an artist from Bahia, produces art with anything he comes across in the town he lives in, Santo Antônio de Jesus. Packs of cigarettes, coconut palms, walls, and memories taken from the streets, go into putting together a personal archeology for this young artist.
2. Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present
Feature documentary on the pioneering life and work of iconoclastic filmmaker/musician/composer/artist Tony Conrad.
It has an average vote of 7.6 on TMDB.
3. By Rook Or By Left Hook
In 2003, Dutch artist Iepe Rubingh became the first World Champion of Chessboxing. This brain-busting combination of alternating rounds of chess and boxing was in fact an art performance calling for more balance in a world of extremes, and the audience reaction was so electric that it inspired Rubingh to push it as a real sport. Rubingh’s methodical ability to achieve balance in the ring is put to the test outside of it when impulsive British TV Producer Tim Woolgar takes up the sport and his opposing vision for success creates a rift between them, endangering chessboxing’s future.
4. Diorama
A ritual of transformation and awakening within the walls of the only existing original ‘diorama’ building in London
5. Balkan Baroque (Balkan baroque)
Balkan Baroque is a real and imaginary biography of the Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic. Rather than a mechanical reproduction of the artist's work, the film tries to create a new reality by translating the performances into cinematographic images that intensify the fictional context of the film. Abramovic plays herself, but ,appearing in multiple forms, blurs her own identity. Memories and fantasies intermingle with day to day rituals. The chronological narrative often breaks to reflect the interior voyage of the protagonist from the present to the past and back to the present. The result is a visually impressive film. Balkan Baroque had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999.
It has an average vote of 5.5 on TMDB.
6. Fall 1
Bas Jan Ader's first fall film shows him seated on a chair, tumbling from the roof of his two-storey house in the Inland Empire.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
7. Fall 2
Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
8. I'm Too Sad to Tell You
This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
9. Broken Fall (Geometric)
One of a series of ‘falls’ by Bas Jan Ader that he recorded on film, this work was filmed in West Kapelle, Holland in 1970.
It has an average vote of 5 on TMDB.
10. Broken Fall (Organic)
Bas Jan Ader hangs from the branch of a tall tree, until he loses his grip and falls into a river below.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
11. Nightfall
Shot in his garage-studio, the camera records Ader painstakingly hoisting a large brick over his shoulder. His figure is harshly lit by two tangles of light bulbs. He drops the brick, crushing one strand of lights. He again lifts the brick, allowing tension to accrue. The climax inevitable—the brick falls and crushes the second set of lights. Here the film abruptly ends, all illumination extinguished.
It has an average vote of 1 on TMDB.
12. Athens Rising: The Sicyon Project: Volume One
Featuring dozens of performances from the living rooms, backyards, and unconventional venues throughout Athens, GA, the first Athens Rising film takes a deep look at music, dance, food, stand-up comedy, strange theater, visual art, and the origins of AthFest.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
13. DIVISOR / VILLEURBANNE (DIVISOR / VILLEURBANNE)
Documentation of Lygia Pape’s 1968 performance Divisor - reactivated in the city of Villeurbanne in October 2014. Commissioned by Institut d'Art Contemporain de Villeurbanne / Rhône-Alpes.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
14. The Rock Tours Around Great Britain, 2006-2007
The Rock Touring Around Great Britain is a performance piece by Chinese artist He Yunchang that involved a walking circumambulation of Great Britain from September 23, 2006 to June 14, 2007. Starting from the hamlet of Rock, Northumberland, the artist walked to the nearby town of Boulmer where he selected a rock which he then carried counterclockwise until he returned it to the precise location from which it was taken. As the artist commented, the work was primarily "an attempt to represent the iron will of an individual and the living conditions of his being with simple and pure methods."
15. Meat Joy
"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."
It has an average vote of 6.6 on TMDB.
16. 4 Performances by Marina Abramovic 1975-1976
Documents four of Abramovic's solo works, exercises in which her body is the vehicle for a rigorous testing of the self — violently brushing her hair and her face, vocalizing until she can no longer breathe, intoning a stream-of-consciousness flow of memories, moving to a drumbeat until she literally drops from exhaustion.
17. DJ Punk: The Photographer Daniel Josefsohn (DJ Punk – Der Fotograf Daniel Josefsohn)
Nobody captured the atmosphere of 1990s Berlin better than German photographer Daniel Josefsohn, who died in 2016 at the age of 54, leaving his mark in advertising with his irreverent aesthetic and punk sensibility. It was his spontaneous, imperfect images shot for an MTV campaign in 1994 that first made him famous.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
18. Esther Ferrer: Threads of Time (Esther Ferrer: Hilos de tiempo)
The definitive documentary that reviews the enormous career of Esther Ferrer, one of the great Spanish creators in the performance genre. A "hybrid" between the documentary and the discipline of performance itself, between recording and creation, which uses elements and techniques typical of the cinematographic genre on which animation and self-created elements are superimposed.
19. Marinella Senatore. The School of Narrative Dance, Naples (Marinella Senatore. The School of Narrative Dance, Napoli)
Through the voice of its founder Marinella Senatore, the video focuses on a few key themes of The School of Narrative Dance project. The artist describes how the nomadic school, founded in 2013, centers on the concept of "assembly" and collective creation which promotes an educational system based on emancipation, inclusion and self-cultivation. A school which continues to travel and has, until now, worked in more than 15 countries in the world and involved some 5 million persons including activists, both amateur and professional workers, dancers, choreographers, actors and poets in an atmosphere of shared knowledge. As the artist speaks, scrolling across the screen are images from the itinerant performance held in Naples in September of 2019.
20. Salvador Dalí at Work
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows the surrealist artist around the streets of New York documenting staged public art events.
It has an average vote of 5 on TMDB.
