What The Future Sounded Like

A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.

Young members of 3 New Orleans school marching bands grow up in America's most musical city, and one of its most dangerous. Their band directors get them ready to perform in the Mardi Gras parades, and teach them to succeed and to survive.

Martin Scorsese’s electrifying concert documentary captures The Rolling Stones live at New York’s Beacon Theatre during their A Bigger Bang tour. Filmed over two nights in 2006 with an all-star team of cinematographers, the film combines dynamic performances with archival footage and rare glimpses behind the scenes, offering a vibrant portrait of the band’s enduring energy and legacy.

The trajectory of the Brazilian punk band Plebe Rude is told in an acid and good-humored tone. Through internal dialogues, the members and contemporary characters of the phonographic industry expose differences, exorcise hurts and analyze how changes in the Brazilian scenario in recent years. The group draws a musical panorama from the events of the 70s and 80s, the group's most successful period alongside the biggest names in national rock.

In this tape, Ko Nakajima and Video Earth Tokyo interview a homeless man. The subject is initially angry and frustrated, but gradually opens up and shares stories about his life. Under A Bridge was later broadcast on cable television.

Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

An examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing computer technology.

Gérard Courant applies the Lettrist editing techniques of Isidore Isou to footage of late 70's pop culture. Courant posits that his cinema offers an aggressive détournement to the French mainstream, reifying a Duchampian view of film: "I believe in impossible movies and works without meaning... I believe in the anti-movie. I believe in the non-movie. I believe in Urgent... My first full length movie that is so anti-everything that I sometimes wonder if it really does exist!"

Black Hole Radio is an installation that consists of taped confessions of callers of the New York City Phone Confession Line and video images. The Phone Confession Line is based on anonymous callers ringing to confess on things they had done or thought like adultery, theft, murder or regrets. Thereafter anybody could call and listen to the confessions. Although making a confession was free, listening to a confession costs money. After Cohen got his hands on the confessions, he used them as an audio heartbeat to accompany video-images of every day life in New York City he had taken over the years. This installation is a portrait of the city with its dark secrets, hushed voices and nocturnal images. In this way Cohen tries to bring across an experience to the viewer that relies on absence, waiting and the effort to hear something in the dark.

Trance dances and out of body projection. In front of the camera, Parvaneh Navaï becomes a mediator who enters in contact with and immerses into the energies of Nature, while her own energy radiates and echos in the forest ("selva"). The camera amplifies and expands her presence, transforming the forest into an imaginary space. The camera becomes a painter's brush.

Sunken Treasure follows Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy on his February 2006 solo acoustic tour. The footage was recorded over five nights and features songs from three of his current and former bands: Wilco, Uncle Tupelo, and Loose Fur, plus an unreleased track, "The Thanks I Get." The film is directed by documentarians Christoph Green and Brendan Canty, himself the former drummer of Fugazi.

A detailed chronicle of the famous 1969 tour of the United States by the British rock band The Rolling Stones, which culminated with the disastrous and tragic concert held on December 6 at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, an event of historical significance, as it marked the end of an era: the generation of peace and love suddenly became the generation of disillusionment.

Documentary about “Os Mulheres Negras” , the world´s third smallest big band, discussing music, aesthetics and creation in Brazil from the 80´s till nowadays.

You Gave Me A Song offers an intimate portrait of old-time music pioneer Alice Gerrard and her remarkable, unpredictable journey creating and preserving traditional music. The film follows eighty-four year old Gerrard over several years, weaving together verité footage of living room rehearsals, recording sessions, songwriting, archival work, and performances with photos and rare field recordings. Much of the film is told in Alice’s voice and via interviews with musical collaborators and family members who share the story of Alice and others chasing that high lonesome sound.