Black Metal Satanica, as you might have already surmised from the title, is a 2008 documentary on the second wave of Scandinavian Black Metal music and its practitioners. Church burnings! Self-mutilations! Grave desecration! Suicide! Satanism! Murder!
Something here for the entire family. I wanna party with these guys…
Delve into the history of Black Metal with this comprehensive documentary covering the origins, the lore, the lifestyle and the contemporary scene of the Viking-based musical genre, from Scandinavian melodies to self-destructive behavior. Director Mats Lundberg’s interviews with key figures shed light on the different Black Metal factions. The film features music by bands including Watain, Vreid, Shining, Svartahrid, Rimsfrost and more.
Frederick Wiseman’s powerful, depressing—Roger Ebert called it “despairing” and that’s probably a better word—1967 documentary Titicut Follies revealed the sordid and horrific conditions of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
Wiseman’s camera watches impassively as the patients are bullied, taunted, herded like cattle, mocked, stripped, drugged and kept in sub-human conditions by the institution’s callously indifferent guards, social workers and psychiatrists. The film is a narrator-less, structure-less collection of some of the bleakest cinéma vérité images in film history. The footage of the yearly New Year’s Eve talent show, the “Titicut Follies” (“Titcut” is the Indian name for the Taunton river) featuring the inmates (and some of the staff) is like something straight out of a Harmony Korine film. In another scene, a doctor smokes a cigarette and dangles a long ash over a funnel as he inserts a long rubber tube into a patient’s nostril for a force-feeding.
Amos Vogel called Titicut Follies “a major work of subversive cinema and a searing indictment…of ‘the system” in his seminal book Film as a Subversive Art.
Wiseman, a Boston-born lawyer, had taken his law classes from Boston University to Bridgewater for educational purposes and decided he wanted to make a film there. He was granted permission to film at Bridgewater for 29 days. Although Wiseman got got appropriate assurances, releases and agreements from legal guardians, prior to the debut of Titicut Follies at the 1967 New York Film Festival, the state of Massachusetts tried to get an injunction stopping the screening, the state arguing that the film violated the patients’ right to privacy and dignity. A state court eventually ordered that all copies of the film should be destroyed, but Wiseman’s appeal—luckily he was a lawyer—to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, resulted in the film being allowed to be shown to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in related fields.
Wiseman appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court, but got nowhere. Titicut Follies was the first film to be banned in America for a reasons other than obscenity or national security. In 1991, a Superior Court Judge allowed Titicut Follies to be released, citing the passage of time and the end of privacy issues (many of the patients were dead by then) and First Amendment concerns. On September 4, 1992, Titicut Follies was aired on PBS with a taped explanation of what audiences were about to see by Charlie Rose. A Titicut Follies DVD was released in 2007 by Wiseman’s Zipporah Films.
If you’re a fan of Turkish cinematic knock-offs then this low-budget scene-for-scene remake of The Exorcist will be right up your demented alley.
1974’s Seytan directed by Metin Erksan removes the Catholicism and gives the whole thing a slightly Muslim spin while retaining almost every other detail of William Friedkin’s horror masterpiece, including Mike Oldfield’s omnipresent score.
Unlike the VHS copy I own, this version has subtitles!
Self-taught Detroit-based sculptor Bob Causey aka Bobby C creates these incredibly realistic life-sized and scaled down busts. In an online interview with The Armchair Empire, Bobby C discusses how long it takes to make one, “Upward to 6 months for the proto, I can get my end done fast but It seems to take everyone else a bit longer for the clothes.”
You can view the finished Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) bust here. Apparently this sculpture was a wacky Christmas gift for someone named “Wendy.”
One of the great characters of all time and a man with discerning taste when it came to picking roles, Warren Oates left an indelible mark on the movies. No matter how small the role, he was always memorable.
Oates appeared in some of the seminal and hippest films of the 1970s. Check out this impressive list: The Wild Bunch (1969), Two Lane Black Top, The Hired Hand, Dillinger, Badlands, Cockfighter, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, Rancho Deluxe, Race With The Devil, China 9, Liberty 37, and The White Dawn. He worked with some of America’s finest directors, including Terence Malick, Sam Peckinpah, Monte Hellman and John Milius. Oates had great radar for finding projects that were both popular entertainment and art.
Warren Oates: Across The Border, narrated by Oates’ buddy Ned Beatty, was made with the cooperation of his family and includes interviews with Peter Fonda, Harry Dean Stanton and Monte Hellman. The documentary doesn’t dig too deep but does manage to be a loving tribute to one of Hollywood’s true independent spirits.
Nice panoramic timelapse of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window by Jeff Desom. According to the information on Vimeo, “The order of events is pretty much as seen in the movie.”
Northwest Film Forum in Seattle presents: Magick in Cinema with Brian Butler this Thursday night featuring some rarely seen occult-themed films. The films will be followed by a lecture and ritual performance by Butler.
Films include Brian Butler’s “Night of Pan” (2009), “Death Posture” (2011) and his latest “Union of Opposites” (2012); Kenneth Anger’s documentation of the paintings of Aleister Crowley “Brush of Baphomet” (2009); Ira Cohen’s “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda” (1968); Harry Smith’s “No. 11: Mirror Animations” (1979); and Curtis Harrington seldom-seen visual poem about Marjorie Cameron, Wormwood Star (1955), where you can see dozens of her amazing paintings, most which she sadly destroyed.
Brian Butler’s films have screened at the Tate Modern and the Cannes Film Festival. He recently had his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles at LA ART and performed in collaboration with Kenneth Anger at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). The Seattle event is co-presented by the Esoteric Book Conference.
Magick in Cinema with Brian Butler, Thursday, 7:00 pm April 5th
Northwest Film Forum 1515 12th Ave. E. Seattle Tickets are available at www.nwfilmforum.org or by calling 1-800–838-3006
Below, an excerpt from Butler’s “Night of Pan” short:
Robert Snyder’s excellent 1969 documentary The Henry Miller Odyssey takes a joyful look at the Buddha of Brooklyn and his fascinating world.
The colossus of Big Sur at work, living in, and revising old haunts in Brooklyn and Paris. Miller generously reveals how he saw his era, his peers and himself. He recalls his painful youth and his struggle to survive as a writer; talks about art, dreams, and the allure of Paris; reads passages from his works and enjoys himself with friends, including Lawrence Durrell, Anais Nin, Alfred Perles, Brassai, and Jakov Gimpel. What emerges in this insightful documentary is Miller’s charm, his gentleness and his lust for life.
Mostly narrated by Miller, this warm-hearted and playful film captures the essence of a man who did indeed have a lust for life.
revealed the sordid and horrific conditions of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. 
