Judith Malina

When a man claiming to be long-lost Uncle Fester reappears after 25 years lost, the family plans a celebration to wake the dead. But the kids barely have time to warm up the electric chair before Morticia begins to suspect Fester is fraud when he can't recall any of the details of Fester's life.

Dr. Malcolm Sayer, a shy research physician, uses an experimental drug to "awaken" the catatonic victims of a rare disease. Leonard is the first patient to receive the controversial treatment. His awakening, filled with awe and enthusiasm, proves a rebirth for Sayer too, as the exuberant patient reveals life's simple but unutterably sweet pleasures to the introverted doctor.

The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year's Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator's experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.

Teenage lovers Tony and Tyan-Hwa tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.

Music From Another Room is a romantic comedy that follows the exploits of Danny, a young man who grew up believing he was destined to marry the girl he helped deliver as a five year old boy when his neighbor went into emergency labor. Twenty-five years later, Danny returns to his hometown and finds the irresistible Anna Swann but she finds it easy to resist him since she is already engaged to dreamboat Eric, a very practical match. In pursuit of Anna, Danny finds himself entangled with each of the eccentric Swanns including blind, sheltered Nina, cynical sister Karen, big brother Bill and dramatic mother Grace as he fights to prove that fate should never be messed with and passion should never be practical.

Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.

A ghostwriter finds himself romantically involved with his current wife, a married woman and his long-vanished wife.

In this filmic memoir, German director Rosa von Praunheim returns to New York, a city he knew and loved in the woolly 1970s, to see what he might find and also to check in on the colorful protagonists of his 1989 documentary, Überleben in New York. Both a personal journey and a historical survey, New York Memories captures a transformed city by charting the shifting course of gay life, from Warhol Factory figures to the AIDS ravaged, within it.

A high school girl encounters a variety of kookie characters and humorous sexual situations while searching for the meaning of life.

A stripped-down account of a young man's existential reckoning. "As dust hides a mirror, lust hides the self," reads one of the film's Vedanta-sourced intertitles. And indeed, while the Pierre Clementi protagonist's inner life remains obscure, the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood that offers his temptations appears in harrowing detail.

Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.

In keeping with the intergenerational magic of 'Household Saints', filmmaker Martina Savoca-Guay has crafted a compelling new documentary, 'The Many Miracles of Household Saints', revealing the improbable story behind the making of the film.

British director Peter Brook talks about his theatre experience from his first directing gigs of Oxford to the foundation of a company of international actors coming from different acting schools and cultures.

Series of three short 'Pop Films' directed between 1966 - 67 for French television by Philippe Garrel. Includes footage of The Living Theater in rehearsal, interviews with Julian Beck and Judith Malina, Donovan in concert and The Who in the studio recording 'Pictures of Lily'. Re-broadcast on INA in 1984.

The title Amore amore ( Love Love) defines the primary emotive motor of the film and constitutes the filter through which are selected the materials used - people, things, signs - and determines a good portion of the associations though which the sequences unwind.

A film poem, a re-telling of the Greek myth in modern terms. In the traditional pool the water has become muddy and Narcissus finds that mirrors are more rewarding for the study of his changing reflections. There are three mirrors, each reflecting a dramatic study in self-love. The first, love that deserves the adoration of the opposite sex; the second, homosexual love that investigates itself and its own sex; the third, love that insures one a place in the present and history.

The story of legendary New York City disc jockey Bob Fass who pioneered free expression on the airwaves with his long running FM program 'Radio Unnameable'.

Swearing fidelity to his fiancée, two-faced Scott attempts to bed every woman who crosses his path.

During the summer of 1966 Jonas Mekas spent two months in Cassis, as a guest of Jerome Hill. Mekas visited him briefly again in 1967, with P. Adams Sitney. The footage of this film comes from those two visits. Later, after Jerome died, Mekas visited his Cassis home in 1974. Footage of that visit constitutes the epilogue of the film. Other people appear in the film, all friends of Jerome.

Based on the true story of would-be Brooklyn bank robbers John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile. Sonny and Sal attempt a bank heist which quickly turns sour and escalates into a hostage situation and stand-off with the police. As Sonny's motives for the robbery are slowly revealed and things become more complicated, the heist turns into a media circus.

Images of the life of the Living, the material that composes it was originally shot for the film: "The Unconscious Rebels". The shots were re-edited following the rehearsals of Mysteries and Antigone.

An enchanting slice-of-life comedy about a hard luck gambler who gets in over his head when he starts putting his store's profits on the line.

a 32-minute color film by Gwen Brown, featuring precious footage of Living Theatre productions “Mysteries” and smaller pieces, “Paradise Now” and “Frankenstein.” “The fusion of Brown’s freewheeling direct cinema and the Living Theatre’s performance for revolutionary change (amidst the heydays of both) unite as a dynamic concoction of the era, yielding for the viewer a shifting terrain of both critical insight and ecstatic zeal, not as a vacant nostalgia for a pre-commodified radicality, but as tactical inspiration for future days.” – Andrew Wilson (Artist’s Access Television)

The pages of the artist Judith Malina's diary, imprisoned by the military dictatorship during the season of the Living Theater group in Brazil. The documentary chronicles the visit of the actress and her theatrical company to the country.

Disillusioned with romance, Beth, an ambitious New Yorker, travels to Rome for her sister's wedding, where she plucks magic coins from a special fountain of love. The coins attract unwanted attention from an assortment of odd yet ardent suitors: a sausage merchant, a street magician, an artist, and a male model. But when the best man from the wedding, persistent reporter Nick, throws his hat in the ring, Beth wonders if his love is the real thing.

Signals Through the Flames is at once a history and a celebration of the Living Theatre. Founded in the late 1940s by husband-and-wife performers Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the Living Theatre was for many years the predominent American outlet for the avant-garde movement. There were occasional self-imposed exiles to Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, but the group returned full-force during the Aquarius Age to entertain a new generation of theatregoers.

A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

A man becomes a bookie after losing his job as a day trader.

Chantal Akerman explores Jewish American identity in this multilayered portrait of the immigrant experience. Shot in Brooklyn near the Williamsburg Bridge, Histoires D'Amérique takes the form of a series of first-person addresses delivered by a cross-section of Jewish New Yorkers, whose by turns tragic and humorous tales speak to a collective history of trauma, displacement, and resilience.

Best known for his roles in Belle de jour, Sweet Movie, and many more, Pierre Clementi was also the architect behind a transgressive, high-minded, and disorienting cinema. Like an acid-soaked freefall, Visa de censure n° X is a rush of nudity and color from one of France’s most seductively watchable actors, set to an album's worth of psychedelic prog rock (performed by the Delired Cameleon Family, a group featuring members of French band Clearlight).

Commissioned work by Julian Beck and members of The Living Theatre (featuring Beck and Judith Malina, co-founders of The Living Theatre, in performance) for broadcast on KQED-TV, San Francisco. The Dilexi Series represents a pioneering effort to present works created by artists specifically for broadcast.

A harrowing, gorgeous, in-your-face-and-mind 45-minute black-and-white film by Marty Topp, produced by Ira Cohen for Universal Mutant. “Marty Topp’s beautiful film of ‘Paradise Now’ reveals how the theories of revolutionary change and the experience of sexual liberation are not separate paths to the beautiful nonviolent anarchist revolution. Practiced together they are a single thrust, encompassing both political action and sensual joy, leading to the dreamed-of terrestrial paradise.

At least forty films have been made about the Living Theatre; it remained to the American underground filmmaker Sheldon Rochlin (previously responsible for the marvellous Vali) to make the 'definitive' film about one of the most famous of their works, Paradise Now, shot in Brussels and at the Berlin Sportpalast. Made on videotape, with expressionist colouring 'injected' by electronic means, this emerges as a hypnotic transmutation of a theatrical event into poetic cinema, capturing the ambiance and frenzy of the original. No documentary record could have done it justice.

Two young lovers meet on a series of snowy days in high school.

“New York plays itself, as Taylor Mead and Winifred Bryan regale in pas de deux among the trashcans and the towers. The Studiedly Goofy and the Monumentally Grand are joined in masterly pas de don’t [...] The awed couple do battle with the status quo and teach the world to dance on the head of a bin. Rice detects real dignity in Bryan and amazing grace in Mead as they essay solitary promenades through the parks, subways and streets of a wintery New York landscape. Photographed and directed by Ron Rice, edited and scored by Taylor Mead.” –Edward Leffingwell

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

The Living Theatre is an experimental company founded in New York in 1947 by Julian Beck (New York 1925-1985), painter and poet, and the actress and stage director Judith Malina (Kiel 1926), a student of Erwin Piscator. From the very beginning the group’s activities bore the stamp of social and political commitment, imbued with a strong libertarian matrix. A video montage of films and videos from The Living Theatre Archives.

A chronicle of three generations of Italian-American women struggling to get by in post-World War II New York’s Little Italy.

Leonardi's film about the Living Theatre is less concerned with a straight documentary presentation of the exile theatre group from New York, but rather is concerned with the specific atmospheric factor which is indicated by their name, and which constitutes the highly suggestive effect of their playing. Cutting, for Leonardi, is the most decisive aesthetic device. The result is a wonderfully composed furioso of pictures. The hand-held camera catches rehearsals, conversations without sound, bits of theatre and daily life actions (which, for Living Theatre people, is very often intermixed).

A cinematic love letter to a pre-gentrification New York City

Italy, 1970. An increasing legion of harmless warriors begins a peaceful struggle for sexual freedom through pornography, shaking and shocking religious authorities and conservative political institutions. They are ironic, happy, crazy. They are dreamers, defenders of definitive communion between body and soul. But they were censored and humiliated. They were mistreated and arrested for demanding loud a new cultural renaissance.

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

Brantley Foster, a well-educated kid from Kansas, has always dreamed of making it big in New York, but once in New York, he learns that jobs - and girls - are hard to get. When Brantley visits his uncle, Howard Prescott, who runs a multi-million-dollar company, he is given a job in the company's mail room.

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."

I am not free. There is a structure in my mind that imprisons me. This structure is the world. I obey certain laws. I could be punished. I cannot act upon my sexual desires. I cannot find the resources I need to create my art. I cannot stop war. I cannot live without money.

A visceral examination of the social contract between the governed and the government, the play explores Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's Six Houses of Bondage: Love, Money, Property, State, War and Death, with a seventh meditation on Revolutionary Change. "Seven Meditations..." was created in 1973 by Julian Beck, Judith Malina & Friends.