Pitched as a television variety show of the avant-garde - hosted by real and invented personalities and jam packed with interviews, vox pops, home-shopping segments, art performances, live call-ins, art lessons and 'much more' - The Live! Show debuted on Manhattan cable station Channel J on December 21st, 1979.
Though a manic collage of playful ideas, The Live! Show also operated as a polemical artwork for its creator Jaime Davidovich. Davidovich had a long-standing interest in television as a platform for artistic production and intervention and The Live! Show allowed him to critically explore - albeit gnomically - this interest while engaging directly with the conditions of television culture itself.
Davidovich, as the show's host, editorialist, and chief ideologue, wanted people to be aware of their own behaviour in relation to television and the place that television occupied in their daily lives as a transmitter of ideas and cultural values. Davidovich, usually assuming his favoured character role of 'Dr. Videovich' (described by New York Times television critic John J. Connor as 'a persona somewhere between Bela Lugosi and Andy Kaufmann'), would invite artists such as Laurie Anderson, Les Levine and Robert Longo onto The Live! Show to perform and make work. Davidovich also took advantage of his airtime to do a little selling, inaugurating a segment called 'The Video Shop', selling things like Winky Dinky sets, Dukes of Hazzard bedtrays and other objects he'd made especially for sale on the show.
Finally after five years The Live! Show was retired - leaving for history a unique experiment in art television; one that was intensely personal, slightly self-indulgent, often original and definitely entertaining.
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For this exhibition episodes and excerpts from The Live! Show will be screened alongside archive materials, printed matter and original photographs drawn from The Live! Show's run between 1979 and 1984. The work of Jaime Davidovich (American, Born 1936, Argentina, lives and works in New York) is featured in prominent public collections including MOMA New York and The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Recent exhibitions include 40 Years / 40 Projects, White Columns New York (2009) and 'Jaime Davidovich', MAMBA, Buenos Aires (2005).
Forget the urban settings of your typical low-budget zombie flick, the first-ever Brazilian effort takes you to the hot, sweaty mangrove swamps of the remote state of Espirito Santo.
Here, the people of this poor community eke out an existence fishing and pulling crabs out of the mud, but pollution and progress have been killing off the once abundant swamplands. Some of the older people believe the land has become cursed and haunted, and they are soon proved right as the undead start to rise from the mud and attack the village with their insatiable hunger for human flesh and blood. The film's hero is a rather timid man who has fallen in love with daughter of one of the village leaders, but when the zombies start to attack he finds the courage, and a machete, to try and save himself and the girl.
This film looks stunning!!
As a child Kohei Takahara grew up in an idyllic country setting with his mother and twin brother. One day, his brother drowns trying to save his life whilst Kohei grows up to be an astronaut, only to lose his own life in an accident.
As part of a special programme he is legally resurrected as a clone. Contrary to the scientists' expectations, Kohei's clone reverts to the childhood memories of when his twin brother drowned. When the clone discovers his original body he believes it is his deceased twin, and sets off on a journey to his old home, carrying his corpse. The scientists create a second, improved clone that goes to look for the first one. What discovery will the second clone of Kohei make in the ruins of his hometown?
With Wim Wenders as an executive producer, this is not a typical Japanese sci-fi film. Beautiful, subdued cinematography sets the mood for this philosophical, art-house film that is reminiscent of 'Solaris' or Wender's 'Until the End of the World'. It is certainly one of the more ambitious and thought-provoking sci-fi films to come out of Japan in recent years, and addresses many moral and spiritual issues relating to cloning that action-packed Hollywood films such as 'The Island' were unwilling or unable to do.
