Beyond the Spectrum

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The final episode in our Mini-Docs series comes from musician and writer Jake Anderson, who explores the niche music genres which find an increasing audience in the North East. On a mission to discover outside-the-mainstream sounds and the driving forces behind their creation, Jake chats with musicians Me Lost Me, SQUARMS and Mariam Rezaei, along with some of the major players keeping these sonically-engaging sound makers doing what they’re doing, including Simeon Soden from Kaneda Records and Lee Etherington of TUSK. This mini-documentary features reflections on some of the most unique acts in the North East, what genre boundaries actually mean and artists’ hopes for the future of the North East’s alternative scene. This is an Art Mouse film for NARC. TV, written and directed by Jake Anderson.

In June of 2007, the re-united Smashing Pumpkins eschewed a traditional US tour and opted for an experimental art installation in the form of two residencies in Asheville, NC and San Francisco, CA. The documentary "If All Goes Wrong" traces the band over this period from the opening note to the final chord.

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Documentary directed by W.K. Border, that which dives into the aspects of contemporary Gothic subculture, vampirism, and BDSM culture. Filmed in 1997 in California.

An electric transition. The void left by a vice disguised as false promise to escape, is reclaimed by a new frequency, louder, colder, more transcending: C.R.Y.S.T.A.L. (Cognitive Rupture Yielding Synthetic Trance and Luminality). Through a synesthesia of stroboscopic light and sound pulses that pierce the viewer's consciousness, this short film is a sensorial trance that documents the disintegration of an individual. There's no narrative, only the vibration of a substance that reprograms the body until light is the only thing left within them. A feedback loop where the flash is, at the same time, consumption and the end of being.

Once described by the press as "one of the most controversial figures on the Australian art scene", avant-garde poet and playwright Christopher Barnett achieved a level of notoriety in the Melbourne underground theatre scene during the ‘70s and ‘80s, before self-exiling to France. He remains there today, running an experimental theatre lab working with the marginalised and underprivileged, applauded by the establishment (including former French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault) and faithful to his belief that art can change the world. These Heathen Dreams is an intimate portrait of Barnett's life and revolutionary philosophy. Combining archival footage dating back to the ‘60s with contemporary observational documentation and text from Barnett's writings, it is a poignant and inspiring study of the power of both art and political activism.

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Maxime, a forty-something engineer full of high hopes, sets himself the challenge of creating a citizens’ party capable of restoring people’s faith in politics in his city, Toulouse. Joined by other idealists, the project generates enthusiasm and becomes a political experiment unlike anything seen before in France. But reinventing democracy is not without its risks. The film plunges us into the heart of this human experience, day by day, like a logbook.

Clark and Thom suspect their life-long friend Robin is a dog.

When a gang of suburban teens stumbled across a bunch of abandoned instruments and formed The Fleshtones little did they know that 30 years later they'll still be struggling to rock - and pay the bills.

Zenith Virago is an activist and educator who for over 20 years has been returning the coastal region of Byron Bay, Australia to a more communal, celebratory, and creative engagement with death and dying.

Cartagena de Indias, the walled city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you think of rock. But by the edge of the sea, an alternative music scene pulses with life. Bands move from punk to emo to post-punk to goth, while a community keeps alive the chance to be free from prejudice, the chance to be part of something unique.

Documentary about British artist Andrew Logan as he attempts to put on the 2009 edition of his Alternative Miss World. The film also presents a history of the contest (which has run eccentrically since 1972) which was set up firstly as an excuse to have a good party, but has grown into a celebration of alternative lifestyles and sexualities. The documentary mixes archive footage, animated inserts, with talking head interviews and a fly-on-the-wall look at the organisation of the 2009 event

The first American documentary about Traditional (Non-Racist) Skinheads. Focuses on the 'cross of cultures' that came together to form the Skinhead identity: The origins of the Skinhead scene in England, its roots in Jamaican Reggae and Ska (mid-'60s) to its revival and global impact with 2 Tone, Punk, Oi, and Hardcore (late '70s to present day). Features interviews and live concert footage by current bands across these various musical genres in the United States, England and Germany; discussing their viewpoints on Skinhead, its Working Class values, and its continuing relevance around the world.

A documentary about the Italian provocateur industrial band Disciplinatha.

Farida Belghoul, a teacher at a high school in the northern suburbs of Paris, has decided to withdraw her own children from the school system. Believing the system is in a state of total collapse, she wants to save her own children—as she puts it. Alternating between outrage and disillusionment, Farida fights a daily battle to keep her "closed-door" school alive.

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