This 1975 film by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman has been called “an astonishing work of subtextual feminism which has to count as one of the seminal films of the 1970s.”

by Dan Graham, 1982-84, 55:27 min, b&w and color, sound

Rock My Religion is a provocative thesis on the relation between religion and rock music in contemporary culture. Graham formulates a history that begins with the Shakers, an early religious community who practiced self-denial and ecstatic trance dances. With the “reeling and rocking” of religious revivals as his point of departure, Graham analyzes the emergence of rock music as religion with the teenage consumer in the isolated suburban milieu of the 1950s, locating rock’s sexual and ideological context in post-World War II America. The music and philosophies of Patti Smith, who made explicit the trope that rock is religion, are his focus. This complex collage of text, film footage and performance forms a compelling theoretical essay on the ideological codes and historical contexts that inform the cultural phenomenon of rock `n’ roll music.

Original Music: Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth.

The History and Legacy of the Black Panther Party

Just in time for the International Day Against Police Brutality, comes this 1996 documentary on the history of the Black Panther Party.

It stars Bobby Seale, Leonard Peltier, H. Rap Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Ward Churchill, and more, presenting the Black Panthers’ first cop watching patrol, their ten point program, their breakfasts for kids program, FBI and police repression, and the abortive rainbow coalition of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, the Brown Berets, the Young Lords, and others.