Movies: John Zorn

This film by Johanna Heer and Werner Schmiedel represents a homage to a man revered internationally as one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century. Raul Hilberg and other intellectuals also perceive him as a philosopher, although his primary w...

A young Taiwanese filmmaker explores the lives, dreams, and aspirations of a group of tenants at the Hastings Hotel, a resident hotel located in Hollywood Boulevard's historic Walk of Fame....

— The term "KiyaKiya" comes from the old Japanese expression "mune ga kiyakiya suru." I first encountered it in Shibusawa Tatsuhiko's book Introductory Essays on Girls, in the chapter about "childhood experiences." The expression, which describes “a...

Through interviews we meet some of the people who risked their lives to hide Jewish children during World War II and how this experience has continued to affect the survivors....

A film set to "Batman" by Naked City. Taking the band’s name and first album cover as a clue, Henry Hills drew heavily on themes in WeeGee’s photographs, recreating many of his pictures in their actual Lower East Side/Little Italy locations....

Short animation from Nicolas Brault...

With his hand-held video camera, Jalal Toufic presents faces of ordinary people living in a war-ravaged country. He begins with a 1987 US state department document invalidating US passports for travel to Lebanon. Then, we see walls marked by bullet h...

PBS produced documentary in two parts: the first is dedicated to saxophonist and composer John Zorn; the second is about Sonic Youth at the height of their powers in 1988....

Agatha is an international lawyer, Jo a filmmaker. The two women are lovers. While Jo is on the road showing her films, Agatha discovers and reads her diaries. Problems ensue as Agatha's transgressions lead to jealousy and a spiraling cycle of sexual...

An avant-garde documentary film on English guitarist, composer and improviser Fred Frith....

The more the knots tighten around her body, the more Clara's imagination flies away. She finds herself naked at the edge of a forest. The grass tickles her feet, a bramble scratches her, her breathing accelerates under the electric shocks of the nett...

This film is a documentary composition of new jazz, New York as the city that generates it, and the musicians playing it. The thoughts of the saxophonist Charles Gayle and the bass players William Parker and Peter Kowald from Germany accompany the f...

In 1942, nazi leaders met in Wansee to organize the final solution to the Jewish problem. The Warsaw guetto was first. Treblinka was created in a rural village near the Polish capital. 900.000 Jews and 500 Gypsies were murdered in 13 months. On Augus...

Little Lieutenant is a look back at the late Weimar era with its struggles and celebrations leading up to world war, a period piece. Scored to John Zorn's arrangement of the Kurt Weill song, "Little Lieutenant of the Loving God", and drawing its imag...

An unfaithful interpretation of John Zorn’s early 80’s film script, “A Treatment For A Film in 15 Scenes”. I consider “Well Then There Now” a “list” film since Zorn’s text is really a shot list. An exploration of the singularity of the image, but a p...

The life of the old horse comes to end behind that - the death. But before the death, the fortune gives him the last fantastic vision which opens the world filled with an endless life and love....

Money (1985) is an historical document of the early days of "language poetry" and the downtown improvised music scene. A manic collage film from the mid-80s when it still seemed that Reaganism of the soul could be defeated. Filmed primarily on the s...

Cahen surveys a New York in transition, in transit, in smog, in chaos and in peace....

Part of a CD+DVD set released by Tzadik. Recorded at the powerful organ at Henry LeBoeuf Hall, Bozar in Brussels, this is one of Zorn’s most beautiful and personal solo performances—a dramatic musical reading of the epic Faust legend. Featuring a gue...

Mathieu Amalric’s film with John Zorn began as a European TV commission that was quickly abandoned in favor of something more intimate: an ongoing dialogue between two friends that will always be a work-in-progress....