REM: This Film Is On
This 50-minute release features promotional videos to the band's four singles from Out of Time ('Losing My Religion', 'Shiny Happy People', 'Near Wild Heaven' and 'Radio Song') in addition to videos to the album tracks 'Low', 'Belong', 'Half A World Away' and 'Country Feedback'; an acoustic performance of 'Losing My Religion' from The Late Show; and a live acoustic performance of 'Love Is All Around' from MTV Unplugged. Also included is 'Endgame', an instrumental track, played over the feature's credits; and several avant-garde clips, ranging from ten seconds to one minute, playing in between each song. This incidental footage was directed by Michael Stipe.
Jem Cohen
Beth McCarthy-Miller
Peter Carey
Jim McKay
Jeff Preiss
Katherine Dieckmann
James Herbert
Sharon Maguire
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Jem Cohen
A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.
The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on city life. The piece revolves around a mysterious notebook filled with obsessive listings of places, objects, and incidents. These listings serve as the key to a hidden city: a city of unconsidered geographies and layered artifacts—the relics of low-level capitalism and the debris of countless forgotten narratives. The project stems from the filmmaker's first job in New York—working as a pushcart vendor on Canal Street. As usual, Cohen shot in hundreds of locations using unobtrusive equipment and generally without any crew. Influenced by the work of Walter Benjamin.
"I shot this film with a 16mm wind-up Bolex, and the 25th Anniversary tour of Dutch band The Ex, when they embarked on a 'convey tour' with about 25 performing comrades. If half the battle is getting there and half the battle is joy, then the other half is madness. I thank all of the musicians who float in and out — of the film, in particular, and my life, in general." — Jem Cohen
The film is a domestic portrait of Patti and her son, Jackson. William Blake was invited in the form of a plaster cast of his death mask. Kurt Cobain, (conflicted, fierce, gentle, and another mother's son) was invited as an admirer of Leadbelly. Cats were invited as household saints. The film invokes New York and rural America. It is about picking up guitars and doing dirty dishes.
BENJAMIN SMOKE is the highly acclaimed documentary by directors Jem Cohen (FUGAZI: INSTRUMENT) and Peter Sillen (SPEED RACER) on legendary underground musician Benjamin. BENJAMIN SMOKE follows the crooked path of this fringe-dweller, speed-freak, occasional drag-queen and all-around renegade living in the hidden Atlanta neighborhood called "Cabbagetown," and playing with his band Smoke. This moving, heart-breaking and often funny portrait premiered at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, won the First Prize Juror's Award at the 2001 Doubletake Documentary Film Festival and had a national theatrical release by Cowboy Pictures, garnering acclaim from critics throughout the country. The DVD edition includes over forty minutes of outtakes and interviews with Benjamin, bonus live footage of Smoke, and performances of unreleased tribute songs by Cat Power and Vic Chesnutt.
A personal, poetic approach to narrative, originally shot on 8mm film and mastered to ¾” video. Created in collaboration with Gabriel Cohen
This film is closely related to my last featurelength project, COUNTING. I take the temperature of a neighborhood. In this case, the place is my New York. I think about street life and its threatened demise – a death ushered in as Big Money relentlessly re-makes cities in ever more categorical ways. I think with the camera, on the move, in fragments. The light seen on a woman’s face in Chapter 3 of COUNTING is blocked by the luxury condo that grows and joins many nearby, as Brooklyn succumbs to gentrification (evinced by a beleaguered postOccupy Wall Street demonstration). Here also is the ever worried, ever renewed hum of the Manhattan crowds which continue to enthrall me. What stays, what gets buried? (Jem Cohen, Viennale 2016)
A portrait of Southend-on-Sea, a town along England's Thames estuary, that includes everyday streets, people, birds, water, mud and sky.
Instrument is a documentary film directed by Jem Cohen about the band Fugazi. Cohen's relationship with band member Ian MacKaye extends back to the 1970s when the two met in high school in Washington, D.C.. The film takes its title from the Fugazi song of the same name, from their 1993 album, In on the Kill Taker. Editing of the film was done by both Cohen and the members of the band over the course of five years. It was shot from 1987 through 1998 on super 8, 16mm and video and is composed mainly of footage of concerts, interviews with the band members, practices, tours and time spent in the studio recording their 1995 album, Red Medicine. The film also includes portraits of fans as well as interviews with them at various Fugazi shows around the United States throughout the years.
This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with concert clips of Vic Chesnutt and members of Silver Mt. Zion, among others.
Also Directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller
Filmed at the New York Comedy Festival, comedian Patrice O'Neal stars in his first and only full-length stand-up special. Featuring 40 minutes of additional content not seen on television, Patrice brings his trademark absurdism and friendly yet no-holds-barred style to material on race and gender politics, relationships and more.
Chris Farley was one of the most popular comedians of the 1990s, thanks to his hilarious skits on "Saturday Night Live," which featured Matt Foley, everyone's favorite motivational speaker, the Chippendales dancer (alongside Patrick Swayze) and more. This program pays proper homage to Farley, who was an "SNL" cast member starting in the spring of 1990, with numerous clips and exclusive backstage footage.
Dave Attell is funnier and more outlandish than ever in his first solo HBO, special, a 60-minute concert performed in front of a live audience at The Lincoln Theater, the venerable Washington DC venue. Attell's sarcastic wit and quick-fire delivery prove why he has earned the reputation as a "comic's comic" and was dubbed one of the"25 Funniest People in America" by Entertainment Weekly. His decidedly adult brand of comedy covers everything including alcohol consumption, dating current events and celebrities, and everything else on his mind.
Jon Stewart performs a solo standup routine, telecast live from Miami, Florida.
Hilarious ensemble comedy that follows Leslie Knope, a mid-level bureaucrat in the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana, and her tireless efforts to make her quintessentially American town just a little bit more fun.
An aging actor, who long ago enjoyed a brush with fame, makes his living as an acting coach.
Well-known television personality Bob Saget -- perhaps best known for his portrayal of squeaky-clean TV dad Danny Tanner on "Full House" -- headlines an unpredictable evening of adult-flavored comedy in this raucous stand-up special. Highlights include Saget's performance of "Danny Tanner Is Not Gay," a pop parody set to the tune of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way," and the music video "Rollin' with Saget" featuring Jamie Kennedy.
Maya Rudolph's take on the variety show special with guest stars in the vein of the Carol Burnett Show.
A love story about a middle-aged compression sock businessman from Detroit who unexpectedly falls for his cardiac nurse, a Nigerian immigrant, while recovering from a heart attack and sets his sights on winning her over.
Two unrepentant guy's guys who, unable to find work, dress as women to get jobs as pharmaceutical reps. Not only do they pull it off, but they might just learn to be better men in the process.
Also Directed by Jim McKay
The closing of a local restaurant concerns a number of employees who've dedicated their lives to the eatery
A group of undocumented Mexican immigrants work long hours six days a week, and then savor their day of rest on Sundays on the soccer fields of Brooklyn.
A young fresh-faced Hill staffer gets her first job in Washington, D.C. and discovering two things: 1. The government has stopped working, and 2. alien spawn have come to earth and eaten the brains of a growing number of Congressmen and Hill staffers.
This documentary is an insightful look into the Duplex Nursing Home in Massachusetts and the resident contributors to the Duplex Planet. Director Jim McKay interviews David Greenberger, the magazine's founder and member of the band Men & Volts. The real stars of this documentary-essay, however, are the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, who offer interesting anecdotes and opinions on subjects ranging from their mothers, moon-walking and fortune tellers, to their attitudes about life. This work also includes a special tribute to Duplex resident-poet Ernest Noyes Brookings. As director, McKay does not attempt to mediate the experience or moralize on why the lives represented in this tape are significant or worthwhile, he simply lets them speak for themselves.
Tourfilm (1990) is a documentary-style concert film by American rock band R.E.M. The film chronicles the band's 1989 Green tour of North America. Produced by frontman Michael Stipe and director Jim McKay, the black-and-white film features aspects of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking, including handheld camera shots and stock footage.
Four women, Patti, Emma, Angela, and Nicki are completing their last year of high school. Unfortunately for the group, one of their own, Nicki, unexpectedly commits suicide. The three remaining women, upon finding out that Nicki had been raped before she died, begin to talk to each other about the ways in which they are oppressed by the men in their lives. They begin to fight together, taking revenge on Emma's rapist, Patti's abusive ex-boyfriend, and finally, Nicki's rapist.
Sexy New York detective and single mother Harlee Santos fell in with a tight-knit group of dirty cops, taking bribes and protection money that she uses to provide the best life for her honest, talented daughter. But when she's trapped by the FBI and forced to inform on her own "brothers," she'll have to walk the fine line between love, loyalty, honor and betrayal, and try to keep it together for her daughter's future.
A pregnant New York social worker tries to help a troubled teenager whose father kicked him out of his home.
Focusing on the bonding between three female (an African American female, a half African American half Latino American female, and a Latino American female) high school members of Brooklyn's "Jackie Robinson Steppers Marching Band" and the choices the girls face once their school closes down because of the need for asbestos removal. This film is about a host of topics, not least of which is the hard-work involved in maintaining
Also Directed by Jeff Preiss
Distilled from 2,500 100-ft rolls of 16mm film shot between 1995 and 2011 – organized sequentially by numbered lab rolls of camera negative into four half-hour parts.
The daughter of jazz pianist Joe Albany witnesses her beloved father's struggle -- and failure -- to kick his heroin habit.
A few years ago, Preiss had the rare chance to salvage a selection of 8mm reels from his archive; 30 years after it was first shot, this lovingly refashioned material returns as both a luminescent ode to the friends, filmmakers, and artists with whom Preiss lived and worked during that time, and a considered meditation on the evolution of diaristic filmmaking. (-MoMA)
Also Directed by Katherine Dieckmann
In View: The Best Of R.E.M. 1988–2003 is a DVD featuring videos by the rock band R.E.M. during 1988–2003, released as a companion to the Warner Bros. compilation In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003. All but two of the songs included on the audio CD made the DVD—the exceptions being "All the Right Friends" (which had no official music video) and "Animal" (the video not having been shot until early 2004.)