Wattstax is a 1973 documentary film by Mel Stuart that focused on the 1972 Wattstax music festival and the African American Watts Los Angeles, California.  organized by Memphis‘s Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Watts riots. Wattstax was seen by some as “the Afro-American answer to Woodstock“. To enable as many members of the black community in L.A. to attend as possible, tickets were sold for only $1.00 each. The Reverend Jesse Jackson gave the invocation, which included his “I Am – Somebody” poem, which was recited in a call and response with the assembled stadium crowd. In the film, interspersed between songs are interviews with Richard Pryor, Ted Lange and others who discuss the black experience in America.

Jumping continents and crossing cultures, “Planet B-Boy” looks at the history of breakdancing and its vibrant resurgence in urban cultures around the world.

WILD COMBINATION is director Matt Wolf’s visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer, singer-songwriter, cellist, and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, Arthur prolifically created music that spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art. Now, over fifteen years since his passing, Arthur’s work is finally finding its audience. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur’s family, friends, and closest collaborators—including Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg—to tell this poignant and important story.

RASH is a contemporary story of modern urban Australia and artists making it a living host for illegal artwork called “street art”. This film explores the cultural value of unsanctioned public art, and graffiti?s contribution to a very public dialogue.

In most movies, the audience can say, “It’ll be okay. This is just a movie.” But because Crumb is a documentary, the audience can only watch (or leave), but everything will not be okay. Crumb is more than a movie; it holds the shards of a life.

Robert Crumb, the artist of the picture of four guys in big shoes stepping out under the words “Keep on truckin’.” Other well-known Crumb creations include the cover to Janis Joplin’s “Cheap Thrills” album and the character Fritz the Cat, whom animator Ralph Bakshi adapted into the first x-rated animation movie. However, to know this much about Crumb is to know almost nothing about him or his art.



“Inside Outside” is a film about the energy artists get when working in the street. An energy they’re missing when exhibiting in galleries and museums, an energy that brings life to their art and to …

With just one spot of red paint between the eyes the Parisian artist ZEVS, executes the advertising industry’s images of perfect humans. ‘People don’t think about the force of advertising,’ says Zevs and continues, ‘But with just one psst I remove the force. No one wants to be identified with a dead person so advertising looses its effect’. ZEVS calls his action ‘Visual Attack’, and he has executed billboards worth millions around Paris. At the same time, ZEVS is a respected artist who exhibits all around the world. “Inside Outside” follows ZEVS and other so-called street artists from New York, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Sao Paulo. They all make a living off their art, but they also have an urge to exhibit their work illegally in the streets.

As the Icelandic volcanoes cool off, here comes stormer of an EP from ILLFINGAS. The EP is rumored to be responsible for the recent wall collapse on Yonge street in Toronto. When asked, Illfingas responded “Ah lawd yeah, I did not wreck this . I am just zep-illin kind of a guy, what’s all the vendetta?”

Well, download it and find out for yourself here. Did we mentiioned it’s all FREE!?

The larger scope of the story explores the gun trade to Africa that takes place under the covers — Russian pilots fly guns into Africa, then fly fish back out to Europe. The hazards and consequences of this trade are explored, including the pan-African violence propagated by constant flow of weapons into the continent. If it is a “survival of the fittest” world, as Darwin concluded, then the capitalist interests that fund the gun runners are climbing the evolutionary ladder on the backs of the Africans in this stark Darwinian example. Much like the foreseeable extinction of the Lake Victoria perch, and death of Lake Victoria itself, the Africans are in grave jeopardy, even as they survive in the only ways they know how.

Before iPods (or even CDs) there were boomboxes. It’s been 20 years since they disappeared from the streets, but the nostalgia they evoke is about more than stereo equipment. We’ve changed the way we listen to music — and to each other. Learn more about the boombox at npr.org

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on “where,” but on “what’s there.” It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky