Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance...
For the past ten years Zappa in composing has turned away from Rock and Roll music - for which he first became famous - and has been working on new, contemporary, orchestral electronic music; in solitude and beyond any commercial conventions or commitments. It is the first time that Zappa has...
Less a documentary than a primer on all electronic music. Featuring interviews with nearly every major player past and present, as well as a few energetic live clips, Modulations delves into one of electronica's forgotten facets: the human element. Lee travels the globe from the American Midwest to...
In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental...
Freitag aus Licht (Friday from Light), the main body of which is also titled Freitag-Versuchung (Friday Temptation), is the fifth to be composed of the seven operas that comprise Licht (Light), by Karlheinz Stockhausen. It was the last of the operas to receive a staged production with the...
A woman sits alone on a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum. Bright spot lights dot the night, sometimes shining on her window. She sharpens pencils and writes on a page in a copy book. The pencil point often breaks under her fingers' force. She places broken points...
The amazing story of electronic music: its epic journey from its origins in Europe, at the hands of the great artists of the post-war classical avant-garde, to the great post-industrial cities of the USA, where this genre of genres took over music stores, shady clubs and, eventually, the big stages.
Samstag aus Licht (Saturday from Light) is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting and four scenes, and was the second of seven to be composed for the opera cycle Licht: die sieben Tage der Woche (Light: The Seven Days of the Week). It was written between 1981 and 1983, to a libretto...
Dienstag aus Licht (Tuesday from Light) is an opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen in a greeting and two acts, with a farewell, and was the fourth of seven to be completed for the opera cycle Licht: Die sieben Tage der Woche (Light: The Seven Days of the Week). It was begun in 1977 and completed from...
A series of migrants who at times narrate and impersonate shards of myths, among them the Great Goddess, the Virgin of Bach’s Magnificat, the Sulamite of Stockhausen’s Song of Solomon (“I am black but comely”), tales by Herodotus, Kafka, Villon (as set to music by Ezra Pound). Third part...
The second act of Stockhausen's dramatic music work "Donnerstag Aus Licht" (Thursday from Light), which was the first composed entry of his 7-part, 29-hour opera cycle "Licht" (Light).
Olivier Assayas’ Eldorado is a riveting documentary chronicling the efforts of Ballet Preljocaj to choreograph an otherworldly icon of 21st century music: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ethereal Sonntags-Abschied.
One morning, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen awoke from a dream that told him to take to the sky. Stockhausen envisioned four helicopters swirling in the clouds, with each of a quartet’s members tucked inside his own chopper, communicating through headsets, stringing away in sync to the...
Filmed during rehearsals for the premiere of Stockhausen's monumental work Momente. The revealing rehearsal sequences are interspersed with Stockhausen speaking of his youth, work process and the genesis and meaning of Momente.
This fascinating film documents the U.S. premiere production of Originale, a Happening by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Filmed at the "2nd Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York," which was produced by Norman Seaman and Charlotte Moorman, the stage production was directed by Allan Kaprow....
Donnerstag was the first completed work of the gigantic seven-opera cycle Licht by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Composed over a span of 25 years and lasting nearly 30 hours in total, the cycle offers up a wide-ranging, experimental take on theology, time, and the nature of the universe....
How can a DSLR camera move in the ruins of a 19th century mansion that is battered to be covered with glass and steel in the days to come, for that’s a more appropriate image as a shopping mall. How to get up and to do what in the ruins; the scenery of late ones to come? Here, this occurs: there...
Karlheinz Stockhausen (22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music". He is...
