| Mondo New York | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Harvey Nikolai Keith |
| Produced by | Stuart S. Shapiro |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Lenny Wong |
| Edited by | Richard Friedman |
| Music by | Johnny Pacheco |
Release date | 22 April 1988 |
Running time | 82 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Mondo New York is a 1988 Mondo film directed by Harvey Nikolai Keith. [1] The documentary film was inspired by the 1963 movie Mondo Cane .
Mondo New York examines the lives and activities of Manhattan performance artists, and features Joey Arias and Rick Aviles. A number of New York City denizens appear in various sketches, each linked by a young woman's exploration of the city. Other performers include Charlie Barnett, Joe Coleman, Phoebe Legere, Karen Finley, Lydia Lunch, Veronica Vera, Frank Moore, and Ann Magnuson. The film was produced by Night Flight creator Stuart S. Shapiro. [2] [3]
Michael Wilmington of Los Angeles Times stated ""Mondo New York" (Times- rated Adult for offensive language and repulsive situations) has some small value as an uncensored record of these highly regarded and controversial performance artists. But, mostly, it's a movie which expects us to react like the bored voyeurs eyeballing the geek while the blood spurts from his teeth." [4] Jonathan Rosenbaum of Chicago Reader mentioned "Director Harvey Keith and producer Stuart Shapiro take a walk on the wild side through the seamier byways of New York life in this documentary inspired by the 1963 Mondo Cane. It features cockfights, junkies, street hookers, habitues of S and M clubs, and a number of outre performance artists—Ann Magnuson beating a dead horse, Karen Finley decorating herself with raw eggs and glitter, Joe Coleman biting the head off a mouse while nearly exploding himself with firecrackers, and Dean Johnson performing in drag with his band, the Weenies (1988)." [5]
They Live is a 1988 American science fiction action film written and directed by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster, the film follows an unnamed drifter who discovers through special sunglasses that the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media.
Joseph Coleman is an American painter, illustrator actor and performance artist. He has been described as the "walking ghost of Old America" by his wife, photographer Whitney Ward, for his over-riding interest in the historical arcana and personae that often populate his paintings. Of Coleman's work, the New York Times wrote that, “If P. T. Barnum had hired Breughel or Bosch to paint sideshow banners, they might have resembled the art of Joe Coleman.” While Berlin's Tagesspiegel said of Coleman, "Like [George] Grosz in the 1920s, he holds a drastic mirror up to his own times."
Mr. Mike's Mondo Video is a 1979 American comedy film conceived and directed by Saturday Night Live writer/featured player Michael O'Donoghue. It is a spoof of the controversial 1962 documentary Mondo Cane, showing people doing weird stunts. Many cast members of Saturday Night Live, including Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Bill Murray, Don Novello and Gilda Radner, appear in Mr. Mike's Mondo Video. People who had previously hosted SNL, or would go on to host make cameo appearances in the film. Others who appear in the film include musicians Sid Vicious, Paul Shaffer, Debbie Harry, Root Boy Slim, and Klaus Nomi; artist Robert Delford Brown; and model Patty Oja.
Mondo films are a subgenre of exploitation films and documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of mondo films include portrayals of foreign cultures, an emphasis on taboo subjects such as death and sex, and staged sequences presented as genuine documentary footage. Over time, the films have placed increasing emphasis on footage of the dead and dying.
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to such notable film publications as Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment.
Joey Arias is an American artist based in New York City, best known for work as a performance artist, cabaret singer, and drag artist, but also as a published author, comedian, stage persona and film actor. He also goes by the names Joseph Arias and Joe Arias.
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is a non-profit art organization located in Buffalo, New York. Since 1974, Hallwalls has shown and shows the work of contemporary artists of diverse backgrounds who work in film, video, literature, music, performance, media and the visual arts. The ideology behind Hallwalls has always been one of a cooperative with artists and the gallery has made it a mission to show work that directly shows Buffalo’s fading industrial past.
Ann Magnuson is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer. She was described by The New York Times in 1990 as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lily Tomlin does".
Karen Finley is an American performance artist, musician and poet. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work She is currently a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Gualtiero Jacopetti was an Italian documentary film director. With Paolo Cavara and Franco Prosperi, he is considered the originator of mondo films, also called "shockumentaries".
Club 57 was a nightclub located at 57 St. Mark's Place in the East Village, New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was originally founded by Stanley Zbigniew Strychacki and enhanced by nightclub performer Ann Magnuson, Susan Hannaford, and poet Tom Scully. It was a hangout and venue for performance and visual artists and musicians, including The Cramps, Madonna, Keith Haring, Cyndi Lauper, Charles Busch, Klaus Nomi, The B-52s, RuPaul, Futura 2000, Tron von Hollywood, Kenny Scharf, Frank Holliday, John Sex, Wendy Wild, The Fall, April Palmieri, Peter Kwaloff, Robert Carrithers, The Fleshtones, The Fuzztones, Joey Arias, Lypsinka, Michael Musto, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, Fab Five Freddy, Jacek Tylicki, and to a lesser extent, Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is a 1933 American pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Lewis Milestone and set in the Great Depression.
The Horse Thief is a 1986 Chinese film by director Tian Zhuangzhuang. It follows one of Tian's favorite topics, Chinese minorities, a topic he touched upon in 1984's On the Hunting Ground and would return to in 2004's documentary, Delamu. Like these other films, The Horse Thief shows Tian's fascination with China's ethnic minorities, and in particular the Buddhist ceremonies that these peoples practice.
Queens Logic is a 1991 American ensemble coming-of-age comedy-drama film from Seven Arts Pictures starring Kevin Bacon, Linda Fiorentino, Joe Mantegna, Jamie Lee Curtis, John Malkovich, Ken Olin, Chloe Webb and Tom Waits. It was directed by Steve Rash.
Golub is a 1988 documentary film, produced by Kartemquin Films, that examines the life and work of controversial painter, Leon Golub. Inspired by war, political oppression and the fight for Free Speech, Golub and his paintings are famous for their depictions of extreme violence. Also featured prominently in the film is his wife, anti-war feminist and artist, Nancy Spero. The documentary tracks Golub from starting with a blank canvas to a touring North American exhibition and eventually to an exhibition in Northern Ireland.
Mondo Cane is a 1962 Italian mondo documentary film and directed by the trio of Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco E. Prosperi, with narration by Stefano Sibaldi. The film consists of a series of travelogue scenes that provide glimpses into cultural practices around the world with the intention to shock or surprise Western film audiences. These scenes are presented with little continuity, as they are intended as a kaleidoscopic display of shocking content rather than presenting a structured argument. Despite its claims of genuine documentation, certain scenes are either staged or creatively manipulated to enhance this effect.
Stuart S. Shapiro is a producer, writer, director, and Internet entrepreneur. Shapiro began his career as an independent film distributor in 1974 by starting International Harmony which distributed cult classics TunnelVision, Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, Bob Marley's Reggae Sunsplash, The Sex Pistols' DOA, and Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle.
It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles is a 1993 documentary feature about Orson Welles's ill-fated Pan-American anthology film It's All True, shot in 1941–42 but never completed. Written and directed by Richard Wilson, Bill Krohn and Myron Meisel, the film is narrated by Miguel Ferrer. It was named the year's Best Non-Fiction Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and its filmmakers received a special citation from the National Society of Film Critics.
Desolation Angels is a 1995 independent film written and directed by Tim McCann.
"Jump in the River" is a song recorded by Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor. It originally appeared on the Married to the Mob soundtrack in 1988 and was released as a single the same year. It was also released as a 12" maxi-single that included a remixed version featuring the American performance artist Karen Finley. The song was later included on O'Connor's second studio album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990), as well as on the B-side of the 7" single for "Nothing Compares 2 U."
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