The Kingdom of Survival

Portrait of legendary primitive Rock ‘n’ Roll record label Voodoo Rhythm Records, its founder the inconoclastic Reverend Beat-Man and several bands on the label.

THE ROAD TO NOD is a narcotic and brooding tale of wrong decisions and their inevitable and desultory consequences. The film is at its roots an Old Testament tragedy. Shot in stark high contrast black and white the film bears resemblance to classic film noirs and the genre of the Road Movie. The otherworldly Irish landscape, long tracking shots and the hallucinogenic blues soundtrack lend the film a peculiar rhythm and atmosphere.

The portrait of Miron Zownir, one of the most censored photographers, filmmakers and crime novelists of our time. Stanley Kubrick's screenwriter and satirical novelist Terry Southern called Miron Zownir the poet of radical photography. Born in Karlsruhe in 1953, Zownir moved to Berlin in 1976 and then to the U.S. in 1981. There he spent 15 years in New York, Los Angeles & Pittsburgh. Zownir is one of the greatest existentialist photographers of our time. His images are icons of lust, pain, hunger, madness, starvation & death.

M.A. Littler's film diary, Beyond the White Rains, subtly reflects the dichotomy of man, mind, and place. In Littler's singular style, the film juxtaposes an author's interior landscape with the dramatic exterior of a remote coastal setting. Set within the interior of an old whaler's cottage, the film captures the ever-changing weather, the impervious sea, and moving clouds, reflecting a lifelong study of the interaction between man and place. Enigmatic, elegiac, and at times eerie, the film's pared-down images and otherworldly sound design reveal both the external beauty and the haunting interior landscape.

Hard Soil traces the history and evolution of American Roots music and examines its social and cultural relevance in the 21st century. Nowhere is America's cultural evolution and diversity as palpable as in the music of the people. Folk music or alternately roots music, a collective term encompassing a variety of musical styles from Bluegrass, to Blues and from Country to Gospel. Today a wild and vibrant subculture of musicians has begun to infuse these musical styles with the sounds of the 21st century keeping the evolution of American Roots music that is not only heard in the land of Lincoln but across the globe. To many it has not only become the soundtrack to their lives it has become a way of life.