OHM+: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music : 1948–1980

The dark sensibilities and cultural resonances of Butoh, the radical Japanese dance movement, are explored in this multilayered work. Profoundly rooted in both traditional and contemporary Japanese culture, Butoh arose in a spirit of revolt in the early 1960s. Characterized by frank sexuality and bodily distortions, Butoh transforms traditional dance movements into new forms, stripping away the taboos of contemporary Japanese culture to reveal a secret world of darkness and irrationality.

Director Kelly Anderson's personal journey as a Brooklyn 'gentrifier' to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class. The film reframes the gentrification debate to expose the corporate actors and government policies driving displacement and neighborhood change.

Filmed in the Guatemalan Highlands during a 1980 journey, Edín Vélez’s experimental video essay offers a lyrical portrait of Mayan life. Avoiding conventional narration or ethnographic analysis, the film observes gestures, landscapes, and daily rituals through slow motion and expressive camera techniques, while American news broadcasts evoke the political conflict surrounding the community, creating a meditation on cultural resilience in a changing world.

Filmed over a year in Japan, Edín Vélez’s experimental video essay examines the tension between tradition and modernity in Japanese culture. Through a nonlinear collage of layered images—ranging from bullet trains and corporate life to Kabuki, Sumo, and Shinto ritual—the film explores the concept of ma, the “interval” or charged space between things that shapes rhythm, balance, and meaning.

Oblique Strategist Too is a multilayered, tangential portrait of composer Brian Eno, and an evocative essay on the creative process. Eno's perspectives on his music and working methods surface elliptically, through interviews and footage of him in the studio and in lectures. Eno emerges as a meticulous musician, articulate critic, and, ultimately, an inscrutable personality. The tape's title is taken from a set of cards bearing aphorisms, which Eno uses as a random element of advice in his working process. Velez uses intricate audio and video effects to heighten the elusive nature of Eno's music and character. He begins the tape with a quote from Heraclitus: "The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself" a paradox that eminently suits his subject matter.