Brown Bag

Painter, fisherman, visionary, eccentric - Forrest Bess lived his life in obscurity, at an isolated bait camp off the East Coast of Texas. From 1949 through 1967, Bess showed at the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City along with artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. But Bess' art was only part of a grander theory based on alchemy, Jungian philosophy, and aboriginal rituals, which proposed that hermaphrodism was the key to immortality. Narrated by actors Willem Dafoe and Ruth Maleczech, the documentary combines the beauty of Bess' art with the drama and tragedy of his personal life. Interviews with people who knew Bess, including art historian Meyer Schapiro (his last interview) and Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman bring life to this forgotten artist. Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddleis a fascinating look at one of America's most unusual artists.

The debut full-length video from Stereo Skateboards.

The Beastie Boys are among the most influential groups of the last two decades. As their music has opened hip-hop to a wider audience and changed the parameters of its sound, their ambitious music videos have carried the medium to new levels of artistic expression. This groundbreaking two-disc anthology showcases eighteen videos containing alternate visual angles and multiple audio tracks. Loaded with never-before-seen footage and unreleased music tracks, this special edition also contains a trove of rare still photos and exclusive audio commentary by the band and the video directors.

Solid Gold Hits is a greatest hits collection by Beastie Boys, released in November 2005. In contrast to 1999's The Sounds of Science anthology, Solid Gold Hits consists only of tracks that were released as singles. Where The Sounds of Science is a double CD compilation, Solid Gold Hits contains one CD with all their singles that broke gold, plus a DVD with the respective videos of the songs. Although the standard US release of the CD/DVD has 15 songs, the Japanese release has the song and video for "Right Right Now Now" as the last song.

The Park is an uninterrupted 58-minute capture of the action on an unfenced basketball court adjacent to the Walt Whitman housing projects in Fort Greene Brooklyn, New York. With no physical barrier between athletes and spectators, and no evident delineation between the beginning or end of a game, players join and depart apparently at random, while park visitors wander past, and sometimes through, the activity on court. The Park reveals the game zone as a fundamental space of public social life, providing an anthropological cross-section of social codes. The film is accompanied by an improvised soundtrack by musician Jason Moran, whose live-recorded performance spontaneously translates the visual rhythms of The Park’s unscripted choreography.

Detroit merges his attention to particularities of cultural identity with the intimacy of a home movie. The kids in the video skillfully adapt the gritty conventions of noise rock for an audience of family and friends.

Invited to a gathering at a 7th Ward bar, the artist captured a rehearsal by a traditional Mardi Gras Indian “tribe”. Marcopoulos films the members training a new generation in the rules of the dance. There are specific codes and gestures which prepare each participant to do battle with rival tribes come Mardi Gras. The chants date back generations, and the drum rhythm coheres this tight-knit group of men to the wider collective of the neighborhood bar.

Skateboarders Noah Sakamoto and Patrick Rizzo filming each other on a ten-minute downhill slope—in powder blue suits and into oncoming traffic.

Big wave surfers Grant Twiggy Baker, Brian Conley, Greg Long, Rusty Long, Frank Solomon and Anthony Tashnick call for the creation of marine protected areas in our oceans, like national parks on land.

A highly personal portrait of the late Craig Kelly. The film is a non-linear sequence of short films. It's a cinematic poem about a close friend of the filmmaker.

Filmed during a late summer trip in Nova Scotia, Marcopoulos visited a small town founded in 1783 by freed American slaves during the revolutionary war. The church, established in 1822, is a central part of a shrinking society and the site of gathering for its largely African Canadian congregation.