Staten Island Sex Cult

A fictionalized portrait of the British dancer and choreographer Michael Clark, depicting a day in his life as he and his company prepare for a performance.

A history of the work of Merce Cunningham.

Marina Abramovic collaborated with videomaker Charles Atlas on this striking work of autobiographical performance. Abramovic delivers a monologue that traces a concise personal chronology. This brief narrative history, which references her past in the former Yugoslavia, her performance work, and her collaboration with and separation from Ulay, is intercut with images of Abramovic engaged in symbolic gestures and ritual acts—scrubbing her feet, staring like Medusa as snakes writhe on her head. Closing her litany with the phrase "time past, time present," Abramovic invokes the personal and the mythological in a poignant affirmation of self.

An avant-garde omnibus that features works by off-the-wall artists in many different disciplines.

PBS produced documentary in two parts: the first is dedicated to saxophonist and composer John Zorn; the second is about Sonic Youth at the height of their powers in 1988.

Welcome to the over-the-top, extravagant world of Leigh Bowery, a key figure in New Romanticism and London nightlife in the 1980s. With his bizarre outfits, a mix of kitsch and fetish, and his eccentric performances, he influenced artists, musicians and stylists like Boy George, Lucian Freud (of whom he became the muse), Vivienne Westwood, Anthony and the Johnsons, John Galliano and David LaChapelle. Born in Australia into an intensely religious family and brought up in a Melbourne suburb, Leigh moved to London where he worked as a fashion designer and a promoter, and started the legendary disco club night "Taboo", the first outrageous polysexual party in London. The documentary offers a fully rounded portrait of this artist, including interviews with the people who knew him, who describe a complex, extreme, and ironic personality, a performer, actor and designer ahead of his time, from his difficult early life to international success, up to his death in 1994.

Merce by Merce by Paik is a two-part tribute to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Marcel Duchamp. The first section, “Blue Studio: Five Segments”, is a work of video-dance produced by Merce Cunningham and videomaker Charles Atlas. The second part, produced by Paik and Shigeko Kubota, further queries the relationship between everyday gestures and formal notions of dance.

John Cage’s original concept of Ocean, in 1991, was for a dance to be performed in a circular space, with the audience surrounding the dancers, and the musicians (112 of them) surrounding the audience. The last performance was in the Rainbow Quarry in Minnesota, September 2008, at which time the piece was filmed by Charles Atlas.

Check Your Body At The Door is a documentary film about some remarkable underground house dancers in NYC during the golden decade of the 1990s. It follows master free-stylists into the clubs, their jobs, and their everyday lives. Filmed in the studio as well, the dancers’ virtuosic moves are brilliantly revealed in silhouette or light pools. In their words they describe the importance of clubbing, why they dance, how they dance, and what it means.

A video portrait of the legendary late performance artist, fashion designer and nightlife icon Leigh Bowery. Atlas's camera follows Bowery as he flamboyantly strolls through Manhattan's Meatpacking District, outrageously costumed in a self-made reinterpretation of "Mr. Peanut," the Planter's Peanut mascot. Bowery's molded full-bodysuit, accessorized with a floral print dress, top hat and transparent-heeled platform shoes, draws stares from onlookers. Peanut-related pop songs accompany him on the soundtrack.

New York City 1988. Raging homophobia. A killer on the loose. Disco dancing till dawn. Performers struggle to survive. Delilah seduces Samson in song. Gender illusionists go shopping. Samson and Delilah, 1991. This tape is an entertaining amalgam of cross-cut scenes featuring New York performance luminaries including John Kelly, Hapi Phace and DANCENOISE. It is a dark vision of an America where life is cheap and even the moments of tenderness have a life threatening edge.

The confluence of words and movement propels this multi-layered collaboration by Atlas, choreographer Douglas Dunn, and poets Anne Waldman and Reed Bye. Dunn's athletic choreography is performed to the rhythms, cadences, and associative meanings of the poets' "cascade of words," which function as music. Atlas introduces narrative references, ironically staging the dance in unexpected locations, including domestic interiors and vehicles. In a self-referential deconstruction that punctures the theatrical illusion, the poets are seen reading their texts and interacting as self-conscious performers within the dance. Atlas and his collaborators intersect the language of words with the language of the body.

Blue Studio: Five Segments is a groundbreaking work of videodance by postmodern master Merce Cunningham and his then filmmaker-in-residence, Charles Atlas. In a series of short pieces choreographed and performed specifically for video space, Cunningham is multiplied, overlaid and transported from the studio to a series of unexpected landscapes. Cunningham's gestural dance is manipulated to the accompaniment of a disjunctive audio collage that includes the voices of John Cage and Jasper Johns.

We Interrupt This Program (1991) was a live television broadcast presented by The Kitchen in association with Visual AIDS for Day Without Art 1991. The broadcast was directed by Charles Atlas and includes contributions from artists whose work addressed the AIDS crisis in diverse ways included performances by DANCENOISE, Richard Elovich, Karen Finley, Bill T. Jones and Estella Jones, John Kelly, Lavender Light, and Robbie McCauley.

In this futuristic danse macabre, Charles Atlas creates a fully realized cyber-gothic world, rife with both erotic and physical danger. We follow our heroine on her travels through a world inhabited by libidinal robots, human profligates, statuesque hairdressers and a bevy of other intriguing individuals. Her stylized and blank-faced nonchalance mirror the performative passion and violence which surrounds her.

The Michael Clark Dance Group perform to the music of T.Rex, Chopin, the Beatles and the Velvet Underground.

Strangers in their own birthplace, 16-year-old Danny and 18-year-old Odysseus cross the entire country in search of their Greek father, after their Albanian mother passes away.

Arnold Beckoff is looking for love and acceptance, but as a gay man working as a female impersonator in 1970s New York City, neither come easily. After a series of heartaches, Arnold believes he has found the love of his life in Alan, and the couple make plans to adopt. But when tragedy strikes, Arnold's life is shaken to its very core, leading to a confrontation with his overbearing mother, who has never approved of her son's lifestyle.

A visiting city reporter's assignment suddenly revolves around the murder trial of a local millionaire, whom he befriends.

An array of outrageous people, including a desperate nymphomaniac and a terrorist with an acute sense of smell, seek love and happiness in Madrid.

The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.

In 1970s Germany, Léopold, a 50-year-old businessman, picks up and seduces 20-year-old Franz, who swiftly moves into his apartment. The dynamic between them intensifies with the sudden arrival of their ex-girlfriends.

In 1979 Cuba, flamboyant gay artist Diego attempts to seduce straitlaced David, an idealistic young communist, and fails dismally. But David conspires to be "friends" with Diego so he can monitor the artist's subversive life for the state. As Diego and David discuss politics, individuality and personal expression in Castro's Cuba, a genuine friendship develops between the two.