Watch: “Bela, L’Homme Chat” – A Mini Doc About a Street Performer and His Cats

According to filmmaker Paul Trillo:

A short documentary shot during Cannes Film Festival 2011.

“Bela” follows the day in the life of a street performer named Bela Erdei or “the cat man”. Bela, a recognizable face to some, travels hours by train throughout the south of France to perform with his affectionate house cats. An affable and eccentric character who has a real passion for what he does.

Watch: “Karakuri” – A Mini Doc About Traditional Japanese Self-Operating Machines

According to the filmmaker Matthew Allard:

Japan has always been on the forefront of cutting edge robotics. Its roots can be traced back 200-300 years ago during the Edo period when skilled craftsmen created automata (self-operating machines). Using nothing more than pulleys and weights they were able to make the Karakuri (Japanese automata) perform amazing tasks.

Japan’s modern day robots can be traced back to the Karakuri. Today Hideki Higashino is one of the few remaining craftsmen who is determined to keep the history and tradition of Japanese Karakuri alive.

Learn more about Karakuri here

Watch: “Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood: Hunter S. Thompson”

This 1978 documentary by Nigel Finch captures artist Ralph Steadman and Hunter S. Thompson traveling to Las Vegas, Barstow and Hollywood in their distinctly gonzo way.

TV Eye: All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Via the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis:

This series of films investigates how people have been colonized by the machines they have built.

Although they may not realize it, the way many people see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. Not just politics and the economy — but also in the way bodies, minds, and even the whole of the natural world are perceived.

The underlying argument is that people have given up a dynamic political model of the world — the dream of changing things for the better — for a static machine ideology that says everyone is a component in a system, and that the aim is to manage these systems and keep them stable.

From the utopian visions of the worldwide web to the idea of an interconnected global economic system, to the dream of balanced ecosystems, all these ideas share an underlying machine vision of organization and order.

The films tell an extraordinary range of stories: from novelist Ayn Rand and her tragic love affairs to the dreams and the frightening reality of the hippie communes; from the brutal politics of the Belgian Congo to the doomsday computer model behind the rise of modern environmentalism; from the lonely suicide in a London squat of the mathematical genius who invented the selfish gene theory to Alan Greenspan and his faith in a new kind of global economic system. And there’s also the computer model of the eating habits of the Pronghorn antelope.

The series argues that by embracing this new machine ideology something very precious has been given up: the idea of progress and political struggle to change the world for the better.

Episode One – Love and Power (premiered May 23, 2011 on BBC Two):

This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.

The film tells the story of two perfect worlds. One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. Many of them were also disciples of Ayn Rand. They believed that the new computer networks would allow the creation of a society where everyone could follow their own desires, yet there would not be anarchy. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who had also been a disciple of Ayn Rand. He became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism – “Like a New Planet”, he said.

But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by the two dynamic human forces – love and power.

As always when watching films on Youtube this is broken into multiple parts. We’ve embedded parts one and two of episode one with links to the other three parts below the videos. We’ve also included links to all five parts of episode two, which is entitled The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. The third and final episode - The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey - airs this Monday on BBC Two.

Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Episode Two: The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

Watch: Surf Punks, 1981

45 min. Dutch TV documentary by Frans Bromet on the SoCal punk scene with footage of Suicidal Tendencies, The Germs, Venus & The Razorblades, 45 Grave, China White, Casey Cola, and Phranc.