A Bright Nowhere: Journeying Into Improvisation

Waiting for Guffman

1997 · ★ 7

Aspiring director Corky St. Clair and the marginally talented amateur cast of his hokey small-town musical production go overboard when they learn that Broadway theater agent Mort Guffman will be in attendance.

M-TOWN The Hidden Olympic Village

Short documentary film about Maryland, a corner of Stratford neglected by the Olympic ‘regeneration’. Seen through the eyes of veteran grime emcee Chronik.

The Improv: 50 Years Behind the Brick Wall

2013 · ★ 6.8

Several comic greats pay tribute to the legendary stand-up stage founded by Budd Friedman in 1963.

Transfragmentation

2022 · ★ 9

After I had already begun to conduct my first cinematographic experiments in 2015, I shot between 2016 and 2019 (during my time as a student in Rostock) exclusively for this "No Budget Feature-Length Experimental Film", now titled "Transfragmentation", which was originally conceived to last three hours, based on Werner Fritsch's "Faust Sonnengesang" (2011), but now has a running time of approximately two hours. In 2015, I also began my correspondence with the Brussels-based Sound-Artist Unenthüllte, who eventually composed four twenty-minute pieces for this work and has to be regarded as my sole artistic collaborator in this sense. My cinematographic concept was clearly outlined from the beginning: The duration of each shot is exactly 1 minute. Only two elements diverge from this primary premise: The Seventeen Minute Prelude, Created In Post-Production (2020-2022), And The Slow Motion Sequences Involving My Voice-Over, Which Linger In The Heart And At The End Of The Work.

Orson Welles in Spain

1966 · ★ 5

Orson Welles presents a proposed film project to prospective investors in Spain. Speaking to an audience of wealthy arts patrons, Welles outlines his vision for an improvised, documentary-style fiction set in the world of bullfighting, centered on a solitary, existential matador who stands apart from his peers. As he expounds on cinema, performance, and the ritualized spectacle of death, the film captures a project that would ultimately remain unrealized.

Taube Feuer

2024

With noise-canceling headphones, they communicate with an inaudible counterpart. Decoupled, they move around the room and meet their surroundings. Intimate stories and needs are discussed. The personal blends into a shared portrait.

The Yellow Shark

1992 · ★ 8

This live recording was culled from seven September 1992 concerts given in Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based chamber orchestra that performs only contemporary music. Composed and conducted by Frank Zappa.

Fainting Flicker

2016 · ★ 10

Two young strangers meet in Naples and begin to flirt and dance in the street.

The Hypergaussian Wars

2025 · ★ 10

The Hypergaussian Wars is an AI-generated feature-length audiovisual work exploring algorithmic warfare, obsolete media and the transformation of images through repetition, saturation and collapse. Built from thousands of generated images, synthetic landscapes and references to 14th–16th century painting, the film stages a continuous conflict between historical visual culture and contemporary computational systems. Fragments of obsolete video games, ruined architectures, military simulations and post-human figures circulate through increasingly unstable environments. Rather than telling a linear story, the film operates as an image system in which visual excess progressively erodes meaning. The Hypergaussian Wars reflects on memory, obsolescence, artificial intelligence and the persistence of images after their original function has disappeared.

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

2005

Drawing on rare performances, interviews, animations, and experimental film, this documentary surveys the formative years of electronic music from 1948 to 1980. Featuring pioneering composers and inventors—including Milton Babbitt and Leon Theremin—the film explores the experimental technologies, academic laboratories, and creative struggles that shaped the early evolution of electronic sound.

Sound Pictures by Music

2020

Larion Dyakov is a painter, but he doesn't use paint; instead, he "paints pictures through music." He plays the viola and connects it to a chain of various effects devices to loop his phrases and alter the original sound of his classical instrument. The result is a mixture of classical and modern ambient music that can transport you to another world and paint a new picture in your mind's eye, if you let it.

FUCK TV

2019

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.