americanprimitives - Tumblr blog

[americanprimitives]

La Divina

[americanprimitives]

Throwing Muses | Not Too Soon | 1991

[americanprimitives]

[americanprimitives]

[americanprimitives]

Joan Crawford

[americanprimitives]

I 🖤 John Waters.

[americanprimitives]

Luminaires, 1970s.

[americanprimitives]

Happy 71st, Kim Gordon.

Photo by Ezra Petronio.

[americanprimitives]

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance premiered in Santa Fe, NM on 28 April 1982.

In 1972, 30-year-old Godfrey Reggio began making a number of “advertising” spots sponsored by the ACLU for the Albuquerque, New Mexico viewing area, focusing on “invasions of privacy and the use of technology to control behavior.” The spots were so popular that people called the TV stations asking when they would be shown again. After the campaign ended Reggio tried to raise more money to begin another project, but failed. He was then convinced by his cinematographer Ron Fricke that they could use the remaining $40,000 to make a film.

After quickly exhausting their budget (resulting in about 20 minutes of edited film), Fricke moved to Los Angeles and worked as a waiter while trying to get jobs in Hollywood. Reggio continued to try and raise funds and the 2 began working together in 1976, traveling around the country and filming when and where they could.

In 1981, Reggio met Francis Ford Coppola who was so impressed with the footage that he saw, he offered to attach his name to the project in order to secure theatrical distribution. Reggio turned down offers from larger studios in order to have greater control of distribution and went with Island Alive (started by Chris Blackwell of Island Records), and Koyaanisqatsi was the company’s first release.

The film received significant critical praise and was a surprise financial success, due to support from college campus theatres and art house screenings.

Michael Nesmith’s Pacific Arts Video initially released Koyaanisqatsi on VHS and laserdisc.

Koyaanisqatsi also brought wider attention to Philip Glass, whose soundtrack for the film was released on Island Records in 1983.

[americanprimitives]

Plants actually move around a lot in 24 hours, they just do it very slowly | source

[americanprimitives]

[americanprimitives]

Chaka Khan photographed by Jamie Nelson for Flaunt Magazine

[americanprimitives]

David Wojnarowicz

Untitled (Burning House) 1982

[americanprimitives]

The woke mob has made Santa gay! Mrs Claus has been replaced with a 5'8 twink named Tony Tinsel

[americanprimitives]

“Later we [Culture Club] played with them a few times and they had the most unique, hypnotic sound. It’s trashy Americana, John Waters, Divine, the Shangri-La’s, high camp and bubblegum punk. The beat is everything. Fred always reminded me of Dr Zachary Smith from Lost in Space. I never thought about whether the B-52’s had a gay angle. They were just against rules in general – taking classic American kitsch and giving it a punk, space-age irreverence, like a beautiful car crash with pop surrealism. They were very camp but very funky: always on it, melodic but effortlessly free. It’s the sort of pop music that I want to hear.”

/ Boy George reflecting on the B-52’s in The Guardian /

Born on this day: happy 76th birthday to the sublime Kate Pierson (née Catherine Elizabeth Pierson, 27 April 1948) - singer, multi-instrumentalist, bouffant wig enthusiast and one of the founding members of Athens, Georgia’s essential post-punk party band the B-52’s! For me, Pierson’s spine-tingling dissonant science fiction anti-harmonies with co-vocalist Cindy Wilson are one of the defining sounds of American New Wave music. Pictured: Pierson captured by Lynn Goldsmith in the early 1980s.

[americanprimitives]

Sandy Dennis, April 27, 1937 – March 2, 1992.

Mike Nichols’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

[americanprimitives]

Happy 76th, Kate Pierson.