mdblist.com logo The Best Nam June Paik Directed Movies


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poster
?
5.7
/17/
45
/1/

Videotape Study No. 3 (1967)
Part of a collection of restored early works by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, this piece is historically significant as well as remarkably prescient. Video Tape Study No.3 is a direct media intervention, in which Paik distorts and manipulates footage from news conferences by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and New York Mayor Lindsey.
poster
?
10
/1/

Cinema Metaphysique No. 1-5 (1972)
This early work belongs in the company of Paik and Yalkut's classic collaborative "video-films," including Video Tape Study No. 3, Beatles Electronique, and Missa of Zen. To the accompaniment of the abrupt sonic interjections of Fluxus-affiliated composer Takehisa Kosugi, Yalkut's black and white film records brief, masked actions: an arm with clenching fist; a pair of faces, visible only about the eyes, which squint, gaze, and rest; Paik eating a slice of bread. Reminiscent of Beckett's theater, as well as the minimal movements of 1960s avant-garde dance, Cinéma Metaphysique is a study in gesture and stillness, noise and silence.
poster
?
40
/2/
60
/1/

Butterfly (1986)
The exuberant irreverence and wit of Butterfly characterizes Paik's stream-of-consciousness visual and conceptual techniques. In a vibrant image/music collage, he ironically juxtaposes high-cultural artifacts (the aria from Madame Butterfly), contemporary avant-garde icons (Laurie Anderson) and Eastern symbols (the butterfly), within a rapid-paced proliferation of vividly computerized visual effects. This abbreviated work is classic Paik.
poster
?
60
/1/

A Tribute to John Cage (1976)
A Tribute to John Cage is Paik's homage to avant-garde composer John Cage. A major figure in contemporary art and music, Cage was one of the primary influences on Paik's work, as well as his friend and frequent collaborator. In this multifaceted portrait, Paik creates a pastiche of Cage's performances and anecdotes, interviews with friends and colleagues, and examples of Paik's participatory music and television works that parallel Cage's strategies and concerns. The methodology and philosophies that inform Cage's radical musical aesthetic — chance, randomness, the democratization of sounds — are evident as he performs such seminal pieces as 4'33" (of complete silence) in Harvard Square, or throws the I Ching to determine performance sites. Among the collage of elements included in this work are segments from Paik's Zen for TV; Paik and Charlotte Moorman in early performances, including the TV Bra; and anecdotes from composer Alvin Lucier.
poster
?
10
/1/

Missa of Zen (1967)
In Missa of Zen, a TV screen, filmed from an extremely oblique angle, appears as a ghostly, flickering sliver at the side of a darkened frame. The images playing across its surface are rendered abstract by the perspective: we witness the transmission of information, but at a great distance. Isolated in silence and darkness, the television set slips into the realm of the unheimlich — an uncanny object, at once familiar and unfamiliar. Situating mediated America at the crossroads of missa — Latin for the Christian mass — and Zen Buddhism, Paik highlights the connections between mass culture and the transcendental.
poster
?
5.0
/6/
10
/1/

Electronic Fables (1965)
Part of a restored collection of rare early works by Nam June Paik, Electronic Fables is an example of Paik's early improvisations and experiments with electronic image manipulation, prior to his invention of the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer. This piece also makes use of anecdotes by John Cage and other influential artists and cultural figures.
poster
?
10
/1/
80
/1/

Lake Placid '80 (1980)
Paik produced this exuberant, high-speed collage as a commission for the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games. In a fractured explosion of densely layered movement and action, images of Olympic sports events are mixed with Paik’s recurring visual and audio motifs.
poster
?
35
/2/

TV Garden (1974)
TV Garden is Paik’s imagined future landscape where technology is an integral part of the natural world. Placing television sets amongst live plants, he creates an environment in which the seemingly distinct realms of electronics and nature coexist. His approach follows the Buddhist philosophy that everything is interdependent. It also suggests that technology is not in conflict with nature but an extension of the human realm.
poster
?
30
/2/

TV Buddha (1974)
One of Nam June Paik’s most iconic works, TV Buddha expresses the contrasts and parallels between East and West and between technology and spirituality in a very simple and direct way. A CCTV camera films a Buddha statue, which Paik bought from an antique store. Its static, silent image appears live on a round TV set, inspired by popular sci-fi imagery. Here the Buddha is both the viewer and the viewed image, mirroring our own experience as mass media consumers.
poster
?
35
/2/

Magnet TV (1965)
Magnet TV is an early example of Nam June Paik’s “prepared televisions,” in which he altered the television image or its physical casing. This work, which was featured in Paik’s first solo exhibition in New York, consists of a seventeen-inch black-and-white set on which an industrial-sized magnet rests. The magnetic field interferes with the television’s electronic signals, distorting the broadcast image into an abstract form that changes when the magnet is moved. Paik’s radical action undermines the seemingly inviolable power of broadcast television by transforming the TV set into a sculpture, one whose moving image is created by chance procedures and can be manipulated at will.
poster
?
6.5
/15/
10
/1/

Waiting for Commercials (1966)
Waiting for Commercials is a hilarious compendium of Japanese TV commercials. "Beckett wrote 'Waiting for Godot' twenty years ago, but instead of Godot, TV commercial after TV commercial arrived". This early example of Paik's use of appropriated television imagery as pop cultural artifact was originally created for a performance piece of the same name, which featured Charlotte Moorman and her cello.
poster
?
10
/1/

Deoksu Palace (1992)
N/A
poster
?
10
/1/

One Candle, One Projection (1988)
One Candle, One Projection
poster
?
6.1
/15/
35
/2/
57
/3/

"Topless Cellist" Charlotte Moorman (1995)
Nam June Paik's first single-channel videotape since 1989 is a heartfelt tribute to his long-time collaborator Charlotte Moorman. This portrait traces Moorman's career as an avant-garde performer, from her classical training to her notorious arrest as the "Topless Cellist" and subsequent talk-show celebrity. Rare documentations of Moorman's performances include Otto Piene's Sky Kiss and Jim McWilliams' Chocolate Cello. Interviews with Moorman's friends, family and collaborators, such as Yoko Ono, Christo and Jeanne Claude, Otto Piene, and Barbara Moore, among others, provide intimate recollections of the inimitable Moorman.
poster
?
65
/1/

Merce by Merce by Paik (1978)
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.
poster
?
6.6
/8/
90
/1/
70
/1/

Guadalcanal Requiem (1977)
One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles.
poster
?
30
/2/

Allan ‘n Allen’s Complaint (1982)
The influence of Jewish fathers on their sons and the complexity of familial relationships are explored in a witty, poignant portrait of two artists. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (whose father Louis was a poet in his own right) and performance artist/sculptor Allan Kaprow (whose father is a high-powered lawyer) are the sons who struggle with and against the influences of these patriarchal figures.
poster
69
?
7.0
/54/
56
/3/
77
/3/
3.6
/370/

Global Groove (1973)
Global Groove was a collaborative piece by Nam June Paik and John Godfrey. Paik, amongst other artists who shared the same vision in the 1960s, saw the potential in the television beyond it being a one-sided medium to present programs and commercials. Instead, he saw it more as a place to facilitate a free flow of information exchange. He wanted to strip away the limitations from copyright system and network restrictions and bring in a new TV culture where information could be accessed inexpensively and conveniently. The full length of the piece ran 28 minutes and was first broadcasted in January 30, 1974 on WNET.
poster
64
?
7.0
/13/
35
/2/
81
/4/
3.6
/342/

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984)
In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).
poster
?
6.2
/15/
36
/3/

Suite 212 (1974)
Suite 212 is Paik's "personal New York sketchbook," an electronic collage that presents multiple perspectives of New York's media landscape as a fragmented tour of the city. Paik critiques the selling of New York by multinational corporations and the city's role as the master of the media and information industries; Collaborators Yalkut, Davis and Kubota contribute their own vibrant and punchy segments.
poster
53
?
5.2
/60/
40
/2/
54
/5/
3.3
/369/

Zen for Film (1964)
In an endless loop, unexposed film runs through the projector. The resulting projected image shows a surface illuminated by a bright light, occasionally altered by the appearance of scratches and dust particles in the surface of the damaged film material. This a film which depicts only its own material qualities; An "anti-film", meant to encourage viewers to focus on the lack of concrete images.
poster
?
20
/1/

Analogue Assemblage (2000)
Drawing from Paik's earliest experiments with video synthesizers, Analogue Assemblage employs current technology to create a multilayered montage that references both the old and the new. The eerie 1969 electronic score floats over ghostly image processing; the result is a paean to the way the future was.
poster
?
10
/1/
60
/1/

Electronic Yoga (1972)
Part of the "Video-Film Concert" collection on EAI. From 1966 - 1972. Music by K. S. Narayanaswami.
poster
?
6.4
/19/
10
/1/
60
/1/

Electronic Moon No. 2 (1966)
Part of the "Video-Film Concert" collection released by EAI. From 1966 - 1972.
poster
?
10
/1/

The Medium Is the Medium (1968)
Produced by WGBH-TV in Boston, the Medium Is the Medium is one of the earliest and most prescient examples of the collaboration between public television and the emerging field of video art in the U.S. WGBH commissioned artists — Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock and Aldo Tambellini — to create original works for broadcast television. Their works explored the parameters of the new medium, from image processing and interactivity to video dance and sculpture.
poster
?
10
/1/

Bye Bye Kipling (1986)
This ambitious live satellite link-up of Japan, Korea and the United States features interviews with Keith Haring and architect Arata Isozaki, and performances and works by Philip Glass and the Kodo Drummers, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, and Lou Reed. In an extraordinary section, a performance in Japan of classical Western music is accompanied by a group of Kabuki dancers.
poster
?
15
/2/

Button Happening (1965)
Button Happening is Nam June Paik's earliest extant tape, and possibly his first tape ever. Recorded in 1965 on the day he acquired his first Sony Portapak camera, this previously unknown work has recently been rediscovered and restored. Recorded on computer tape, this technically fragile piece documents a single performance action — Paik buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket. A spirit of conceptual Fluxus humor underlies this seminal recording.
poster
?
10
/1/

Early Color TV Manipulations (1968)
Marked by a playful, irreverent sense of improvisation and experimentation, these experiments with image manipulation and synthesis form a link between Paik's performance and sculptural works of the 1950s and early 1960s and the celebrated video works and installations of his later years.
poster
?
10
/1/

Video Commune (Beatles from Beginning to End) (1992)
Video Commune is Jud Yalkut's free-form documentation of Nam June Paik's first interactive television "performance" at the public television station WGBH in Boston. Subtitled "Beatles from Beginning to End," this was a live broadcast in which Paik created a freewheeling collage of recorded images, image-processing and Beatles music.
poster
?
10
/1/

TV Cello Premiere (1971)
TV Cello Premiere is a silent film documentation of Charlotte Moorman in her first performance on Paik's eponymous TV Cello at the Bonino Gallery in New York in 1971.
poster
?
10
/1/

Wrap around the World (1988)
This spectacular satellite link-up, coordinated by Paik, connected the United States, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan and numerous other countries. David Bowie performs with La, La, La, Human Steps, and carries out a conversation via satellite with Japanese musician Ryuichi Sacamoto, who also performs. There are also appearances by Merce Cunningham, the Viennese Art Orchestra, a game of elephant soccer in Thailand and a car race in Ireland. The whole event is held together by Paik's video graphics, which includes one of his stacked television sculptures.
poster
?
6.6
/7/
65
/2/

All Star Video (1985)
A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
poster
?
10
/1/

Digital Experiment at Bell Labs (1967)
Using Bell Lab's pioneering research facilities, Paik creates a starkly minimal experiment in computer imaging, in which a shifting dot appears on a black ground.
poster
68
?
6.0
/91/
63
/3/
80
/2/
3.4
/360/

Beatles Electroniques (1969)
Part of a collection of restored early works by Nam June Paik, the haunting Beatles Electronique reveals Paik's engagement with manipulation of pop icons and electronic images. Snippets of footage from A Hard Day's Night are countered with Paik's early electronic processing.
poster
?

Media Shuttle: New York - Moscow (1978)
Collaboration with Nam June Paik and Dimitri Devyatkin, combining footage from the US and Russia: Brezhnev on TV, a May Day parade, veterans in the park. The film was shown internationally in New York.
poster
?

Living with the Living Theatre (1989)
One of Paik's most compelling and poignant tapes, Living with the Living Theatre pays tribute to Judith Malina and the late Julien Beck, founder of the Living Theatre. Reversing the theme of the earlier Allan 'n' Allen's Complaint, which dealt with two artists and their relationships to their fathers, Paik explores Malina and Beck's relationship to their children. Interviews provide the memories of actual lives lived together, while Betsy Connors' animated sequences transcend the specific to suggest the universality of childhood. Garrin and Paik edit these elements into an electronic synthesis that is at times dizzyingly psychedelic and always affectionate towards its subjects. Infused with personal and cultural memories that evoke time and place — Janis Joplin concert footage, Living Theatre performances — Paik creates a haunting and deeply moving homage.
poster
?

Beuys (1990)
Beuys Projection, 1990
poster
?

Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970 (2010)
Feature-length compilation program presenting 37 out of 41 original fluxfilms produced and directed in the 1960s by Fluxus artists, including George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Robert Watts, Paul Sharits, et al.


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