Category Archives: Film

A short film documentary: A Tribe Called Red – music activists from Canada.

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

Is music made only for entertaining people? Is music just a commercial product? Is music something deep and important in our lives? Why do we still need music? How do you feel about music in general? What’s your answer?
It s is widely known that the power of music influences people’s mood and  creates scenes, routines and occasion in their lives. From Plato to Adorno who portray music in their social theories as an influence on character, social structure and action. A Tribe Called Red is a good example for what DooBeeDoo believes in and why it has been supporting music acts like them:… The basic thrust of the editorial content is that a social awareness can be fostered through music.

Last month, Guillaume Decouflet made his way to the Electric Pow Wow in Ottawa and sat down with A Tribe Called Red to talk party music, urban indigineity, and upending racist stereotypes through multimedia artwork. Cluster Mag is proud to host Decouflet’s account of the experience; a short film-documentary assembled from his interview, a little bit of party footage, and the audio-video work of Bear Witness, one of ATCR’s three members.

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Recommended events: DANCE CLASS with Natasha Blank & CRAZY WISDOM film screening

Date: Saturday, February 11, 2012
Time: 7-9pm
Venue: Laughing Lotus Yoga NY (59 West 19th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011)
Ticket: $15
Genre: dance and music

DANCE CLASS is a movement meditation that feels like the best dance party EVER. 2 hours of nonstop grooves in the Dance Hall at Laughing Lotus: bangin system, floors built for bare feet, and an arsenal of beats from dance maven/bass freak Natasha Blank.

This is your invitation to LET GO, surrender your head to the intelligence of your breath, shake out everything that holds you back, and sweat out your week with a family of crazy dancers.

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Film documentary feature: Iran’s Zurkhane culture

Photo by Antoin Sevruguin (1830s-1933)

Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

The last time I went to a Zurkhane (or Zorkhana or Zourkhaneh lit. “house of strength”, the traditional gymnasium of urban Persia and adjacent lands) in Teheran was when I was a teenager. 42 years ago? At that  time I still lived in Germany. And every year during my summer school vacation I visited my family in Teheran. During my stay there I spent mostly of my time in the bazaar, museums, mosques, Teheran’s red-light district, went up the Elbrus Mountains and many other places without telling my parents about it. Because they might have stopped me. Some of the places were taboo, but as a young man I wanted to see the real Iran with my own eyes.

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Vinyl and DVD reviews: Pascal Plantinga – moody pop sensibility from Holland

Review  by Jim Hoey

A flurry of activity has reached us here in NYC from Dutch-based sound artist Pascal Plantinga. Three releases from the Ata Tak label have come out recently, featuring Platinga’s production and bass work, as well as vocals, with his moody pop sensibility the constant on all of these recordings. One features a collaboration with a traditional Japanese samisen player, another, a found-sound pop project, and the third is a live album, recorded at The Stone in NYC in 2009, with sax, and electronics. Bundled with this release is also a short film, entitled Learn To Speak Your Language, which is his visual and musical interpretation of what goes through a person’s mind in the seconds before they die.

A so-called “pop-eccentric”, Plantinga seems to be pretty damn busy right now, churning out these different recordings, showing off different sides of his approach to music. From Holland he seems to get around, working with a singer in Okinawa, Japan, downtown scene musicians in NYC, and his hometown crew in the Netherlands. What remains constant though, is his ability to capture the feeling of a moment and craft it into a slow-boiling song that rides out the emotion, checks through a number of possibilities, and eases into the most appropriate vein of expression.

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