Julie Sloane

The Sensual Nature of Sound portrays four New York based composers and performers in terms of their musical lives and artistic passion. Though Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros are all pioneers in American music, each composer pursues a distinct direction of her own. Their rehearsals and performances show a common pursuit of lyrical storytelling through which a new set of contemporary narratives has been forged. Through body, sound, movement and composition, these women have forged their own path through the wild world of modern music.

Since the 1960s, other disciplines, cultures, and artists previously excluded from modernism's privileged canons have become absorbed into an ever expanding field of activity and influence. Younger artists are a new breed of cultural scavengers, anything or anyone is fair game for appropriation or reinterpretation. Fascinated by notions of space, time and the human body, artists such as David Hammons, Laurie Simmons and Richard Wentworth have carved their own path through conceptual art.

Czech refugee Krystyna travels to New York in search of her actress idol and fellow expatriate, Anna. After her own arrival in the Big Apple, Anna finds that celebrity often doesn't travel well, and she must go through a battery of humiliating auditions to try and get work in her adopted land. But when Krystyna and Anna finally meet, they provide a support structure for each other.

This unusual documentary-style feature starts with ordinary people discussing their private erotic desires; what sets it apart from other documentaries, which often feature a lot of talk, is that in this experimental film, 10 of the subjects then act out their most intimate fantasies. Carl Gurevich and Ralph Rosenblum (the acclaimed editor of Woody Allen's comedies Annie Hall and Sleeper) co-direct this daring peek into the human sexual psyche.

This unusual documentary-style feature starts with ordinary people discussing their private erotic desires; what sets it apart from other documentaries, which often feature a lot of talk, is that in this experimental film, 10 of the subjects then act out their most intimate fantasies. Carl Gurevich and Ralph Rosenblum (the acclaimed editor of Woody Allen's comedies Annie Hall and Sleeper) co-direct this daring peek into the human sexual psyche.