"Actor: Philip Glass"

• Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell | DVD | (03/11/2008) from £24.28   |  Saving you £-6.29 (-35.00%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Wild Combination is director Matt Wolf's visually absorbing portrait of the seminal avant-garde composer singer-songwriter cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell. Before his untimely death from AIDS in 1992 Arthur prolifically created music that spanned an extraordinary diversity of styles and won the love of artistic communities that would seem utterly disparate. His collaborators and most ardent supporters ranged from Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg to rock bands like The Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers; the pre-Studio 54 disco scene of Nicky Siano's Gallery and David Mancuso's Loft; and DJ-producers like Francois Kevorkian and Larry Levan among others. Arthur's music spanned both pop and the transcendent possibilities of abstract art and now over fifteen years since his passing his work is still being embraced by new and ever growing audiences. Wolf incorporates rare archival footage and commentary from Arthur's family friends and closest collaborators including (in order of appearance) the musician and writer David Toop (who did the last print interview with Russell) parents Chuck and Emily Russell Allen Ginsberg Ernie Brooks (The Modern Lovers The Necessaries) Philip Glass Russell's partner Tom Lee Steve Knutson of Audika Records (responsible for reissuing Russell's work in recent years) the singer-songwriter Jens Lekman and others.

• Philip Glass - Looking Glass | DVD | (29/08/2005) from £17.98   |  Saving you £0.01 (0.10%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This documentary captures the overflowing energy and activity of one of today's greatest composers Philip Glass and allows us to follow him from New York to London and from Paris to Boston. He speaks about his beginnings his moving to Paris for two years of intensive study with Nadia Boulanger his meeting with Indian musician Ravi Shankar and director Robert Wilson who had a deep influence on his career. The film also shows him at work on the last details of his opera The Sound Of A Voice directed by Robert Woodruff and conducted by Alan Johnson. Eric Darmon's camera with its poetic shots and original framings takes us for a musical journey into seven months of the life of the composer who rising from the underground scene of the seventies brought on a revolution in modern theater.