Between appearing in supporting roles in General Hospital and local TV commercials, Ryan Sexton spent the early 90s documenting the life and art of El Duce, lead singer of the notorious shock rock band The Mentors. Famous for taking the stage in black executioner hoods, the band spent a few moments in the national spotlight after some of their most offensive lyrics were denounced on the floor of the US Senate. 25 years later, David Lawrence and Rodney Ascher dive into the long unseen VHS footage searching for clues about who El Duce really was, how much of his disturbing persona was for real, and what an act built around a cartoonish sense of violent misogyny can tell us about our own time and place.
An intimate portrait of the band Swans, from their roots as a brutal, confrontational post-punk band that emerged from the same early 1980s era NYC that gave us Sonic Youth. The film covers their ill-fated bid at mainstream success in the 90s, breakups and chaos (on and offstage) to their odds-defying revered current status.
Are we in fact living in a simulation? This is the question postulated, wrestled with, and ultimately argued for in the latest provocation from acclaimed documentary stylist Rodney Ascher (Room 237, The Nightmare) through archival footage, compelling interviews with real people shrouded in digital avatars, and a collection of cases from some of our most iconoclastic figures in contemporary culture.