Coolhunting

I simultaneously revel and suffer in the turbulent wash of my niche tastes. I like a rare and unusual combination of pop-culture, ultra nostalgia, alternative music, comics and film along with a healthy dose of punk rock. As such, I often wind up with hit-lists like the following, so here’s a few documentaries and one short film that I’m currently on the hunt for or have managed to find on my wanderings through the digital wasteland.

The Public Image Is Rotten - an in-depth look at one of my all time favourite bands. The sounds of Public Image Limited echoed through-out my formative years, subtly shaping my brain into a more questioning and expansive flesh machine. John Lydon’s lyrics always captivated, sometimes informed and occasionally confused the hell out of me.

I am happy to say that this brilliant, in-depth documentary is available through Vimeo On Demand. The interviews are straight forward anecdotes, following the band through years of performances, recording sessions and behind the scenes chicanery.

Even if you don’t like Johnny Rotten, you’ll wind up respecting the man a little more by watching this.

Watch the Public Image is Rotten here

RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop - another part of my teenage years, RoboCop had a hard edged, tongue in cheek, punk rock movie that fit into the zeitgeist of my mind. It was sardonically bitter medicine wrapped in a candy coating of ultraviolet, cyberpunk futurism. I remember having the movie passed on to me in the form of a pirated VHS video cassette. Complete with bad tracking and static from the amount of times it had been played. The future certainly wasn’t then but we could see a version of it from there.

According to the official Twitter feed for the documentary, it’s currently in post production. You can check their tweets here.

I first heard of the documentary Rise of the Synths about 5 years ago, just as I was in the process of discovering the Synthwave genre and it sounded like an epic undertaking at the time.

After multiple crowd funding campaigns, two soundtrack EP’s, an album and a bunch of trailers, it’s finally made it out in the world in limited screening events both physical and online but has yet to make it to a VOD platform as a readily consumable product.

That being said, it is getting closer and I for one am ready and waiting in a neon lit corner for it, with much anticipation.

An additional note, the movie landed the John Carpenter as the narrator, so you know it’s going to be quality.

The Edge of All We Know is an upcoming documentary on the science of black holes.

Just based on the description alone (there’s no trailer for it yet) it sounds positively enthralling and as an added bonus of the wonderful Zoë Keating providing the documentary with an original score. In case you’re bereft of the aural delight that is Zoë Keating, she’s the ultimate punk-rock cellist and creates the most beautiful sounds.

Finally I give you Blood Machines which is most definitely not a documentary but something I’m dying to see.

A Carpenter Brut scored retro futuristic space opera, filled with flying naked women, upside down crosses, very original space-ship designs and breath takingly surreal environments.T his is definitely worth the wait and the ultimate feast for the eyes.

The French film studio Seth Ickerman have created something unique and amazing.

It’s currently available via the Shudder streaming service as a three part television series.