S19.E8 ∙ The Rise of Isis

'A Body Without Organs' was shot intimately with my father and mother over a one and a half year period at their home in Florida. It is a portrait of their lives in the present, along a continuous present marked by frequent incursions into various pasts, real and imagined. My father has no colon. He is a narcoleptic. His friends are all dead. His life is dreamt. In the house there is my mother. There are the cats. And then there is a body without organs.

To date, there are roughly 8 million bands and recording artists listed on Myspace. This film is a story about one of those 8 million bands. 'Stuck in Neutral' is a cautionary rock and roll tale about the unmaking of a young band. It follows Something For Rockets, whose front-man Rami Perlman (son of Itzhak), is undeniably talented in his own right but ultimately incapable of balancing his desire for success with musical integrity. Told over 7 arduous years, the film explores how musicians must reconcile between self-promotion and identity; between image and substance.

Simurgh is the story of 6 real characters (political prisoners) who had participated in death fasts in order to protest the F-type cell system in 1996 in prisons of Turkey and caught the Wernicke Korsakoff illness after 69 days on death fast, then released due to health problems and now trying to cope with speech difficulty, loss of muscle coordination, balance problems, amnesia and hazy consciousness. In 2000, the second death fast action begins and these six former activists come together once more. The film tells, through these characters, in real time and sites, those second death fasts, which continued for nearly 7 years and had left behind 122 people died, and tries to bring light to the dark areas of a painful 14-year period.

After two years of waiting and with his heart running at only 8% of his capacity, John receives new that there is a donor for him.