Robert Millis is a founding member of Climax Golden Twins and AFCGT, a solo artist and a frequent contributor to the Sublime Frequencies label. He have scored long and short films, created sound installations, produced and designed audio projects, and released many LPs and CDs. Millis's work veers haphazardly between sound art, music concrete, instrumental, improv, field recording, song and collage. During 2012 and 2013 he was a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in India studying Indian music, sound art and the early recording industry. Tonight Millis presents two of his films - This World is Unreal Like A Snake in A Rope and Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan.

THIS WORLD IS UNREAL LIKE A SNAKE IN A ROPE

Folk cinema from the eternal never-ending collage that is India. A journey through the ancient Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu featuring Hindu trance ceremonies, street music, festivals, nagaswaram improvisations, impossibly loud cities, ancient temples, processions, devotions, decay, fireworks, abstractions and more. India is impossible to know: it is impossibly old and impossibly new, impossibly rich and impossibly poor, quiet and chaotic. Offered here is one perspective, raw, captured live and in the moment, with an emphasis on India's complex and mesmerizing sounds.

55 minutes/Color/SUBLIME FREQUENCIES



PHI TA KHON: GHOSTS OF ISAN

Masks and outfits made of coconut husks, rice steamers, shredded rags and clanging bells transform participants of Thailand’s Phi Ta Khon festival into ghosts, devils, demons, and spirits unleashed for a bacchanal. Outrageous wooden phalluses and plenty of rice whiskey heighten licentious behavior as MO LAM--Thai country groove music--blasts from makeshift bands in the back of pickup trucks…Described as ‘The Mardi Gras from Hell’ and ‘Thai Halloween" Phi Ta Khon is a ghost festival that takes place every year in the Isan province of Northern Thailand. Meaning 'ghosts with human eyes' or ‘ghosts follow people’, Phi Ta Khon features magnificent costumes, ornate masks, decorative phallic icons, strange ceremonies, drinking, dancing, and endless addictive Mo Lam music in higher doses than most souls can process. A mind-blowing and obscure tradition hidden within the Indochine peninsula. Filmed on location by Robert Millis and Richard Bishop in June 2004, Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan, is shot from the perspective of a participant, ensuring an intense and immersive experience for the viewer.

2006/75 minutes/ SUBLIME FREQUENCIES

"The visual pace of the video can be slow at times, and at others overwhelming. What holds everything together as it veers between these states is the music. In fact, the music itself is just as enjoyable with or without the accompanying footage. While some archival recordings purchased on location are inserted into the film, much of the music was recorded in the streets. The locals frequently break out in music during the festival, both with and without vocals, playing instruments that sometimes appear homemade or else have seen their fair share of use over the years." - Matthew Amundsen, Brainwashed