Bruce Lee (27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973) is our Master of the Cult Edge #38.
 
Bruce Lee is unanimously considered as one of the most recognized martial arts artist of all time, as well as a notorious pop culture icon.
 
Born in San Francisco, in the hour and year of the Dragon (according to the Chinese Zodiac) Lee was then raised in Hong-Kong until his early teens.
 
“Fist of Fury”, “Enter the Dragon” and “Game of Death” are just three movies in which he starred.
 
Find out more about Bruce Lee by visiting the site of the Bruce Lee Foundation.
 
 
 
 

“The Magnificent Seven”, “The Dirty Dozen”, “The Great Escape”, these are all films that we can easily link back to Charles Bronson (November 3, 1921 – August 30, 2003).
 
The great Charles Bronson is our Master of the Cult Edge #37.
 
One of the most celebrated tough guys of the movies, Bronson was a man, whose life experience also translated all that stiff coolness. Before making it as an actor, Bronson was a coal miner and served as an aerial gunner during World War II.
 
What most people don’t know is that Bronson was a man profoundly dedicated to his family. During most of his married life with Jill Ireland, the couple often took their seven children to all filming locations.
 
Charles Bronson was and will always be the ultimate vintage anti-hero.
 
 
 

Man Ray (August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an artist, a creative mind that spread his unique understanding of the world using photography and painting, sculpture and film. Man Ray is our Master of the Cult Edge #36.
 
Born in Philadelphia, Man Ray lived almost all of his life in Paris, alongside other integrants of the Dada movement, like Marcel Duchamp. He was also part of the first ever surrealist exhibition, with Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, or Jean Arp, at the Galerie Pierre, in Paris, in 1925.
 
Recognized for his unique techniques and approaches to the act of art creation, Man Ray also dedicated himself to the art of cinema, directing a series of short films.
 
After all, all that matter is that one is “unconcerned, but not indifferent” – this is what can be read on Man Ray’s epitaph at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.
 

We all remember seeing “Kids”, one of the most poignant and disturbing movies of the 90s.

Larry Clark, our Master of the Cult Edge #35, was the man sitting on the director’s chair, as well as in “Another Day in Paradise”, “Bully”, or “Ken Park”.

Larry Clark (January 19, 1943) is better known for his career as a film director, but he is also a talented photographer and writer.

Reality was and is the scenario selected by Clark for all of his movies. Disconcerting, mind wrecking, and just real after all; how much reality can everyone take?

“Less, but better” – that is the phrase that sums up the life and work of Dieter Rams, our Master of the Cult Edge #34.

Dieter Rams (May 20, 1932) is one of the most recognized and eminent industrial designers in the world. His works, particularly consumer products made during his lifelong career at Braun.

Innovation, aesthetics, utility, these are just three of the principles that Rams implemented, creating unique and timeless pieces.

Know some more about Dieter Ram’s pieces at the London’s Design Museum page on Dieter Rams.

David Cronenberg is one of the most mind-challenging and complex creators of modern cinema. Our Master of the Cult Edge #33 was born in Toronto, Canada (March 15, 1943). Cronenberg inaugurated a new kind of horror films, movies that exposed and defied one’s most inner and organic fears.
 
“The Brood”, “Videodrome”, “The Fly” and “Naked Lunch” are just some of his better works from the first decades of his career. Most recently, Cronenberg began experimenting with other movie genres, and delivered other masterpieces just like “A History of Violence” or “Eastern Promises”.
 
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877 – August 9, 1962) is our Master of the Cult Edge #32. All of his lifework is like an ode to the capability of self-knowledge, of searching deep inside one’s soul of our truth, of the thread that presents to us the sense of it all.

Hesse, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946, is better known for works like “Siddhartha”, “Steppenwolf”, or “The Glass Bed Game”.

Whatever ways to understand it (a naturalistic perspective or even a psychedelic one), the works of Hermann Hesse are essential for a better and ultimate understanding of each and every one of us.

Visit the Hesse Portal.

Karlheinz Stockhausen was one (among others) pioneers of electronic music. The German composer is better known as one of the most important figures of the history of music of the 20th century.

Stockhausen is our Master of the Cult Edge #31. Forget about Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd, Brian Eno, Can, the whole “well-known” electronic music vintage combo everyone mentions when trying to find the origin of whom first started to extract sounds from machines.

Stockhausen (22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) developed his work not only by creating outstanding musical pieces, that eventually influenced the whole classical congregation, but also popular groups like the Beatles.

There is always a beginning.

Born in Canada, but mostly famous for travelling in outer space, William Shatner is our Master of the Cult Edge #30.

Shatner is the reference when it comes to all things Star Trek (alongside the also charismatic Leonard Nimoy), but also a great actor, and surprisingly (for all those that don’t read that much about entertainment), a respected vocalist, or spoken word interpreter (as one might better call it).

The release of his first album “The Transformed Man” dates back to 1968 and, since then, Shatner released two live albuns, a record with a best of Startrek with Nimoy, and three other solo recordings.  ”Has Been”, edited in 2004, is a fantastic album produced and arranged by Ben Folds, (with an irresistible version of Pulp’s ‘Common People that you can watch below), and includes appearances by artists like Joe Jackson, Aimee Mann or Henry Rollins.

Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts (2007) (a collection of Biblical texts readings) was followed by “Seeking Major Tom” in 2011, yet another record filled with remarkable collaborations with musicians like Bono, Zakk Wylde, or Alan Parsons.

William Shatner keeps spreading the difference by singing, being Denny Crane in Boston Legal, or just being.

Homepage image: The New York Times

What to say about the man responsible for taking Brazilian music to even higher places, the man who co-authored ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ (‘Garota de Ipanema’), a symbol of Bossa Nova per se?

Tom Jobim (January 25, 1927 –December 8, 1994) was, more than anything, a man in love with Rio de Janeiro,  a man in love with music and with all things art. Tom Jobim is our Master of the Cult Edge #29.

A composer, a pianist, a songwriter, Jobim garnered respect not only in Brazil but also internationally, recording with artists like Frank Sinatra or Stan Getz. Alongside Vinícius de Moraes, his lifelong lyricist and music companion, Jobim compiled a music legacy that spread out as one of the greatest in all of the history of Brazilian music.

Jobim recorded dozens of records, among them the celebrated “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim”, released in 1967, an album filled with Brazilian songs, and with three jazz standards played with bossa nova arrangements.

‘Chega de Saudade’.