A whistleblowing documentary parody, not exactly in prose, wherein Nothing tries to defend its cause. Brainstormed and filmed by 62 cinematographers in 70 countries, scored by cabaret grandmasters Pascal Comelade and The Tiger Lillies, narrated – in simple childish verse – by Iggy Pop.Read More »
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One of the best comic shorts (6 minutes) I’ve seen recently — Broken Specs by Ted Fendt, whom many people already know as the great translator of significant French texts by Godard, Straub, Moullet, Daney. It begins with shots like Caroline Champetier-era Godard, cuts to the credits the same way an ’80s Godard might. Haddon Township, New Jersey. Smashed glasses. “Mike,” the protagonist, eats NJ pizza with his family, his father with glasses pristine. Mike’s fall into the pie. A (high-school? home-from-college?) party comes next. The comedy goes far and quick. It’s a cross between the end of Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha and all of Rohmer’s Paris vu par episode Place de l’Étoile.Read More »
A short 7-minute follow-up to Broken Specs by Ted Fendt — this one called Travel Plans. There are no travel plans, per se: the protagonist comes upon a Greyhound bus ticket (spoiler alert) on a sidewalk, which might have been shed by the psyche of a friend-of-a-friend who has previously discussed her own plans to keep on moving in her travel.
When the three convene (in what appears to be the same kitchen as in Broken Specs?), a rapport is not formed, but a miniature-train station becomes the real place where none will bond, and, of course, this platform calls to mind, as a cinephile in-joke, in the same way that Moullet would do it, Gorin’s Routine Pleasures. Use what you have at hand.Read More »
Going Out. 2014. USA. Directed by Ted Fendt. 8 min.
Liz thinks she’s going on a date with Rob to see RoboCop, but things take an unexpected (and inexplicable) turn.Read More »
Sophia Antipolis: a technopole on the French Riviera, a place where dreams should come true. But fear and despair lurk beneath the surface. Under a deceitful sun, five lives map out the haunting story of a young woman: Sophia.Read More »
Synopsis
Mary lives alone and is waiting for something to happen in her life. Riding the elevator to work, a strange man grabs her shoulder and speaks to her telepathically: “Do you believe in magic?”. Mary can now hear people’s thoughts, and she starts hearing music that seems to be broadcast from her mind.Read More »
Extraction: The Raft of the Medusa portrays a brief moment of euphoria as the occupants on the raft spot a glimpsic illusion for their drift, hoping and praying to be rescued. We can almost hear the hoarse cries in an attempt to draw attention to their desperate plight, mustering their last ounce of strength to the void. This is their last chance of survival.Read More »
Synopsis
The film, set in Kirghizstan, is a search for Jamila, the title character in the novella by Chingiz Aitmatov about a young woman who rebels against the rules of Kirghiz society. We will meet women who, in talking about Jamila, reveal their own private lives and desires, the rules they chafe under and their ideas of freedom.Read More »
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An unashamedly erotic look at female queer sexuality viewed through the prism of emotional trauma, Vergel is guaranteed to stir. A sudden mourning brings a woman to the edge of madness. Funeral procedures, heat and a neighbor that comes to water the plants, come together in an emotional journey where it is impossible to distinguish the real from the unreal.Read More »