Experimental

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The final film of “Elective Affinities”. A central element is a documentary film about paranoid conditions. Another is a flow of images of an apple tree in my back yard filmed impulsively, without forethought, the opposite of the static camera of FOG LINE. The radical breaking with the previous passivity of the camera has deep psychological dimensions. That was the first thing that led me to bring the paranoid material into the zone of the tree footage. The elements of sound and image are closely matched to each other, frame by frame. Inserted in them at the heart of the film are images of children, Kenneth and Louise, from an instructional documentary about the seasons. Cries of cattle being auctioned and sent to the stockyards are also inserted. Read More »

This descent into the mysterious world beneath the city is like science fiction – a claustrophobic visual masterpiece.Read More »

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My Mexican Bretzel opens with black-and-white clips of pilots during World War II in Switzerland, subtitled with excerpts from – so we are told – the diary of Vivian Barrett. She talks about herself and her husband Léon, who partly lost his hearing in an accident with his plane and could no longer fly. The couple’s glamourous life then unfolds in diary excerpts and footage shot by Léon, about whom we also learn that he developed a successful anti-depressant, and had an obsession with many different forms of transportation.Read More »

Synopsis
Two travelers journey in search of a flying-craft that can deliver them from this world to other dimensions of existence, all the while voicing and recording their memories and thoughts.Read More »

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Their Trilogia della guerra (War Trilogy) consists of Prigionieri della guerra (War prisoners), Su tutte le vette è pace (All’s Quiet on the Mountain Peaks), and Oh! Uomo (Oh! Man). The trilogy explores armed conflict from a variety of perspectives: from the relationship oppressor/oppressed and psychological warfare to the meticulous preparations undertaken by soldiers before battle, the plight of the wounded, and the realities of the battlefield. In their unusual and deeply individual method, Gianikian and Lucchi take old archival footage as the basis for their creations. They then set about reworking and transforming in ways that recontextualize and call our attention to the old film—marked, quite literally, by the passage of time—as a visual, historical document. Their work has been presented in many of the world’s most prestigious international festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Paris and New York.Read More »

Synopsis: An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s near West Side.

This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.Read More »

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Begins with a three beat announcement drawn out in time which thereafter serves as a figure to divide the four sections. Each return of this figure is more condensed, and finally used in reverse to conclude the film.

The brothers John & James Whitney created their remarkable series of Film Exercises between 1943 and 1944. These films are visually based on modernist composition theory, the carefully varied permutations of form are manipulated with cut-out masks so that the image photographed is pure direct light shaped, rather than the light reflected from drawings as in traditional animation. Read More »

A humorous lesson in gestural acting from Dr. Otis Bird and Butch Babad, demonstrating such useful phrases as ‘the verge of remembering’ and ‘letting your friend know he’s forgotten to zip up his pants.’ (MW) ‘This film can be of immeasurable aid to would-be actors who are weak in the jape.’ (William T. Wiley)

One of Nelson’s collaborations with painter and good friend of about 50 years, William T. Wiley. Dr. Otis Bird and Butch Babad are challenged to act out amusing and creative pantomimes while two voices are evaluating their success.Read More »

PROPOSITIONS
Selected examples of a New Cinema

The continuing demand for high standards is what sets Rouseau’s work apart. What makes this film distinctive is the way Rousseau explicitly returns to the source of his creative inspiration. So here he is at home reciting «Bérénice» to himself, whilst going about his household chores. It verges on the comical: There are repeated shots of him obstinately trying to turn off a dripping tap, or the jubilant close up of bare feet carried away in performing a dance step or two. Combining art with life in such a way, that nothing is compartmentalised, nothing lost – that is the goal. (Jean-Pierre Rehm)Read More »