Experimental

Dispatch (1979)
Quote
‘Dispatch,’ another black-and-white film, begins with oscillating greyish surface modulations that move sideways on the screen, rendering our view a partial window to some larger movement taking place. Geographic graphic ribbings then ascend, and as perceived, the thought occurs we might be watching animated film. A shadow of a truck’s front end appears in movement, then comes gently to a halt: we know this image to be photographed, and yet the texture of the film itself hasn’t changed at all. Further readings of the upwards, downwards, and occasional obliquely graphic movements of the patterns on the screen soon describe to us the vantage point of the camera stationed above some traffic intersection.Read More »

“For Jean-Luc Godard,with all the admiration and affection of
Jacques Perconte and Nicole Brenez,December 3, 2020.”

At the end of October (a few days before my birthday actually) Nicole Brenez asked me to produce a small film for a great man, a short film, a film like a birthday song, a common gift. Of course, I go for it, although I wonder how I could do something like this. That JLG sees one of my films, that he tampers with it and uses it is a blessing, a huge honor, but it’s quite another thing to send him images, to make a little film for him, so humble the gesture be it … Nicole Brenez sends me many portraits that she likes very much, some are historical documents, others images made by JLG himself. She also sends me documents, films, recordings. An incredible amount of stuff for a month of immersion. The birthday is December 3. I don’t know why, but I immediately wanted to grab my camera and take JLG to a screen on a boat, for a ride in the port of Rotterdam (where I live). I have tried several times to express this intuition. I wanted to film.Read More »

Quote:
Loosely based on William A. Seiter’s 1948 film One Touch of Venus, Steven Arnold’s first film is a macabre, decadent work presenting mannequins and models that travel through strange universes.

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
A haunting, genuinely decadent work about mannequins that may be real and girls that may be models, journeying through strange universes towards possible self-discovery. An exorbitant, perverse sensibility informs the ambiguous images and events.Read More »

Synopsis
Digital edition of the original 1993 video-tape. Dedicated to Dr. Albert Hofmann and his famous bicycle trip.
(FILMAFFINITY)Read More »

One of the greatest if all-too-often overlooked landscape films in American cinema, Larry Gottheim’s HORIZONS displays a sensitivity to the seasons that seems more in keeping with Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” than the typical nature documentary. HORIZONS was not only Gottheim’s first feature-length work, it was also his first film to deploy rhythmic editing after several single-shot works. Working with Virgil’s four-part poem “Georgics” and Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos “The Four Seasons” as models, Gottheim arranged his painterly compositions into four distinct sections, each edited according to its own exacting pattern. The seasonal flux thus informs both the form and content of the image, with the basic elements of trees, sky, hills and the occasional crisscrossing clothesline filmed in every imaginable light. The resulting work is at once rigorous and meditative: a film that demands repeated viewings but captures the eye from the first. – Max GoldbergRead More »

The painter Picasso awakes from the dead, steals one of his paintings from a psychiatrist’s and his wife’s kitchen and wanders through Munich, where he meets the psychiatrist’s patient, Takla Bash, and falls in love with her. Ignoring that she is actually his daughter he plans a phenomenal love affair including a film about a blue cow. This surreal film includes many of director/writer/star Herbert Achternbusch’s own paintings.Read More »

Quote:
At the end of October (a few days before my birthday actually) Nicole Brenez asked me to produce a small film for a great man, a short film, a film like a birthday song, a common gift. Nicole sends me many portraits that she likes very much, some are historical documents, others pictures made by JLG himself. She also sends me documents, films, recordings. An incredible amount of stuff for a month of immersion. The birthday is December 3. I don’t know why, but I immediately wanted to grab my camera and take JLG to a screen on a boat, for a ride in the port of Rotterdam (where I live). I have tried several times to express this intuition. I wanted to film. Maybe I can’t imagine making a movie without shooting. Maybe I wanted to go home with my new camera, to film this harbor which will be the subject of future projects.Read More »

Synopsis
A document of one of the most famous 66 miles of railroad track in the world including the Tehachapi Loop.

Review
After his 2007 RR, filmmaker James Benning set his camera up by the railroad again. This time, instead of observing various types of trains, he watches trains passing the 66-mile railroad from Bakersfield to Mojave. The endless train tracks look as if the trains were transporting us to somewhere. Watching the tracks, we gaze at the moment of trains passing through the track. We also find the heritage from the past, cargo trains, reminding us of scenes from classic western movies that today’s cinema almost forgot. From Bakersfield to Mojave forms a delightful contrast with On Paradise Road, which was exclusively filmed inside the house during the shutdown. Showing us the wild and vast nature of the United States, it delivers us some sense of freedom in this moment where nobody is really allowed to travel freely around the world.Read More »

Synopsis
A commemoration of two friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss who died within a year of each other.
(imdb)Read More »