Experimental

  • Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson & Guy Maddin – The Rabbit Hunters (2020)

    2011-2020Evan JohnsonExperimentalGalen JohnsonGuy MaddinShort Film

    A short film in honor of Federico Fellini’s centenary.Read More »

  • Helen Hill – Mouseholes (1999)

    1991-2000ExperimentalHelen HillShort FilmUSA

    A film documenting a woman dealing with the slow death of her grandfather in a hospital.Read More »

  • Harun Farocki – Ein Bild AKA An Image (1983)

    1981-1990ExperimentalGermanyHarun FarockiShort FilmVideo Art

    Quote:
    Four days spent in a studio working on a centerfold photo for Playboy magazine provided the subject matter for my film. The magazine itself deals with culture, cars, a certain lifestyle. Maybe all those trappings are only there to cover up the naked woman. Maybe it’s like with a paper-doll. The naked woman in the middle is a sun around which a system revolves: of culture, of business, of living! (It’s impossible to either look or film into the sun.) One can well imagine that the people creating such a picture, the gravity of which is supposed to hold all that, perform their task with as much care, seriousness, a responsibility as if they were splitting uranium.Read More »

  • Whitney Horn & Lev Kalman – Two Plains & a Fancy (2018)

    2011-2020ComedyExperimentalLev KalmanUSAWhitney Horn

    Described on its Kickstarter page as “..a satirical, experimental “Spa Western” set in Colorado in 1893”.

    The narrative follows a group of 3 women who travel around the landscapes and strange towns of 1890s Colorado, originally looking for natural springs, but with various absurdist detours and side-tracks.

    Not in popular taste or catering to a common sense of humour – as reported in the Hollywood Reporter:Read More »

  • Robert Lapoujade & Jacqueline Plessis – Le Socrate [Jacqueline Plessis version] (1968)

    1961-1970ArthouseExperimentalFranceJacqueline PlessisRobert Lapoujade

    Shows the eccentricties of Le Socrate, a philosopher who has divorced himself from materialistic society and a local policeman assigned to watch him.

    scenario : Jean-Patrick ManchetteRead More »

  • Harutyun Khachatryan – Vaveragrogh AKA Documentarist (2003)

    2001-2010ArmeniaDocumentaryExperimentalHarutyun Khachatryan

    Originally, Documentarist was intended as a traditional documentary about a country that has to face challenging problems such as war, unemployment, extreme poverty, mass emigration, alcoholism and crime. Unfortunately, Harutyun Khachatryan did not raise enough state money in order to make the film he wanted to and therefore had to settle for a different project. Thus, he decided on a very unorthodox narrative strategy. By weaving together different styles, such as documentarist observation and docu-drama approach, he shed a new light on the complexities and challenges a director has to face in order to present a multifaceted picture of reality. Read More »

  • Godfrey Reggio – Naqoyqatsi (2002)

    2001-2010ArchitectureDocumentaryExperimentalGodfrey Reggio

    Naqoyqatsi, also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio and edited by Jon Kane, with music composed by Philip Glass. It is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy.

    Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “life as war”. In the film’s closing credits, Naqoyqatsi is also translated as “civilized violence” and “a life of killing each other”. While Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi examine modern life in industrial countries and the conflict between encroaching industrialization and traditional ways of life, using slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and natural landscapes, about eighty percent of Naqoyqatsi uses archive footage and stock images manipulated and processed digitally on non-linear editing (non-sequential) workstations and intercut with specially-produced computer generated imagery to demonstrate society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based one. Reggio described the process as “virtual cinema”.Read More »

  • Michael Snow – Wavelength (1967) (HD)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtCanadaClassicsExperimentalMichael Snow

    Quote:
    “Wavelength” was shot in one week in December, 1966, preceded by a year of notes, thoughts, mutterings. It was edited and first print seen in May, 1967. (The Film-Makers’ Cooperative)

    Quote:
    I wanted to make a summation of my nervous system, religious inklings, and aesthetic ideas. I was thinking of, planning for a time monument in which the beauty and sadness of equivalence would be celebrated, thinking of trying to make a definitive statement of pure Film space and time, a balancing of “illusion” and “fact,” all about seeing.Read More »

  • François Bel & Gérard Vienne – La griffe et la dent [+Extras] (1976)

    1971-1980DocumentaryExperimentalFrançois BelGérard Vienne

    During its presentation at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, Fang and Claw was a sensation. The fruit of labours which spanned over two years, and whose editing amalgamated some 65,000 meters of film and 37 hours of sound, the film was unlike anything from the world of wildlife documentary. Not only was it technically interesting at the time (the construction and transportation of two large high powered spotlights for night scenes, as well as special trucks to carry them), nor the exceptional preparation required to craft each scene, but what all this work is in the service of. Totally without dialogue, with a soundtrack crafted by Michel Fano from natural sounds as well as an electronic instrumentarium, using an editing technique devoted to the rhythm and rhyme between each shot. Between plastic beauty and bloody cruelty, hunting scenes and scenes of rut, stillness, quickness, carnivorous, and nocturnal and diurnal races hound this feral world which becomes savage, becomes fragmented and alien.Read More »

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