Experimental

I had just finished the last of the “Sincerity and Duplicity” series which I had been working on for over 10 years. I was completely exhausted and desperately needed a rest. I was in the middle of reading a book about Sigmund Freud by the keeper of the International Psychoanalytical archives. Before I went to sleep I had come across the statement that, while there is a vast multitude of case histories of the murder of the father there are only very few and very oblique references to murdering the mother. That night I dreamed that I murdered my mother, with an axe to her head. And the dream was so vivid that my hand was vibrating as if from the handle of the axe. Read More »

Quote:
In ”Him and Me,” at the Film Forum, James Benning, one of our more highly regarded experimental film makers, appears to be looking back over his life, from the 1950’s to the 80’s, recalling it in terms of public events and private sorrows, landscapes, streets, music and colors.

I emphasize the word ”appears” because ”Him and Me” makes no attempt to be coherent in any conventional sense. The film is composed of dozens of sometimes startlingly beautiful fragments of images and sounds, involving people who are never identified, sometimes accompanied by off-screen voices that may take the form of first-person reminiscences or of inconclusive conversations.Read More »

“Isn´t suicide an introverted desire to kill?”

The man wants to die and the woman wants to be famous. According to the man, there could not be a better plan than the woman killing him. This way the man will get his wish to die and the woman will become famous. The man tries to convince the woman: “You are my killer and my life source.” The gun finally goes off and the interrogation of the woman begins.Read More »

An experimental documentary epic, Mr. Zhang Believes recounts 30 years of China’s 20th-century history through the story of Mr. Zhang Xianchi and the interacting forms of theatrical fiction and autobiography.Read More »

Toilets Not Temples, a film by David Leonard and Will Benedict, mixes different styles of narrative storytelling such as live journal (rehearsing the breaking news over and over again), news anchor (reporting on catastrophes as if the reporter was reading lottery numbers), and rap video (does anyone ever listen to the lyrics?), only to mention the most important ones. These are wrapped in a (post)apocalyptic film narrative. A narrative that, despite the dominant trend in feature films that must have an end-of-times scenario, finishes with a five-minute scene of a jubilant crowd somewhere in India—celebrating the end of food shortage and the volunteers’ (who fall from the sky) success in containing a spread of giant rats.Read More »

Gulyabani is an entity, a ghoul, an outsider. She’s the restless spirit of a desolate and lonely place. Fethiye Sessiz, a notorious clairvoyant from Izmir in 1970s and 1980s, remembers fractions of her survival from abuse, kidnappings and violence. Recounting the events of her childhood through her diary and letters to her estranged son, Gulyabani recollects the emotional landscape in the most violent period of post-Republic Turkey, where the memory of the future and fragments of the past come together at once. (IMDb)Read More »

Synopsis
As the most southern island off the coast of Italy, Lampedusa is relatively close to Africa. This is where Zakaria got stranded – a Somali journalist who fled his country because of the war. He escaped that, but on Lampedusa he wrestles with fears and existential questions. Here he meets Giulia, an ageing woman facing a personal crisis on the same island. Together and separately, they try to get a grip on life.Read More »

Synopsis
Austrian experimental documentary maker Peter Schreiner undertakes a psychoanalytic quest for human existence. It’s a cross between Freud and Sartre, magical and minimalist, as long as you dare.
Two wrinkled lovers, marked by life, expose their deepest inner emotions. Giuliana compares the vaults of her spirit with closed doors that you ‘have to open cautiously’. ‘But,’ Christian wonders, ‘does that make you happier?’ They talk slowly and calmly, looking for the right words for their inner demons. It all comes down to reason and feeling and where the two meet. About reality that looks both familiar and alienating. Read More »

A couple equipped with digital cameras travels by the Trans-Siberian Train. She (Joana Preiss) is a known actress and a model. He (Bruno Dumont) is a world-famous and valued director who decides for the first time to stand on the other side of a camera. Instead of the picture of the merry couple, the bitter portrait of the relationship that is falling apart emerges from “Siberie”. Bruno and Joana record theirs confessions, doubts, moments of happiness and moments of weakness. They talk about love, desire and art. Austere and endless space of Russia that is seen behind the windows of the train puts their feeling to the test.Read More »