Experimental

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The history of the city symphony is dominated by artists who identified as progressives and radicals, or in some rare cases, such as that of Walter Ruttmann, artists whose politics appear to have undergone a rather startling transformation, from a position that was at least centrist or moderate, to one that was far to the right of center. Stramilano (1929), directed by Corrado D’Errico (1902-41) and produced by the company of the Za Bum music hall by Mario Mattoli and Luciano Ramo for instituto LUCE, was not only Italy’s first contribution to the city symphonies cycle, it was also the earliest example of such a film to emerge from a fascist nation. Read More »

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Hotel Monterey is a cheap hotel in New York reserved for the outcasts of American society. Chantal Akerman invites viewers to visit this unusual place as well as the people who live there, from the reception up to the last story.New York City’s Monterey is a residence hotel; the residents we see are older, most live alone. The camera, usually stationery, begins with a look into the lobby. The film ends with a panorama from the hotel’s rooftop. There’s no soundtrack. The lobby is clean with granite floors. Men wear hats. People enter and exit an elevator. The camera looks out from within the elevator as doors open and close. People sit alone and motionless in their apartments. There are long shots of empty halls. Paint peels. The flooring on upper levels is linoleum. Hall lights are florescent. Doors open a crack then close. The film provides the feeling of what it’s like to live there.Read More »

In ancient Greece “theoria” describes a journey to bear witness at a festival taking place in a foreign city. The “theoros” undertook the journey on behalf of their community and, upon returning home, described what they had seen with their own eyes. With “theoria” the first step towards knowledge is seeing. With a hero’s journey the return is as essential as embarking in the first place—through the act of leaving and then returning after the arduous journey the new is metabolized and the old is seen in a new light.Read More »

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We’re leading up to talking about Elliot, the pair’s most ambitious project to date. But first I ask them about the medium they shot it in: VHS. Jacobson explains why the pair chose that format: “We got into VHS for Cassandra’s most ambitious short, Wireboy, because it provided the look we were going for in that movie. It was important to have a dirty image due to the subject matter and it became a bit of a production element too. Elliot was kind of a further exploration of some of the same themes, but it was very different in what it dealt with exactly. Again, VHS seemed most appropriate for the story because this was another grimy world, and because the sets in Elliot were all made by hand rather cheaply; shooting the movie in HD wouldn’t have done it any favors.Read More »

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A collection of Super 8 films shot by Derek Jarman between 1972 and 1975, edited to the music of Throbbing Gristle.

Derek Jarman used some of his 70s home movie footage to produce this wonderful piece of exploitational avantgarde cinema. Actually the original material has been slowed down to a speed of 3-6 frames, then Jarman added colour effects and the pulsating, menacing score by Industrial supergroup Throbbing Gristle

The result is a piece of art not to dissimilar to Jarman´s painting work in using found footage as elements of memory and mind that resemble ideas reflected in the Cabala and in C.G. Jung`s writings about an archetypical past that is hidden in everyone of us.Read More »

Years ago Kevin Jerome Everson asked his aunt about old family photographs. Her reply—that “we lost them in the flood” was the catalyst for this film, a poem and paean to the citizens of Westport, Mississippi, the hometown of the filmmaker’s parents.Read More »

An experimental film that lifts the veil on the world of African American drag racing.

Set in the world of African-American drag racing in Virginia, Cinnamon follows Erin (actress Erin Stewart), a young bank teller, and John, a mechanic, as they prepare for a race. As a driver, her routine is to stay focused before races, while his is to constantly examine the driver’s behavior.Read More »

Three young sisters are set apart by the eruption of Fogo.
But they sing.
One day we’ll know why we live and why we suffer…

Cannes Film FestivalRead More »

Synopsis:
The project originated from two novellas of J.-H. Rosny, the joint pseudonym of the Belgian brothers Boex who wrote on natural, prehistoric and speculative subjects—sci fi before it was a genre. The film takes up their pluralist vision of evolution, where imagining prehistory is inseparable from envisioning the future. Also central are Roger Caillois’ writing on stones, Robert Hazen’s theory of Mineral Evolution, Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star, the Symbiosis theory of Lynn Margulis, multi-species scenarios of Donna Haraway, Hazel Barton’s research on cave microbes and Marcia Bjørnerud’s thoughts on time literacy. In one way or another, these thinkers have all sought to displace humankind and human reason from the center of evolutionary processes. Passages from Rosny and interviews with Bjørnerud form the film’s science-fictional / science-factual spine. Stones are its anchor. To touch stone is to meet alien duration. We trust stone as archive, but we may as well write on water. In the end, it’s particles that remain.Read More »