Experimental

  • Jørgen Leth – Ofelias blomster AKA Ophelia’s Flowers (1968)

    1961-1970DenmarkExperimentalJørgen LethShort Film
    Ofelias blomster (1968)
    Ofelias blomster (1968)

    Quote:
    Ophelia’s Suicide soliloquy is staged by a forest pond against the backdrop of a stretched piece of blue fabric gently quivering in the accidental breeze. A few years earlier, Jørgen Leth and Per Kirkeby had put on a highly stylized production of “Hamlet” at the Svalegangen theatre in Aarhus and from there comes the idea of Ophelia’s soliloquy literally “going to pieces” according to this principle: when Leth in the wings, strikes two wooden blocks together, the actress halts her reading and starts over. As the actress is halted again and again, the soliloquy breaks up according to the accidental principle, which is unpredictable and enervating. Read More »

  • Franciszka Themerson & Stefan Themerson – Europa (1931)

    1931-1940ExperimentalFranciszka ThemersonPolandShort FilmStefan Themerson
    Europa (1931)
    Europa (1931)

    Europa is a 12-minute anti-fascist film made in 1931 in Warsaw, Poland by surrealists Stefan and Franciszka Themerson. The film is based on Anatol Stern’s 1925 futurist poem Europa. It uses collages and photograms, and articulates the sense of horror and moral decline its makers were witnessing. The film, while long thought to have been lost, is considered an avant-garde masterpiece.Read More »

  • Béla Tarr – Cinemarxisme (1979)

    Béla Tarr1971-1980ArthouseExperimentalHungary
    Cinemarxisme (1979)
    Cinemarxisme (1979)

    A student film by Béla Tarr, from 1979.
    Presumed lost until very recently.Read More »

  • Derek Jarman – Imagining October (1984)

    Derek Jarman1981-1990ExperimentalUnited KingdomVideo Art
    Imagining October (1984)
    Imagining October (1984)

    Produced for the 1984 London Film Festival, Derek Jarman’s Imagining October is a dreamlike meditation on art and politics in the final years of the Cold War. In this film Jarman explores art and politics in the final years of the Cold War, drawing connections between pre-Perestroika Russia and Thatcherite Britain. The title refers to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and Sergei Eisenstein’s propaganda film October: Ten Days That Shook the World 1928.Read More »

  • Nina Danino – Temenos (1998)

    1991-2000DocumentaryExperimentalNina DaninoUnited Kingdom
    Temenos (1998)
    Temenos (1998)

    Temenos explores the phenomenon of visionary experience, taking the viewer to locations where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared, including Lourdes, Fatima and Medjugorje in Croat-occupied Bosnia, where the visions continue. Nina Danino films the landscapes that have witnessed these transcendental appearances, imbuing them with a powerful sense of the sacred.Read More »

  • Joost Rekveld – #37 (2009)

    2001-2010ExperimentalJoost RekveldNetherlandsShort Film
    #37 (2009)
    #37 (2009)

    #37
    (35mm scope, 31 min, 2009)

    “Andronicos says that in a certain place in Spain one finds small, scattered stones which are polygonal and grow spontaneously. Some of them are white, others are like wax and pregnant of smaller stones similar to themselves.
    I kept one to verify this myself and it gave birth at my place, so the story is not a lie.”

    ‘Paradoxographus Palatinus’, anonymous, 3rd century.Read More »

  • Raúl Perrone – Ragazzi (2014)

    Raúl Perrone2011-2020ArgentinaArthouseExperimental

    1 – the last day in the life of Pasolini but from the look of his aggressor a ragazzi – like any other his friends – his environment – his tragedy

    2 – a group of ragazzis working with their wooden carts in the city of Cordoba but the gaze is focus on them – playing in the river and with a mysterious woman Ragazzi is a symphony in two movementsRead More »

  • Chris Welsby – Drift (1994)

    Chris Welsby1991-2000ExperimentalUnited Kingdom
    Drift (1994)
    Drift (1994)

    Shot in the waters just off the Port of Vancouver where large cargo ships wait at anchor for their turn to dock. Sometimes, in clearer weather, the ships dominate the landscape. At other times, when the fog moves in, the landscape dominates the ships. On some days they assume a monumental, sculptural presence, testimony to the technological domination of the environment. At other times they are no more than grey, ghostly shapes, only half-seen in the swirling fog.Read More »

  • Chris Welsby – Park Film (2006)

    Chris Welsby2001-2010ExperimentalUnited Kingdom
    Park Film (2006)
    Park Film (2006)

    The camera was pointed at right angles across a busy park pathway connecting one part of the city to another. On the other side of the path are many trees receding into the distance. Many people move through the picture, both on and off the pathway. One frame was taken each time a person on the pathway moved into the picture and one frame was taken again as they moved out. The procedure was repeated over a period of three days with filming beginning at dawn and ending at dusk. Two of the days were sunny and the other was very stormy. The speed at which people, clouds and shadows move in the film is directly related to the flow of people through the park.Read More »

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