USA

  • Sophie Fiennes – Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012)

    2011-2020DocumentaryPhilosophy on ScreenSlavoj ZizekSophie FiennesUSA

    Short Synopsis
    The makers of THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA return with THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY. Philosopher Slavoj Zizek and filmmaker Sophie Fiennes use their interpretation of moving pictures to present a compelling cinematic journey into the heart of ideology – the dreams that shape our collective beliefs and practices.Read More »

  • Alfred L. Werker – A-Haunting We Will Go (1942)

    1941-1950Alfred L. WerkerComedyUSA

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    Plot: The boys are recruited by a gang of thugs to get a coffin containing one of their far from dead colleagues to Dayton to try and get at an inheritance. After the coffin gets switched with the one Dante the Magician uses in his act, his stage show gets more than usually popular.Read More »

  • Stanley Kubrick – Day of the Fight (1951)

    1951-1960DocumentaryShort FilmStanley KubrickUSA

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    Based on Kubrick’s pictorial for Look Magazine (January 18, 1949) entitled “Prizefighter,” “Day Of The Fight” tells of a day in the life of a middleweight Irish boxer named Walter Cartier, particularly the day of his bout with black middleweight Bobby James. This 16-minute short opens with a short (about 4 minutes) study of boxing’s history, narrated by veteran newscaster Douglas Edwards in a no-nonsense, noir tone of voice. After this, we follow Walter (and his twin brother Vincent) through his day as he prepares for his 10:00 P.M. bout. After eating breakfast, going to early mass and eating lunch, he starts arranging his things for the fight at 4:00 P.M. By 8:00, he is waiting in his dressing room, where he undergoes a mental transformation, turning into the fighting machine the crowd clamors for. At 10:00, he faces James, and soon, he comes out victorious in a short match which was filmed live on April 17th, 1950.Read More »

  • Jeff Frost – Circle of Abstract Ritual (2014)

    2011-2020ExperimentalJeff FrostUSAVideo Art

    Quote:
    This film took 300,000 photos, riots, wildfires, paintings in abandoned houses, two years and zero graphics to make. It changed my entire life.

    Quote:
    Circle of Abstract Ritual began as an exploration of the idea that creation and destruction might be the same thing. The destruction end of that thought began in earnest when riots broke out in my neighborhood in Anaheim, California, 2012. I immediately climbed onto my landlord’s roof without asking and began recording the unfolding events. The news agencies I contacted had no idea what to do with time lapse footage of riots, which was okay with me because I had been thinking about recontextualizing news as art for some time. After that I got the bug. I chased down wildfires, walked down storm drains on the L.A. River and found abandoned houses where I could set up elaborate optical illusion paintings. The illusion part of the paintings are not an end in themselves in my work. They’re an intimation of things we can’t physically detect; a way to get an ever so slight edge on the unknowable.Read More »

  • Bob Kelljan – Black Oak Conspiracy (1977)

    1971-1980ActionBob KelljanDramaUSA

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    Quote:
    Black Oak Conspiracy stars Jesse Vint (Forbidden World) as Jingo Johnson, a struggling Hollywood stunt man who comes back home after hearing his mother is sick. He is greeted by his friend Homer (Seymour Cassel) and is saddened to find that the old girlfriend he left behind (who is also Homer’s sister) is now going out with local rich kid Harrison Hancock. Jingo also finds out that his mother signed over her house in return for medical care and that the house is going to be demolished. Jingo soon discovers that there is corruption going on in town and it is up to him to stop it.Read More »

  • Ken Jacobs – Canopy (2014)

    2011-2020ExperimentalKen JacobsUSAVideo Art

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    Quote:
    Ken Jacobs’ most recent stroboscopic work transforms a typical New York street scaffolding scene into a mesmeric, Christo-esque merry-go-round.

    In his most recent stroboscopic work, Canopy, Ken Jacobs sets a typical New York street scaffolding scene into mesmeric, gravity-defying motion. An elegant, immersive miniature with a strange faux stereoscopic effect, it takes off like a Christo-wrapped gravitron.Read More »

  • Trinh T. Minh-ha – Reassemblage (1983)

    1981-1990DocumentaryEthnographic CinemaExperimentalTrinh T. Minh-haUSA

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    From Allmovie:

    Director Trinh T. Minh-ha’s first film is an ethnographic portrait of rural Senegalese women, but its provocative editing and self-conscious narration question the very activities of ethnography and documentary filmmaking; Minh-ha inverts and critiques authoritative Western representations of the “other.'” ~ Sarah Welsh, All Movie Guide

    INTERVIEW WITH TRINH MINH-HA

    Interviewer Interviewed: A Discussion with Trinh T. Mihn-ha

    by Tina Spangler
    Emerson College

    BORN IN VIETNAM, Trinh T. Minh-ha is a writer, composer and filmmaker She has been making films for better than ten years and may be best known for her first film Reassemblage, made in 1982. However her most recent film Surname Viet, Given Name Nam (1989), which examines “identity and culture through the struggle of Vietnamese women” has received much attention, including winning the Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video festival Trinh T. Minh-ha is a professor of Woman Studies and Film at the University of California, Berkely and was recently a Visiting Professor at Harvard University.Read More »

  • John Boorman – Hell in the Pacific (1968)

    1961-1970ClassicsJohn BoormanUSAWar

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    A shot-down American pilot finds his way to a small, unpopulated island where he hopes to find provisions. He soon discovers that he is not alone; there is a Japanese officer marooned on the island also. Will they continue to fight each other to the death, or will they reach a modus vivendi?

    Lone Japanese soldier Toshiro Mifune diligently scans the ocean from his island lookout as he must have thousands of times before, but this time he spies an abandoned life raft resting on a rocky bluff. Within minutes he’s face to face with American sea-wreck survivor Lee Marvin and the two begin an elaborate game of cat and mouse. Director John Boorman presents this two-man war as a deadly game between a pair of overgrown children, who finally tire of it (as kids will) and settle into tolerated co-existence and then even something resembling a friendship. With impressionistic strokes, Boorman paints a lush tropical paradise in colors you can drink from the screen, capturing the texture of their experience as refracted through the cinema: the look of the island as seen through the haze of smoke, the sound of a sudden rainstorm as it hushes the island in a calming roar, the timelessness of life outside of civilization.Read More »

  • Kirby Dick – This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)

    2001-2010DocumentaryKirby DickQueer Cinema(s)USA

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    Synopisis from RopeofSilicon.com

    IFC Original Documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the breakthrough film from Oscar-nominated director Kirby Dick (Twist of Faith) is an unprecedented investigation into the MPAA film ratings system and its profound impact on American culture.Read More »

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