After finishing a strict and traumatizing education at a Jesuit seminary, young Roberto is offered a post by the priest of his village: The local count is looking for a new teacher for his eight year old niece, Flora. Roberto accepts the post and soon finds himself traveling to the remote estate of the count by the seaside which is taken care of by the old housekeeper Mrs. Antonia. In the beginning, everything is well but with the arrival of Flora’s elder brother Mikel who has been expelled from school, things start to get disquieting. In his attempts to find out why Mikel was expelled, Roberto soon unearths unsettling secrets – about himself and about Cristina, his deceased predecessor and Pedro, a former servant of the count who now seems to lurk within the dark corridors of the mansion. Could it be that these two sinister beings are trying to get back to life by the souls of the children?Read More »

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Two detectives seek a stripper’s killer in the Japanese quarter of Los Angeles, but a love triangle threatens their friendship.Read More »

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“When two hapless electricians go out on a job, they have every reason to believe that it’ll be a job like any other. But the bumbling twosome soon find themselves zapped into a virtual reality war zone! This Zone is an artificial dimension set up by Iria, a cute, tough-as-nails bounty hunter and her super-intelligent computer, Bob, to do battle with Zeiram, a seemingly indestructible alien that’s been genetically engineered to kill. The electricians do their best to help Iria take on Zeiram in this epic adventure. Created and directed by noted illustrator Keita Amemuya (Moon Over Tao, Mechanical Violator Hakaider) and starring Yuko Moriyama (Kunoichi Lady Ninja).”Read More »

A whistleblowing documentary parody, not exactly in prose, wherein Nothing tries to defend its cause. Brainstormed and filmed by 62 cinematographers in 70 countries, scored by cabaret grandmasters Pascal Comelade and The Tiger Lillies, narrated – in simple childish verse – by Iggy Pop.Read More »

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The Spirit of Navajos
Here the daughters of the chapter chairman of the community decided to make a film showing “the old ways.” They chose their grandfather as subject. He was one of the best known “singers” (medicine men) in the area. The film opens with the old medicine man walking and wandering across the Navajo landscape, again digging and searching for roots and herbs which he is to use as part of a ceremony. We see him at one of the “camps” before a ceremony, eating and drinking. The sequence of the grandfather eating is the only one in which a face close-up is shown. It is apparent, however, that the shot was considered a humorous one, almost like a home movie in which one of the children sticks his tongue out at the camera.Read More »

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One of the best comic shorts (6 minutes) I’ve seen recently — Broken Specs by Ted Fendt, whom many people already know as the great translator of significant French texts by Godard, Straub, Moullet, Daney. It begins with shots like Caroline Champetier-era Godard, cuts to the credits the same way an ’80s Godard might. Haddon Township, New Jersey. Smashed glasses. “Mike,” the protagonist, eats NJ pizza with his family, his father with glasses pristine. Mike’s fall into the pie. A (high-school? home-from-college?) party comes next. The comedy goes far and quick. It’s a cross between the end of Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha and all of Rohmer’s Paris vu par episode Place de l’Étoile.Read More »

A short 7-minute follow-up to Broken Specs by Ted Fendt — this one called Travel Plans. There are no travel plans, per se: the protagonist comes upon a Greyhound bus ticket (spoiler alert) on a sidewalk, which might have been shed by the psyche of a friend-of-a-friend who has previously discussed her own plans to keep on moving in her travel.

When the three convene (in what appears to be the same kitchen as in Broken Specs?), a rapport is not formed, but a miniature-train station becomes the real place where none will bond, and, of course, this platform calls to mind, as a cinephile in-joke, in the same way that Moullet would do it, Gorin’s Routine Pleasures. Use what you have at hand.Read More »

Going Out. 2014. USA. Directed by Ted Fendt. 8 min.

Liz thinks she’s going on a date with Rob to see RoboCop, but things take an unexpected (and inexplicable) turn.Read More »

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A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel’s eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.Read More »