• Zhangke Jia – Shan he gu ren AKA Mountains May Depart (2015)

    2011-2020ChinaDramaZhangke Jia

    Quote:
    The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025.Read More »

  • Various – The Dream Machine (1980 – 1983)

    ArthouseDerek JarmanExperimentalQueer Cinema(s)United KingdomVarious

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    review of Dream Machine from link
    Burroughs’ Dream Machine On Film… Nearly., 26 March 2004
    6/10
    Author: scottanthony from Dorset, England

    In theory: a short non-narrative film made to commemorate the visit of Burroughs and Gysin to the UK. In practice: four shorts (directed by Jarman, Kostiff, Maybury and Wyn Evans) broken up by footage of Gysin gazing at said machine.Read More »

  • Josh Gibson – Light Plate (2012)

    2011-2020ExperimentalJosh GibsonShort FilmUSA

    Quote:
    A whimsical black and white film essay exploring the Tuscan landscape and its relationship between, tradition, modernity and food. Through shimmering hand-processed, window-framed ruminations, time passes in licks of light, while a storm gathers and a woman makes pasta by hand.Read More »

  • Suzan Pitt – Visitation (2013)

    2011-2020AnimationExperimentalSuzan PittUSA

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    Quote:
    The animated film VISITATION unwinds through a dark landscape of unending life and death; steeped in the alchemical and inner dream life the film explores a black and white landscape of gothic figures who enact evolving metaphysical dramas. Surrealistic and strange, cast in grainy 16mm images, the film allows an imaginary glimpse within “an outer-world night…” The visions in the film are summoned from the film maker’s imagining of a mythical eternity which is beautiful but fraught with pain, exposed by the ether voices and figures which inhabit the eternal ballet beneath our consciousness. VISITATION imagines scenes from the alchemical experiments which were calculated to disclose and finally manipulate existential nature. Metals, air, fire and water were essential elements in Alchemy, and their psychological counterparts are likewise interpreted within the film as essential elements of death, cruelty, rebirth, and eternal evolution. The film was inspired by hearing wolves crying and simultaneously reading H.P. Lovecraft, a combination which led the filmmaker’s imagination into the world she then created. Using painted cut-outs and early cinema techniques (multiple passes, mattes, multi-plane levels, in-camera superimpositions, shutter manipulation, etc.) the film was shot with a 16mm Bolex camera in black and white which gives it a grainy handmade look. The abstract passages were created by placing objects directly onto raw film and exposing the film with a flashlight. Thus the film’s process mirrors the alchemical nature of chemical and material experimentation.Read More »

  • Larry Jordan – Big Sur: The Ladies (1966)

    1961-1970ExperimentalLarry JordanShort FilmUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    In describing the process of BIG SUR, artist Lawrence Jordan writes, “As with RODIA-ESTUDIANTINA only one shot, which probably was the result of lapse in concentration, was deleted from the original camera roll. This film was intended to extend my experiments with the ‘in-camera’ film, and is probably one of the most successful. Against the coastline of the Big Sur country the camera catches swiftly shifting fragments of the women at the baths, playing the guitar, cutting their hair, sleeping. In this case I attempted to use the camera movement to slightly smear the images onto the film emulsion in a manner parallel with the use of broad different medium from music or painting, I have always been interested in the dynamic parallels that existed once photography in its still form was released into time (the parallel with music) and into motion (the parallel with the brush stroke).”Read More »

  • Nobuo Nakagawa – Onna shikeishû no datsugoku AKA Death Row Woman (1960)

    1951-1960CrimeJapanNobuo NakagawaThriller

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:

    A Hitchcockian narrative and noirish atmosphere characterise this effective, taut thriller, made the same year as the director’s magnum opus, JIGOKU (Hell). Set in the present day, DEATH ROW WOMAN is at once a prison film, an innocent-man/woman-on-the-run story, a police procedural, and a family melodrama, that is equal parts Hitchcock, Samuel Fuller and Douglas Sirk.Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Boris Godunov (1990)

    1981-1990Andrei TarkovskyMusicalPerformanceUnited Kingdom

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    This is the Andrei Tarkovsky production of the famous Pushkin/Mussorgsky opera, performed in 1990 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

    [To avoid some confusion: Tarkovsky, who died in 1986, was the director of the opera production, not the man behind the camera for this performance. The original production was staged 1983 in London. Amazon lists both Tarkovsky and Gergiev as directors, IMDB lists Humphrey Burton.]Read More »

  • David Bickerstaff – The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch (2016)

    2011-2020David BickerstaffDocumentaryUnited Kingdom

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    Quote:
    After 500 years Bosch’s paintings still shock and fascinate us. Delve into the vivid imagination of this true visionary.

    Who was Hieronymus Bosch? Why do his strange and fantastical paintings resonate with people now more than ever? How does he bridge the medieval and Renaissance worlds? Where did his unconventional and timeless creations come from? Discover the answers to these questions and more with this remarkable new film from EXHIBITION ON SCREEN directed by David Bickerstaff.Read More »

  • Narges Abyar – Nafas AKA Breath (2016)

    Drama2011-2020FantasyIranNarges Abyar

    Quote:
    Iran’s submission for the 90th Academy Award Best Foreign Language Film

    Little Bahar lives a life spun from folklore and stories, always with her head in a book. But growing up in Yazd in the 1970s and ’80s, she’s at the centre of a country in turmoil: the Shah is overthrown, Ayatollah Khomeini rises to power, and the first shots are fired in a bitter and protracted war with Iraq. Over the span of several years, Bahar finds daydreaming in her own fantasy world is the only way she can make sense of the pain and suffering warring humans inflict on one another.Read More »

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