Homo Sapiens Project (201) (2002-2021)

Homo Sapiens Project (200) was completed in 2020 as part of the 20th anniversary of Experimental Film Society. This eight-hour experimental feature is constituted from short film experiments made between 2000 to 2010. These films have already undergone many metamorphoses over the years. They were always restless wandering spirits seeking a permanent place of rest but so far without success. Each section of Homo Sapiens Project (200) was made under the unique condition of living out a form of subtle therapeutic practice. Collectively they reflect major life-changing events, formalistic mutations and thematic shifts within Rouzbeh Rashidi’s filmography. In spite of this, they could not find the peace of a satisfactory final shape. Indeed, they are about peace, something that rarely (if ever) exists within Rashidi’s work. But now, after twenty years of roaming the subconscious, they have come to rest in a permanent retirement in one world, one very personal floating planet.

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

In this short experimental film, three friends are waiting for their train to arrive.

A aspiring novelist operates a tiny neighborhood bookstore. His wife is a talented painter. Their marriage is disintegrating, and they are about to sign their divorce papers. Meanwhile, the legendary Casanova and his lover Lavinia are characters trapped inside of a 17th-century children's book. The tragedy of the impending divorce triggers the release of Casanova and Lavinia from the confines of the children's pop-up book.

A 16mm experimental short film loosely following a cormorant as it attempts to dry its wings.

Mars Canal - Within absolute silence, a naked man wanders through a dark and depressing landscape recalling the excruciating details of his last encounter with his former lover. Mirror Hell - When a series of women are discovered with their faces burnt and skulls charred, a young detective investigates, discovering that a unique hand mirror is always found at the scene. Caterpillar - A war hero returns home with no limbs and only his eyesight remaining. His beautiful wife, tired of taking care of him, turns to torturing her crippled husband for amusement. Crawling Bugs - A sexy actress is returning home from a successful night on stage, until her limo driver decides that she should be coming home with him.

When forest animals invade our cities, the world is in disarray. Office vixen Fiona struggles with her banana phone addiction. Will she succumb to it? Temperamental bunny Barbara only gives her stag sugar daddy Nestor his special massage, after he dines her and plays the big spender. This obscure short film pinpoints postmodern tropes of consumerism, eroticism, and art with an homage to the theater stage and references to literature. This work uses a fantasy language and needs no subtitles.

Is the eye the window of the soul? - Mydriasis is a movie that reflects about the early discoveries of queerness and its impact on the self perception of a person.

'Afloat' is an experimental film that paints a portrait of Japanese performance artist: Ayumi Lanoire. The film opens as a telephone call between Ayumi and Person X, which meanders the audience through the various layers that make up her personas leading one to wonder whether she is in fact a myth or reality.

After a feverish dream, a paralysed dreamer finds themselves trapped within a purgatory of their sleep, as they begin to fuse with their bed. The purgatory begins to refract the dreamers mind, as they are confronted with multiple incarnations of themselves struggling to awake. Bed & Breakfast is inspired by the neurodivergent experience of procrastination, and inertia. Questioning the nature of memory, identity, and the fabric of reality, by plunging you into the psyche of a paralysed dreamer where reality is far repressed.

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

a lazy girl is depressed and confused of what to do next, after she realizes that she has grown up.

According to an English legend, Joan of Arc never died at the stake. Her eyes were seared with hot pokers and she was deflowered by an English stud. She was then sentenced to wander on the battlefields, like a vulture, on the look-out for life and searching for any virgins left alive.

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

All We Sheep Have Gone Astray is an experimental film that shows the internal struggles of a person who is frustrated with the function and structure of the world. The film sets a surreal portrayal of the person's mind as he talks to himself about his personal critique on humanity, individualism, and the idea of free will. The cinematic elements within the film guide the protagonist through his quest as he strives to retain his deepest thoughts from the outside world.

A Romany woman travels from Praha to her home in Transylvania

An assortment of obscure private obsessions, conspiracies and perversions flicker on the verge of incoherence against the context of vast cosmic disaster in Rouzbeh Rashidi’s boldest film to date. This sensory onslaught combines a homage to the subversive humour of Luis Buñuel and Joao Cesar Monteiro with the visionary scope of a demented science fiction epic.

The tranquility of Uncle No Rules's home is disturbed when a mysterious variety-show equipped with a studio audience and charismatic host (Marky Ramone) descends upon the household.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

A static close-up of a clock. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.