King of the Jews is a film about anti-Semitism and transcendence. Utilizing Hollywood movies, 1950's educational films, personal home movies and religious films, the filmmaker depicts his childhood fear of Jesus Christ. These childhood recollections are a point of departure for larger issues such as the roots of Christian anti-Semitism.
A woman is reduced to tears. She bends over backwards trying to be a good wife and mother. Her head is cut off from her heart. A doctor picks her brain. A boy inherits his mother's depression. Short of Breath is a haunting, emotional collage about birth, death, sex and suicide. It's like a punch in the stomach.
Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.
In an effort to cure her smoking habit a middle-aged woman discovers that she can communicate with her long lost son while watching a Halloween safety program on TV. After suffering a nervous breakdown, her husband, a used car salesman, is revitalized when he travels back in time to drive the first car he ever sold. Seventeen years later a powerful canned food manufacturer crashes the same car into a toaster truck while endorsing a brand of yams on live TV. At the funeral his clergyman experiences a crisis of faith when he and a lifelike Mexican continue their search for a married couple who have befriended an insect who enjoys drinking lime soda. They later meet a young man whose bizarre murder scheme involves four innocent members of an experimental rock band who have all given up smoking.
A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.
An audiovisual investigation into the way Spanish cinema has represented its audience throughout history, and a tribute to those who, for over a hundred years, have inhabited the theaters, mutually nurturing their deepest dreams and aspirations.
Holding Space explores the lived experiences of Burmese immigrants in Singapore under the gaze of neighbours in public flats. With a focus on spatial arrangements and housing exteriors, the experimental film challenges the ways architects visualise and instrumentalise their ways of seeing, seeking to hold space for subjective experiences and the subtle yet persistent influences on our domestic interiors.
TAMAN HUTAN Chapter Four: The Wound Response focuses on the rubber craze of the 20th century through both archival documentation of wages and an interview with Cek Anuan on his grandfather Rasimin who worked with English naturalist Henry Nicholas Ridley. Focusing on the Singapore Botanic Gardens as the site of interaction between colonists and labourers, the film reveals the wounds of those erased from colonial records but who remain inscribed within nature itself.
Proximities focuses on the trope of the Malay Boy found in the works of Singaporean artist Cheong Soo Pieng (b. 1917-1983). It attempts to locate the Malay male in art history while unpacking underlying systems of power that have shaped and naturalised the understanding of difference.
A self described "documediamentary" about the reactions to the release of the then final Star Wars film, "Revenge of the Sith".
In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky (b.1943) begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work operating at the intersection of film materiality and personal language, Dorsky explains how he developed his philosophy of the “devotional film” and the “microcosmic viewer.” Dorsky likens his practice to Buddhist sculpture, referring to himself as a “Japanese poet continuing aspects of the ethos of the Marxist revolution.” In the interview, the artist describes his use of the screen as an “altarpiece for the image” and emphasizes his use of editing to create works which “harmoniously coalesce.” Interview conducted by Jeffrey Skoller in May 2000, edited in 2014.
A cinematic time capsule with over 1,400 hours of submitted material from all regions of Switzerland gives unknown insights about the life of Swiss people in the politically and socially turbulent summer of 2019.
A haunting documentary on the pains of growing up male. It explores the inner and outer cruelties that boys perpetrate and endure. The film provokes the viewer to reflect on how our society can deprive boys of wholeness.
Stan Brakhage is a film maker whose work is shown mainly at film festivals. His work has been likened to poetry. Brakhage explains his techniques and his motivation.
“Persistencies of Sadness & Still Days”, is a four hour feature film by Maximilian Le Cain and Rouzbeh Rashidi. Structured in two sections or ‘takes’ of two hours each, this dream-like, experimental project offers two complementary explorations of cinematic form that skirt around possible narratives, ducking through a series of fluctuating audio-visual categories and intensities.
A 16mm experimental short film loosely following a cormorant as it attempts to dry its wings.
A battle between nature and culture, between organic rye-grass and artificial turf. American football is played on rectangular fields, 120 yards long and 160 feet wide. These dimensions defined the framework for this film. Made with images found in Google Earth. With music by Michel Banabila.
Anger discusses his Aleister Crowley-inspired theories of art: How he views his camera like a wand and how he casts his films, preferring to consider his actors, not human beings but as elemental spirits. In fact, he reveals that he goes so far as to use astrology when making these choices. This is as direct an explanation of Anger’s cinemagical modus operandi as I have ever heard him articulate anywhere. It’s a must see for anyone interested in his work and showcases the Magus of cinema at the very height of his artistic powers. Fascinating. (Dangerous Minds)
Shot in black and white, Invisible merges performance art and personal documentary to reflect personal and shared experiences during the military coup. Set in an abandoned building where many young revolutionists sought refuge, the seemingly invisible experiences of displacement, loss, suffering and anger are made visible through words and subtle movements.
In this "beautifully intimate and utterly unique piece of cinema", Toby Amies crosses the line between filmmaker and carer, trying to cope with the strange and hilarious world view of the fragile eccentric, Drako Zarharzar. A love story. Drako Oho Zaraharzar can remember modeling for Salvador Dali and hanging out with The Stones. But he can’t remember yesterday. Following a severe head injury, Drako Zaraharzar suffers from terrible memory loss, he can access memories from before his accident, but can’t imprint new ones. As he puts it, “the recording machine in my head doesn’t work”. Consequently, and as an antidote to depression he chose to live “completely in the now” according to the bizarre mottoes delivered to him whilst in a coma.