Skies Above the Landscape

Uptight Millie Haven has always followed the rules, but when she has doubts before her big Kansas City wedding, her attitude-prone little sister Emma, the least likely of heroes, comes to the rescue. They embark on a spontaneous roadtrip to their grandmother’s farm where, with the help of Grandma Mildred, they rediscover their bond.

Pen and Jake have to rescue Princess Bubblegum from the antagonistic Ice King.

Following the unfortunate passing of King Kong in a workplace accident, his wife and son must embark on a cross-country road trip to collect and scatter his ashes. Operating under the guise of a road movie, the film acts as a reflection of the characters’ emotional journeys by creating both a meditative experience through the use of longform shots of landscapes, and a fleeting encapsulation of the world contained within a camcorder.

An anonymous narrator outlines a bizarre journey taken through "H", aided by a series of extraordinary maps, and his previous dealings with the mysterious Tulse Luper and the keeper of the bird house at the Amsterdam Zoo.

IJswee is a documentary film about an ice club, a village and the warm winters. In the film we follow Oringers, the inhabitants of Odoorn, through the winter. The Oringers all experience IJswee in their own way. You will also see the Icecounter (Rafael van der Ziel), who builds ice sculptures and drinks frozen milk. You see the Drenthe countryside changing with the weather. You see animations, archive material and you hear the mysterious sounds of IJswee in the music of Wietse de Haan. And there are two trumpet players, who welcome winter with their music and say goodbye to it.

An investigation about human intervention in nature, from the subjective point of view of the camera, the environment and its transformation are observed.

Annette Philo brings us to the Scottish landscape and its associated dream-like mystique. With gentle overlays, vivid purples and blues, and alluding to the hidden graves of the last of the Knights Templar, Philo’s depiction of bluebell island lulls us into a contemplation on the duality of what we see for ourselves, and what is cultivated as cultural, historical and national identity.

In Seán Martin's "Koan IV", an opening provocation suggests that the things we see continually hide the things we'd like to see. What we see after this is mist in a Scottish landscape. Martin's patient, enigmatic film contemplates a popular image of romance and intrigue attributed to a rural identity, alluding to what is hidden, what is real and what does not exist.

Home is where we grow up or settle permanently. And this home is always shaped by nature. Today, we human beings change and shape this more than any law of nature. HEIMAT NATUR is a visually stunning journey through the nature of our homeland, from the peaks of the Alps to the coasts and the depths of the North and Baltic Seas. In between is a cinematic foray through steaming forests, shimmering moors, over rose-blossoming heaths and the colorful cultural landscape around our villages and towns. In extraordinary images this nature is shown from its most beautiful side, examining the state of the native habitats. Slow-motion and time-lapse photography as well as intimate shots of familiar and unfamiliar species, some filmed for the first time, making the film a cinematic nature experience for the whole family.

"I was visiting Jerome Hill. Jerome loved France, especially Provence. He spent all his summers in Cassis. My window overlooked the sea. I sat in my little room, reading or writing, and looked at the sea. I decided to place my Bolex exactly at the angle of light as what Signac saw from his studio which was just behind where I was staying, and film the view from morning till after sunset, frame by frame. One day of the Cassis port filmed in one shot." -JM

Viewed at its seams, a National Geographic slideshow from the 1960s and '70s deforms into a bright white distress signal.

An ill wind is transmitting through the lonely night, spreading deception and myth along its murky path, singing the dangers of the mediated spirit.

Shaping a concurrently indulgent and skeptical experience of the beautiful, the film draws an uneasy balance between the romantic and the horrid. A Frank O'Hara monologue (from a play of the same title) attempts to undercut the sincerity of the landscape, but there are stronger forces surfacing.

After the earthquake; D. surrounds himself with nature, becoming a recluse. Both D. and the nature go through a transformation as the seasons change. Winds howl, waves soar and the crickets chirp no more. The storm wets the dried earth, healing its cracked surface and starting a new cycle of life. D. disappears and the summer house returns to its lonely existence.

Some images of the landscape and the spaces that house them. "Every single entity contains an adumbration or landskip of the whole Universe" (Jan Baptist van Helmont, 1650). Images becoming life—life becoming images.

In SUNSPOTS, several 16mm shots of the sun are layered and superimposed, paired with a soundscape consisting of volcanos, fire, plastic and the audible solar sounds recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

A prairie landscape undergoes a metamorphosis: rural idyll to over-urbanized dystopia. Director Anne Koizumi laments the changing face of her hometown of Calgary in this critique of the bacteria-like spread of suburbia and exurbia. This film was made as part of the third edition of the NFB's Hothouse apprenticeship.

In the Aysén region dwell a population of 90000 isolated souls sharing the harsh landscapes of an area about the size of England. Here where beauty seems to be on first-name terms with fear and danger,in a place where the immensity of nature can never be dominated, the setting hesitates, along the expanses, between sparkling colours and the black and white of the snow and the water. The day-to-day images intermingle with a story of mythological aspect; that of the timeless quest for the Lost City of the Caesars, a city of gold built 500 years ago by the conquerors.

In Titan's Goblet refers to a landscape painting by Thomas Cole circa 1833. The film is intended as a homage to Cole, who is regarded as the father of the Hudson River School of painting.

This video creates an awareness of the different forms of beauty found in cities. Explains that art, not luxury, is necessary and that nature enriches cities. Shots of San Francisco, Rome, and the Gold Rush town of Columbia, California. The film extols the modern outdoor shopping mall, enhanced by public art and parks, as an important aspect of civic architecture and design.