The Shore That Falls

SONG 1: Portrait of a lady (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

SONG 10: Sitting around (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

SONG 9: Wedding source and substance (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

Experimental short film by Michio Mihara.

On stormy night in an ugly urban landscape, Ciro Norte, a scientist with wild hair and thick glasses, straps himself to a chair he's has fashioned with wires: lightening strikes, convulsing him. It seems his experiment has not worked. The next day, he drives his jalopy to a bar, sits alone, and weeps. But suddenly, a vortex sucks him into a dream state where he wanders, escapes man-eating fish, confronts his doppelganger, walks through a field of giant flowers, and comes upon Venus herself, buried up to her shoulders in sand. She is a giant, and she takes him to her breast. He wakes from the vortex, back in the bar, his mood transformed.

A dramatic recreation of Dylan Thomas' last tour of America, starring actor Bob Kingdom as the Welsh poet. Originally a successful stage production, the show was adapted for this recorded version by renowned actor Anthony Hopkins (in his directorial debut). Dylan Thomas was one of the twentieth century's greatest poets. He was born in the Uplands district of Swansea in 1914 and died in New York in 1953 at the age of 39. Towards the end of his life, Dylan Thomas toured America, performing his works before sell out audiences across the country. The film features the poems "Fern Hill"; "Do Not Go Gently into that Good Night"; "A Poem in October"; "And Death Shall Have No Dominion"; "A Story (The Outing)" and "Return Journey" .

Explores the creation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie,” and the phenomenon it became.

The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.

Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.

In a lush and lively forest lives a hedgehog. He is at once admired, respected and envied by the other animals. However, Hedgehog’s unwavering devotion to his home annoys and mystifies a quartet of insatiable beasts: a cunning fox, an angry wolf, a gluttonous bear and a muddy boar. Together, the haughty brutes march off towards Hedgehog’s home to see just what is so precious about this “castle, shiny and huge.” What they find amazes them and sparks a tense and prickly standoff.

Orson Welles reads the poem especially for this film by Larry Jordan, which is dedicated to the late Wallace Berman, and is made possible by a grant from The National Endowment Of The Arts.

Experimental filmmaker Rubén Gámez explores the iconography of the maguey plant in Mexican cinematic history.

Tympanum

Born in Los Angeles but a New Yorker by choice, Barbara Hammer is a whole genre unto herself. Her pioneering 1974 short film Dyketactics, a four-minute, hippie wonder consisting of frolicking naked women in the countryside, broke new ground for its exploration of lesbian identity, desire and aesthetic.

Martin (Joe Newton) is a casualty of society. He is under appreciated and overworked as a salary man in the city. With mounting pressure on his shoulders, he experiences a breakdown at work and loses his job. After visiting his childhood home to collect some possessions, he opts not to go home but instead chooses to live off grid in the vast woodland. Here he attempts to survive, to try and find himself again, through being amongst nature and his love of writing poetry.

An experimental film comprised of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING played forwards and backwards at the same time on the same screen, creating bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities.

"An experimental documentary on Reverend L.O. Taylor, a black Baptist minister from Memphis, Tennessee who was also an inspired filmmaker with an overwhelming interest in preserving the social and cultural fabric of his own community in the 1930′s and 40s. I combine his films and music recordings with my own images of Memphis neighborhoods and religious gatherings" -Sachs

The film follows Manuel Maria du Bocage, 18th-century poet, as he travels through the world from orgy to orgy and from excess to excess.

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.