Reflex/Reflection

Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?

In Untitled (Pink Dot), Murata transforms footage from the Sylvester Stallone film First Blood (1982) into a morass of seething electronic abstraction. Subjected to Murata's meticulous digital reprocessing, the action scenes decompose and are subsumed into an almost palpable, cascading digital sludge, presided over by a hypnotically pulsating pink dot.

Druga linija aka The Other Line is a product of many years of research of neo-avant-garde cultural and art scene in Novi Sad, Serbia (late 60s and 70s), which has been marginalized until today. This artistic movement was directly connected not only with important art centers of the former Yugoslavia, but also with existing flows of world art during its brief and productive activities (7e Biennale de Paris, 19th Berlinale). The cultural and artistic emancipation of that time had implied individual freedom of expression and strong reaction to established boundaries. This avant-garde movement had become threat to communist establishment, the authors' work were sabotaged, the films were sealed off, five artists were taken to trial, two were sent in prison. How is it that the retrograde mechanism of shutting down and removing the most creative and representative progressive impulses of our surrounding is still so current to this day?

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. (from bfi.org.uk)

In the 1920s, Man Ray directed four films which, although largely unknown by the general public, made him into a major figure in avant-garde cinema. His films were to be as radical as his images or objects. Included: Le Retour à la Raison, Les Mystères du Château du Dé, Emak-Bakia, L'étoile de Mer and collected shorts.

A film woven around the idea that between early cinema and avant-garde film exists a connection.

After encountering Lensface at the 2019 Unnamed Footage Festival, Filmmaker Travis Z. (Cabin Fever 2016, The Midnight Man) became obsessed with the voyeuristic cryptic, and spiraled into madness, leaving only this bizarre collection of surreal and horrific footage.

Niki is a child who chases butterflies through a chaotic landscape in a home-made samurai costume, and attempts to prepare for a catwalk. Niki is on a journey to find meaning, to understand a crazy world that does everything it can to get rid of anyone who doesn't fit in - an inner journey to become a human being.

Jennifer and Amber Cluck accompany a montage of potentially homoerotic touching from TV sportscasts with a song about being "in love with a guy who's afraid to use his charms."

Everyone has to be ready to appear before God, or it is irrevocably too late. My Lord. Save our guilty souls. Do not desert us. According to the short statement by the artist.

From Angry Bible Thumpers to Infamous Hall H Lines, This is an Appropriated Video Essay Covering the Negative Changes that San Diego Comic Con Has Gone Through This Passed Decade Alone.

1981 short film made by Nik Allday, the drummer on Cabaret Voltaire’s critically acclaimed third album ‘Red Mecca’, and features music by Allday and the Cabs’ Stephen Mallinder. The 10 minute abstract film uses raw material of video feedback and some nuclear bomb footage to represent “the cruel chaotic dysfunctional nature of the human condition with all its potential for self destruction”. Allday wanted a soundtrack that complemented the film thematically and approached Mallinder to see if he’d be interested in creating the audio.

A four-dimensional short anime will start at the very beginning of Shibuya Crossing, that is, 10,000 years in the past. The anime is part of a collaborative project helmed by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya. It features a hybrid of animation and live-action. The short was screened on Shibuya's Crossing screens and a YouTube-friendly version was posted as well. (Source: ANN)

Originality in a time of poorly made copies, a filmic inventory of a strange time, a kaleidoscope of images, in a constant game of ruptures and continuities. All this from 365 videos published on an Instagram page in 2018, added to an original soundtrack and a text adapted from Dürrenmatt's play Dialogue of a Vile Man, a text that synthesizes our time well.

The first film in Vlatko Gilić’s Sisyphean trilogy, Homo sapiens follows a suited man as he takes a trek back and forth across a sandy desert to fill an oversized barrel using a woefully small tub of water. Shot in stark black and white and edited to achieve a dreamlike quality, the man’s devotion to this task is tested and taunted by a young couple that frolics around the barrel.

This documentary interweaves celluloid and voice recordings by Maya Deren, and colleagues who knew her firsthand: Jean Rouch, Jonas Mekas, Alexander Hammid, Cecile Starr etc. Maya Deren (1917-1961) was an experimental filmmaker. In the 1940s and 1950s she made several influential avant-garde films, such as Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Images from this and her other work are used in this documentary. You can also hear her voice, as well as accounts by contemporaries such as Jean Rouch and Jonas Mekas.

Based upon the life and writing of literary visionary Danil Harms, a Russian avant-garde poet of the 1920s who was persecuted and ultimately silenced by the Soviet authorities.

Investigating autumn, temporal alterations, and their effect on movement

16 mm, color, 3:35 or 10 min. Study for No. 11. "An exposition of Buddhism and the Kaballah in the form of a collage. The final scene shows Agaric mushrooms growing on the moon while the Hero and Heroine row by on a cerebrum."

Ema Nudar Umanu is the story of the dream of a woman who has died told to a man born from a duck's egg in a jungle far from anything. It is the story of a couple forced together, coming to realise that what they each wish for is to be one another. It is a story about the point at which life is death, love is loneliness, man is woman and dream is reality. Five weeks from initial concept to shot and made on the barest of budgets, the film is an unprecedented undertaking that brings to life a dream from beyond the grave. Ema Nudar Umanu is a romance of liberty, draped in tragedy, comic and absurd.