Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.
Sistiaga painted directly on 70mm film a circular (planetary?) form, around which dance shifting colours in a psychedelic acceleration matched by the soundtrack’s deep-space roar and howl. - Cinema Scope
“Past Perfect” is a spirited meditation on the elusiveness and inaccessibility of (Jewish) history as conveyed through sightseeing tours of “Jewish” Poland, a grandmother’s recollection of life in America during War II, and memoir-like “last moments” of a great aunt believed to have died in Treblinka. Shot almost entirely in contemporary Poland, “Past Perfect” lyrically portrays the relentless yet ultimately futile attempt to resuscitate a history literally gone up in smoke.
Experimental short film playing with light and how it appears through reflections, lenses, and distortions
Personal diary-style documentary of German Gay rights activist Von Praunheim's sojourn in the US.
White Sands is a 3 screen projection 16mm film installation which reflects on the visible and invisible manifestations of the nuclear fuel chain on the land, air, water and people of New Mexico.
If Not is a meditation on love, inspired by If Not, Winter by Sappho, translated by Anne Carson. Filmed in Ephesus and Brooklyn.
Bubble is a short film performed by Zeena Parkins and the Plastic Girls, Eleanor Hullihan and Erin Cornell in a public park in Brooklyn, NY.
The town Minot is home to a U.S. Air Force base that guards 150 nuclear missiles buried in northern North Dakota. The weapons of mass destruction placed there 50 years ago are still targeted at Russia. Minot, North Dakota portrays an American landscape where people live with nuclear bombs in their backyard.
Alex and José, is a 16mm single channel projection that explores gender, movement and form.
A silent film portraying winter across three continents.
The PSA Project is a series of 15 videos that speak out against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the act of war.
Still Life gazes unflinchingly at the violence of war, observing the eerie architecture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip collapsed under Israeli occupation. This portrait provides brutal witness to how government sanctioned destruction metes upon structures of home and State. Unlike the mediated images of current warfare, Still Life examines the effects of the destruction of Occupation through the details of cinematic landscapes and its inherent inhabitants. In its relentless questioning reaffirmed with a unique and unremitting soundtrack by composer Zeena Parkins, Still Life forces us to focus on details of devastation.
A sparing and minimal travelogue of Istanbul. A foreigner meditates on the unraveling of a relationship while moving from hotel room to hotel room. In a city simultaneously devoted to Islam and secular nationalism, she finds refuge in the frailty and severity of the rituals of devotion.
A meditative journey, using and manipulating archival silent film footage, that investigates the look of the "New Woman" in Chinese silent screen.
Sites Unseen is a 3 channel 16mm projection of the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw, a photograph of a great Aunt who died in Treblinka, and my late grandmother eating her morning cornflakes.
A super 8 projection which references the essay “On the Jewish Question” by Karl Marx.
This experimental video breaks the many silences surrounding lesbians and AIDS. Interweaving the voices of two friends, Internal Combustion reflects on the often unspoken tensions within this epidemic of survival and power and mourning and loss .
A story about a woman descending into mental illness.
This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.