“For my film portrait of Sasha Grey, I wanted to focus on her expressive and psychological transformation into a cinematic actor, separate from the cues that have associated Sasha with her previous career as a performance artist working within the adult film world.” – Richard Phillips
A love story recounted not by them, but by their belongings and surroundings.
A couple, Vlad and Sophy, navigate their relationship as well as their own struggles with mental health in the context of a highly connected, politically uncertain modern world while on a trip to a remote Canadian island in this avant-garde feature film. PREFACE TO A HISTORY, created with a tiny crew of four people, represents an experiment in using minimalist tools to create an overwhelming aesthetic experience in service of a simple, but specifically contemporary, story about two people attempting to navigate a fraying relationship amid all the anxieties and external pressures of modern adulthood in a technologically-interconnected and politically unstable era.
Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive
A fascinating case of narrative deconstruction, THE SUICIDE SQUEEZE is a '40s style whodunit pressed through the wringer of an optical printer.
A quasi-sequel to Michel Houellebecq's novel The Possibility of an Island, Masbedo's short presents a post-apocalyptic landscape overseen by a distant mother nature or perhaps mother of nature portrayed by French icon Juliette Binoche.
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity. An alternate ending to the television series "Neon Genesis Evangelion", which aired from 1995 to 1996 and whose final two episodes were controversial for their atypically abstract direction.
An unknown future. A boy confesses to the murder of another in an all-boy juvenile detention facility. More an exercise in style than storytelling, the story follows two detectives trying to uncover the case. Homosexual tension and explosive violence drives the story which delivers some weird and fascinating visuals.
Weston Eastward, owner of a small delivery service, hires Garrett Britches to deliver packages to unusual clients, whom lead Garret to a dark secret.
History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.
Set halfway through the 17th century, a church play is performed for the benefit of the young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.
The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.
Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.
A musical audiovisual journey in four parts. A young man finds himself unexpectedly taking an audiovisual odyssey into a world of surreality, slowly recounting his memories, revealing the puzzle pieces that led him to where he is, and maybe how he can get out.
Swain is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe, features a dreamlike narrative of a young man’s ritualized rejection of heterosexuality, as a mysterious woman in white gossamer pursues him through a ruined landscape.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.
"Assassination" - Adaptation of Hermann Hesse's novel "Demian". A young man's detachment from and revolt against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self. Max Demian is his childhood friend and mentor.
A compelling narrative told entirely through subtitles, lights, and chairs.