Stairway to Heaven

From June 2021 to June 2022, Justin "Jastun" Bland records whatever that is in front of him. He presents an abstract montage of collected videos varying from onscreen recordings to filming special, intimate & mundane in-real-life moments. This short captures our daily routines in life and how we choose to spontaneously record them.

The "bleared eyes of blue glass" in the title of this experimental short expand on a verbal image from Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, considered the most experimental among the 20th-century British writer's literary works, from which the young filmmaker took inspiration for his film, borrowing passages and visions to explain his own understanding of what cinema is. A film that plays with water - precisely - and light, and yet in a very dark b&w lit up by rare flashes of colour, making a journey in the night in which the shadow of a man gradually acquires substance.

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?

Over the space of a summer, Liam filmed, edited, and released a single shot every day. The outcome? A documentary that blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction.

A sci-fi filmed in Mount Shasta, CA, Morro Bay, CA and Cape Romain, SC.

Renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko creates powerful responses to the inequities and horrors of war. This in-depth investigation into the artist focuses on the recurring themes of war, trauma, and displacement in his work. An instigator for social change, Wodiczko’s powerful art interventions disrupt the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression.

From Pompeii to Xenia puts in echo times of innocence struck by disaster: the lightning tornado which had beaten down on the American city of Xénia in 1974 answers, at thousands of kilometers in distance and centuries apart, the mythical eruption of Vesuvius in 79. The extended panorama, derived through the crossing of history and from an intimate story and urban sociology, is the cinematic reconstruction of a personal history: of its historical and geographical conditions to its processing.

A correctional officer’s daily routine of gaining access into a correctional facility.

Six Positions (1998) is about task of a funeral home director.

A Week in the Hole chronicles a factory employee’s adjusting to the materials, time, space and personnel during his first day of work.

Collage

The creative processes of avant-garde composer Philip Glass and progressive director/designer Robert Wilson are examined in this film. It documents their collaboration on this tradition breaking opera.

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.

"[Hutton’s] latest urban film, New York Portrait, Chapter III, takes on a unique tone in relation to Hutton’s ongoing exploration of rural landscape. The very fact that Hutton is dealing with older footage, with archives of memory more than immediacy, gives it a different texture than his earlier New York films. Hutton always found the presence of nature in the city, not only in his many shots of sky and vegetation, but also in the geometry and texture of the city itself, which seemed to project an independence from the human." (Tom Gunning)

Stuck in the traffic of life.

Noise, static, channel change...

Time lapse of clouds and a mimosa tree to the silhouette at dusk.

The Dreamer That Remains is a documentary produced by Betty Freeman and directed by Stephen Pouliot in 1972. Here is the director’s original cut along with his commentary. If you’ve never seen Partch or his instruments before, this is the place to start.

Chapter Two represents a continuation of daily observations from the environment of Manhattan compiled over a period from 1980-1981. This is the second part of an extended life's portrait of New York.

A recollection of almost 40 years of career. A giant image-jukebox, from early 70s autoportrait to films for Alain Bashung / Elli Medeiros, private karaokes to “video sculptures” applied to John Travolta or Maria Callas, and much much more…