First part of the collaborative project "Brise-Glace" showing the diverse travels on the icebreaker "Frej". Directed by Jean Rouch.
How many movies have you seen where at the end the main character wakes up, causing he and the audience to simultaneously realize that everything they witnessed beforehand was "just a dream?" This film takes that principal but instead of deceiving, the story invites you to watch the main characters dream away. As a result, "True Dreams" takes the dream sequence to a whole new level: it lets its audience in on the joke, while they watch the two main characters run around unaware of the reality/fantasy of their surroundings. This film can be viewed via Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/132642294 (password: truedreams)
'It was in San Francisco at a punk festival. I was already high and the air was so thick in the rooms that you could cut it with a knife. I had a photograph camera with me; I stood in a corner of the entrance hall and took 36 pictures on slide film. At home I put the slides into a slide projector. I took out the lens and filmed the slides by filming directly from the projector - using single frames according to a certain plan.'
The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.
Surrendering the mind to the hypnotic dance of fire, a candle's glimmer reveals dreamlike memories, illustrated by flickering fragments of experimental films that overlap alongside a deconstructed soundscape. Entering a hallucinatory state in a haunted ambience, one's own subconscious is put on display.
Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.
Wax and wane until there is naught but boring pain.
The rare short film presents a curious dialogue between filmmaker Julio Bressane and actor Grande Otelo, where, in a mixture of decorated and improvised text, we discover a little manifesto to the Brazilian experimental cinema. Also called "Belair's last film," Chinese Viola reveals the first partnership between photographer Walter Carvalho and Bressane.
A Japanese salaryman finds his body transforming into a weapon through sheer rage after his son is kidnapped by a gang of violent thugs.
This is a story of love seen from a square, in which a couple gets united, separated and rearranged again. A special kind of puzzle.
The quasi-fictional story of transgender sex workers living in Rio de Janeiro's swampy red light district, who are joined by a group of hippies and a runaway stockbroker, "Mangue-Bangue" is the paradigmatic expression of the post-1968 spirit of desbunde, the Brazilian slang catchword for "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll".
A teenager decides to shut himself off from the world around him after receiving bad news.
Steadily reading while/becomes treading into murky waters.
Magnetic Scramble is the first video work by Toshio Matsumoto. Here, the artist manipulates television images (of student demonstrations against the U.S.-Japan Security Pact) by holding a magnetic coil next to the monitor. Matsumoto later incorporated this piece into a scene of his film Funeral Parade of Roses (1969).
With input from actor and writer Jan Hlobil, director and cinematographer Rene Smaal presents a film in the true surrealist tradition, in the sense that only 'found' elements were used, and that it defies interpretation based on ordinary cause-and-effect time sequence.
On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.
During the Feria of Nîmes, a bullfight is filmed from the perspective of the animal, relegating the matador and public to off-screen spectators. A ritual at the frontiers of mysticism, carried by the sacrificial figure of the bull, revealer of our humanity.
The film is a stage play hybrid showcasing dark and absurd sketches based on contemporary Hungarian news of the 2000's with campy, senseless musical interludes in-between. Highly experimental in nature that - like Marmite - will split its' crowd into ones that'll love it and others that'll loathe it. There's no middle grounds here. The topics included are: The Hungarian Olympians' doping scandal, political terrorism, the national elections... and more.
A divorced journalist Marko Požgaj starts his working day by taking his son to the school. During the day many thoughts and images pass through his mind - the memories of childhood, ex-wife, current girlfriend, but mostly his father who died in a war.
An experimental film about a peaceful and carefree life in a small Dalmatian town, which turns into bloodshed and horror on the eve of the Italian occupation of the country.