Second-hand Reading

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.

"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito

Paleo is a video clip shoot at the famous homonymous music festival in the French canton of Vaud in Switzerland, where many hippie-techno-pagans gather every summer since 1977. The editing style is a tribute to the reworking of psychedelic theories and the New Age proliferation within rave culture in the early 90s from the perspective of the late second decade of the new millennium. In the footage, the ritual ingestion of psychedelics is symbolically replaced by a liberating dance through a powerful fast montage that epitomizes the frenzy of intoxication achieved through psychedelic plants. A revival of a revival of a revival.

To fly a – way from/out of death, don’t hire a taxidermist but take a ride in this taxidrome! Series of 41 Moving Images - this analogy is possible being conservation at its core rescuing what really matters in the world, like nature, habitats, science and art. It is vital. Yet in a continuously changing environment, the flipside of conservation becomes and here it is where the vital feature of conservation becomes its lifelike trait, a fictive life, a fake life. The embalming process consists of 1) imparting a balmy essence to the dead body, as in the ancient world, 2) by filling its blood vessels with formaldehyde to prevent putrification, as in the modern world, although recently with more regard towards more natural treatments, as for instance in bio-art. To embalm also means to “preserve from oblivion”, and “to cause to remain unchanged”, “to prevent the development of something”.

Notes on Film 01 Else

In 1952, Haanstra made Panta Rhei , another view of Holland through the eyes of a painter and filmmaker. Its poetic images of water, skies and clouds reflect Haanstra's own moods.

The term "The Weir-Falcon Saga" appeared to me, night after night, at the end of a series of dreams: I was "true" to the feeling, tho not the images, of those dreams in the editing of this and the following two films. The three films "go" very directly together, in the order of their making (as listed); yet each seems to be a clear film in itself. At this time, I tend to think they constitute a "Chapter No. 2" of The Book of Film I've had in mind these last five years (considering SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD as Chapter No. 1); and yet these "Weir-Falcon" films occur to me as distinct from any filmmaking I have done before. (Stan Brakhage)

Filmed in Berlin, July 1990. Images of workers taking down the wall and street peddlers selling pieces of it to make a living.

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.

Rachelle his spending her vacations in the country. One night, as she is watching a silly reality tv wedding show, she decides to plan the most magical marriage.

An experimental film comprised of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING played forwards and backwards at the same time on the same screen, creating bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities

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.

Electro-Pythagorus is an intimate and subjective portrait of the late Martin Bartlett, the Canadian electronic music pioneer who studied with Pauline Oliveros, David Tudor, John Cage, and Pandit Pran Nath. His contribution as an interdisciplinary composer, educator, and founding member of Western Front, though undoubtedly extensive, is in danger of being erased from cultural memory since his death from AIDS in 1993. Navigating an array of archival materials including letters, correspondences, notebooks, personal photos, and a huge body of unreleased music and field recordings held at the archives of Simon Fraser University, Electro-Pythagoras is a journey through the evolution of Bartlett’s musical time and space, softly guided by Luke Fowler’s insightful camera and montage—creating an experimental portrait that defies one-dimensionality.

The parents of an adult infant named "Child", played by Todd Haynes, attempt to expel him from their home, by casting magical spell seen in a television documentary about Malaysian rites of passage.

The second part: Brakhage’s layering of images spends less time with images of war, and begins filtering in scenes of Vienna and his home in Colorado. He sets up a comparison between “Kubelka’s Vienna” and his own.

A depiction of a girl’s uneasy state of mind as it wavers between life and death.

As a major storm strikes Texas in 1900, a mysterious televisual device is built and tested. Blake Williams’ experimental 3D sci-fi film immerses us in the aftermath of the Galveston disaster to fashion a haunting treatise on technology, cinema, and the medium’s future.

The world appears black on black until it separates from itself, looks at itself, includes itself, and sees colour.

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".