The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
Born in Los Angeles but a New Yorker by choice, Barbara Hammer is a whole genre unto herself. Her pioneering 1974 short film Dyketactics, a four-minute, hippie wonder consisting of frolicking naked women in the countryside, broke new ground for its exploration of lesbian identity, desire and aesthetic.
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.
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
In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.
Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.
Lines align during acclimated apexes, shadowy vertices, and bright burrows.
Trite, closed memories flagrantly bleed into profuse openings mixed & held together by retaliatory colorations & obfuscations.
Colossal explores the complexities of grief and the process of grieving as understood through the myth of a Man as he ventures through shifting landscapes ruminating.
Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.
This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...
In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.
A sexual reverie unfolds over the course of one ethereal night. Characters wander through an erotic maze of love and lust, blurring the lines between wet dream and lucid nightmare as a macabre, erotic stage performance sends a ripple of lustful desires through its audience and performers.
A personal, subjective journey into the mind of Greta Thunberg, before realizing her calling as a climate activist. While struggling with mental health issues and bullying because of her Aspergers, she also grapples with the sense of impending doom due to the climate crisis. These same struggles and fears drive her to make change and become the person she is today.
This is a time when we learn afresh that nothing lasts forever and that the variability is an integral part of everyday life. What is a river today does not mean that tomorrow will not become a sea. Life itself is one large metamorphosis, and the human being is its variable shape...
An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.
A Japanese salaryman finds his body transforming into a weapon through sheer rage after his son is kidnapped by a gang of violent thugs.
When the strongest earthquake in a century hit Mexico in 2017, everyone had eyes on the rescue of 12-year old Frida - until the story took a very strange twist.
Cremaster 5 is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamenting tone of the opera suggests that Barney invisions this as a moment of tragedy and loss. The primary character is the Queen of Chain (played by Ursula Andress). Barney, himself, plays three characters who appear in the mind of the Queen: her Diva, Magician, and Giant. The Magician is a stand-in for Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest in 1874 and appears as a recurring character in the Cremaster cycle.
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.