A half-hour experimental film that shows Fukui moving towards cyberpunk imagery in a manner similar to Tsukamoto, featuring industrial locations, a malfunctioning cyborg/android and a hulking metallic ‘caterpillar’ that stalks characters.
Second part of the Elements series with the motif of "water". A beautiful swamp image is displayed at the beginning. An allegorical story of sisters and lovers living at the bottom of the water is developed in an experimental narrative that does not depend on dialogue. Aesthetic images and music highlight the dazzling atmosphere.
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.
A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?
Cumberland, 1348. The plague is spreading in medieval England. The remote village of little Griffin is also threatened. But the 9-year-old boy has a recurring dream that holds the key to a tiny hope of survival: a lake with a coffin floating on it. A white church with an iron cross. A falling glove. A falling silhouette. A torch tumble through a dark shaft into infinity. With his brother he recognizes in it a prophecy to escape the Black Death. So they embark with a few men on a journey to a distant cathedral, where they want to set up an iron cross as an offering to God. Her path leads them through a deep and dark mine shaft into an unknown land and completely outlandish time - into the present-day New Zealand of the 1980s.
By fabricating her biography, Luo Su, a young Chinese white-collar worker from a low-income family, hopes to wed Mr. Win, an alluring bachelor. But when her mother's shocking TV interview exposes her deceit, she loses everything and ends her own life. Left in limbo, she is mystically given one last opportunity to alter her fate within 72 hours - albeit within the body of a man.
A group of five classmates is trapped inside their school bus after an encounter with a mysterious creature on the road. Amid constant threats from the creature, the teen's anxiety increases while their survival chances decrease.
After his death, a young man stuck in purgatory attempts to cope with the afterlife.
Luca and his best friend Alberto experience an unforgettable summer on the Italian Riviera. But all the fun is threatened by a deeply-held secret: they are sea monsters from another world just below the water’s surface.
Nobody knows that Professor Hong Sum Kwai is actually the Water Magician, one of the five elemental wizards. One day, Hong accidentally loses his magical powers, which are transferred to his student Cheng Meisi. The girl happily uses the superhuman abilities she acquired by luck in life, at school, and on the volleyball court, but those powers also land her in trouble as a war of wizardry rages around her... Fire Magician Bi Yewu is desperate to turn back time to change a tragedy in the past, but to do so he needs to bring together the powers of all five elemental wizards. Wood Magician Gu Xinyue foresees catastrophe if time is warped, so he alerts the other wizards - including Earth Magician Ling Feng and Metal Magician Charlie - to join forces and prevent it from happening...
Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.
Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit enjoying his quiet life, is swept into an epic quest by Gandalf the Grey and thirteen dwarves who seek to reclaim their mountain home from Smaug, the dragon.
Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.
A female hotel employee wanders around different guestrooms and searches for an unreachable dream. Wandering in other people’s dreams, she encounters a mysterious guest and hears a story about a woman who dances deep inside her dream and a dancing procession...
Urashima Tunnel – Once you enter that tunnel, you can get whatever you want, but at a price. Kaoru Tohno, who seems to have an elusive personality and traumatic past, and Anzu Hanashiro, who is struggling to reconcile her ideal image and true-to-heart attitude, team up to investigate the Urashima Tunnel and get what they want. This is an unforgettable summer story of nostalgia and sprinting in a remote countryside.
A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.
Via the New York Times: "...a severely obscure meditation on pre-revolutionary Russia in the form of an encounter between a ghost from the past and the ghost's present-day guardian. In fact, the two characters seem to be the shade of Anton Chekhov and the young man who tends a Chekhov museum in the Crimea, though that is never made explicit."
A man unravels the consequences of reaching the unreachable horizon, starting from the abyss.
A vision from Limbo, where the canoeist of the eternal lake floats in his boat, between sleep and wakefulness. When he sleeps, he dreams of the everyday of a parallel time. when he wakes up, the same song haunts him again and again. his boat, “ara” (time, in guarani) travels through time like a shooting star.
This four-volume boxset released by Image Forum compiles the breadth of Shuji Terayama's experimental short film work into an extensive DVD collection. Originally released by Image Forum on VHS in 1995, this upgraded DVD boxset stands as the definitive collection for Terayama's experimental work in the highest quality possible.