What I Learned at the Harun Farocki Residency

Stream of consciousness awakened by the shots of an inauspicious summer.

Linda

This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”

A flickering dance of intriguing imagery brings to light the possibilities of ordinary movements from the everyday which appear, evolve and freeze before your eyes. Made entirely from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of moving image, All This Can Happen (2012) follows the footsteps of the protagonist from the short story 'The Walk' by Robert Walser. Juxtapositions, different speeds and split frame techniques convey the walker's state of mind as he encounters a world of hilarity, despair and ceaseless variety.

Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

A personal essay which analyses and compares images of the political upheavals of the 1960s. From the military coup in Brazil to China's Cultural Revolution, from the student uprisings in Paris to the end of the Prague Spring.

In an open letter to the most influential modern Indian political leader, the Late Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the filmmaker sequentially narrates the stories of three distinct individuals - that of a confused filmmaker who flows with time, a dedicated social reformer who guides the stratified masses into social upliftment and a divisive and regressive politician. The juxtaposition of their disfigured trajectories provokes a pertinent question: Did Gandhi ever foresee the dehumanized shape that his legacy has now dangerously morphed into?

Swimming, Dancing examines audiovisual representations of the Yangtze (1934–present), from silent film to video art to the contemporary vlog. Inspired by the city symphonies of the 1920s, Swimming, Dancing pieces together a “river symphony”, evoking the images, sounds and contradictions that make up the river’s turbulent history.

The six-hour essay in four parts examines the history of regimes and revolutions, leaders and martyrs, from a philosophical perspective. The collage of personal memories, staged scenes and archives of collective memory compares the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution and shows the exposure, conflict, crisis, and catharsis of the post-communist society.

The world’s museums are closed. What are you missing?  Take a real-time walk through the Louvre towards the “greatest painting ever” and contemplate what it would be like to be there yourself.

SONHO QUE VIVIA ACORDADO

The Water Map is an essayistic journey through the ethnography and landscapes of the Region of Murcia. These places are in the process of disappearing due to the increasing and abundant agricultural exploitation. Water has marked the territory and the culture of the area, and with its disappearance, the memories of four characters fade away.

A visual essay on contemporary Kiwi architecture.

In the dressing room of the French cinema, minutes before attending a lecture, François Truffaut recalls his trajectory

An experimental documentary about dead turtles, crab swarms, decaying tennis courts, and microscopic histories. The filmmakers shot their explorations into the abandoned golf courses, factories, and resorts of Sarasota, Florida and spoke to local youths who are using them for new and strange purposes. What would the Surrealists and Situationists think of a suburban, subtropical tourist town? What goes on in a storage unit in the dead of night? What is the afterlife of a decommissioned train car? What ghosts haunt a ruined hotel? What is the life cycle of a city? When will waters wash it all away?

If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other filmmakers identified as auteurs, Linklater’s distinction is not found on the surface of his films, in a visual style or signature shot, but rather in their DNA, as ongoing conversations with cinema, which is to say, with time itself. A visual essay produced by Sight and Sound.

Rastros que Deixamos

An essay style film in the vein of Orson Welles' "F For Fake" and Jon Jost's "Speaking Directly". From 2011 to 2013, filmmaker Kristian Day randomly documented the art and actions of the award winning metal sculptor, James Bearden. Refusing to make another artist documentary, Day insisted on illustrating Bearden's creative process through surreal and id oriented story telling.

A street in downtown Warsaw transforms into a kaleidoscopic portrait of Polish society. Behind the viewfinder is an Indian immigrant, who seeks to overcome the boundaries between himself and an anxiety-ridden country.