A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
Filmed during summer 2019, Jesus Is King brings Kanye West’s famed Sunday Service to life in the Roden Crater, visionary artist James Turrell’s never-before-seen installation in Arizona’s Painted Desert. This one-of-a-kind experience features songs arranged by West in the gospel tradition along with new music from his forthcoming album.
La reserva del silencio
A dash of youth, a pinch of age, and an unrecorded recipe: Mudder's Hands is a charming documentary conversation about arthritis, centered around the tradition of baking Newfoundland raisin bread.
In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky (b.1943) begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work operating at the intersection of film materiality and personal language, Dorsky explains how he developed his philosophy of the “devotional film” and the “microcosmic viewer.” Dorsky likens his practice to Buddhist sculpture, referring to himself as a “Japanese poet continuing aspects of the ethos of the Marxist revolution.” In the interview, the artist describes his use of the screen as an “altarpiece for the image” and emphasizes his use of editing to create works which “harmoniously coalesce.” Interview conducted by Jeffrey Skoller in May 2000, edited in 2014.
In this film from late in his career, Kramer returns to Hanoi after nearly 25 years to re-envision the city’s struggle through an uncertain and daunting past, present, and future. The Vietnamese characters in the film are diverse: Kramer’s former guide from an earlier visit in 1969; a tight-rope walker in the national circus; a man who took photos of B-52s and another who lost his fingers shooting them down.
X-hale
An experimental film about narrations of two journal photos from Iran's revolution in 1979.
"A l likeness is a gift... it avoids... or confuses time if your prefer." said John Berger. Following this premise, 81.92 is a structuralist inquiry into the notion of presence and absence as it reveals archival radio broadcasts from former Montreal radio host Mike Wolkow. The former (the audible) is left invisible while the later (the visible) seeks to find the missing elements that trace the passage of this vocal presence. Past and present interplay in this piece that shifts between epochs, thus mimicking a radio signal that is being tuned in.
A documentary about the sea and memory. Its movement is its form. Its strength.
Stan Brakhage is a film maker whose work is shown mainly at film festivals. His work has been likened to poetry. Brakhage explains his techniques and his motivation.
It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.
The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.
The war memorials of 1914-1918 have become so familiar that we no longer see them. They've become an invisible museum, blending into the landscape of France. Then, one fine day, a sculpture catches our eye. Another History appears, perhaps the most gigantic artistic project since the cathedrals...
Between notes and photographs from a baby album, this short film investigates what lies outside the frame. Starting from the director's mother's written records and childhood images in which her presence appears only in fragments — a hand holding, an arm supporting, a shadow on the edge — the film proposes a reflection on absence and the traces left in the visual narratives of family life. By weaving together facts and fabrication, the work reveals how family albums function not only as repositories of memory, but also as coming-of-age stories, full of choices, silences, and inventions. Between delicacy and humor, the film questions who appears and who is erased in these stories, exploring the invisibility of care work and its discreet permanence in the materiality of photography.
Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.
ACIdRAPTURE ZEBRA
Seven strangers are interviewed to talk about the relationship they have with their mother.
KWAIDAN
A mockumentary focused on an ESA at a college campus and her point of view about the students and their activities.