The Red and the Blue Gods

Experimental short film playing with light and how it appears through reflections, lenses, and distortions

Experimental 8mm film.

Rather than writing a simple letter to explain his absence from the press conference for his latest Cannes entry, "Goodbye to Language," at the Cannes Film Festival, instead, legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard created a video "Letter in motion to (Cannes president) Gilles Jacob and (artistic director) Thierry Fremaux." The video intercuts from Godard speaking cryptically about his "path" to key scenes from Godard classics such as "Alphaville" and "King Lear" with Burgess Meredith and Molly Ringwald, and quotes poet Jacques Prevert and philosopher Hannah Arendt.

A young woman and man are riding bikes through nature, having a good time. When she speeds up, he loses her, and after a while he stumbles across her bike without any trace of her. He stumbles through the forest looking for her, imagining how she kisses him. No dialogue, just "audio credits" instead of titles, saying the name of the film, actors and director.

Experimental short film from Yugoslavia.

From the re-appropriation of archive images with various contents (war images, soccer matches, social celebrations, religious rites, historical characters, etc.) and from different sources (including films by Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Leni Riefenstahl or Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi, as well as images from ads and news...), together with reflections of Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, Bertolt Brecht, Hannah Arendt, Stanley Milgram, Eric Hobsbawn, Amin Maalouf, Josep Fontana, etc., Zavan Films producer develops this complex and kaleidoscopic work on (national, religious, commercial...) identities and their relation with war, economic profit and "legal crimes".

Drawing on VHS tapes of a programme hosted by her mother on Bulgaria’s national television, the filmmaker gives a pop-style and in-depth chronicle of the gentle – even “over-gentle” – 1989 revolution.

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.

White Sands is a 3 screen projection 16mm film installation which reflects on the visible and invisible manifestations of the nuclear fuel chain on the land, air, water and people of New Mexico.

If Not is a meditation on love, inspired by If Not, Winter by Sappho, translated by Anne Carson. Filmed in Ephesus and Brooklyn.

Dear features the interior world of two teenage Chinese girls in New York City, whose diary entries reveal their concerns related to growing up as immigrants amidst the ever-gentrifying landscape of Chinatown.

Mostly dark, rejecting images which are repeated. A stone wall, the chamber of a revolver which is, at first not recognizable, a close-up of a cactus. The duration of the takes emphasises the photographic character of the pictures, simultaneously with a crackling, brutal sound. (Hans Scheugl)

A meditative journey, using and manipulating archival silent film footage, that investigates the look of the "New Woman" in Chinese silent screen.

It started with filming the tree. Something was released in that manner of filming seemingly farthest removed from the procedure of the early films. I first thought a simple ordering of this rich material might be enough, something related to BARN RUSHES [...] But the film only came into its form-life with the idea of linking this deep-rooted and far-outreaching tree material with that film on paranoia that had fascinated me for many years. –L. G.

"With characteristic wit and rigor, experimental filmmaker Larry Gottheim here applies his impressionistic editing style to footage collected during his travels in the Dominican Republic. Gottheim’s formal emphasis on repetition and fissures between sound and image resonates here as a mode of sociological reflection (with the fragmentary montage mirroring elements of ritual while also destabilizing the ethnographic gaze). A largely overlooked antecedent to the contemporary blending of avant-garde and ethnographic filmmaking, MACHETTE GILLETTE… MAMA still poses a potent challenge to documentary convention." - Max Goldberg

Writing late becomes usual, we are always too late. Boris was my alter ego and I was his alter ego. Now that he is no longer here, I can be honest.

Chilean experimental film.

Two screens of film about - and sometimes shot by - Claes Oldenburg, detailing his inspiration, his methods and his relationship with his partner Hannah Wilke.

Anne Bean, John McKeon, Stuart Brisley, Rita Donagh, Jamie Reid and Jimmy Boyle are interviewed about their artistic practice and the legacy of Surrealism on their work.

Arguably Larry Gottheim’s most exuberant experiment in the single-shot, single-roll format (and his first with a soundtrack), HARMONICA trains the camera on a friend improvising a tune in the backseat of a moving car. Held out the window, the harmonica becomes a musical conduit for the wind, while Gottheim's film transforms before our eyes into a playful meditation on wrangling the natural elements into art. - Max Goldberg