One of the best-known Chinese figurative painters, Liu Xiaodong goes back to his hometown of Jincheng, in the province of Liaoning (North-East China), to re-paint again friends and relatives after several years have gone by. With a soundtrack by famed composer Lim Giong (Millennium Mambo, The Assassin).
"All sounds travel in waves much the same as ripples in water." Educational film produced by Bray Studios New York, which was the dominant animation studio based in the United States in the years surrounding World War I.
As their planet is being ripped apart two young soldiers Ashmal and Zack stumble across something that might be mankind's only hope for survival against an overwhelming alien invasion. A NOVR.
Human? Machine?
Mairy, a thirty-year-old woman from Philippines, works in a village in Cyprus. She takes care of Mr. Michalis, an eigthy-five-year-old man with arteriosclerosis. Mr. Michalis spends his days in front of the television, watching time and again a soap opera with a heroine named Anna. He soon becomes obsessed with this heroine, to the point of calling Mairy 'Anna', despite the remarks of his daughter Melpo. When Mairy finds some old photographs she makes an important discovery...
Recorded at the Teatro Alhambra on May 10 and 11, 2023.
A short black-and-white silent documentary film featuring one dog jumping through hoops and another dancing in a costume, which was considered lost until footage from an 1896 Fairground Programme was identified as being from this film.
An American art collector, living in France in the 1870s, who loses his fortune in a stock market crash devises a scheme to get back his wealth through insurance fraud with the added consequence of potentially killing hundreds of people. His scheme is to place his art collection aboard a ship, insure the collection far beyond its value, and place a barrel of dynamite with a clock-piece timed to go off when the ship is at sea.
Under Reconstruction
This educational film illustrates various textures as students create different kinds of textured art by using ordinary objects and materials.
How to Welcome a Stranger
CONTACT is a short documentary film directed by Jonathan Walley that chronicles the transformation of an entire skatepark into a playable musical instrument—where the skate, BMX, art, and music scenes collide. HCS has been many things: a skatepark, gallery, library, museum, and stage; but, for one weekend, Derek Nelson fabricator, activist, BMX pro, and artist, transformed his skatepark into an immersive sonic installation—part instrument, part playground—for the community of Binghamton, NY to become co‑creators in a conflagration of sound. SMALL TOWN, BIG SOUND. CONTACT reminds us of the joy in creativity, community, and the DIY spirit. Contact is about pushing boundaries, experimenting with art, and reclaiming space in an increasingly cruel, unkind, and oppressive world. It’s a poetic exploration of the creative process told by a filmmaker who calls HCS home.
The story focuses on high school girl Nagisa Yukiai who lives in a seaside town. She has believed her grandmother's story that spirits dwell in words and they are called "kotodama" (word spirit). One day, she strays into a mini FM station that has not been used for years. As an impulse of the moment, she tries to talk like a DJ using the facility. But her voice accidentally broadcasted reaches someone she has never expected.
In Unborn we follow the internal monologue of a hybrid pigeon-persona who questions her inevitable cursed fate of parenthood. As a pigeon, she is supposed to build a nest to lay her eggs, but she fundamentally doubts her part in the cycle of life. Several absurd scenes show her struggle with popular belief, and nightmarish fantasies around the trappings of parenthood, and indirectly address reproductive rights without perpetuating the polarising perspective present in ongoing public debate. The spell-like remarks of the crow could be seen as her conscience echoing society’s expectations around reproduction. The presence of the egg as a haunted object with magical properties in this film becomes an unsettling interpretation of (in)fertility as a curse. The video incorporates various digital and hand-made techniques like stop-motion animation, set design, sound design and performance to unfold an uncanny world.
Interview Record of New Artists
Painter Zdzisław Beksiński, his wife Zofia and their son Tomasz, a well-known radio journalist and translator, were a typical and unconventional family, both at the same time. One of the father’s obsessions was filming himself and his family members. Using archival footage only, shot primarily by Zdzisław, as well many other materials, which have not been presented anywhere so far, the film tells a tragic story of the Beksińskis that has never ceased to fascinate Polish filmmakers.
In Bait, awkward parallels are drawn between environmental and sexual violence. Central is a range of anthropomorphous characters voicing their conflicting perspectives on consent and complicity. An adaptation of Millais' Ophelia comes back to life through karaoke. A white male default 3D avatar generates empty buzzwords to apologize for being involved in issues of harassment. A singing ensemble of oysters share their concerns about the abuse of power, allegorically hinting at their gendered, art-historical, and ecological connotations. The Aquatic Apes are depicted as otherworldly mid-evolution creatures with sexualized and animalistic features, and vocalized dolphin-like sounds translated into subtitles. Connecting all characters is the reference to water as a unifying element, exposing its undeniable sexual, biological, and environmental interpretations.
Focusing on the self-narration and visual language of the mounted police, ‘A horse is a horse of course of course’ reflects on how police horses are treated as just another of the many apparatuses police use for the maintenance of social control systems and their legitimation. While undergoing a special domestication process aimed at suppressing their instinctive flight responses to fear, horses become a means to impose disciplinary power in return. Originally a two-channel video, ‘A horse is a horse of course of course’ invites us to question the distorted mainstream cultural definition of policing. To start engaging with an abolitionist practice also requires radically decoding and refusing the oversimplifying language that police speak.
A film about the artist Marlene Dumas: - There's no right way to portray or to understand someone. It's just an acknowledgment , not a denial of reality. Here are my paintings.
Breaking a mirror initiates five different acts in five different places; exposing shades of magic, politics, and systemic violence. The harm social systems are designed to inflict, the enforced disappearances in Turkey during the 1990s, the border politics of the EU, manipulative storytelling, and power struggles are evoked as the round Pendant attempts to become whole again with its gemstones scattered throughout the acts.