Before the Gates

Short film by Mary Ellen Bute

Buenos Aires. Exe, 25 years old, has just lost his job and is not looking for another one. His neighbors and friends seem as odd to him as they always do. Online, he meets Alf, a boy from Mozambique who is also bored with his job and who is about to follow Archie, another boy who has run away into the jungle. Through the dense vegetation of the forest, Archie tracks ants back to their nest. One of them wanders off course and comes across Canh, a Filipino, sitting on top of a giant heap of earth and who is about to go back to his strange, beautiful home town, where he too has a miserable job.

A man who is paranoid and deluded by his own conspiracies that someone out there is after him must come to terms with the root of his suffering.

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

In this child's game, a live-action boy and girl draw characters and compete who is better. The girl draws a flower and the boy draws a car that runs it over. Then a drawn lion chases a drawn girl, until it all becomes frightfully serious.

Against the backdrop of an unfathomable megalopolis, in a story that follows the associative qualities of a dream logic, the protagonists quote from concepts of neo-liberal elitism, and a mix of religious delusions and hallucinations of the apocalypse. The film begins in a sacral space, where Randi, a figure that references Ayn Rand, transforms a parapsychological medium into two digital clouds and sends them on a journey through a megalopolis in full growth. There they materialize as two bodies, which go by the names of Mr. Freedom and Ms. Independence.

A man is in self-quarantine in a housing building that is under construction. But the place is so chaotic that he isn't able to sleep. One day he goes over to the local zoo and attempts to sleep there.

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Featuring a cast that includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Mike Watt of the legendary hardcore band Minutemen, and Pettibon himself, this deadpan narrative pays dubious homage to the 1960's radical underground. In this crudely rendered home video of a commune of stoned revolutionaries, the cameras are hand-held, the edits in-camera, and the dialogue is wryly on-target. Pettibon's band of outsiders reenacts a countercultural moment defined by rock music, drugs, and ideological paradox — and in so doing, captures their own late-80's West Coast grunge milieu as well.

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

A psychiatrist and his needy patient discuss their relationship in a snow-covered field.

White Tape explores the theme of boundaries: the frame, the space between brushstrokes and the implications of occupation.

A film about the dominance of time and space over a human being. A poetic reflection on the transience of material life characterized by a Mediterranean ambience, contemplation, mosaic structure, and repetitive editing patterns.

An experimental and critical view on the decadence of Honduran society. It practically has no narrative structure, as it plays out as a day-in-the-life-of the eponymous Ángel, a kid who's a shoe-shiner.

The film consists of three sequences shot by a fixed camera: the first shows the balcony of a hospital with patients (soundtrack from the film "Vivre sa vie" by Jean-Luc Godard), the second is a scraped wall and the third is a crossroad with pedestrians and cars (sound taken from the film "The Time-Machine " by George Pal).

Dementia draws a woman into a world of memory loops, losing her love her spirit, her present her past.

A group of Staten Island radicals lead by ex-philosophy student Marie and her boozy filmmaker boyfriend Nick attempt to kidnap the CEO of the Leo Corporation but instead accidentally capture Daniel, a nutty small time accountant. With Daniel in custody at their commune, several of the radicals attempt to 'revolutionize the bedroom', an endeavor further complicated by a surprise visit from Marie's tough boy ex-lover Junior.

Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)

A postmodern Swiss-Tyrolean ensemble ventures into remote mountainous regions, embracing the sonorous variety of local vernaculars. A poetic road movie with stunning shots and an emphatic approach to a new alpine aesthetics.

The silent film is about a depressive lady of the last century who travels through time to a beach of current times, but ends up coming across a completely polluted environment.