Something is Happening Here

Viewed at its seams, a National Geographic slideshow from the 1960s and '70s deforms into a bright white distress signal.

Features four distinct, bizarre, existential tales about people whose lives are in transition, who are each asking questions about themselves, their environments, and about God(s).

This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.

"Thornton's magnum opus, this ongoing and open-ended serial follows its two improvisatory protagonists, children “raised by technology,” through a surreal landscape where pop culture and history, science and science fiction blur." - BAM

"A fisherman, dark-skinned and shirtless, sits in a boat on a quiet river and, before long, catches a fish. The fish gasps for air and the fisherman holds it to his chest until it dies. This sequence—performed by a series of fishermen, of various ages and using various styles of capture—is the spine of the work, interrupted by passages of quiet natural beauty; one shot is a steady, stately pan through scores of trees and empty air behind." - Vinson Cunningham

"A deeply beautiful and disturbing split-screen depiction of the contrasting daily routines of sociologist Gilberto Freyre in 1959 (author of The Masters and the Slaves, originator of Lusotropicalism, proponent of racial integration) and Cristóvão, an ordinary housekeeper in 2016." - Angeline Gragásin

The passing time is displayed as a series of still frames, or a rapid sequence of moments, ever flowing like the waves that break on the shore, like a repeated chant with no beginning, middle or end.

This found 8mm film of underwater ballet has a red rust effect flowing through it like living fire.

Freely adapted from a story by Marcel Schwob in 'Screw imaginary' and deeply focused on the thought of Georges Bataille, the film wants to give substance to Clodia tragic affair, the Roman noblewoman loved by Catullo and made him immortal in his ways, with the Lesbia pseudonym.

Collage from 35 mm trailers.

An exploration of the Cultural Revolution that depicts both its chaotic later years – through the story of a squad of Red Army guards running amok in the countryside – and its continuing legacy in today’s China.

When asked to make a documentary about her friend’s mother—a Parisian astrologer named Juliane—the filmmaker sets off for Montmartre with a Bolex to craft a portrait of an infectiously exuberant personality and the pre-war apartment she’s called home for 50 years.

Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.

A trippy pop-art collage of phallic objects, naked women and American icons, most notably Elvis Presley.

Flies never give up. But horses may get exhausted. But flies never stop buzzing.

This independent film follows the actions and inner thoughts of four unusual individuals as they go about their lives in Tokyo, occasionally meeting up with one another. Their thoughts tend to focus on questions of death, existence, and the conflict of society against the individual. All of the action is performed silently, with narration dubbed over.

Emerging from a period of withdrawal, a social recluse or ‘hikikomori’ relates her inner experiences against the backdrop of an illuminated and restless urban environment that never sleeps.

Performance video about a holiday romance at St Ives, Cornwall.

Clapperboard claps, from rushes from a film I worked on as an editor, synced with gunfire.

A man eats breakfast during the COVID-19 pandemic.