Cinema Exercises

Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up as part of the experimental film community.

This episode focuses on Zappa's early 70s albums, Overnight Sensation (1973) and Apostrophy (') (1974). Together they encapsulate Zappa's extraordinary musical diversity and were also the 2 most commercially successful albums that he released in his prolific career. Included are interviews, musical demonstrations, rare archive & home movie footage, plus live performances to tell the story behind the conception and recording of these groundbreaking albums. Extras include additional interviews and demonstrations not included in the broadcast version, 2 full performances from the Roxy in 1973 and Saturday Night Live in 1976, and new full live performance done specially for these Classic Albums.

This two-color (green-blue and red) film was produced as a demonstration reel at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, under the direction of Kodak scientist John Capstaff. It features leading actresses, including Mae Murray, Hope Hampton, and Mary Eaton, posing and miming for the camera to showcase the capability of the complex Kodachrome process to capture their translucent movie star complexions and colorful, high-fashion clothing.

Several fragments of one day in Leningrad in the autumn of 1989, refracted in the imagination of the artist.

During WWII, the Japanese army developed experimental balloons able to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the West Coast of North America in 3-6 days. Armed with explosives, they were given the code name fu-go, or fusen bakudan (“fire balloons,” or balloon bombs) in an attempt to instill a culture of fear like that caused by the far more deadly American firebombing of Japanese cities. The U.S. responded by enacting a censorship campaign, requesting newspapers avoid reports of fu-go landings or sightings. Living near the remains of a fu-go launch site in Fukushima Prefecture, Takeuchi mimics their flight take-off using a drone camera, and, traveling to North America, follows their arrival across the shoreline and rural landscapes, using a bat’s echolocation as narrative device to place fu-go and Fukushima as echos across history.

Cindy was asleep under a maple tree/ Rolled over and said to me/ I dreamt of Air Cries/ I turned over, we were lying on the the/ dry cracked mud of a river bed/ Empty Water/ Puppies, Air Cries Only/ They don’t make a sound/ My eyes on fire with nothing/ to quell them/ A piece of steel in the heart/.

On an overcast day late in the summer of 1966, Syd first tripped on mushrooms while film student/friend Nigel Gordon captured the event on 8mm film. This marked a major turning in Syd's life; The man that entered the Gog Magog hills that day would not be the same entity that returned.

The film begins with a series of horizontally running ocean tide waves, sometimes with mountains in the background, hand-painted patterns, sometimes step-printed hand-painting, abstractions composed of distorted (jammed) TV shapes in shades of blue with occasional red, refractions of light within the camera lens, sometimes mixed with reflections of water. Increasingly closer images of water, and of light reflected off water, as well as of bursts of fire, intersperse the long shots, the seascapes and all the other interwoven imagery. Eventually a distant volleyball arcs across the sky: this is closely followed by, and interspersed with, silhouettes of a young man and woman in the sea, which leads to some extremely out-of-focus images from a front car window, an opening between soft-focus trees, a clearing. Carved wooden teeth suddenly sweep across the frame. Then the film ends on some soft-focus horizon lines, foregrounded by ocean.

Concerned with processes of assembly, CHOIR brings together disparate bodies of material and archival technologies into dissonant concert. It is a work of several parts. Part one constructs an auditorium in which an action will be staged. Part two assembles the chorus to narrate the action. Part three supplies the action.

Early Edison short showing two men fencing.

William K.L. Dickson and William Heise shake hands in this early experimental film.

Grand Opera marks a stock-taking of Benning's work and his life, presenting a personal and artistic autobiography woven together with a series of events dealing with the historical development of the number pi, Benning's travels, and homages to Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, George Landow (Owen Land), and Yvonne Rainer.

An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.

Trance dance and water implosion, a line drawn between secular freak-outs and religious phenomena. Shot in a single-take at a sacred site on the Upper Suriname River, the minor secrets of an animist are revealed as time itself is undone. Rites are the new Trypps, embodiment is our eternal everything.

Short film that shows daisies throughout the day with music as an accompaniment.

The first experimental dance film from Croatia, which pays homage to the pioneer of experimental and dance film Maya Deren and her "Study in Choreography for Camera" from 1945. The theme of the film is inspired by a composition by Ivo Malec "Miniatures for Lewis Carroll", and the dance is performed by the members of the Studio for Contemporary Dance who, in black suits and white surroundings, seem to float in the space captured by the eye of the camera.

A collage of Derek Jarman's super 8 footage spanning over 20 years.

A collection of Jim Henson's commercials, industrial reels, short films and some related talk show appearances. Includes Henson's Oscar nominated short, "Time Piece," in its entirety. Part of the Jim Henson Legacy's "Muppets, Music & Magic" program that debuted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2004.

The film in a metaphorical form demonstrates a model of self-devouring in a closed spiritual system, it explores intermediate state between a human and a non-human: a subhuman deprived of a divine spark.

In the mountains of Córdoba hides a historical scar. In 1575, hundreds of Hênia-Kâmîare women, children and elders jumped off in order to avoid slavery. A free, poetic view at the very place where the largest mass suicide in the history of the territory known today as Argentina took place. The film is a phantasmagoric trip within this geographical extension, taking it as a vast, green cemetery.