Emak-Bakia

A hole gapes in a house wall. A small flaw, something imperfect that we seldom consciously direct our attention to. Filmmaker Ondřej Vavrečka finds holes in every corner. His focus is on the imperfections of human existence. A hole can also mean an uncertain future, or an empty stomach. The gap that partners leave behind after a breakup. Ondřej Vavrečka does not only deal with visible holes. He looks at the incomplete from a philosophical perspective. He also lets a nuclear physicist, a theologian and an ethnologist have their say. He underscores their thoughts and theses with absurd everyday scenes: a woman with a chair on her head or an invisible skier. These scenes combine with interviews, sounds and stop-motion sequences to create a playful collage.

Super 8 experimental film by Claudio Caldini.

Arab-American filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi embraces the rhythmic rituals that have run alongside Islamic tradition throughout the centuries in this surreal and poetic short film. Piecing together old and new, Al-Rashi's dream-like imagery breathes fresh air to a subject hardly seen in positive light.

Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.

Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”

On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.

Embarks on a journey that traces the life and work of Antonio Martorell, a prolific plastic and multi-disciplinary artist in Puerto Rico. This film is a dance between the director (Paloma Suau) and the portraitist while portraying each other. More than a documentary, this film is an experiment of a director trying to reconnect with her creative voice.

Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.

SONG 5: A childbirth song (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

An observational film that using the fragmented format of a newscast program proposes a cinematic glance to the same reality depicted daily by the media.

Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.

A day in the life of an 'organillero' as he plays his music in the streets of a Chilean city.

A recollection of almost 40 years of career. A giant image-jukebox, from early 70s autoportrait to films for Alain Bashung / Elli Medeiros, private karaokes to “video sculptures” applied to John Travolta or Maria Callas, and much much more…

Found footage anti-war film comprising film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian army on the Alpine front, and from first generation picture material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.

Cine-diaries about rock bands and personalities from the eighties from the archives of Edgar Pêra.

A short film about the meeting of a Trappist monk and a Zen Buddhist master.

A day in the life of director Boris Lehman: he wanders from cafe to bookshop, cinema to museum, writer to musician, and into the storeroom of the film archive... He celebrates his birthday in an alleyway, with a friend, and finishes his journey with an escapade to Bruges and a stroll by the North Sea. The camera plays dirty tricks and the sound recorder gets carried away, to the point that both are clearly telling Boris to stop filming. Yet he persists…

An experimental sports film made partly during the Scandinavian Open Championships in Halmstad in 1970, partly during the Chinese players' exhibition tour in Denmark immediately after the SOC. First of all, it is a film about their style, about the artistic culmination that is ping-pong at its best, it records China's comeback into the international sports world.

Lucía and Valeria take out three Tarot cards that reveal the first two dishes of a menu that takes them from Embún, Spain to Llanquihue, Chile; the towns of their grandmothers. Among improvised still lifes, maps and video calls, the friends try to discover the meaning of the third card through a ritual that connects both continents.