In 17th-century Tuscany, a church play is performed for the benefit of young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.
Swain is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe, features a dreamlike narrative of a young man’s ritualized rejection of heterosexuality, as a mysterious woman in white gossamer pursues him through a ruined landscape.
Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.
When churlish mobster Albert Spica acquires an upscale French restaurant in London, he dines there nightly, effectively scaring off the clientele with his bad manners. His wife, Georgina, is especially disgusted by him, and soon begins an affair with regular guest Michael. Despite their best efforts to keep it secret, Spica learns about their trysts, and he plots a terrible revenge.
A quasi-sequel to Michel Houellebecq's novel The Possibility of an Island, Masbedo's short presents a post-apocalyptic landscape overseen by a distant mother nature or perhaps mother of nature portrayed by French icon Juliette Binoche.
The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.
A man’s female friend who just came back from London spends time on the river shore.
Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.
Child on a Chess Board
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
In the aftermath of an emotional shock, a ruthless high-class manager faces her own abyss, becomes pervaded by a sensory spirit and undertakes a purifying voyage.
History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.
"In medical terminology, absence of genitalia in females is referred to as "gynatresia". In other words, an extreme defect that goes beyond a mere illness" Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive
An immersion into the surreal and dreamlike world of painter, photographer and filmmaker Man Ray (1890-1976), one of the most prolific American visual artists, through four of his short films, brought to life by the atmospheric music of SQÜRL.
An unknown future. A boy confesses to the murder of another in an all-boy juvenile detention facility. More an exercise in style than storytelling, the story follows two detectives trying to uncover the case. Homosexual tension and explosive violence drives the story which delivers some weird and fascinating visuals.
CREMASTER 3 is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect...
A journey to an unknown star, a children's theatre play, an untalented writer and the fear of becoming the worst version of oneself. A mixture of live-action footage and animated scenes. A stream of (un)conscious stereotypes.
Presenting a woman, a female statue, a breathing tree, and a fish out of water, an unorthodox love story unfolds with the growth of limbs and expressive gestures. Accompanied by desire discovered and lost, erotic femininity disfigured in a domestic space, and physical forms fragmented, two women steep in their reticent intimacy.
A paean to light, a glittering bodice of a film that rapturously unfolds its subject with a shimmering luminosity.
Two men sit in a car, watching the world through the windshield. One is silent, the other is slowly drinking himself to death. External reality becomes a reflection of internal decay. Almost without words, the film speaks through gaze, sound, and silence.