Essay

As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

In 2010, an obsessed gamer designed the perfect game of Sim City. Achieved through a repeating pattern of clustered high rises, “Magnasanti” exposes the hellish consequences of top-down civic design. In his new documentary, John Wilson explores how New York City is creeping closer and closer to realising this fictional metropolis.

An essay film about... things that don't make sense. Or maybe they do, I don't know. You tell me.

A film-letter that tells the tale of an unlikely and recurring discussion about the perception of herons in the urban environment. (Un)intentionally, it raises questions about how we see ourselves as residents of "less affluent" areas of Rio de Janeiro.

An experimental study about Czech life, focusing on Prague's National Street, its businesses and the varied people who frequent it.

Partly a parody, partly a mockumentary, partly an essay film - and also an actual behind the scenes documentary of two short films.

Jim, a slacker college student, decides to procrastinate on an essay worth 25% of his grade. Will he finish in time, or suffer the consequences?

The film begins as a documentary about an author known for autofiction. By incorporating multiple making-of layers, it blends the process of making the documentary with the author’s narrative technique.

While Trevor and Sam are smoking pot, Trevor’s mom comes home. When she finds out, Trevor reveals his father’s adulterous ways and destroys his family.

A video essay about a conversation the director had with a friend about a particular picture of a cat sitting in front of a plate of blins.

Humankind has always dreamt of the night sky. Of the infinite freedom offered by the black void, and of the strong, shining beacon inviting us to ascend. This is a story, a history of the events that led up to our conquest of space, and the consequences throughout wider humanity. The film is a collage. Of genres, documentary and comedy. Of media, drawing from painting and film. Of films, cannibalising all film history. Of truth, both objective and subjective. Watch the small steps and let your mind take a giant leap.

A videographic fantasia on the films of Alfred Hitchcock that quickly veers into controlled insanity. Through fervor and mania, this unconventional cinematic homage re-imagines the influence of the master of suspense. A "murdergame" means to will a dream into existence, and fall victim to obsession.

Shot on 16mm celluloid across parts of New Zealand and Samoa, interdisciplinary artist Sam Hamilton’s ten-part experimental magnum opus makes thought-provoking connections between life on Earth and the cosmos, and, ultimately, art and science. Structured around the ten most significant celestial bodies of the Milky Way, Apple Pie’s inquiry begins with the furthest point in our solar system, Pluto, as a lens back towards our home planet and the ‘mechanisms by which certain aspects of scientific knowledge are digested, appropriated and subsequently manifest within the general human complex’. Christopher Francis Schiel’s dry, functional narration brings a network of ideas about our existence into focus, while Hamilton’s visual tableaux, as an extension of his multifaceted practice, veer imaginatively between psychedelic imagery and performance art.

The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.

An essay film in which three young people unearth a clandestine archive of Brazilian cinema and plunge into a Dadaist–Third World delirium. Amid forbidden images and personal memories, they implode the very idea of Brazil.

A found-footage essay, Filmfarsi salvages low budget thrillers and melodramas suppressed following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Everyday Maneuver is a video that presents the viewer with an unrealistic scenery. Shot from a drone, it shows a city at daytime, but there isn't a single human being in it. What seems disconnected from everyday life, and as artificial as a landscape created with computer graphics, is in fact a recording that was made during one of the annual "Wanan Air Raid Drills" that have been implemented in Taiwan since 1978.

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard.

A rose is a rose by any other name would be, well, something different, particularly if the rose was a woman. This tape is a witty and thoughtful exploration of naming and the importance of names in knowing who you are and where you come from, particularly in a world where you meet so many people but get to know so few. Christine Stewart s teasing voiceover and sly visuals slip between the pages of the phone book to provide a cunning directory to the loss of women's names, the anonymity that makes them feel safe and the eclipse of their identity in shedding their maiden names. Rich colours, great found footage and insightful musing open up traces of history in the story behind Jane Doe.