Still Raining, Still Dreaming

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).

Folk portraiture, images of children in suburbia.

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.

7362 is concerned with dividing and joining together. It begins with two black circles against a white background, knocking together and gradually moving further apart. The circles fade out, and return as white circles against black inside a square. Images similar to Rorschach blots appear. Gradually the viewer realizes that the images were not originally abstract, but were human forms (dancers, gymnasts, etc.), bridges, and others that have been split down the center of the frame, with their mirror images printed on either side of the split. Red, green, and white tints further abstract the images from their original foundations in the natural world, making dancers appear to be amoebas or dividing cells. The accompanying sound track is a mixture of electronic music and musique concrète ("real" recorded sounds manipulated to sound abstract).

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.

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.

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.

A story of an artist entertainer who swallowed razors, glasses, records, light bulbs, nails, forks and everything else hard to swallow. Cannibalism and auto-cannibalism included.

Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

A proto-music video: three minutes of experimental animation set to the tune of Romeo Nelson's 'Head Rag Hop'.

The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.

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

An abstract experimental short film from Jordan Belson.

A silent succession of black-and-white photographs of the city of Montreal.

Experimental short film by Michio Mihara.

"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito

A short movie about a guy living in his own world.

Thanks to his myriad film roles, Lon Chaney is known as “the man of a thousand faces,” and you could say that the early horror era never beheld a figure more intriguing. Yet because of his numerous transformations, his face never became as iconic as that of, say, Boris Karloff. Accompanied by a soundtrack from Bernhard Lang, this “re-imagination of shots” taken from Chaney´s forty-six surviving films offers a beguiling excursion into the history of film. The director reveals surprising associations, while highlighting the enduring magic of works which are now more or less forgotten.

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."

A look at the various modes of transportation made for the Expo '86 World Fair in Vancouver, Canada.