Vukica Djilas – Home Movies

Portrait of Costa da Morte (coast region in Galicia, Spain) from an ethnographic and landscape level, exploring also the collective imagination associated with the area. A region marked by strong oceanic feeling dominated by the historical conception of world's end and with tragic shipwrecks. Fragmentary film that approaches to the anthropological from its protagonists: sailors, shellfish, loggers, farmers ... A selection of characters representative of the traditional work carried out in the countryside in the region, allowing us to reflect on the influence of the environment on people.

Film is made out of gelatin that comes from horses. They’re waiting to be slaughtered, so that pictures can be made. Many years ago we learned the language of our masters. Though we couldn’t help wondering why so few of you bothered to learn ours. Three scenes featuring horses, remembering Jacinto. The first is a daytime forest haunting that winds up at a carousel, the second a rainy street in Portugal, the finale a nighttime vigil of fire and water.

A bed of flowers.

Fragments 83 rediscovers—and repurposes—Richard Millen 1983 experimental film If You Can’t Be with the One You Love, shot in Brooklyn and the West Village in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The resulting documentary explores the hunt for sex/love, the joy of making cinema, and the inexorable passage of time.

"This tape is an exploration of my latent heterosexuality with porn star / performance artist Annie Sprinkle as instructor and sage. After assuaging my fears that I can have sex with a woman & still maintain my gay identity, Annie warms me up with some playful, sensual wrestling. She then instructs in the use of a tampon while relating men's need to make war with their inability to menstruate. For the rest of the tape, she guides me through the specifics of sexual exploration, positions of coital congress as well as post- coital ritual."

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Originality in a time of poorly made copies, a filmic inventory of a strange time, a kaleidoscope of images, in a constant game of ruptures and continuities. All this from 365 videos published on an Instagram page in 2018, added to an original soundtrack and a text adapted from Dürrenmatt's play Dialogue of a Vile Man, a text that synthesizes our time well.

Using only nature and his immediate surroundings, filmmaker Brandon Wilson creates an experimental documentary that ignites the imagination of wandering in nature, and creates a loving portrait to the woods he calls home. Over the course of a year, Wilson set out to document— and accentuate—his surroundings through camera filters, angles, repetition, and audio. The end result is a hypnotic journey through the hidden wonders and beauties of the Northwest forests, in vivid colors and immaculate black-and-whites.

Throughout three decades, Bill Laswell has been a constant innovator, fusing seemingly disparate genres into a whole new sound. Touching upon everything from worldbeat, funk, rock, hip-hop and jazz, there are no limits to his experimental approach. Among his many talents is his ability to bring together well-matched singers and players to create a distinct style that defies easy classification. His Soundstage episode embodies his unique approach, transcending any genre boundaries and delivering an engaging performance. From the World Beat of Tabla Beat Science, to the jazzy flavors of Pharoah Sanders backed by Material, it’s an exciting mix. Other surprises include a rocking Buckethead set that includes a little breakdancing and songs by Praxis. The show culminates with an all-star performance, funked up by Bootsy Collins.

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organised in part by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…

Safe places to view from.

Living in fragments, pieced together in varied ways, uncertainly, and yet... Inside there is a familiar chaos, awaiting a key...

In the fall of 1967, intermedia artists Ture Sjölander and Lars Weck collaborated with Bengt Modin, video engineer of the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation in Stockholm, to produce an experimental program called Monument. It was broadcast in January, 1968, and subsequently has been seen throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. Apart from the technical aspect of the project, their intention was to develop a widened consciousness of the communi - cative process inherent in visual images. They selected as source material the "monuments" of world culture— images of famous persons and paintings.

A visual journey through the Mapocho river.

A docudrama about art and creativity; based on modern art gallery in Tehran and its founder Jazeh Tabatabai.

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

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

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.

The film is an insight into a teacher's soul and a contemplation upon his teaching fate. This portrait of a unique, experimental filmmaker and teacher Martin Čihák takes a look at his teaching methods, his meetings with his students at FAMU and at a park where they work with film, or in his studio.