
In 1973, the Shah of Iran commissioned the construction of a paper factory in the lush northern province of Gilan. The arrival of heavy industry in a predominately agricultural region brought with it a series of interventions into this landscape, including the construction of modernist apartment blocks and purpose-built villas to house foreign engineers from Canada and the United States and their families. Their stay, however, came to a sudden halt in 1979 with the Iranian revolution forcing them to flee the site overnight. Chooka unfolds around the site of this factory, returning to the location 40 years after it mysteriously appeared in Jacques Madvo’s 1978 footage. Treating his archival material as a guide, the film moves through a landscape altered by industry, technology and revolution, bringing silent images from the past forward to a location caught within a perpetually uncertain present.

In 1973, the Shah of Iran commissioned the construction of a paper factory in the lush northern province of Gilan. The arrival of heavy industry in a predominately agricultural region brought with it a series of interventions into this landscape, including the construction of modernist apartment blocks and purpose-built villas to house foreign engineers from Canada and the United States and their families. Their stay, however, came to a sudden halt in 1979 with the Iranian revolution forcing them to flee the site overnight. Chooka unfolds around the site of this factory, returning to the location 40 years after it mysteriously appeared in Jacques Madvo’s 1978 footage. Treating his archival material as a guide, the film moves through a landscape altered by industry, technology and revolution, bringing silent images from the past forward to a location caught within a perpetually uncertain present.
2018-01-23
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10.0Simultaneously sumptuous and gorgeous, garish and grim, this is a re-working of Pinocchio for the neo-liberal era. Rachel Maclean’s dark fairytale, which represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale 2017, depicts a brash and baroque binary world of poverty and riches where the prospect of easy wealth tempts even good boys like Pic into bad ways. But if everyone believes the lie, what’s the problem?
0.0Rosso Fiorentino's painting "The Deposition of the Cross" comes to life. The Christ is gradually removed from his cross by the biblical characters who surround him.
5.5Avant-garde homage to pre-revolution Russian silent movies, and to the poet Aleksandr Blok.
0.0An animated short consisting of 4 segments: bowl, garden, theatre, marble game. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Harvard Film Archive in 2015.
0.0Commissioned by David Bienstock, creator of the New American Film Series at the Whitney Museum of Art to raise funds for the second season of the series. The film was projected at the end of each program and a box to receive donations was placed at the exit of the theater. Whitney Commercial ran for two or three years until the Museum agreed to sponsor the series on its own which has continued to the present season. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.
7.0The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
5.9Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
4.4In Vigo, Spain, during Christmas, Ángel, a Spanish filmmaker, walks through the crowded streets while thinking about a possible movie made of…
0.0This experimental nature documentary by Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts depicts climate change and the wave of extinction from the point of view of our near future. Actually, it depicts the age we live in now, or rather its fateful consequences.
A sinister montage intimates the hellish void facing a man emptying bottles by the river. Sandy Fisher’s densely reverberating electronic score provides strong support for Lloyd Williams’ cultic collage of skulls, chess boards and fire.
0.0In 1933, at age 33, Harry Alan Potamkin died of complications related to starvation, at a time when he was one of the world's most respected film critics. In his writings, he advocated for a cinema that would simultaneously embrace the fractures and polyphony of modern life and the equitable social vision of left radical politics. This film-biography is assembled out of distorted fragments of films on which he had written, an impression of erupting consciousness.
0.0Exploring the duality between friendship and loneliness, this intimate narrative short tells the story of David, a bright young boy struggling with a broken home life, as he tries to reconnect with his childhood best friends as they search for something to do in their small suburban town.
5.6Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.
0.0After a brutal robbery, a Shopkeeper sets out to get back what was stolen from him: his pride. Featuring a unique blend of fiction and reality.
10.0Flitter like tittertatter trying to breathe while working, like a mad hatter; the outofbreath feeling rising from recursive reforgettings (or their resemblances).
10.0Tales of old springing forth underlying dissatisfaction with current states of being.
10.0Rather pointless, rather stilted, fetid; not what we want us going after.
0.0Journalist Dermi Azevedo has never stopped fighting for human rights and now, three decades after the end of the military dictatorship in Brazil, he's witnessing the return of those same practices.