The director goes to the city of Cuenca in Spain, Castilla-La Mancha for Erasmus. In this process, he records his experiences, days, and trips with a digital handheld camera and Super 8mm. A visual diary of the director is documented by witnessing the 2022 spring period in Spain and Portugal with images.
Himself
Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.
In 2016, Aekaphong’s uncle was murdered in his house alongside his wife. A year later, Aekaphong returns to his hometown to investigate the man’s past and come to terms with his absence.
The comings and goings of the late underground filmmaker, Curt McDowell—and the people and activities that came and went along with him—are the themes that run through this existential diary of daily life. McDowell was dying from AIDS-related illnesses during the production of the diary. “An elegy for McDowell, the videowork captures Kuchar’s mournful remembrances of his long-lasting friendship with the young filmmaker. But it also has the inquisitive charm, perverse humor, and quirky candor that places Kuchar’s visual expressions in a gritty niche all their own.”
An intimate glimpse into 3 years of serene moments, compiling video, polaroids and other things that were lying around when editing.
Filmed in the quaint prairie town of Herbert, Saskatchewan, Heaven or Not by filmmakers Zuzana Hudackova and Danijel Margetic is an intimate portrayal of one man's tireless journey to give his life greater meaning. John Gerbrandt, a WWII veteran, has been singlehandedly building a 7,000-square-foot house over the past three decades with nothing more than his pension and salvaged materials. With no formal training, he is fuelled by a powerful determination to prove his worth to his God, his family, and his community. John's story transcends day-to-day life in a small town and reaches the realm of deep spirituality marked by an unwavering commitment. Now at the age of 84, suffering from health problems and the financial burden of property taxes, John might not be able to finish his lifelong endeavor.
For years, together with his partners from the production company O Quadro, he has been betting on cinema as a tool to explore the typical issues of youth. In this film, Evandro Scorsin turns the cameras on himself as he deals with the dilemmas of the passing of time and the imposition of adulthood. In an exercise in autofiction where cinema and life merge, the film is also a cinematic love letter to the beloved masters (especially Nicholas Ray). Coming and going between two countries and times, it records the vertigo of displacement and the reinventions inherent to an immigrant experience.
Documentary relating Ingmar Bergman's life, from his high school graduation up until he became an established filmmaker in the latter half of the 40's.
Pedro is Mallorcan, born to a mother from Burgos and a father from Mallorca. Due to his distant relationship with his father, Pedro doesn't fully master Mallorcan as a language. He turns to the works of Damià Huguet to remember his father, as only his poems can fill the void left by his death. The poet's words transport Pedro to his childhood and his roots, even though many of the words are unknown to him, despite them belonging to his language. This becomes the driving force behind the protagonist's search for his own identity, his origins, what it means to be a man, father-son relationships, collective identity, and "mallorquinness". Pedro constantly questions the emotions stirred by Huguet's poetry, and, most importantly, who he is and where he belongs.
When director Iván Guarnizo's mother passes during the first days of peace talks with FARC-EP in Colombia, a door opens to explore a dark and painful past and, perhaps, find forgiveness. Iván's mother had been kidnapped by FARC-EP forces and held in captivity for 603 days. As they marched her through the jungles and mountains of the Colombian countryside, she was able to keep a diary that in great detail documented the places she was taken, her experiences and the names and descriptions of her captors.
A short film of the first weeks of strict national lockdown, filmed in Barcelona on a classic home video camera Hi8. Narrates the story of three women who share a flat and who create a microworld not only to survive the global pandemic but also to survive themselves.
The film weaves together the filmmaker's introspections with survivor's collective memories. Amid deciphering a diary, the filmmaker reflects on personal encounters.
Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.
Hit Him on the Head with a Hard, Heavy Hammer departs from the handwritten memoir of the filmmaker’s father and his experience of displacement during wartime. Referring to the notion Thomas Hardy termed ‘The Self-Unseeing’ in his eponymous 1901 poem, the film returns to childhood and the matters that harden us: upbringing, social status, education, labour, and familial bonds. The memoir weaves into the film as both a contemplation on mortality and an illustration of fading memory, reflecting on how we pen our pasts and how they can be re-told.
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
This documentary recounts the difficult choice actress Mary Astor had to make after learning her personal, very intimate, diaries had been stolen. The film tells the story of Astor's 1936 child custody case.
“I have on occasion experienced filmmaking as an intensely shared activity. Lively friendships result and remain. Filming that affection today is no act of nostalgia. Paths once crossed make things simple. People who have been behind the camera, or in front of it, giving the movie their all, are without illusion.” (Alain Cavalier)
A glimpse of life through movement and memory, negotiating a narrative through images and sounds both personal and found, private and public, recounting four years of the filmmaker's life, relocating from Iran to the US.