A Bright Nowhere: Journeying Into Improvisation(2023)

The Yellow Shark(en)

This live recording was culled from seven September 1992 concerts given in Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based chamber orchestra that performs only contemporary music. Composed and conducted by Frank Zappa.

Sound and Silence(ja)

Toshio and Shizuko Omiro, both over seventy years old, have lived in Kawasaki, Japan since 1981. With their free-spirited lifestyle, the improvisaton duo continues to pursue their vision of changing the world into a more peaceful one in an inappropriate and unseemly way.

Waiting for Guffman(en)

Aspiring director Corky St. Clair and the marginally talented amateur cast of his hokey small-town musical production go overboard when they learn that Broadway theater agent Mort Guffman will be in attendance.

Phantasia(xx)

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

The Ghost(en)

Two college students set out to capture a ghost on film to make millions instead of doing their finals.

3 Minutes with a 12 Piece Band(en)

An exploration of the individual components that make up a jazz improvisation, told in 13 parts.

SIN PIEDAD(es)

Under the relentless sun, a killer stalks through the mountains, where the innocence of a young couple becomes prey. With no shadows to hide their fate, the hunt is a macabre game in broad daylight, where fear is not hidden in the darkness, but burns with the rawness of the unperturbed noon.

To B or to B Flat - the composer Boudewijn Buckinx(en)

Who gets the idea to write “Nine unfinished symphonies” - one of them perhaps the shortest Symphony in music history? Or "1001 sonatas’ - each lasting about a minute but in total being one of the longest pieces ever written? Like a postmodern Erik Satie the Belgium composer Boudewijn Buckinx is using music history as a playing field. The classical music audience is irritated, the avant-gardist wrinkles his nose... "Daisies in a Meadow" - that's how Buckinx described his "1001 Sonatas” for violin and piano, They play a leading role in our film, in the supporting roles the Spanish sun and the Belgian rain. The latter, however, did not show up at the set - just as you always have to be prepared for surprises with Boudewijn Buckinx. "Why is my music so simple? - Why is my music so complex?" With a wink, Buckinx gives various answers to these recurring questions. The portrait of an immensely productive artist who is radically taking his own path.

Tom Waits - Live On The Tube(en)

Tom Waits 1985 performance of "16 Shells From A 30.6" and “In the Neighborhood” from the album 'Swordfish Trombones' and "Cemetery Polka" and “Walking Spanish” from the album 'Rain Dogs' Live On The Tube.

Orson Welles in Spain(en)

Orson Welles pitches to potential investors his vision of a largely improvised bullfighter movie about an existential, James Dean type troubadour who sets himself apart from other matadors. In front of an audience of wealthy arts patrons, Welles pontificates on the state of cinema, the filmmaking process, and the art of bullfighting.

Safari Ya Gari(en)

This early travelogue film, made in a Kenyan train station, captures an impromptu musical performance. Some passengers eagerly join in while others sleep—blissfully unaware of the performance taking place around them.

Cecil Taylor: All The Notes(en)

Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and battered piano in his Brooklyn brownstone the maestro holds court with frequent stentorian pronouncements on life, art and music.

Liberté, égalité, improvisez !(fr)

GUTTER: Girls of Noise(en)

In April 2008, LRS toured across the USA and met some amazing female noise artists. This is what it is like to be a girl of noise.

The Making of Basement 626(uk)

In January 2025, experimental jazz duo Myshko Birchenko and Yevhen Puhachov, members of Hyphen Dash, travelled to Kramatorsk without any pre-made drafts or demo recordings to use music as a vessel to capture the emotions present in a place on the edge of a battle for survival and explore the therapeutic nature of music and improvisation in the brutal reality of war. They packed all the equipment into a car, drove 700 kilometres from Kyiv to the frontline city Kramatorsk, and turned one of many basements which serve as shelters into a makeshift recording studio. As a result, they recorded over 300 minutes of music, which were eventually distilled into a 90-minute album.

A Pat On The Head Causes A Dream(zh)

A filmmaker and rapper duo revive Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind” protocols - a set of filmmaking “rules” with which groups of strangers can conceive, shoot, and screen a film in just two and a half hours. Against the grim backdrop of the stringent Shanghai lockdown, the event soon turns into a sanctuary for individuals to forge collective dreams.

Fogo Corredor(pt)

William Eggleston: Musik(en)

A short documentary portrait of the artist William Eggleston; focusing particularly on his musical endeavours and his album Musik that was released through Secretly Canadian in 2017.

En Frame(es)

The Ashgrove Experiment(en)

An indie film crew throw caution to the wind when they attempt to shoot a completely improvised drama where the film's big twist is being kept secret from their lead actress, while also navigating on-set mishaps, bizarre twists of fate, and the first year of a global pandemic.