The filmmaker sends the viewers off to sleep with this 9minute descent into the netherworld.
"This is my only truly solo video project. The tape is an exploration of character and was done in direct reaction to my performance work at the time, which was characterless. Video seemed a good way, by virtue of it not operating in 'real' time, of dealing with character and psychological motivation. 'The Banana Man' was a minor figure on a children's television show I watched in my youth. I, myself, never saw this performer. Everything I know about him was told to me by my friends. The Banana Man is an attempt at constructing the psychology of the character — problematized by the fact that the character is already a fictional one, and by the fact that none of my observations were direct ones."
Through the uses of kinescope, video, multimedia, and direct painting on film, an impression is gained of the frantic action of protoplasm under a microscope where an imaginative viewer may see the genesis of it all. – Grove Press Film Catalog
Lacking 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.
Filmmaker and teacher, Stéphane Marti has been researching experimental cinema as an art form liberated of aesthetic codes and the economics of big budget cinema. His work is primarily focused on the themes of the sacred and the human body. An avid supporter of the Super-8 format, he has been fighting for its merits as a tool. He has used this format film after film and has been sharing his experiences with new filmmakers during his workshops at the Sorbonne’s College of the Arts (Paris I).
In December, 1941, using music by Stravinsky, this film provides a reaction to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. An egg is smashed by a hammer; red color with white and then blue dominates the frame. Blue paint runs; small bulbs float. The dark colors spread. White, red, blue, and black dominate the frame. Then comes fire. The bulbs burn and break. A broken bulb's filaments are exposed.
This psychedelic horror short inspired by vintage cinema follows a raped girl's descent into derangement and makes the audience feel as claustrophobic as the character.
The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
Begotten 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.
Dementia draws a woman into a world of memory loops, losing her love her spirit, her present her past.
Five passengers encounter a mysterious woman on a train. While we strain to hear their whispers, we are confronted by the passengers' reactions. Dark and secretive, this journey will leave you with questions playing on your mind.
Norman McLaren made Scherzo early after his arrival in North America in 1939, but the film was subsequently lost. In 1984 the original materials were found and the hand-drawn images and sound were reconstituted. Picture and sound dance triple-quick in this animated version of a musical scherzo. A film without words.
Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)
An Appropriated Self-portrait is an autobiographical piece conceived through the articulation of appropriated and recycled film fragments from over 180 movies and found footage. It was assembled as a fragmentary structure that relies on a non-linear narrative.
Sunspring is a short film about three people living in a weird future, possibly on a space station, probably in a love triangle. You know it's the future because H (played with neurotic gravity by Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch) is wearing a shiny gold jacket, H2 (Elisabeth Gray) is playing with computers, and C (Humphrey Ker) announces that he has to "go to the skull" before sticking his face into a bunch of green lights. It sounds like your typical sci-fi B-movie, complete with an incoherent plot. Except Sunspring isn't the product of Hollywood hacks—it was written entirely by an AI. To be specific, it was authored by a recurrent neural network called long short-term memory, or LSTM for short. At least, that's what we'd call it. The AI named itself Benjamin.
A group of musicians seem isolated from the world playing beautiful pieces. But in the darkness of the night, and from their minds, there are melancholies on earth, loves and families that they left behind. Their silences, their letters, these elements shape the poetic intention of this documentary.
Neil Bishop has spent his whole life living on the fringes of society. His only interaction with people is through his job as a lost luggage courier. One day, Neil delivers luggage to a woman in suffering, and he discovers someone like him. In this dreamlike psychological thriller, Neil Bishop sets out to make today, unlike any other day.
The first collaboration between Matthew Barney & Elizabeth Peyton, Blood of Two is a unique, site-specific work that draws its references from Hydra itself – the surrounding environment, animals, humans, and local traditions are all part of the project in equal measure. Blood of Two centers on the former function of the Slaughterhouse and the customs of Hydra to establish connections between paganism and religion, ancient and modern, the ritualistic and familiar. As much as its conflicted terms strive for balance and fusion, it is Blood of Two’s greater resistance to these impulses, its failure to surrender unconditionally to them that ultimately counts, as a network of overlaps and crisscrosses.
A woman is stalked by a mysterious hooded spectre. An Autumnal homage to and inspired by Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren.