
SELF SONG documents a body besieged by cancer. The amber glow of flesh suggests both victory and submission to death. Blackness surrounds the image and takes it over altogether. Furthermore, the complex grooves and patterns of the flesh struggle to maintain their focus, suggesting the obscuring and dissolving effects of cancer. In DEATH SONG the film begins with blue hues which suggest the permanent aspect of death to contrast a sequence of overexposed yellow. Within these images are microscopic organisms constantly being 'washed out' by whiteness, which seeks to dissolve the image. In this respect, we might view the purity of whiteness as being 'soiled'. By the end of the film, the image has shifted to the blue screen suggesting a comfortable aspect of death. Yet, this vision is too idyllic in Brakhage's mind, and thus he allows the blueness to bleed from the side of the frame, opening the 'blinds' to the cancerous light. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

SELF SONG documents a body besieged by cancer. The amber glow of flesh suggests both victory and submission to death. Blackness surrounds the image and takes it over altogether. Furthermore, the complex grooves and patterns of the flesh struggle to maintain their focus, suggesting the obscuring and dissolving effects of cancer. In DEATH SONG the film begins with blue hues which suggest the permanent aspect of death to contrast a sequence of overexposed yellow. Within these images are microscopic organisms constantly being 'washed out' by whiteness, which seeks to dissolve the image. In this respect, we might view the purity of whiteness as being 'soiled'. By the end of the film, the image has shifted to the blue screen suggesting a comfortable aspect of death. Yet, this vision is too idyllic in Brakhage's mind, and thus he allows the blueness to bleed from the side of the frame, opening the 'blinds' to the cancerous light. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
1997-10-22
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10.0As technology accelerates, our species' collective imagination of the future grows ever more kaleidoscopic. We are all haunted by temporal distortion, perhaps no more than when we attempt to remember what the future looked like to our younger selves. As the mist of time devours our memories, the future recedes; each of us burdened by the gaping mouth of entropy. Yet, emerging technology provides a glimmer of hope; transhumanism promises a future free from mortality, disease and pain. Does our salvation lie in digital simulacra? We're here to sell you the answer to that question, for the low, low price of four hundred and seventy seconds.
Life drums the playfulness out of a boy as he grows up.
9.0Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive
8.3As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.
7.5Wallace and Gromit have run out of cheese, and this provides an excellent excuse for the duo to take their holiday to the moon, where, as everyone knows, there is ample cheese. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
7.8Wallace rents out Gromit's former bedroom to a penguin, who takes up an interest in the techno pants created by Wallace. However, Gromit later learns that the penguin is a wanted criminal. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
7.6Wallace's whirlwind romance with the proprietor of the local wool shop puts his head in a spin, and Gromit is framed for sheep-rustling in a fiendish criminal plot.
7.8A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.
0.0Short film about the Manzanar Japanese American internment camp. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.
0.0This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.
6.5Satyajit Ray's poetic documentary was commissioned by the Chogyal (King) of Sikkim at a time when he felt the sovereignty of Sikkim was under threat from both China and India. Ray's documentary is about the sovereignty of Sikkim. The film was banned by the government of India when Sikkim merged with India in 1975. The ban was finally lifted by the Ministry of External Affairs in September 2010. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.
7.1When illegal card dealer and recovering heroin addict Frankie Machine gets out of prison, he decides to straighten up. Armed with nothing but an old drum set, Frankie tries to get honest work as a drummer. But when his former employer and his old drug dealer re-enter his life, Frankie finds it hard to stay clean and eventually finds himself succumbing to his old habits.
8.0Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.
“A deadpan video art reworking of 1982's highest-grossing movie, EXTRA TERRESTRIAL peels away layers of sentimental narrative goo from its source, exposing a hard core of anxiety, loneliness and dread. Shifting the focus from character to interior, Ben Russell and Rhyne Piggott mine the landscape of a beige-carpeted ranch style house for new insights into the architecture of suburban alienation.” - Anne Reecer, Cinematexas
0.0After ending a very close relationship, Manuel falls into melancholy and begins to rethink his way of loving. Within his thoughts are the social problems that surround him. He realizes that with these comes a rethinking of what love is. An idea that we have been carrying for a long time: the idea that to love is to possess.
5.5Jerry Martin quits his dull job as a bank clerk and falls in with a band of hobos. He takes on the guise of Bachelor, the "king of the market," and finds himself pursued by dangerous men who are after the real Bachelor. *Only fragments are known to exist. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.
A virtuosic study of sync-sound cinema, Cagean organizational strategies, and montage. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.
6.8After being discredited as a coward, a 19th century seaman lives for only one purpose: to redeem himself. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.