Visual Essays: Origins of Film(1984)

Visions of Europe(en)

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her(fr)

As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

Exergo(eu)

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.

Donosti 2730(es)

A youngster writes a letter to his grandmother about his last trip to Donosti (Spain). This city inspires him to ponder about the language of cinema, time, cities, and sharing memories with our loved ones.

And the Dogs Were Silent(fr)

For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.

Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons(en)

Penthesilea, the first of six films made by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, traverses thousands of years to look at the image of the Amazonian woman in myth. It asks, among other questions, is the Amazonian woman a rare strong female image or is she a figure derived from male phantasy? The film explores the complexities of such questions, but does not seek any concrete answers.

I don't want to have to be loud(de)

She is defined; from birth on. The role she has to play, who she is and what she is made of is not determined by her. If one’s own body and gender are a political issue, it is about time that one’s own voice is heard.

Lost in blue(fr)

Remastered Brutality(tr)

Alinur, a student filmmaker, tries to make a film about the apocalypse for his capstone project. The movie itself happens to be about a mercenary named M who inadvertently causes an apocalypse. As he tries to “create” the destruction of this supposed apocalypse through utilizing technical gimmicks that he has enforced onto the production of the film, this supposed effort also creeps in as a force that starts to “destroy” him, piece by piece. The outcome of it tests the sincerity of not only the film itself but also of the performative efforts that Alinur has made as a filmmaker—even this test might not be as sincere as it seems.

Une vie pour deux(fr)

Freely adapted from the eponymous novel, Une vie pour deux is inspired by real events, the discovery by the novelist's husband (director Jean-Pierre Ronfard) of the corpse of a young woman on a beach in Ireland in the late 1970s.

Frankenstein (Re)Membered(en)

Since its publication 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has influenced vast swathes of popular culture. Adaptations have starred cinema legends from Boris Karloff to Robert De Niro – and even Alvin and the Chipmunks. From tales of science gone mad (Jurassic Park) to stories of understanding the other (ET, The Hulk, Arrival), traces of the story and its themes have spread across our media. With Frankenstein Re-membered, video artist and film historian Chris Gerrard collects these diverse fragments from the birth of cinema until the present day and in the tradition of Victor Frankenstein himself, attempts to stitch them back together into an adaptation of the original Shelley novel.

Oxymoron Life...(pt)

The wanderer Rascal embarks on a psychotic and contradictory journey to break out of the ego bubble in which his self-loathing and isolation have inserted him in. After his metamorphosis, his soulmate, Paloma, makes him realize that life is as complicated as it is simple - and that all that's left to do is to live.

Jetzt hier, nirgends(de)

A short movie about dreams and the personalities we become in an unknown world where everything is possible.

Bruja(de)

A story of diaspora. The film criticises the myth of Swiss neutrality, which violently masks structural, systemic, and social passivity.

Hands Up!(pl)

The reunion of a group of former medical students results in a flood of bitter memories.

SONHO QUE VIVIA ACORDADO(pt)

Beyond Tragedies(pt)

Recalling his childhood and relationship with his mother, a film student tries to understand the origin of his love for cinema and tragedies.

The Scars(eu)

The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?

Dr Tscharniblues(de)

Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. A group of friends get together to make a film about their experiences growing up in suburban Switzerland.

Engel und Puppe(it)

Engel und Puppe is the first film by Italian filmmaker and writer Ellis Donda. Screened at Oberhausen in 1975, Engel und Puppe is a political adaptation of some lines from Rilke's Duino Elegies, featuring the French poet Jacqueline Risset and a young Rossella Or (soon to become an avant-garde theatre actress).