Portrait Serie - Jonas Mekas(2010)

Land Without Bread(es)

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Sarajevo Film Festival(en)

Sarajevo in the twentieth month of its besiegement. The situation is critical, but the city chooses to organise an international film festival. Dutch filmmakers Johan van der Keuken and Frank Vellenga present Van der Keuken's documentaries Face Value and Brass Unbound there, and one of the festival organisers asks a festival visitor: "What is the significance of film in war?" In Sarajevo Film Festival Film, a reflection on film, war and daily life, fictional images are juxtaposed in a disconcerting way with the gruesome reality of the life of a festival visitor.

Misty Picture(en)

The television images of the collapse of the World Trade Center were preceded by manifold stagings of the building, either as a highly symbolic icon, a speculative destruction fantasy or merely as a spectacular backdrop. In Misty Picture, city symphony, disaster movie and media trauma therapy become one.

Unser Fliegerkosmonaut(de)

Sigmund Jähn, (East) Germany's first man in space, and the preparations for the space flight are portrayed.

Keiner wird als Held geboren(de)

Heroes from the GDR's past are presented. Heroes will also be needed in the future.

A Lama from Ulaanbaatar(mn)

A twelve year old boy, living in a "yurt" but in love with hip hop and computer games is caught between modernity and tradition, aspirations and poverty and decides to become a Buddhist monk.

Everyday Life(pl)

Dialogue-free short detailing the daily tasks of a man and his wife.

Working Women(pl)

Stylized with dramatic interiors and a distorted frame rate, this early documentary miniature from Szulkin depicts six sequences of solitary, repetitious labor.

Rumstick Road(en)

A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.

Ava(es)

Flora(es)

A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

Lesser Choices(en)

The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.

STEPS(ja)

The stair of steps appear checkerboard room. Conflict between a young man tries to fit the situation and the stickman ridicules him.

Ako vznikala Ústava SR(sk)

Dobrá novina, šťastná hodina...(sk)

Chop, Chop, Chop, Chopin ...(pl)

Original animated film made for the International Chopin Year. The soundtrack consists of Fryderyk Chopin's music performed by Justyna Steczkowska, Tomasz Stańko and Michał Urbaniak. The author rejects the pompous, exalted, pathos-laden, obligatory admiration that paralyses the possibility of hearing Chopin's music in a fresh way.

Remembering Surrounded Islands(en)

For the 35th anniversary of Surrounded Islands - a monumental temporary art installation by world renowned environmental artists Christo & Jeanne-Claude that wrapped eleven small islands in Biscayne Bay with 6.5 million square feet of bubble gum pink woven polypropylene plastic - Perez Art Museum Miami presented a documentary exhibition about the work entitled Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83 | A Documentary Exhibition. This was the first time the exhibition was on display in North America.

Glass Life(en)

A dynamic configuration of images and videos overlaid with musings on human existence.

Convicts(it)

The short registers a sports spectacle of great importance (probably of soccer). We never see the spectacle itself but the people watching and reacting at the stadium.

Gun Killers(en)

Written and directed by Jason Young (Animals, Inside Time), Gun Killers takes us into the rural, secluded paradise that retired blacksmiths John and Nancy Little call home. As the tranquil light of a typical day of harvesting vegetables descends into night, we experience the secret work that John and Nancy are sometimes called upon to undertake for the RCMP.