Are you going to push yourself hard to behave according to what the authorities dictate until you become numb as a wilted wood? An experimental film about the pressure of conforming to the society. Accustomed to the standards, people are throwing judgment and prejudice against each other that squeeze them much harder towards the invisible walls. Hypocrisy is celebrated and there’s no room for moving and no space for breathing. Human senses may be the roots of all sins, but these senses are also the foundation of life.
First film by Julio Bressane shot in exile, "Memoirs" is a film about a man who repeatedly kills the same type of woman in same places, the same way. Filmed on the streets of London.
The cinematic kiss is probably one of the most archetypical images to be found in film history. It is usually a reassuring and sometimes climactic element in a movie's storyline. Not in Nicolas Provost's 'Gravity' though: with stroboscopic effects, more than a dozen kissing scenes, most from stereotypical 1950s romantic dramas, are edited together and superimposed. Narrative is subverted as the kissing is isolated from its context entirely; the action slows down and flickers back and forth. Every now and then, shots from different films overlap and match; protagonists merge and diverge again a few seconds later. The sugary and dramatic soundtrack of romantic film music contrasts with the deconstructed images; together, they form a dazzling 6-minute vertigo where love becomes a passionate battle.
THE BRIGHT DAY weaves a story that has its roots in the complexity of Iran’s draconian laws governing capital punishment. A kindergarten teacher hopes to aid the father of one of her young students, a man accused of manslaughter, by convincing each of seven reluctant witnesses to come forward. No one lacks a hidden agenda in this drama in which shades of truth collide with self-interest and the specter of payback. (Gene Siskel Film Center)
Using a 35mm strip of motion picture slug featuring the recently deceased American comedian Richard Pryor, this extended Rorschach assault on the eyes moves out of a flickering chaos created by incompatible film gauges into a punchline involving historically incompatible racial stereotypes.
The film is a stage play hybrid showcasing dark and absurd sketches based on contemporary Hungarian news of the 2000's with campy, senseless musical interludes in-between. Highly experimental in nature that - like Marmite - will split its' crowd into ones that'll love it and others that'll loathe it. There's no middle grounds here. The topics included are: The Hungarian Olympians' doping scandal, political terrorism, the national elections... and more.
Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.
Moonwalker is a 1988 American experimental anthology musical film starring Michael Jackson. Rather than featuring one continuous narrative, the film expresses the influence of fandom and innocence through a collection of short films about Jackson, some of which are long-form music videos from Jackson's 1987 album Bad. The film is named after his famous dance, "the moonwalk", which he originally learned as "the backslide" but perfected the dance into something no one had seen before. The movie's introduction is a type of music video for Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" but is not the official video for the song. The film then expresses a montage of Michael's career, which leads into a parody of his Bad video titled "Badder", followed by sections "Speed Demon" and "Leave Me Alone". What follows is the biggest section where Michael plays a hero with magical powers and saves three children from Mr. Big. This section is "Smooth Criminal" which leads into a performance of "Come Together".
White Homeland Commando takes the familiar terrain of network action drama and tilts the playing field. Reminiscent of today's popular reality-based cop shows, White Homeland Commando offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organization. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in a highly textured visual style, the colors are subdued yet somehow garish, and the sound is deliberately just out of sync with the speaker's lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot — the editing is reminiscent of a television viewer flipping channels.
Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.
In The Watchmen, pulsating orbs, panopticons, roadside rest stops, and subterranean labyrinths confront the scope of human consequences and the entanglement of our seeking bodies.
An experimental film comprised of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING played forwards and backwards at the same time on the same screen, creating bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities
After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.
This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...
A surreal musical comedy set in a world where the avant-garde and the mainstream are reversed.
Composed of original footage and re-filmed found footage, Oneirologue is a remembrance of a dream that occured in June 2020. It is an experimental short that presents the impression of a mind plagued by cinematic images and subconscious impulses.
Adachi'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
Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.
Study of the relationship between observer and landscape in the contemplative experience. The view building the landscape from the necessary distance. The delimitation of its borders against the total continuum of nature. The observer immersed in the path of his gaze across the landscape. Resting the gaze in the details that make the globallity. The view selecting the space included as a landscape.
We approach to invisible details for our eyes, figures disappearing as we move away from them, diluted in space. Parts that are integrated into the whole landscape. The remoteness as disappearance. The human figure betrays us here negligible small in the vastness of the territory, the voracity of the active vacuum that surrounds him. Images captured in the Atlas region in Morocco.