An experimental short film by John Whitney Sr. which combines animated shapes and colors; Computer graphics as dynamic, swirling art. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.
An experimental short film by John Whitney Sr. which combines animated shapes and colors; Computer graphics as dynamic, swirling art. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.
1968-12-21
6
James Whitney’s Lapis (1966) is a classic work of abstract cinema, a 10-minute animation that took three years to create using primitive computer equipment. In this piece smaller circles oscillate in and out in an array of colors resembling a kaleidoscope while being accompanied with Indian sitar music. The patterns become hypnotic and trance inducing. This work clearly correlates the auditory and the visual and is a wonderful example of the concept of synaesthesia.
Cartoon figures announce, via comic strip balloons, that they will move - and move they do, in a wildly exaggerated style. Also known as "Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics".
A man is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. When his wife is murdered and his son kidnapped and taken to Mexico, he devises an elaborate and dangerous plan to rescue his son and avenge the murder.
Ivan sets off on a dangerous mission into Syria to save his ex-commander Grey after his capture by ISIS. With the help of U.S. military patrols, he succeeds in freeing Grey and attempts to escape the country while being hunted by terrorists.
The film tells a story speaks of "Yusuf ", a plumbing Man, who is exposed to many pranks by his friends.
In Rome it hasn’t rained for three years and the lack of water is overturning rules and habits. Through the city dying of thirst and prohibitions moves a chorus of people, young and old, marginalised and successful, victims and profiteers. Their lives are linked in a single design, while each seeks his or her deliverance.
Near the end of WW2, prisoners of war are used in experiments to perfect the Arian race.
Like the original film, the sequel is set in a near future where all drinking and drugs are banned except for on one glorious day known as The Binge. This year, that day happens to miraculously land on Christmas.
An expert hacker is targeted by a sentient AI after she realizes the threat it poses, and she must try to stay off its radar long enough to stop it.
This unique cinematic experience dives deep into an artist’s work and reveals his life path, inspiration, and creative process. It explores his fascination with myth and history. Past and present are interwoven to diffuse the line between film and painting, allowing the audience to be completely immersed in the remarkable world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. Wim Wenders shot this unique portrait over the course of two years in stunning 3D.
Three friends are arrested after committing an accident with their car. After finishing their sentence, they become partners with the owner of a decoration workshop. But he deceives them and spends the money in gambling. They force him to sign a waiver of his workshop but he wants to get it back.
When aimless Manon begins work at À mon seul désir, a strip club that offers high concept performances, she instantly bonds with her fellow strippers, particularly Mia, an aspiring actress with a boyfriend and child. Manon learns that it is “not easy money, but fast money” and when she finds herself falling for Mia, she is forced to question her priorities as she explores her newfound erotic life.
The Farels are a power couple: Jean is a prominent French pundit and his wife Claire an essayist known for her radical feminism. Together they have a model son, Alexandre, who is a student at a prestigious American university. During a brief visit to Paris, Alexandre meets Mila, the daughter of his mother’s new partner, and invites her to a party. The next day, Mila files a complaint against Alexandre for rape, destroying family harmony and setting in motion an inextricable media-judicial machine that posits opposing truths.
An airport security officer races to outsmart a mysterious traveler forcing him to let a dangerous item slip onto a Christmas Eve flight.
A meeting in a London bus with jewel thief Lady Christina takes a turn for the worse for the Doctor when the bus takes a detour to a desert-like planet, where the deadly Swarm awaits.
On July 7, 1944, a U.S. Army hospital on the remote island of Saipan is overrun by Japanese forces during a relentless attack. Outgunned and surrounded by the enemy, a lone medic puts it all on the line to lead a band of wounded soldiers to safety.
An observational film that using the fragmented format of a newscast program proposes a cinematic glance to the same reality depicted daily by the media.
Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.
A documentary on the Wilmington 10, 9 afro-Americans and 1 white woman who were unjustly imprisoned. 4K digital restoration by the Academy Film Archive released in 2021.
Benjamina Miyar Díaz (1888-1961) led an unusual life in her house on calle del Agua in Corao, Asturias, at the foot of the Picos de Europa mountain range in northern Spain: she was a photographer and watchmaker for more than forty years, but she also fought in her own humble and heroic way against General Franco's dictatorship.
Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.
The film reflects Dewdney's conviction that the projector, not the camera, is the filmmaker's true medium. The form and content of the film are shown to derive directly from the mechanical operation of the projector - specifically the maltese cross movement's animation of the disk and the cross illustrates graphically (pun intended) the projector's essential parts and movements. It also alludes to a dialectic of continuous-discontinuous movements that pervades the apparatus, from its central mechanical operation to the spectator's perception of the film's images... (His) soundtrack demonstrates that what we hear is also built out of continuous-discontinuous 'sub-sets.' Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.
In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.
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.
Found footage anti-war film comprising film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian army on the Alpine front, and from first generation picture material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.
This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”
An experimental sports film made partly during the Scandinavian Open Championships in Halmstad in 1970, partly during the Chinese players' exhibition tour in Denmark immediately after the SOC. First of all, it is a film about their style, about the artistic culmination that is ping-pong at its best, it records China's comeback into the international sports world.
Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.
Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”
On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.
"After two years of massive didacticism in black-and-white [Hapax Legomena (1971-72)], I am surprised by Tiger Balm, lyrical, in color, a celebration of generative humors and principles, in homage to the green of England, the light of my dooryard… and consecutive matters." - HF
An analysis of film’s persistent relationship to sexuality, mediated by allusions to early cinema’s flicker, and other aggressive qualities of the cinematic apparatus.
Arab-American filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi embraces the rhythmic rituals that have run alongside Islamic tradition throughout the centuries in this surreal and poetic short film. Piecing together old and new, Al-Rashi's dream-like imagery breathes fresh air to a subject hardly seen in positive light.
Believe it or not, esoteric film sages, i.e., Phil Solomon, are open to the possibilities of working with video — and even video games. This is a film that takes images from the notorious wanton car-jacking shoot-em-up Grand Theft Auto video game.