objects in (the) mirror are closer than they appear

Rummaging for Pasts(en)

Rummaging for Pasts is an experimental juxtaposition of two cinematic documents: the video diary of an international archaeological excavation and a collection of assorted eight millimeter found footage of Indian weddings.

Everyday Portabella(es)

Ground Control(de)

A journey to an unknown star, a children's theatre play, an untalented writer and the fear of becoming the worst version of oneself. A mixture of live-action footage and animated scenes. A stream of (un)conscious stereotypes.

Yo, Diablo(en)

Joey works as a waiter for a hedonistic community of summer holiday makers in a small Mediterranean paradise. It is unclear if their exaggerated behaviors are due to the fact that the summer is coming to an end or if its just the last of their summers.

Blow-Up(en)

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

Watching a Movie(en)

A young man, attempting to watch a VHS tape of "Love Streams" by John Cassavetes on his television, is constantly harassed and annoyed by outside forces.

Sweet Movie(en)

The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

Butterfly Tears(es)

Surrounded by old toys and distant memories, Alicia loses the notion of time in the house she grew up in. As the ghosts of her past confront her, she’ll have to face their torment before they wither her away

Circles(en)

Using the opening paragraphs of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay of the same name as a point of departure, Circles employs lofi environmental textures to explore concepts surrounding circularity, sight, and the passage of time. Its world is flickering in and out of existence. It begins with footage of recognizable spaces and objects and gradually transitions into ever more manipulated, glitchy and transparently artificial and abstracted images. Textual interludes put the film in conversation with the viewer, contextualizing its images and their aged digital patina.

1-39-C(pl)

Polish avant-garde animation with changing colors and shapes that suggest birth followed by heavy distortion and building to a face in the swamp.

Palette of Her(en)

With closed eyes, a woman stands in serene stillness, her skin becoming a canvas where neutral pigments intertwine. She dances and reclines, embracing vulnerability as she finally opens her eyes and confronts the cruel world within her soul.

& More(xx)

A sparkling geometric play of shapes and forms in the M+ Museum of Hong Kong.

Koyaanisqatsi(en)

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

Sleepless far from home(fr)

Incapable of falling asleep, Mamadou starts to walk endlessly to tire himself and be able to have a final dream of where he was born.

Montage V: How to Play Pinball(en)

Vibrant, bursting with color (shot in the late, and much lamented Kodachrome) and ringing with bells and whistles, Wayne Sourbeer’s ode to the joys of the lowly pinball machine is a visual feast; Colored balls whiz, clink, and crash across the laminated landscapes. Dim bulbs illuminate the gaudy caricatures that stare back at the player. Neon lights flash in streaks of hot pink, red, and blue.

Pure Virtual Function(hu)

Pure Virtual Function is an abstract meditation on the representation of violence, the connection of virtual and real aggression. The film was made from painted 35 mm film strips and sound recording from Iraq war.

Polka Graph(en)

Short film by Mary Ellen Bute

Habitar(es)

An oneiric moment in the contradictory sensations that arise when experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zagreb Tram Station(de)

In september 2008 I shot with a photo camera some passers-by at a tram station in Zagreb. I made 132 single frames in an interval of 4 seconds over a period of 8 minutes. With the support of a special algorithm I rendered the estimated and missing inbetween frames on a computer. The rendered images were transferred on a 16mm film and processed with special chemicals. During this procedure some agressive substances disaggregated the silver based image and transformed it drop by drop into its molecules. Succeeding the dried film was digitized frame by frame in high definition. The final editing was done on a computer. On the soundtrack I added fragments of the original sound recording which were atomized by electronic device and reorganized to a kind of sound cloud created of dust.

Thermogenesis(en)

"A film version of a videotape. In it my drawings are animated and colorized by using computers. Walter Wright and Richard Froeman were on the computers. John Godfrey helped with the video editing. I did the sound score. The original tape was done on 2" high-band color videotape, two computers, a Paik-Abe video-synthesizer, with studio chroma-keying and multi-generation video editing." A version of Computer Graphics #1, one of Emshwiller's very first video works.