
During the 2021 lockdown, I directed this short film as an intimate visual diary: a tribute to dance, music, and the queer desire to be seen. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s workshop spirit, the shoot became a stage where we played at being our own celebrities, exploring difference as affirmation. Three years later, this piece returns with a new voice-over—an echo of that creature who, even today, insists: “I am a star.”
2020-10-10
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Playing at fame, reclaiming the right to be seen.
5.0A half-hour experimental film that shows Fukui moving towards cyberpunk imagery in a manner similar to Tsukamoto, featuring industrial locations, a malfunctioning cyborg/android and a hulking metallic ‘caterpillar’ that stalks characters.
0.0Peccadillo tells the story of Lorenzo. An 18- year-old boy struggling to come out to his religious family of female tailors, who work day and night sewing the dresses he only dreams to wear. Unfortunately, the dream of fitting into one of these sparkly beauties and explore his sexuality lingers in the air, as through his Family’s eyes, being gay and wearing clothes opposite to someone’s sex, is a sin.
0.0The restaurant opens. Customers eat. The restaurant closes. For one employee, this daily routine becomes his personal hell.
0.0Arthur wakes to a shocking discovery—a horn growing from his forehead. Confronted by his parents, Arthur will have to make difficult choices that flip his life upside-down.
0.0Fragments retrieved from Archives 76 & 77 have recently been digitized. They appear to document a divine corpus with no known equivalent in mythological, historical, or religious records. The exact origin of these materials remains unclear. No official trace has been found in any consulted database to date. Independent researchers are currently investigating their content.
Camila is a bored young woman. She begins to romanticize her life... until she realizes that there is something supernatural in this fantasy.
0.0Fragments from Brussels, about the flow of the city, A cinema, A body, A film, and a wind that blows through the town. The film is a Schizomentry experience that blends real stories and fiction. After all, where is the border?
1.0Three women with mysterious pasts, a nerdy boy, a company man, and Jesus Christ himself all plunge into an absurdist nightmare when a giant and magical prism descends upon planet Earth and warps reality. Featuring Lloyd Kaufman, Blondie's Matt Katz-Bohen, and a special appearance by indie superstar Mac DeMarco.
0.0A young priest is intent on denying his homosexuality, and he's not doing a very good job. Meanwhile, his alien ex-lover is plotting to turn the Earth into a homosexual planet during a cosmic event and Captain Faggotron is caught in the middle. Clashing ideologies culminate in an orgy of gay demons and a love that no longer has to hide.
10.0It would be chess that brought nightmares and hell to a dreamlike, fairy-tale universe. Chess was trying to manipulate the universe and humanity. It controlled its own destiny. Time had stopped, and now flowed with strategy. To stop it, a fair match had to be played as a last resort.
0.0It took a hundred queer years for Lola Perla to be finally recognized by a government that never really took notice of the likes of her. But that’s okay, because along with the president’s anti-climactic, and in many ways, almost insincere recognition is a fat envelope containing Php100,000 (USD$2,000). For Perla, this is more than enough money to transcend her idea of a lifetime legacy. Today is the day Lola Perla confronts her long-standing personal covenant: to bail an ex-lover’s son out of jail. Meeting fifty-someting Nanding transforms into a reunion, then, a communion of her present self, with an old love.
2.8Loosely based on the classic story of Sleeping Beauty, this irreverent gay fairy tale for modern audiences follows a man named Moses, whose frequent seizures are characterized by the appearance of Glintentica, a spurned Goddess planning her return to earth. Problems arise when Glintentica becomes determined to take over the soul of David, Moses' new love interest.
0.0On a limbo train between life and death, Emelina and Ismael begin to understand their past earthly purpose in order to spiritually transmute helped by the train guard, who will lead them once again to life.
7.0Concerns a young boy's mystical experiences during his Confirmation. As the ceremony unfolds, figures from religion and mythology appear and impress on him the need to become a soldier of Christ.
0.0After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.
0.0A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?
4.7Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.
7.3A woman washes up on a beach and embarks on a surreal journey, encountering others and fragmented versions of herself in a quest for identity.
6.8A bureaucrat interviews five souls to decide which of them will be given a life on Earth. But he soon faces an existential challenge of his own.
6.1Jack McCall is a fast-talking literary agent, who can close any deal, any time, any way. He has set his sights on New Age guru Dr. Sinja for his own selfish purposes. But Dr. Sinja is on to him, and Jack’s life comes unglued after a magical Bodhi tree mysteriously appears in his backyard. With every word Jack speaks, a leaf falls from the tree and he realizes that when the last leaf falls, both he and the tree are toast. Words have never failed Jack McCall, but now he’s got to stop talking and conjure up some outrageous ways to communicate or he’s a goner.
5.9The film contains five stories set on desolate stretches of a desert highway. Two men on the run from their past, a band on its way to a gig, a man struggling to get home, a brother in search of his long-lost sister and a family on vacation are forced to confront their worst fears and darkest secrets in these interwoven tales.
6.7A documentary filmmaker interviews the now-famous Trevor Slattery from behind bars.
5.9A woman named Kit moves back to her parent's house, where she receives a mysterious invitation that would fulfill her childhood dreams.
6.7A social butterfly who dies during her birthday week is given a second chance to right her wrongs on Earth.
6.2Larry Burrows is unhappy and feels powerless over his life. He believes his entire life could have turned out differently had he not missed that shot in a baseball game when was a kid. One night he meets this mysterious man, who could change his fate by offering him that alternative life he always dreamed of. But as Burrows embarks on this journey of self discovery he realises that even this new life has its problems and drawbacks..
6.2A young woman, institutionalized by her abusive stepfather, retreats into a vivid fantasy world where she envisions a plan to escape. Gathering a group of fellow inmates, she embarks on a quest to collect five mystical items, blurring the lines between reality and imagination.
6.1A computer hacker's goal to discover the reason for human existence continually finds his work interrupted thanks to the Management; this time, they send a teenager and lusty love interest to distract him.
7.2When a young boy makes a wish at a carnival machine to be big—he wakes up the following morning to find that it has been granted and his body has grown older overnight. But he is still the same 13-year-old boy inside. Now he must learn how to cope with the unfamiliar world of grown-ups including getting a job and having his first romantic encounter with a woman.
6.4After an attack leaves him in limbo -- invisible to the living and also near death -- a teenager discovers the only person who might be able help him is his attacker.
6.3Seymour works in a skid row florist shop and is in love with his beautiful co-worker, Audrey. He creates a new plant that not only talks but cannot survive without human flesh and blood.
6.9Jordan Sanders, a take-no-prisoners tech mogul, wakes up one morning in the body of her 13-year-old self right before a do-or-die presentation. Her beleaguered assistant April is the only one in on the secret that her daily tormentor is now trapped in an awkward tween body, just as everything is on the line.
6.0Hugo is a brilliant turn-of-the-century scientist, loved and respected by his family and friends, admired by his colleagues. But he is a man quickly becoming obsessed with a curious and frightening question...What is the mysterious apparition found in the photographs of his dying subjects?
7.4One day at work, unsuccessful puppeteer Craig finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters its mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.
7.2A melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past: a mechanical performing doll, a Venetian courtesan, and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer.
6.3In 1950s Australia, young Celia is growing up with a sense of isolation and mistrust of the world that surrounds her. Her mother and father won't let her play with the kids next door because their parents are communists. Then her pet bunny is taken away because of rabbit overpopulation. And, more traumatizing yet, when her grandmother dies, she's the one to discover the corpse. To cope, she retreats into elaborate fantasies.
6.8Upon waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.
6.8Wenches Scarlett and Giselle fix each other up for their wedding, in which they would each marry their groom. Upon realizing that both their grooms were the same man, Jack Sparrow, the two wenches found themselves in an auction led by the Auctioneer. This short film serves as a prequel to The Curse of the Black Pearl, and explains just why Jack Sparrow's boat the Jolly Mon was seen sinking at the beginning of the whole story; why the wenches were so upset with him; and how Cotton lost his tongue.