Visual Essays: Origins of Film

Visions of Europe(en)

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Todo Todo Teros(en)

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.

Engel und Puppe(it)

Engel und Puppe is the first film by Italian filmmaker and writer Ellis Donda. Screened at Oberhausen in 1975, Engel und Puppe is a political adaptation of some lines from Rilke's Duino Elegies, featuring the French poet Jacqueline Risset and a young Rossella Or (soon to become an avant-garde theatre actress).

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her(fr)

As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

I don't want to have to be loud(de)

She is defined; from birth on. The role she has to play, who she is and what she is made of is not determined by her. If one’s own body and gender are a political issue, it is about time that one’s own voice is heard.

Oxymoron Life...(pt)

The wanderer Rascal embarks on a psychotic and contradictory journey to break out of the ego bubble in which his self-loathing and isolation have inserted him in. After his metamorphosis, his soulmate, Paloma, makes him realize that life is as complicated as it is simple - and that all that's left to do is to live.

Lost in blue(fr)

Beyond Tragedies(pt)

Recalling his childhood and relationship with his mother, a film student tries to understand the origin of his love for cinema and tragedies.

Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons(en)

Penthesilea, the first of six films made by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, traverses thousands of years to look at the image of the Amazonian woman in myth. It asks, among other questions, is the Amazonian woman a rare strong female image or is she a figure derived from male phantasy? The film explores the complexities of such questions, but does not seek any concrete answers.

Between the Sky and the Earth(en)

Inspired by a tumultuous period in the director's relationship with her mother, the film draws a poignant analogy between the phases of their conflict and the ever-changing states of water along the coast of São Paulo, where the director grew up.

Dual(es)

After receiving a phone call, a man feels his inner world come to a standstill. Recalling the event decades later, he relives how everything changed in that moment and reflects on how quickly his life has passed and how his reality was constructed by all the things he repeated to himself like a mantra.

Remastered Brutality(tr)

Alinur, a student filmmaker, tries to make a film about the apocalypse for his capstone project. The movie itself happens to be about a mercenary named M who inadvertently causes an apocalypse. As he tries to “create” the destruction of this supposed apocalypse through utilizing technical gimmicks that he has enforced onto the production of the film, this supposed effort also creeps in as a force that starts to “destroy” him, piece by piece. The outcome of it tests the sincerity of not only the film itself but also of the performative efforts that Alinur has made as a filmmaker—even this test might not be as sincere as it seems.

Nourishment of the oblivion(en)

Andrea and the simbionte travel to Toledo; when they arrive, they find a lonely bus station, which slowly turns off the lights for them. In the silence that surrounds them, Andrea watches the moment pass and with it her certainty about her future dream with the simbionte, feeling that everything she experiences is actually a memory.

And the Dogs Were Silent(fr)

For 'Et les chiens se taisaient' Maldoror adapted a piece of theatre by the poet and politician Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), about a rebel who becomes profoundly aware of his otherness when condemned to death. His existential dialogue with his mother reverberates around the African sculptures on display at the Musée de l'Homme, a Parisian museum full of colonial plunder whose director was the Surrealist anthropologist Michel Leiris.

Bruja(de)

A story of diaspora. The film criticises the myth of Swiss neutrality, which violently masks structural, systemic, and social passivity.

A lo Mejor Algún Día(es)

Donosti 2730(es)

A youngster writes a letter to his grandmother about his last trip to Donosti (Spain). This city inspires him to ponder about the language of cinema, time, cities, and sharing memories with our loved ones.

Cambalhota(en)

A girl mixes fiction with reality while writing a letter to her grandmother.

Exergo(eu)

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.

Hands Up!(pl)

The reunion of a group of former medical students results in a flood of bitter memories.