Minot, North Dakota

Blind Bombing, Filmed by a Bat(ja)

During WWII, the Japanese army developed experimental balloons able to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the West Coast of North America in 3-6 days. Armed with explosives, they were given the code name fu-go, or fusen bakudan (“fire balloons,” or balloon bombs) in an attempt to instill a culture of fear like that caused by the far more deadly American firebombing of Japanese cities. The U.S. responded by enacting a censorship campaign, requesting newspapers avoid reports of fu-go landings or sightings. Living near the remains of a fu-go launch site in Fukushima Prefecture, Takeuchi mimics their flight take-off using a drone camera, and, traveling to North America, follows their arrival across the shoreline and rural landscapes, using a bat’s echolocation as narrative device to place fu-go and Fukushima as echos across history.

Maya Deren, Take Zero(en)

This documentary interweaves celluloid and voice recordings by Maya Deren, and colleagues who knew her firsthand: Jean Rouch, Jonas Mekas, Alexander Hammid, Cecile Starr etc. Maya Deren (1917-1961) was an experimental filmmaker. In the 1940s and 1950s she made several influential avant-garde films, such as Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Images from this and her other work are used in this documentary. You can also hear her voice, as well as accounts by contemporaries such as Jean Rouch and Jonas Mekas.

Beatrix Farrand's American Landscapes(en)

Garden designer Lynden B. Miller explores the life and career of Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872-1959), America's first female landscape architect.

Heavy-Light(en)

This is one of those abstract animated films in which colored, richly textured light moves in a black, three-dimensional space. The pictures and the electronic score are unified in a strict structure made of three main sections which progressively develop three subsections. This film may look like it was made using computers or video to the uninitiated, but only animation and much optical printing are to be seen herein. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.

CIUDAD FUTURO(es)

Crossing the vast outskirts of the big city we can glimpse that after the great future catastrophes there will still be room for the promise of a new youth, perhaps the last one.

Not Bad at All(en)

Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Supersurface: An Alternative Model for Life on Earth(en)

Produced for the 1972 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Lanscape, Supersurface was the first of five films planned by Superstudio as a "critical reappraisal of the possibility of life without objects." Superstudio envisioned a "network of energy and information extending to every properly inhabitable area". According to the artists, this network would bring about the destruction of objects as status symbols, the elimination of the city as an accumulation of formal structures of power, and the end of specialized and repetitive work as an alienating activity. "The logical consequence," they write, "will be a new, revolutionary society in which everyone should find the full development of his possibilities".

Lapses, Regrets and Qualms(fr)

A day in the life of director Boris Lehman: he wanders from cafe to bookshop, cinema to museum, writer to musician, and into the storeroom of the film archive... He celebrates his birthday in an alleyway, with a friend, and finishes his journey with an escapade to Bruges and a stroll by the North Sea. The camera plays dirty tricks and the sound recorder gets carried away, to the point that both are clearly telling Boris to stop filming. Yet he persists…

Stones and Flies: Richard Long in the Sahara(en)

In the fall of 1987, Philippe Haas accompanied the sculptor Richard Long to the Algerian Sahara and filmed him tracing with his feet, or constructing with desert stones, simple geometric figures (straight lines, circles, spirals). In counterpoint to the images, Richard Long explains his approach. Since 1967, Richard Long (1945, Bristol), who belongs to the land art movement, has traveled the world on foot and installed, in places often inaccessible to the public, stones, sticks and driftwood found in situ. His ephemeral works are reproduced through photography. He thus made walking an art, and land art an aspiration of modern man for solitude in nature.

Coast of Death(gl)

Portrait of Costa da Morte (coast region in Galicia, Spain) from an ethnographic and landscape level, exploring also the collective imagination associated with the area. A region marked by strong oceanic feeling dominated by the historical conception of world's end and with tragic shipwrecks. Fragmentary film that approaches to the anthropological from its protagonists: sailors, shellfish, loggers, farmers ... A selection of characters representative of the traditional work carried out in the countryside in the region, allowing us to reflect on the influence of the environment on people.

To Be(es)

Juana, Mar, and Eduardo tell their stories of abuse.

Desastres naturales(es)

The encounter of three movies, three territories. A personal story that portrays, through experiments revealed by images and extracts from a diary, lived meetings and inhabited places filled by forces of nature, colors, incidents and struggles.

Aerial New Zealand(en)

Take an epic voyage over the remote island nation of New Zealand, the last habitable landmass to be discovered on the planet. No bigger than the state of Colorado, this small country offers an incredibly diverse landscape view that changes dramatically with each mile. From snow-capped mountains to sandy beaches, and from the glacier-carved Fiordland National Park to the crater lake of Mount Ruapehu, New Zealand is a land of extremes. It's a place where fire clashes with ice and people are always pushing the limits.

Aerial Ireland(en)

Take a cross-country flight over Ireland's natural wonders and ancient ruins. In this spectacular overview of the historically significant Emerald Isle, we soar over Neolithic tombs of the Celtic era, medieval castles of the Vikings, and modern cities humming with life. From the tower that inspired a novelist to the ancestral home of a famous stout, we explore the sites, the people, and the milestones of this unique gem of Western Europe.

City World(en)

An investigation into the whereabouts of an unseen child narrator among the lifeless suburbs of Orlando, Florida. Told by mixing documentary footage with fantasy elements, the boy's tale slowly swivels from a possible theme park ride into his own harrowing familial reality.

Now Eat My Script(en)

"Now Eat My Script is a precipice, a fluid solution in which some spectral noises of the self float adrift. Narration takes the role of a pregnant writer who continuously affirms her hunger and clumsiness towards language and history. Her body is crossed over by both the years to come and the stories that have been buried. As a would-be pirate, she navigates through the tumult of familiar waters."

El mar se mueve en una espiral(es)

Photographic and sound story, through the encounter of characters with their stories of a time without end.

Lost Case(cs)

A completely new story based on existing footage from the series Columbo.

Collage(es)

Tramuntana(en)

In a remote area of northern Spain, the wind has a name: Tramuntana. Tramuntana takes what it wants—clothes, trees, boats, and the people of the landscape who live with the endless threat of being carried away by its force. This film is a lyrical portrait of this furious wind, woven from the stories passed down by local villagers.