Devotion

Daumë(en)

Culled from four rolls of Super-8 film shot while the maker was a development worker in a small South American village, Daumë is at its center a film about ritual, power, and play. Daumë is both ethnography and critique; it is an interrogation into how to represent a place that can't be represented.

Terra Incognita(en)

Terra Incognita is a lensless film whose cloudy pinhole images create a memory of history. Ancient and modern explorer texts of Easter Island are garbled together by a computer narrator, resulting in a forever repeating narrative of discovery, colonialism, loss and departure.

The Red and the Blue Gods(en)

An ethnographic field report in which the Anthropologist describes the mythic creation of an unnamed ‘sun-scraping structure’ through the ritualized actions of the Red and the Blue Gods.

Genova Genova(fr)

A song of love to the city of Genoa. The film wanders the streets of the city center and explore the beautiful cemetery and then climb the hills which offer an amazing view over the old town crossed by a highway and port.

Swole(fi)

In Swole I continue to document my commitment to an intensive and transformative gym and diet regimen, as well as the communities that form around such activities, sustaining themselves through texting and sharing videos and photos on social media. I learn the vocabulary of my new community.

Decasia: The State of Decay(en)

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre(fr)

Jean-Claude Rousseau's Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre is not only his first medium-length film, but a chance to discover this filmmaker whom Jean-Marie Straub has called, along with Frans Van de Staak and Peter Nestler, the greatest working in Europe. With this newly restored print there is also a possibility to discover the relationship between Rousseau's art of filming and Jan Vermeer's famous painting. As Prosper Hillairet wrote in 1988, four years after Rousseau had finished Jeune femme ... (for the first time as we know today): «Without adopting the usual systematic spirit and form of cinéma structurel, Rousseau presents us with simple images and leaves it at that. Keeps the image in hand. A minimalist and ascetic expression of cinema: a shot that lasts.»

The 99 Names of God(en)

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.

It’s Not My Memory of It: Three Recollected Documents(en)

“It’s not my memory of it” is a documentary about secrecy, memory, and documents. A former CIA source recounts his disappearance through shredded classified documents that were painstakingly reassembled by radical fundamentalist students in Iran in 1979 following the takeover of the U.S embassy. A CIA film—recorded in 1974 but unacknowledged until 1992—documents the burial at sea of six Soviet sailors, in a ceremony which collapses Cold War antagonisms in a moment of death and honor. A single photograph pertaining to a publicly acknowledged but top secret U.S. missile strike in Yemen in 2002 is the source of a reflection on the role of images in the dynamic of knowing and not knowing.

Still Raining, Still Dreaming(en)

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.

Autumn(en)

Autumn, photographed during the last months of the drought year, 2015, is a stately, but intimate, seasonal tome, a celebration of the poignancy and mystery of our later years. – Nathaniel Dorsky

The Dreamer(en)

This year our mid-summer’s night was adorned with a glorious full moon. The weeks and days preceding the solstice were magically alive with crisp, cool breezes, bright, warm sunlight, and a general sense of heartbreaking clarity. The Dreamer is born out of this most poignant San Francisco spring.

Pelle vegetale. Un'intervista(it)

Collage(es)

Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget(en)

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.

Man with a Movie Camera(ru)

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

The Red Bank. James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks(el)

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”

On the Heights All Is Peace(it)

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.

The Happy Accident(es)

Embarks on a journey that traces the life and work of Antonio Martorell, a prolific plastic and multi-disciplinary artist in Puerto Rico. This film is a dance between the director (Paloma Suau) and the portraitist while portraying each other. More than a documentary, this film is an experiment of a director trying to reconnect with her creative voice.

All Inclusive(pl)

"All Inclusive" tells the story of seven women who are going on holidays to Morocco, getting out of the hotel and confronting women from Morocco. They will look for their own way of life in the desert, confront their world, looking at the reality that surrounds them.