A baby, John, who was abandoned in the church with a horse-headed koto on his side. His grandfather was once a Morin Khuur player and died in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The brilliantly colored images have an avant-garde charm while hiding the sadness of the war, and will grab the viewer's heart.
The mysterious Count Orlok summons Thomas Hutter to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen. After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok's servant, Knock, prepares for his master to arrive at his new home.
Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.
Michael Gondry's examination of childhood love is replete with his trademark surreality. One evening at the turn of the century, Stephane discusses with his brother the end of the millenium, but also girls, particularly Aurelie, a classmate with whom he is secretly in love. The following day, Aurelie has a letter to give to him....
In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.
In an anachronistic dystopian landscape, a beleaguered young man attempts to navigate his way through the indie film scene in LA.
Based on the 1930s comic strip, The Shadow is put up against his archenemy Shiwan Khan, who plans to take over the world by holding a city to ransom using an atom bomb. Using his powers of invisibility and "the power to cloud men's minds", The Shadow comes blazing to the rescue with explosive results.
This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...
A musical audiovisual journey in four parts. A young man finds himself unexpectedly taking an audiovisual odyssey into a world of surreality, slowly recounting his memories, revealing the puzzle pieces that led him to where he is, and maybe how he can get out.
The first release of the Residents' film debut "Vileness Fats", in a re-edited and re-scored form.
Estranged lovers reconnect through the power of the Magic Conch Shell.
Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
A film student goes to sleep and wakes up in a world similar to German expressionism, but the beings in that world have similarities with the girl.
This four-volume boxset released by Image Forum compiles the breadth of Shuji Terayama's experimental short film work into an extensive DVD collection. Originally released by Image Forum on VHS in 1995, this upgraded DVD boxset stands as the definitive collection for Terayama's experimental work in the highest quality possible.
A Japanese fairy tale meets commedia dell'Arte. All in white, the naïf Pierrot lies in a wood. Doo-wop music plays as he rises, stares about, and reaches for the moon. Although music abounds and the children of the wood are there at play, Pierrot is melancholy and alone. Harlequin appears, brimming with confidence and energy. He conjures the lovely Colombina. Pierrot is dazzled. But can the course of true love run smooth?
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...