OLO, the Boy from Tibet

A 6-year-old Tibetan boy leaves his family and flees to a refugee camp in northern India.

2012-06-30 | ja

Rhythm

Intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Rhythm uses rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, synchronizing it to African drum music. The sponsor was horrified by the music and suspicious of the way a worker was shown winking at the camera; although Rhythm won first prize at a New York advertising festival, it was disqualified because Chrysler had never given it a television screening. P. Adams Sitney wrote, “Although his reputation has been sustained by the invention of direct painting on film, Lye deserves equal credit as one of the great masters of montage.” And in Film Culture, Jonas Mekas said to Peter Kubelka, “Have you seen Len Lye’s 50-second automobile commercial? Nothing happens there…except that it’s filled with some kind of secret action of cinema.” - Harvard Film Archive

1957-01-01 | en

A Trip Down Memory Lane

A Trip Down Memory Lane is a 1965 experimental collage film by Arthur Lipsett, created by editing together images and sound clips from over fifty years of newsreel footage. The film combines footage from a beauty contest, religious procession, failed airflight, automotive and science experiments, animal experimentation, skyscraper construction, military paraphernalia, John D. Rockefeller and scenes of leisure, Richard Nixon and scenes of war, blimps and hot air balloons, and a sword swallower. Lipsett envisioned his film as a kind of cinematic time capsule for future generations.

1966-08-28 | en

Coast of Death

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.

2014-09-26 | gl

Lopez Street

In the eyes of a foreigner practically any street of Mexico City’s Centro Histórico holds potential for a film. Life on the street deserves more than just the natural condition of observer anyone could have, it demands an extra attention. In a 100-meter radius, the sociological exuberance of the events going on is simply impossible to ignore. The street is a mise en scène in itself.

2013-02-23 | es

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

1991-01-01 | fr

6-18-67

6-18-67 is a short quasi-documentary film by George Lucas regarding the making of the Columbia film “Mackenna's Gold”. This non-story, non-character visual tone poem is made up of nature imagery, time-lapse photography, and the subtle sounds of the Arizona desert.

1967-07-07 | en

Man with a Movie Camera

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

1929-05-12 | ru

Todo Todo Teros

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.

2006-08-18 | en

Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box

This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.

1991-11-29 | en

Anônimo e incomum

1990-03-16 | pt

Puenting (Leap of Faith)

A first feature based on sexual events. An actress undertakes her desire of directing her first movie, without a budget or any production company funding her project. She gathers a group of professional actors and actresses, and proposes a project based on a very particular experience: stepping on their fears through a metaphorical 'leap of faith'. As the project advances, individual conflicts will arise affecting the shoot, making the movie crew wonder whether or not they should go on. Will they take the leap of faith with all its consequences?

2019-04-30 | es

Chinese Viola

The rare short film presents a curious dialogue between filmmaker Julio Bressane and actor Grande Otelo, where, in a mixture of decorated and improvised text, we discover a little manifesto to the Brazilian experimental cinema. Also called "Belair's last film," Chinese Viola reveals the first partnership between photographer Walter Carvalho and Bressane.

1975-05-31 | pt

The Five Obstructions

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.

2003-11-07 | da

Thot-Fal'N

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."

1978-06-27 | en

Every Wall is a Door

Drawing on VHS tapes of a programme hosted by her mother on Bulgaria’s national television, the filmmaker gives a pop-style and in-depth chronicle of the gentle – even “over-gentle” – 1989 revolution.

2017-03-25 | fr

Every Ambulation a Betrayal

Return to 'burn' only to find out you're already in that urn.

2017-05-23 | en

Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget

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.

2013-07-04 | en

Sold

A film about friendship and the occasional loneliness.

2019-11-11 | en

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

2011-12-22 | en