A Knowledge They Cannot Lose

Using both found footage and her own material, Nina Fonoroff recollects the memory of her father. Constructing and deconstructing a portrait, she weaves family and friends’ remembrances with an inquiry into her own work process. Her searching attitude suggests that with the loss of her father came a question of the role, not of a particular father, but the father figure—a refusal of authority, and an appreciation of her father’s cycles of learning, teaching, learning. As Danny Kaye, playing Hans Christian Andersen, tells a group of children the story of the piece of chalk that saw itself as a the source, not the transmitter of knowledge, one senses Fonoroff’s sorrow at the loss inherent in the film image, and a yearning for the source of the image, not just its projection.

1989-01-01 | 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

Rumstick Road

A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.

2014-05-01 | en

Chelsea Girls

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

1966-09-01 | en

Metastasis

Writes Matsumoto, "I used the Erekutoro Karapurosesu (Electro Color Processor), which is mainly used in the field of medicine and engineering, to create moving image textures Metastasis, I was interested in layering images of a simple object and its electronically processed abstraction. The electronic abstract image is manipulated in a certain rhythm, depicting an organic process."

1971-03-20 | xx

Just Hold Still

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.

1989-03-21 | en

69SEC

This is a story of love seen from a square, in which a couple gets united, separated and rearranged again. A special kind of puzzle.

2016-11-20 | fr

What You Mean We?

WHAT YOU MEAN WE is a surreal short film by experimental artist Laurie Anderson.

1986-09-26 | en

Bear

Bear (10 minutes, 35 seconds) was Steve McQueen's first major film. Although not an overtly political work, for many viewers it raises sensitive issues about race, homoeroticism and violence. It depicts two naked men – one of whom is the artist – tussling and teasing one another in an encounter which shifts between tenderness and aggression. The film is silent but a series of stares, glances and winks between the protagonists creates an optical language of flirtation and threat.

1993-01-01 | xx

Pickled Punk

This independent film follows the actions and inner thoughts of four unusual individuals as they go about their lives in Tokyo, occasionally meeting up with one another. Their thoughts tend to focus on questions of death, existence, and the conflict of society against the individual. All of the action is performed silently, with narration dubbed over.

1993-12-18 | ja

Harvey

A man without his own half of the body is looking for the other half in the opposite sex. As for the integrity of his body, so for the sake of emotional healing.

2002-06-07 | en

@me

An amateur stand-up comedian seeks company online after the bar closes on a winter's night, but fails to connect with her surroundings and herself.

2016-08-31 | en

Devotion

A sparing and minimal travelogue of Istanbul. A foreigner meditates on the unraveling of a relationship while moving from hotel room to hotel room. In a city simultaneously devoted to Islam and secular nationalism, she finds refuge in the frailty and severity of the rituals of devotion.

2003-04-09 | en

Alien

2017-05-16 | en

Monday or Tuesday

A divorced journalist Marko Požgaj starts his working day by taking his son to the school. During the day many thoughts and images pass through his mind - the memories of childhood, ex-wife, current girlfriend, but mostly his father who died in a war.

1966-01-01 | sh

Kaya

An experimental film about a peaceful and carefree life in a small Dalmatian town, which turns into bloodshed and horror on the eve of the Italian occupation of the country.

1967-07-11 | sh

Fantaisie érotique

1936-01-01 | cs

Alaska

Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.

1969-01-19 | de

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

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