Sam in the Bag

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

September 1927 •German

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

The Contact Enigma

November 2021 •English

Three people become connected through mysterious circumstances involving electronic devices which spontaneously appeared in their world.

The Indispensable Practice of Vagueness

October 2014 •Portuguese

By the director: "Ar.Co embodies each person’s geography, it escapes normalisation. Each individual’s experience is his own. This film is my experience, our experience. Pieced together from the school’s archive, from recordings of classes by Manuel Castro Caldas and from conversations at home."

Moving Memories

Invalid date •Portuguese

On April 1st, 2022, my grandfather passed away and i felt lost. I think my path changed when, some days after he passed away, i was offered a small VHS camera. "Moving Memories" is a visual journey that makes the viewer reflect on our momentary presence on earth and questions the nature of memory. Throughout this journey, we get to the conclusion that memories are more than just static photographs in our minds, they're alive and in constant movement, changing while we evolve as individuals. These memories have influence and help us to move on.

October in Madrid

January 1965 •French

Initially a made-to-order documentary on Spain, the film becomes an open-ended work-in-the-making about the creative process. “Settling in the Spanish capital to make a documentary, Hanoun sketches out for us the different steps involved in making a film. The author turns his hesitations, his doubts and difficult working conditions into the constituents of his work”. (Raphaël Bassan)

Magritte or the Object Lesson

January 1960 •French

The surrealist painter René Magritte questions the objective reality and emphasizes the arbitrariness of the relationship between an object, its image and its name: the evocation of mystery consists of images of familiar things gathered or transformed in such a way that they no longer conform to our ideas, whether naive or wise.

The Art of Un-War

April 2022 •English

Renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko creates powerful responses to the inequities and horrors of war. This in-depth investigation into the artist focuses on the recurring themes of war, trauma, and displacement in his work. An instigator for social change, Wodiczko’s powerful art interventions disrupt the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression.

The Other Line

May 2016 •Serbian

Druga linija aka The Other Line is a product of many years of research of neo-avant-garde cultural and art scene in Novi Sad, Serbia (late 60s and 70s), which has been marginalized until today. This artistic movement was directly connected not only with important art centers of the former Yugoslavia, but also with existing flows of world art during its brief and productive activities (7e Biennale de Paris, 19th Berlinale). The cultural and artistic emancipation of that time had implied individual freedom of expression and strong reaction to established boundaries. This avant-garde movement had become threat to communist establishment, the authors' work were sabotaged, the films were sealed off, five artists were taken to trial, two were sent in prison. How is it that the retrograde mechanism of shutting down and removing the most creative and representative progressive impulses of our surrounding is still so current to this day?

Searching for the Perfect Gentleman

August 2019 •German

"Searching for the Perfect Gentleman — an Investigative Journey" is a documentary about the search of an African barber shop poster. The virtual journey takes the viewer to various African, European and Asian countries, in order to find the place where it was originally created, produced and sold. What seems easy in the beginning turns out to be a demanding process, yet an interesting experience in accessing information, communicating with people from totally different backgrounds and indulging in uncertainty, to celebrate the search itself — wherever it may lead. The film shows how boundaries between originality and reproduction merge, in a world where everything can be remixed and reprinted easily. Searching for the Perfect Gentleman tells a multi-layered story about trust, persistence and interconnectedness in a globalized world.

Second Shift

September 1999 •English

A correctional officer’s daily routine of gaining access into a correctional facility.

A Week in the Hole

November 2001 •English

A Week in the Hole chronicles a factory employee’s adjusting to the materials, time, space and personnel during his first day of work.

A Film Inspired by Real Events

December 2019 •Turkish

Through the footage from his family's Handycam, the director creates a portrait of his family that is falling apart.

Bitva o život

November 2000 •Czech

Zaniklý svět Karla Pecky

March 2000 •Czech

Mondo Hollywoodland

August 2021 •English

Homage to the cult classic “Mondo Hollywood”, a groovy mushrooms dealer and a man from the 5th dimension journey through Hollywood to find the meaning of “Mondo.”

Expiration

July 1976 •

Short experimental film.

Im Reich Des Squatters

April 2020 •German

bleared eyes of blue glass

January 2023 •

The "bleared eyes of blue glass" in the title of this experimental short expand on a verbal image from Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, considered the most experimental among the 20th-century British writer's literary works, from which the young filmmaker took inspiration for his film, borrowing passages and visions to explain his own understanding of what cinema is. A film that plays with water - precisely - and light, and yet in a very dark b&w lit up by rare flashes of colour, making a journey in the night in which the shadow of a man gradually acquires substance.

Night Flight: Born Again

April 2016 •English

Documentary tribute to what VH1 called “the single greatest rock omnibus program ever aired” and Brooklyn Vegan named “the most consistently weird and awesome thing on cable television in the ’80s.” This ‘Best Of’ episode features some of the most memorable moments of Night Flight's near-decade long run including restored interviews and segments from Kate Bush, New Wave Theatre, David Lynch, Prince, Wendy O Williams, Divine, Billy Idol, Johnny Rotten, and much more Night Flight treasures from the archive.

EXPRMNTL

October 2016 •English

Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organised in part by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…