What Was It Supposed to Be Like?

Acceleration

June 1968 •

A film about the dominance of time and space over a human being. A poetic reflection on the transience of material life characterized by a Mediterranean ambience, contemplation, mosaic structure, and repetitive editing patterns.

Death of a Stag

January 1951 •French

Russian emigré Dimitri Kirsanoff’s film, alternatively titled Death of A Stag and Une chasse à courre, is a post-war study of a traditional stag hunt. The pursuit of the animal finds a cross-cutting parallel in the felling of a tree in the forest.

Redland

March 2009 •English

As a family struggles to survive in rural isolation during the Great Depression, their daughter's secret affair begins a journey into the unknown.

Chelsea Girls

September 1966 •English

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.

The Game

January 1962 •

In this child's game, a live-action boy and girl draw characters and compete who is better. The girl draws a flower and the boy draws a car that runs it over. Then a drawn lion chases a drawn girl, until it all becomes frightfully serious.

Thlípsi

December 2018 •English

A man who is paranoid and deluded by his own conspiracies that someone out there is after him must come to terms with the root of his suffering.

Freedom & Independence

April 2015 •English

Against the backdrop of an unfathomable megalopolis, in a story that follows the associative qualities of a dream logic, the protagonists quote from concepts of neo-liberal elitism, and a mix of religious delusions and hallucinations of the apocalypse. The film begins in a sacral space, where Randi, a figure that references Ayn Rand, transforms a parapsychological medium into two digital clouds and sends them on a journey through a megalopolis in full growth. There they materialize as two bodies, which go by the names of Mr. Freedom and Ms. Independence.

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head

January 1991 •French

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.

The Human Surge

March 2017 •Spanish

Buenos Aires. Exe, 25 years old, has just lost his job and is not looking for another one. His neighbors and friends seem as odd to him as they always do. Online, he meets Alf, a boy from Mozambique who is also bored with his job and who is about to follow Archie, another boy who has run away into the jungle. Through the dense vegetation of the forest, Archie tracks ants back to their nest. One of them wanders off course and comes across Canh, a Filipino, sitting on top of a giant heap of earth and who is about to go back to his strange, beautiful home town, where he too has a miserable job.

Vacant Boy

December 2018 •English

Music is everything. Tom listens to music to get by day to day, but what would happen if he had to suffer through his first world problems without his beloved earbuds?

Weatherman '69

November 1989 •English

Featuring a cast that includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Mike Watt of the legendary hardcore band Minutemen, and Pettibon himself, this deadpan narrative pays dubious homage to the 1960's radical underground. In this crudely rendered home video of a commune of stoned revolutionaries, the cameras are hand-held, the edits in-camera, and the dialogue is wryly on-target. Pettibon's band of outsiders reenacts a countercultural moment defined by rock music, drugs, and ideological paradox — and in so doing, captures their own late-80's West Coast grunge milieu as well.

Transfer

January 1966 •English

A psychiatrist and his needy patient discuss their relationship in a snow-covered field.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

July 1987 •English

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

Polka Graph

January 1947 •English

Short film by Mary Ellen Bute

The Magic Sun

January 1966 •English

Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)

Wall

October 2004 •English

Between a man and his lover lies a wall, between the man and the country he loves lies another wall. Can a one-sided dialouge breaks the walls and expresses the man’s feelings and sentiments? Or does the lover or the country wants the wall to be broken in the first place? This short was inspired by Amy Len’s dance choreography “Wall” and colloborated with Loh Bok Lai. The dance was originally choreographed for a performance in Japan Dance Wave Fukuoka ‘06 - Asian Contemporary Dance Now and later made into an experimental video combining elements of an actor and monologue. The video footages were also used for the dance piece itself in KL.

Anônimo e incomum

March 1990 •Portuguese

White Funeral

July 1997 •Tagalog

A bride walks on the desert. She takes off her bridal ornaments and turns into a harlot. A multitude of people crawl on their bellies, become sick and soon die. A volcano erupts. White ashes of lahar cover the earth. The bride remembers her betrothal and repents--symbolically paving the way for the resurrection of her people. A final bridal march into a new heaven and earth takes place.

Blow Job

July 1964 •English

Andy Warhol directs a single 35-minute shot of a man's face to capture his facial expressions as he receives the sexual act depicted in the title.

Hermitage

January 1968 •Italian

Hermitage, defined by Bene as "a rehearsal for lenses", beyond any literal rendition - its narrative trace comes from one of his anti-novels, Credito Italiano V.E.R.D.I - displays his immediate attitude to thinking a cinematic language completely based on actor's movements and actions, and more specifically, on his presence and his schemes. Camouflaged or naked, still or moving, his body seems to play and be played at the same time, shifted by objective and subjective tensions, both metaphorically and visually speaking.