River Rites (2011)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 12M
Director : Ben Russell
Synopsis
Trance dance and water implosion, a line drawn between secular freak-outs and religious phenomena. Shot in a single-take at a sacred site on the Upper Suriname River, the minor secrets of an animist are revealed as time itself is undone. Rites are the new Trypps, embodiment is our eternal everything.
Cremaster 5 (55 min, 1997) is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamenting tone of the opera suggests that Barney invisions this as a moment of tragedy and loss. The primary character is the Queen of Chain (played by Ursula Andress). Barney, himself, plays three characters who appear in the mind of the Queen: her Diva, Magician, and Giant. The Magician is a stand-in for Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest in 1874 and appears as a recurring character in the Cremaster cycle.
Witch’s Cradle is an unfinished Maya Deren film made in the Guggenheim Gallery during a surrealist “Art of this Century” exhibit. It was assembled long after her death by staffers within the preservation department at Anthology Film Archives.
Ion is a seemingly normal guy whose life goes by without a hitch. A phone call; a meeting with a friend; small, unimportant everyday situations. One day he gets into a car with two other people. They cross the border between Spain and France. The next morning, their lives will change forever.
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.
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.
Marguerite loses her wallet, and it's found by Georges, a seemingly happy head of family. As he looks through the wallet and examines the photos of Marguerite, he finds he's fascinated with her and her life, and soon his curiosity about her becomes an obsession.
A lonely hairdresser watches the title sequence of "That Cold Day in the Park" then visits a local park to invite a down-and-out skinhead to his apartment. He draws the silent man a bath and talks to him as he soaks. He locks his guest in a bedroom. Next day, the skinhead leaves through the window and visits his sister, who's making a film called "Sisters of the SLA." He helps with a screen-test. The hairdresser has dreams and fantasies involving the skinhead, the skinhead returns to visit him, and then the filmmaker pays a call on the two men, exposing her brother as faking his silence and pretending a lack of sexual interest. Fantasies can come true.
An attempt to bring the work of surrealist artists to a wider public. The plot is that of an average Joe who can conjure up dreams that will improve his customer's lives. This frame story serves as a link between several avant-garde sequences created by leading visual artists of their day, most of whom were emigres to the US during WWII.
Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.
A story of a group of humanoid rabbits and their depressive, daily life. The plot includes Suzie ironing, Jane sitting on a couch, Jack walking in and out of the apartment, and the occasional solo singing number by Suzie or Jane. At one point the rabbits also make contact with their “leader”.
A short experimental cutup film by Jon Moritsugu.
The Short Films of David Lynch (2002) is a DVD collection of the early student and commissioned film work of American filmmaker David Lynch. As such, the collection does not include Lynch's later short work, which are listed in the filmography. The films are listed in chronological order, with brief descriptions of each film. The DVD contains introductions by Lynch to each film, which can be viewed individually or in sequence. # 1 Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times) # 2 The Alphabet # 3 The Grandmother # 4 The Amputee # 5 The Cowboy and the Frenchman # 6 Premonitions Following an Evil Deed
Shot in 1959, Scotch Tape is Jack Smith's first film -- a joyous, three-minute romp, in color, using Peter Duchin's rhumba "Carinhoso" for its soundtrack. Three young men merrily bop through the wreckage of razed buildings at the site of what would become Lincoln Center. Apparently, Scotch Tape was never edited and, instead, was cut in the camera by Smith, combining long shots and close-ups while filming mostly from overhead. The title comes from a small strip of scotch tape that was accidentally stuck on the camera and so is visible in the lower-right corner of the frame throughout the film.
A cameraman wanders around Moscow, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Odesa with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling invention.
Man with a Movie Camera is one of the major manifestos of the world cinema avant-garde. According to the aesthetic principles of Vertov, the film was not based on a script. In Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov implemented experiments that he carried out for many years and theoretical developments in cinematography and editing, turning the film into a film-making methodological guide for subsequent generations of directors. The camera of a talented cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman captures the motley life of Ukrainian megalopolises – Odesa, Kharkiv, and Kyiv – under New Economic Policy.
In 1983, yacht sailor Will Parker leads an American crew financed by millionaire Morgan Weld to defeat during the America's Cup race against an Australian crew. Determined to get the prize back, Will convinces Morgan to finance an experimental boat designed by his ex-girlfriend Kate's new beau, Joe Heisler. When the boat is completed, the Americans head to Australia to reclaim the cup.
Follow a small group of elderly “Peeping Toms” through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world. Crudely documented by the participants themselves, we follow the debased and shocking actions of a group of true sociopaths the likes of which have never been seen before. Inhabiting a world of broken dreams and beyond the limits of morality, they crash against a torn and frayed America.
Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.
A psychiatrist tells two stories: one of a trans woman, the other of a pseudohermaphrodite.
A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.