Negativland: Our Favorite Things (2007)
Genre : Music
Runtime : 2H 52M
Director : Negativland, Jenny Carden, James Gladman, Tim Maloney, Miguel Soares, James Towning, Kurt Miller, Peter Neville, Harold Boihem, Mark O'Connell
Synopsis
Our Favorite Things is a new DVD/CD release from reigning Kulture Kut-up Kings Negativland. Twenty-seven years of the group's "greatest hits" have become all-new moving pictures in this amazing, years-in-the-making package. Created with 18 other filmmakers from all over the USA (and one a capella group from Detroit), Our Favorite Things is a collaborative project that takes Negativland's sound explorations into the world of film and video. What emerges is a darkly cracked look at 21st century America, juxtaposing paranoia, torture, control, power, weapons, fear, suicide, cola wars, mental illness, and intellectual property issues with the lighter side of dopey advertising, cartoon characters, cleaning products and Jesus.
Humankind has always dreamt of the night sky. Of the infinite freedom offered by the black void, and of the strong, shining beacon inviting us to ascend. This is a story, a history of the events that led up to our conquest of space, and the consequences throughout wider humanity. The film is a collage. Of genres, documentary and comedy. Of media, drawing from painting and film. Of films, cannibalising all film history. Of truth, both objective and subjective. Watch the small steps and let your mind take a giant leap.
A cinematic time capsule with over 1,400 hours of submitted material from all regions of Switzerland gives unknown insights about the life of Swiss people in the politically and socially turbulent summer of 2019.
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A puppet, newly released from his strings, explores the sinister room in which he finds himself.
Short animated film featuring the song "Can't Go Wrong Without You" by His Name Is Alive.
A woman sits alone on a chair at a table in a room on one of the top floors of an asylum. Bright spot lights dot the night, sometimes shining on her window. She sharpens pencils and writes on a page in a copy book. The pencil point often breaks under her fingers' force. She places broken points outside the window on the sill. A satanic figure is somewhere nearby, animated but of straw or clay, not flesh. She finishes her writing, tears the paper from the pad, folds it, places it in an envelope, and slips it through a slot. Is she writing to her husband? "Sweetheart, come." Written by
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Produced in 1993, The Grand Delusion is one of our most completely realized works. In addition to taking the usual form of a Tape-beatles release (a CD), The Grand Delusion was also delivered in the form of an ‘expanded cinema’ presentation involving three-screen motion picture projections and sound. The screen space for this production is intended to be three times the width of the normal 3 to 4 "Edison" aspect ratio of 16mm. The presentation only uses the full width intermittently, so transitions from one form to the next has been translated here by means of a video effect. As a live performance presentation, The Grand Delusion has been screened in dozens of venues across North America and Europe.
Hamdias, a producer who's set out to break new boundaries, plans to finance a film about torture. According to him, torture, the clash of two or more people, is not only what substantiates basic human relationships but also love and politics. Unfortunately Hamdias dies in a freak accident and his project is grounded. After some time, Galai (Olga Karlatos), who should have been the main actress of Hamdias movie, sets out to complete the controversial project. As soon as filming starts again, the thin line that separates reality from a nightmarish obsession begins slowly to blur.
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