Phantom Islands (2018)
Genre : Drama, Documentary
Runtime : 1H 26M
Director : Rouzbeh Rashidi
Synopsis
Phantom Islands is an experimental film that exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. It follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that ultimately results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.
A small Youtuber occasionally makes half ironic videos for few to see. A half narrative, half experimental view of the numb feeling of consuming endless amounts of content online instead of doing anything else, forever.
TRAILERS unites the most personal and experimental aspects of underground filmmaking with a scope that is as cosmically vast as a science fiction epic. Rashidi’s ongoing exploration into the nature of cinema sees a group of characters adrift in space, each locked into their own sexual rituals while a cataclysm of universal proportions unfolds. Humanity has become a mysterious burlesque show for alien eyes: the gaze of the film camera. This visionary spectacle uses multiple formats and visual textures in weaving an erotic anti-narrative suspended in its own space and time.
The bodies of women lying on the ground weave relationships around them, they breastfeed, they connect with the ground ... Carla Simón's first short, shot on 16 mm in the Californian forests. An experimental exercise that connects with the cinematographic avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.
"A springtime Fantasy," everything comes joyfully together in mirthful mythic warmth as Bird Lad's white line on black background richly sprouts, blossoms and bursts with pantheistic fertility.
Summertime. In a camping, three little girls listen to an old mysterious story about a missing kid. They start to investigate.
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
"Normal Porn for Normal People" is an appropriated media piece that explores our societal need to consume violence for entertainment. The film offers a satirical commentary on the romanticizing and normalization of violent imagery, while observing the link to commercial consumerism that exploits human sexuality, while simultaneously demonizing it. Interview segments echo our endless need to devour salacious content by venerating both real and fictional violence. Sexuality and sexual images remain a convenient scapegoat that facilitate a continued avoidance regarding the impact that the glorification of violence has within American culture.
Loneliness is something everyone experiences. This short film deals with that.
Hands play a crucial role in communication. They are capable of revealing things that the face and/or language seek to hide or cannot express. Even though hands are often considered an extension of the brain, they can also be seen as an extension of the heart, and perhaps even our emotions. Based on Jean Ferrat’s musical rendition of a poem by the French poet Louis Aragon, main(s)tenues explores the complexity of (contemporary) human connection and the vulnerability involved.
A documentary like no other. Starting with the bizarre practices and fantasies of a group of filmmakers working under the label Experimental Film Society, it spins off into a manifesto of light and sound. This dazzling journey through a view of cinema as cosmic ritual and erotic delirium is also an idiosyncratic celebration of the medium itself. Rouzbeh Rashidi’s ornate visual style unleashes a parade of visionary scenes that redefine movie magic as a fevered hallucination.
Phantom Islands is an experimental film that exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. It follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that ultimately results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.
a lazy girl is depressed and confused of what to do next, after she realizes that she has grown up.
A man covers his head with several headscarfs, one by one... .
PLANES is an exploration of the corollaries between psychic space and the physical escape of consciousness beyond the earth's biosphere.
1965, black- and-white, 8 min., double-screen projection.
A visual meditation inspired by gem and flower essences.
A women takes a journey that questions the boundaries of reality and what is an illusion.
Fey Iron, an amicable traveler, confronts her natural urges when she encounters a lone man in the desert. We follow Fey and her older sister Dylan through a day of their life. They are gentle with plants, animals and each other but in a world where the roles of men and women are reversed, can women really be held at fault for the dark side of their God-given tendencies?
A vivid sampler of the great Barcelona architect-sculptor’s work in situ, Sokoloff constantly is seeking out the most anthropomorphic images embedded in the intricacies of Gaudi’s buildings.
Beginning in 1965 with Black Is, Tambellini launched a series of politically charged experimental films that explore the expressive possibilities of black as a dominant color and idea. For the most part Tambellini’s seven “black films” are made without the use of a camera but rather by carefully manipulating the film itself by scorching, scratching, painting and treating the film stock as a type of sculptural and painterly medium.