Looney Lens: Pas de deux (1924)

The warping lens used to photograph 10th Avenue seems to puzzle the filmmakers.

The film is set to the music of Franz Schubert and is very strange. Much of it consists of disembodies arms and legs all moving about to the music. There are also folks in body suits moving rhythmically to the tune. Occasionally, there are shots of a guy in full color with multiple exposures.

A commercial for the Works Progress Administration. We see hands close up: working, playing, praying, whittling, and strumming. Hands use saws and hammers, lift stones, turn wheels, then write, type, apply a bandage, play a violin, use a compass, and hold a U.S. Treasury note. Hands put a shoe on a customer, shake a thermometer, and count out bills and coins into other waiting hands. A hand places an engagement ring on a finger, buys a movie ticket, and reels in a fishing line. There are multiple images repeating what we've seen. A chicken is basted; other chickens get grain. It's a national celebration.

Seeing New York by Yacht.

The camera is high above Manhattan near the top of the Times Building, pointing down.

A busy street scene on Lower Broadway,

The use of human hands as characters in a dance inspired narrative are used to explore female experience and representation. By drawing upon experimental traditions found in international art, film, and photography movements of the 1920s, Simon transforms a simple melodramatic love story into an avant-garde feminist short film. (Jennifer Wild)

A surreal encounter at Père Lachaise cemetery between brightly coloured jelly pudding and Mickey Mouse.

A soundless film starts in a studio: an artist sits, a nude stands; a page burns, paper cutouts appear, images are distorted. The artist removes his eye; it falls from his hand, seeing images spin as it rolls. A man falls, objects in the studio falls on him, he's not the artist. A woman gets help from a man in a lab coat; he and the man on the floor fight over a shotgun. Outside, in the city, people and cars move backwards. On the street, those from the studio chase a woman who's stolen leeks. In the backward cityscape, they move forward. They run toward a seaside amusement park. The artist follows, his head in a bird cage. He ends up with the woman who went for help; or does he?

The Extraordinary Child applies his developing style to broad slapstick. His friends from the previous films and the director himself play out a riotous farce about an overgrown baby who steals his father’s cigars. Everyone mugs hilariously. The movie could be taken as another example of the Romantic notion of the artist as a monstrous child or misfit, or a parody of the same rather than the personal confessional statement seen so often in these film movements.

An introverted man runs a "car cemetery" where people come to find parts for old vehicles.

The camera follows a fly as it walks about the body of a nude woman. Shot in extreme closeup (and accompanied by Ono's eponymous song), the film sets out to celebrate the human body.

A doctor and nurse sneak away for a kinky encounter, only to be interrupted by a cop... with a secret of his own.

Surreal and silent short by Adan Jodorowsky.

Thot-Fal’N is a typical piece of Stan Brakhage montage: 9 minutes of completely silent close-ups, shots blurred to incoherence, and occasional clips of American streets or people. Among the identifiable humans there’s a brief sequence with William Burroughs and a balloon, and also shots of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky.

An anatomy of violence. Four young men and two young women are on a drive. There's a rivalry between two guys for one of the girls. On a remote road, the car stalls. The driver hitchhikes for help. Led by the intrepid girl, the others walk toward abandoned buildings, perhaps a mining operation. One of the three guys sits and reads. The intrepid one explores the building and sees something that scares her. She screams; the two rivals and the second girl run to find her. Something she says starts a fight between her two suitors. The one reading a book walks away in disgust. After stopping the fight, the two young women follow. How can this end?

Set in and around a Reno motel, the tape records George's growing friendship with a young weather expert.

A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna's life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.

"This is a very remarkable picture, showing Union Square, New York City, during the great March blizzard of 1899. The camera was stationed at the corner of Broadway and Fourteenth Street, and was swept in almost a complete circle, showing the tremendous drifts of snow and the blockade at 'Dead Man's Curve' in Fourteenth Street. This picture was taken during the busiest time of the day, and shows to what extent New York City was tied up by this tremendous fall of snow." (AMB Picture Catalogue (1902)

Andy Warhol is a lyrical exploration of Warhol's creative process by filmmaker, painter, and actress Marie Menken. Using a hand-held camera, Menken captures Warhol and his assistants, including Gerard Malanga, as they work at the Factory. The result is an intimate portrait of the artist in the process of creating some of his most famous works, including the Brillo boxes, the Jackie series, and the Flowers silkscreens.