Black Sun (2005)

In "The Soviet Elegy" the long train of photos of the Soviet leaders, dead or alive, stops at the portrait of Yeltsin. At the time of shooting Yeltsin had fallen down from the assembly of the Communist Party deities, and participated in the earthly life through connections of different kinds.

A dadaist explosion that starts as a typical Hollywood travelogue of Stockholm and ends in the city's total destruction by fire and dynamite. This is a hilarious anarchist film; made by the then unknown Hulten now director of Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art. In a particularly subversive scene, the fire engine, arriving at a fire, goes up in flames.

Europe 1900 (1968) tells about the history of luxury while problematizing memory and our images of the past.

A film about three of our leading visual artists, Bhupen Khakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram. It takes, as its point of departure, a glass mural on which all three were working, then zeros into each of them. It links them to their physical and mental worlds through cinematic devices like associative sounds, variable light and montage. Compositionally, the visuals aim to link with the styles of each artist, as well as the larger narrative traditions of India.

In this CBS News production broadcast on Thanksgiving 1960, Edward R. Murrow points out the plight of migrant farm workers in America. Topics range from the harsh living conditions, endless travel, low wages, and poor opportunities for their children.

This film was made by the U.S. government during World War II to show its young servicemen the results of "fooling around" with "loose women" overseas. Actual victims of such sexually transmitted diseases as syphilis and gonorrhoea are shown, along with the physical deterioration that accompanies those diseases.

In Razor Blades, Paul SHARITS consciously challenges our eyes, ears and minds to withstand a barrage of high powered and often contradictory stimuli. In a careful juxtaposition and fusion of these elements on different parts of our being, usually occurring simultaneously, we feel at times hypnotised and re-educated by some potent and mysterious force.

A short documentary that explores a blue-collar community’s growing unease with the Vietnam War. It was produced in response to President Nixon’s famous November, 1969 speech when he contrasted the unlawful and vocal anti-war protesters to the respectful “silent majority” who were in favor of remaining in Vietnam to fight communism. This film explores the thoughts and opinions of the “silent majority” represented by the folks living in the Garfield Ridge neighborhood on the southwest side of Chicago.

This bold, stunning exploration of a white mother who undergoes a radical mastectomy and her Black daughter who embarks on a modeling career reveals the profound effects of body image and the strain of racial and sexual identity on their charged, intensely loving bond. At the heart of Onwurah’s brave excursion into her mother’s scorned sexuality is a provocative interweaving of memory and fantasy. The filmmaker plumbs the depths of maternal strength and daughterly devotion in an unforgettable tribute starring her real-life mother, Madge Onwurah.

"TESTAMENT is James Broughton's exquisite self-portrait. A major figure in avant-garde filmmaking and poetry since the 1940s, Broughton views his life and life's work with irony, charm, humor, and a combination of joyous self-love and gentle self-depreciation. Scenes from his earlier films mix the elements of humor, magic, slapstick, melodrama, and romance which mark his aesthetic. A plethora of rich personal symbols is woven throughout the film, tied together by verbal games, Zen poems, anecdotes, songs, a child's prayer, dreams, and visions." - Karen Cooper "James Broughton's TESTAMENT is one of the most remarkable films ever produced within the American independent cinema. It is the most moving and most sublimely detached of the recent trend of filmic autobiographies - by Jerome Hill, Jonas Mekas, and Stan Brakhage, to name only the masters, and Broughton's peers." - P. Adams Sitney "A beautiful, important, mysterious work." - Amos Vogel

A leading director of the Czech film renaissance provides a philosophical meditation on life and death, set amidst complex hospital apparatus and the sadness, hope, or resignation of the patients. Existentialist rather than optimist, the approach is one of humanistic atheism, accepting death as part of life. Interviews with doctors and nurses explore their outlook; all speak of death as a fact, without either sentimentality or religiosity. The studied objectivity of the film only imperfectly hides an intense emotionality.

Peigang, his family's only son for three generations running, is to be executed on account of larceny, but not without the intervention of his grandmother.

Taken from Boccaccio's Decameron, this lovely puppet film tells the bawdy story of the beautiful young Venetian lady who confesses her sinful passion for the Archangel Gabriel to a lustful monk, who promptly impersonates him in her bedroom with predictable results. Amidst the film's ribaldry, the hypocrisy and false piety of the monk are mercilessly mocked.

An egg-sorting woman shrugs off even the appearance of Christ. From Isaak Babel story.

An Islamic faithfull returns from his holy pilgrimage to Mecca with the venerated title “el hadji”. On his return he falls in love with his daughter’s friend Santou, who is already engaged to be married to Garba. El Hadji however already has two wives and his second wife, Gaika, cannot stand the idea of another younger wife entering her house. She plots to kill Santou.

Feature film.

Featuring the stories and music of seminal Cajun musicians "Bois Sec" Ardoin and Canray Fontenot, Dry Wood is a short, vibrant documentary portrait of life, food, music and festivity in the Louisiana Delta from the singular Les Blank. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1999.

Shooting in 1966 without script, story, or any narrative preconception, Nelson and Wiley created a masterwork of ‘60s independent cinema. The Great Blondino follows an anachronistically attired young fellow as he navigates a beguiling, sometimes troubling world with a curiosity that opens us wide to the filmmakers’ inspired, freeform vision. In many ways, the wonder of Blondino may echo the excitement of invention and exploration that Nelson and Wiley experienced in the making of the film. Utterly exuberant and freed from rote cinematic restriction, it embodies an artistic rigor and direction that also prevents it from ever seeming too unhinged. An incredible feat of tightrope walking. —Mark Toscano

"In Chakra, I was able to transfer the traditional order of the chakras into a film, starting with the first (lower) chakra and working up to the seventh (top) chakra…" - Jordan Belson

A short film from Guy L. Coté