Ernst Karel

Nearest Neighbor is an essay film that explores the relationships and intersections between humans, birds and artificial intelligence. Playfully intertwining associated experiments in image and sound generation using AI, the film focuses particularly on language acquisition and mimicry between humans, birds and machines, asking fundamental questions about consciousness, learning and understanding.

터키의 이스탄불 거리 곳곳을 떠돌아다니는 개들의 시선을 통해 불안정한 삶의 의미에 대해 탐구한다. 음식과 쉼터, 친구를 찾아다니며 길 위의 삶을 사는 세 마리의 개 제이틴, 나자르, 카르탈의 눈과 귀를 통해 도시와 사람들의 친근한 이야기, 그리고 그동안 우리가 간과했던 사회의 구석진 부분이 화면에 펼쳐진다. 동물의 낯선 시선으로 계급, 인종, 성별로 나눠진 인간세계의 분열을 비판적으로 관찰하는 동시에 새로운 감각적 여행을 가능하게 한다. (서울환경영화제)

20대 중반의 친구 네 명이 제2차 세계 대전 기념관인 죽음의 철도 박물관에 방문하고자 깐짜나부리로 향한다. 이들의 이야기와 평행을 이루는 한 여자의 이야기가 있다. 그녀는 친구가 알 수 없는 이유로 자취를 감춘 뒤 숲에 홀로 남는다.

Constructed from the audio archive of the 1961 Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea: In the encounter with the Hubula people, this work reflects a parallaxing image of the histories of field recording, ethnographic film, and colonialism.

Constructed from the audio archive of the 1961 Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea: In the encounter with the Hubula people, this work reflects a parallaxing image of the histories of field recording, ethnographic film, and colonialism.

Phases of Matter follows living and inanimate residents of a teaching hospital in Istanbul, moving from the operating room to the morgue, between life and other states, the real and the virtual.

From a snake charmer to a welder, from a weaver to an obstetrician, the inhabitants of the holy city of Varanasi are striving for survival, and transform and ennoble themselves in the process. A hypnotic study of people at work—a street beggar, a surgeon, a weaver, a priest, a masseur, a tabla drum maker, and a crane operator: people who in their intense concentration and ritualized movements evoke the idea of human labor as an act of spiritual devotion and social interdependence. Filmed largely in India’s ancient holy city of Varanasi

Brett Story's visionary look at New York City as it braces for an uncertain future.

태국 남부의 대표적인 관광지로 꼽히는 크라비 섬은 태국의 선사 시대와 가까운 과거, 그리고 현재의 세계가 충돌하는 장소다. 한 영화인은 촬영지를 물색하기 위해 관광 가이드의 도움을 받아 섬의 구석구석을 탐방한다. 이곳에 살고 있는 한 노인은 과거에 권투선수로 살아 온 삶을 이야기한다. 광고를 촬영하기위해 섬을 찾은 배우는 네안데르탈인과 조우하는 기이한 경험을 겪은 이후 행동에 변화를 보인다. 이 모든 신비로운 경험은 장소와 시간의 상호작용에 대한 시적인 표현이며, 일반적으로 크라비 섬을 방문하는 외지의 관광객으로서는 쉽게 볼 수 없는 경험을 선사한다. 미래처럼 느껴지는 2562년은 사실 ‘불력’으로서 영화가 완성된 2019년을 나타낸다.

2045년. 화성에 도착한 영화감독이 영화를 만든다. “고향, 머나먼 고향”을 기억하며 떠나온 곳에 남겨둔 사람들의 얼굴과 떠오르는 이미지를 기억한다. 영상과 아카이브 필름, 베트남 소수민족의 인터뷰를 통해 유령과도 같은 그들의 삶과 기억을 실험적인 형식으로 담아낸다.

Filmed in various places over the globe, Ghost Strata explores the differing scales of impact that humanity’s presence has on the earth in the past, present and into the future. Found sound and text create a meditation on time, memory, leftovers and extinction.

Electro-Pythagorus is an intimate and subjective portrait of the late Martin Bartlett, the Canadian electronic music pioneer who studied with Pauline Oliveros, David Tudor, John Cage, and Pandit Pran Nath. His contribution as an interdisciplinary composer, educator, and founding member of Western Front, though undoubtedly extensive, is in danger of being erased from cultural memory since his death from AIDS in 1993. Navigating an array of archival materials including letters, correspondences, notebooks, personal photos, and a huge body of unreleased music and field recordings held at the archives of Simon Fraser University, Electro-Pythagoras is a journey through the evolution of Bartlett’s musical time and space, softly guided by Luke Fowler’s insightful camera and montage—creating an experimental portrait that defies one-dimensionality.

“Ah humanity! reflects on the fragility and folly of humanity in the age of the Anthropocene. Taking the 3/11/11 disaster of Fukushima as its point of departure, it evokes an apocalyptic vision of modernity, and our predilection for historical amnesia and futuristic flights of fancy. Shot on a telephone through a handheld telescope, at once close to and far from its subject, the audio composition combines excerpts from Japanese genbaku film soundtracks, audio recordings from scientific seismic laboratories, and location sound.”—Ernst Karel, Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Combining high definition and Super 8 footage, Lampedusa is composed of interwoven narratives based on a series of real events. In 1831, a volcanic island suddenly erupted from the sea a few kilometers off the southern coast of Sicily. An international dispute ensued, as a number of European powers laid claim to this newfound “land”. The island receded below sea level six months later, leaving only a rocky ledge under the sea…

A fascinating portrait of "thoughtographer" Ted Serios, a hard-drinking Chicago bellhop who caused a sensation in the sixties with his psychic ability to produce hundreds of Polaroid images from his mind.

Single Stream explores a recycling facility in the Boston area, where hundreds of tons of refuse are sorted daily. Blurring the line between observation and abstraction, Single Stream plunges the viewer into the steady flow of the plant and the waste it treats, examining the material consequences of our society's culture of excess.

A throng of believers all crowd together in front of a stage. The speeches have ended. They are enraptured. The 'new' Indonesia.

Exploring the intersection between experimental documentary and ethnographic anthropology, this short film silently follows a herd of sheep and a faceless cowboy through magic hour in Montana. A Western without guns or dames, just the open country, man and the animal world are left behind.

A short documentary that captures the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, The Yellow Bank takes you on a contemplative boat ride across the Huangpu River in Shanghai, China. Filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki, who lived and worked in Shanghai nine years earlier, uses the eclipse as a catalyst to explore the way weather, light, and sound affect the urban architectural environment during this extremely rare phenomenon.

A static camera records the coming of day as a flock of sheep cross the titular stream in a painterly pastoral to restore the senses through a tradition of old.

In northeastern China the Songhua River flows west from the border of Russia to the city of Harbin, where four million people depend on it as a source of water. Songhua is a portrait of the varying people that gather where the river meets the city, and an ethnographic study of the intimate ways in which they play and work.