David Rimmer's avant-garde classic takes a single film fragment of a factory worker unraveling a sheet of cellophane, and alters it through a mesmerizing series of spectral apparitions and alchemical and sonic permutations.
A necrophilic doctor, a man wearing headphones and a bunch of cannibals are just a few of the characters in this bizarre debut by director Lê Bình Giang about the cyclical effect of violence.
A girl witnesses a horrible sight online, then the electricity is cut off inside her apartment. Later when the light returns, she feel that she is not alone.
A quotation from Aristophanes, "The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love," precedes views of a man and a woman's bodies, often in extreme close up. Off-screen, a voice recites fragments of oracular literature and purple prose. We see an eye, an ear, a mouth, a tongue, bits of hair, a hand, the tips of fingers, toes. Occasionally, the frame includes a larger scape of a body: a chest, a back, a breast. Usually the camera is stationery; sometimes, it moves across a body, remaining in close up. They hold hands for one moment. The bodies are without clothes; no genitalia are visible.
A short film by Stan Brakhage.
A send-up of Griffith's THE LONELY VILLA and other movies of that sort, such as THE GIRLS AND DADDY, THE LONEDALE OPERATOR and many others, as the heroine, thinking that burglars are trying to break into her home phones her husband at the office, who rushes home.... well, who tries to rush home in his chauffeur-driven automobile.
The second part: Brakhage’s layering of images spends less time with images of war, and begins filtering in scenes of Vienna and his home in Colorado. He sets up a comparison between “Kubelka’s Vienna” and his own.
“Freud established that jokes were structurally akin to dreams in their use of condensation, displacement, representation by opposites, punning and ‘nonsense’. All of these strategies are much in evidence in (Land’s) marvelously duplicitous ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE… [...] so clever and original a filmmaker as to make most others – not to mention his critics – seem flat-footed by comparison. ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE harks back to Bunuel’s early work. Not only is it structured like a dream and filled with sexual imagery, but like Un Chien Andalou, it smacks of being an insider’s joke played upon the avant-garde. Where Bunuel used the insights of psychoanalysis to satirize Christianity, Land– with an almost equal perversity – reverses the process and uses Christianity to send up Freud.” – J. Hoberman, American Film
A short film by Stan Brakhage featuring music by Rick Corrigan.
2045 A.D. A new genetic disease is causing humans to reject their own organs. Cybernetic enhancements are the only means to survive. One desperate man is forced to steal cybernetic implants to save an innocent life.
A short film by Stan Brakhage.
An experimental film by Stan Brakhage. Frenetic editing and hand-painted film accompany scenes of dogs and raccoons, snakes and mice.
An injured man lies completely still in a hospital room with doctors hovering at his bedside, appearing serene and peaceful as he slowly succumbs to death. However, in his own mind, memories of a recent battle vividly flash by. Thoughts of death and chaos haunt him, even in his final moments.
No information available regarding the film's director. Just under 10 minutes of over an hour's footage survive.
Rather than telling his parents, who have another girl picked out for him, Bob brings home his new wife disguised as his friend "Steve."
In honor of the cat, so named, and the goddess of all cats which she was named after. - CAT Film Festival
An experimental animated short film in which a piano plays a song and the keys, hammers, and various other parts of the piano are different colors.
“The Riddle of Lumen” presents an evenly paced sequence of images, which seem to follow an elusive logic. As in “Zorns Lemma” the viewer is called upon to recognize or invent a principle of association linking each shot with its predecessor. However, here the connection is nonverbal. A similarity, or an antithesis, of color, shape, saturation, movement, composition, or depth links one shot to another. A telling negative moment occurs in the film when we see a child studying a didactic reader in which simply represented objects are coupled with their monosyllabic names in alphabetical order. –P. Adams Sitney
We move back and forth between scenes of a family at home and thoughts about the stars and creation. Children hold chickens while an adult clips their wings; we see a forest; a narrator talks about stars and light and eternity. A dog joins the hens and the family, while the narrator explains the heavens. We see a bee up close. The narrator suggests metaphors for heavenly bodies. Scenes fade into a black screen or dim purple; close-ups of family life may be blurry. The words about the heavens, such as "The stars are a flock of hummingbirds," contrast with images and sounds of real children.
