Adapted and directed by Marc Craste, Varmints is a 24-minute film based on the award-winning book of the same name by Helen Ward and illustrated by Craste, that tells the story of one small creature's struggle to preserve a world in danger of being lost forever through recklessness and indifference. A crew of 35 people worked in three countries over a two year period to make the film, and an original score by Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson and sound design by Adrian Rhodes complete the picture.
3-D puppet animation adventure about two kids from Warsaw in Poland who discover an old piano in amongst a pile of junk that transforms into a magical flying machine. The kids, Anna and her cousin Chip Chip, use the Flying Machine to fly across Europe to find Anna's father in London. Before it happens, they have to learn how to fly the magical machine... On their way they have to navigate an obstacle course of hot air-balloons, swoop into Paris on a mission of the flying machine, weather a fierce storm in the English Channel, and with sunset fast approaching find dad in the big darkening city of London. Before they reach him they are torn from the flying machine by a magic storm, and find themselves back in the pile of junk in Warsaw. However maybe the Dad saw something in the stormy skies of London, because the next day he comes home to his daughter.
“Aleph” is an artist’s meditation on life, death, mysticism, politics, and pop culture. In an eight-minute loop of film, Wallace Berman uses Hebrew letters to frame a hypnotic, rapid-fire montage that captures the go-go energy of the 1960s. Aleph includes stills of collages created using a Verifax machine, Eastman Kodak’s precursor to the photocopier. These collages depict a hand-held radio that seems to broadcast or receive popular and esoteric icons. Signs, symbols, and diverse mass-media images (e.g., Flash Gordon, John F. Kennedy, Mick Jagger) flow like a deck of tarot cards, infinitely shuffled in order that the viewer may construct his or her own set of personal interpretations. The transistor radio, the most ubiquitous portable form of mass communication in the 1960s, exemplifies the democratic potential of electronic culture and may serve as a metaphor for Jewish mysticism.
The film's subject is a photograph of Jane Fonda visiting Hanoi during the Vietnam War. It asks what the position of the intellectual should be in the class struggle and points out the irony of Jane Fonda's participation in the photo shoot, which was staged.
The Little White Cloud That Cried, made in tribute to underground filmmaker Jack Smith, and described as: “Goddesses unharnessing the power of the sea and putting it into a whole new element as they engaged in orgiastic battles and whoopla.” —cinematical.com
In an endless loop, unexposed film runs through the projector. The resulting projected image shows a surface illuminated by a bright light, occasionally altered by the appearance of scratches and dust particles in the surface of the damaged film material. This a film which depicts only its own material qualities; An "anti-film", meant to encourage viewers to focus on the lack of concrete images.
Jūzō Itami's debut short film, concerning a group of unique young people in the high economic growth period who are into games with rubber band pistols.
An autocratic Director (Harold Pinter) and his Assistant (Rebecca Pidgeon) put the final touches to the last scene of some kind of dramatic presentation, which consists entirely of a man (John Gielgud) standing still onstage.
First screened as part of Jacobs' "Nervous System" film performance, The Georgetown Loop is based on an archival film from 1903, which Jacobs pairs with its mirror double to produce a kaleidoscopic two-screen projection. The original film depicts a journey shot from the cab of a train passing through the Colorado Rockies, and, in this hypnotic new form, comes to suggest the movement of consciousness itself.
An experimental short by Hollis Frampton who films the female form during various activities.
Renowned artist and filmmaker Dave McKean (MirrorMask) brings his distinctive blend of live action and gorgeously wrought animation to this dreamlike reverie about four people whose weekend idyll in an isolated English seaside home becomes an opportunity for spiritual healing.
A businessman lives out his daily routine until he meets unexpected stress in the form of his apartment building's elevator.
Short film of 7 sections with each one using a different experimental film technique.
7362 is concerned with dividing and joining together. It begins with two black circles against a white background, knocking together and gradually moving further apart. The circles fade out, and return as white circles against black inside a square. Images similar to Rorschach blots appear. Gradually the viewer realizes that the images were not originally abstract, but were human forms (dancers, gymnasts, etc.), bridges, and others that have been split down the center of the frame, with their mirror images printed on either side of the split. Red, green, and white tints further abstract the images from their original foundations in the natural world, making dancers appear to be amoebas or dividing cells. The accompanying sound track is a mixture of electronic music and musique concrète ("real" recorded sounds manipulated to sound abstract).
Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.
Nico is an ethereal poet haunting the gaps between scenes of Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Bulle Ogier, Laurent Terzieff, and Garrel’s father, Maurice, discussing the filmmaker’s staple topics: love, psychoanalysis, and the failures of May ’68.
Free-associative images are juxtaposed with disorienting poetry in Richter's late work. The film is visual dynamite: Upside-down and reversed footage, play with shadows and light, billiards and dice and balloons-- suggestive and surreal images. Tenets of Dada writing, such as games of chance, punnery, wordplay and loud nonsense noise are foist upon the viewer as Dada poems are read / performed by their orignal authors.
Suggestion: Please see 'Another Occupation' before 'Seeking the Monkey King'. Contains flicker like many of my works; avoid if you have epilepsy or other unusual brain conditions.
Seeking escape from his stalled relationship and unhappy place in the world, a recently pink-slipped music teacher sets out to hike Kentucky's Sheltowee Trace Trail. Among the verdant hills of Appalachia, he encounters various strange characters and becomes the reluctant companion of a gregarious father and son who ultimately help him rediscover what he's been missing.
An Icelandic farmer's son decides to leave his farm, fiance, friends, dog and horse, during the depression before World War II, to start a new life somewhere else.
