Experimental

  • Alberto Grifi – Dinni e la Normalina, ovvero la videopolizia psichiatrica contro i sedicenti gruppi di follia militante (1978)

    1971-1980Alberto GrifiExperimentalItaly

    Quote:
    This is a quite a rare example of a political sci-fi filmed without means. An excessive and schizophrenic creature, DINNI E LA NORMALINA allows Grifi’s more playful soul to see the light, while not dispersing the dark reflection on the exploitation by media institutions. Although the film is completely finished, in 2004 Grifi filmed new material to be integrated into the editing process: a homeless man who wanders among carcasses of burned scooters, queues of employees who show their feces to the health inspectors. Unfortunately this material remains unpublished.Read More »

  • Vera Chytilová – Sedmikrásky AKA Daisies (1966)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseCzech RepublicExperimentalVera Chytilová

    Synopsis:
    If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named Marie, embark on a gleefully debauched odyssey of gluttony, giddy destruction, and antipatriarchal resistance, in which nothing is safe from their nihilistic pursuit of pleasure. But what happens when the fun is over? Matching her anarchic message with an equally radical aesthetic, director Věra Chytilová, with the close collaboration of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, unleashes an optical storm of fluctuating film stocks, kaleidoscopic montages, cartoonish stop-motion cutouts, and surreal costumes designed by Ester Krumbachová, who also cowrote the script. The result is Daisies, the most defiant provocation of the Czechoslovak New Wave, an exuberant call to rebellion aimed squarely at those who uphold authoritarian oppression in any form.Read More »

  • Yvonne Rainer – Film About a Woman Who… (1974)

    1971-1980DramaExperimentalUSAYvonne Rainer

    Quote:
    Yvonne Rainer’s landmark film is a meditation on ambivalence that plays with cliché and the conventions of soap opera while telling the story of a woman whose sexual dissatisfaction masks an enormous anger. (Zeitgeist FIlms)Read More »

  • Richard Kern – Nazi (1991)

    1991-2000ExperimentalRichard KernShort FilmUSA

    Quote:
    Nazi is a short film by underground film-maker and photographer Richard Kern, featuring Annabelle Lee. This movie came from his Death Trip collection.Read More »

  • Anders Rønnow Klarlund – Strings (2004)

    2001-2010Anders Rønnow KlarlundDenmarkExperimentalFantasy

    Plot Outline: Strings is a mythological story about the son of a king, Hal Tara, who sets out on a journey to revenge the death of his father. To his surprise he discovers the truth of his own people – and where he least expects it – he finds true love.

    Actually this film is a bit short on plot but is technically stunning, and incorporates a number of unusual sight-gags, such as the portcullis to the walled city rising (not lowering) to keep people in (because everyone is a puppet and the raised portcullis blocks their strings)…Read More »

  • Mark Lapore – The Glass System (2000)

    1991-2000DocumentaryExperimentalMark LaporeUSA

    Quote:
    The Glass System, made from images shot in New York and Calcutta, looks at life as it is played out in the streets. Every corner turned reveals activities both simple and unfamiliar: a knife sharpener on a bicycle; a tiny tightrope walker; a man selling watches in front of a department store on Fifth Avenue; a hauntingly slow portrait of the darting eyes of schoolgirls on their way home; the uncompleted activities of a young contortionist. The sound in the film (which is from a Bengali primer written by British missionaries) is a meditation on how the English language teaches ideas about culture which are often incongruous. The disjunction between what you hear and what you see evokes reflections about the impact of globalization and the hegemony of Western-style capitalism.Read More »

  • Fred Halsted – The Sex Garage (1972)

    1971-1980EroticaExperimentalFred HalstedQueer Cinema(s)USA

    Quote:
    Fred Halsted, S&M aficionado and XXX film actor, emerged as a director rivaling Kenneth Anger in the genre of gay art-erotica. L.A. Plays Itself (1972) was his take on the same territory as Anger’s Scorpio Rising. When it opened at the 55th Street Playhouse, doubled billed with his Sex Garage, it was a case of see-it-now, or now you don’t. The police shut it down – not for the notorious fisting vignette that climaxes L.A. Plays Itself (which is cut from the video versions), but for a scene in which a guy gets it on with his motorcycle.Read More »

  • Lukas Moodysson – Container (2006)

    Drama2001-2010ExperimentalLukas MoodyssonSweden

    Poetic, experimental and different, a black and white silent movie with sound where as an obese man carries a slim Asian woman across trash dumps and through dilapidated buildings, off-screen voices deliver a jumble of thoughts and personalities. A blend of identity, spirituality, consumerism and pop culture sounds like crazy talk one minute and sanity the next. The reference of Chernobyl Massacre came repeatedly in the movie. The movie reminds us that it was the then USSR, the country on the lead of Communism i.e. it is not of the people by the people for the people; instead it was a country of social equality; equality, not equity, where the disaster took place !Read More »

  • Gérard Courant – Les Malheurs de Luis Buñuel AKA The Misfortunes of Luis Buñuel (2022)

    2021-2030DocumentaryExperimentalFranceGérard Courant

    The Misfortunes of Luis Buñuel” shows the ravages of time on the rushes of the film “The Golden Age” that Luis Buñuel shot in 1930. By isolating and slowing down the most damaged parts of the rushes of the Spanish master’s film, I managed to create an object with abstract shapes and, insidiously, to give another life to a first-class artistic work.

    Gerard CourantRead More »

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