Experimental

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“He came to read. He opened two or three books; by historians and poets. But he read for barely ten minutes, and then gave up.” C. Cavafy

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A postcard, a souvenir from Athens: sitting on a comfortable rock, a young man is bent over in his thoughts, then straightens up a little to project them on to the landscape; in the background, a ruin; between the two, a few tiny passers-by, two or three stray dogs that break into the frame; and in the air, a record with worn-out grooves, a popular Greek song in which we make out the words: “postcard”, “souvenir from Athens”. Are the films of Jean-Claude Rousseau postcards? Yes, basically: a certain eternity in the stark present of an image, brought back from a place the eye has visited. Read More »

Expressive solarized nightscapes in a personal and poetic filmmaking style with fully hand processing 16mm imagery, made and projected by French filmmaker Gaëlle Rouard.

Shown in its original 16mm format, Gaëlle Rouard’s latest work unfolds in two acts. First, the “Prelude”, whose intrigue rests on a landscape traversed by iridescent Chinese shadows provoking a profusion of sensations. Each shot is a tableau vivant, chiaroscuro, Rembrandtesque. Life is incarnated in the emulsion like a new beginning.
But, the shadows of death make one pause and reflect, as hinted by the title of the second act, “Oration”. The celluloid prism brings perceptions to light, revealing the poetic and narrative force of abstraction. A fitting metaphor of photochemical cinema, elaborated by Gaëlle Rouard in her own laboratory. For many years, she has used it to experiment with particular techniques that make her work unique.Read More »

A joy for the eyes and ears, this high-point of the Brazilian trilogy Operation Sonia Silk. A dreamy making-of about the two other episodes and also a cinematographic essay (in picture, text, sound and music) about cinema and filmmaking and, above all, about love. ‘What is this thing called love? This funny thing called love? Just who can solve its mystery? Why should it make a fool of me?’ So goes the short, poetic synopsis provided by the filmmakers Bruno Safadi and Ricardo Pretti for this third part of their trilogy Operation Sonia Silk. In this ‘operation’, shot in three weeks, the directors each separately made one part (Harmonica’s Howl and Rio Belongs to Us, both shown at IFFR 2012), and then this joint third part, which grew into a surprising high-point.Read More »

People often want to hear what the artist has to say, what lies “behind” the work, yet at the same time it’s taken as a performance.

But Seth Price’s Redistribution (2007 – ) isn’t an artist talk. It uses the artist’s talk as a form and turns it into a video: the artist is at a lectern, giving an overview of his practice, but his explanations are called into question by the constructed nature of all the graphic effects, repeated sequences, voice-overs, or background music. After all, a video is just material in a chain.

When an image is filtered, you’re mostly seeing the filter.Read More »

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It doesn’t look spectacular at first. Two boys each talk separately about their experiences. In the end also on the sexual level. In the end they are also in the room together. In the end they don’t leave it at talking. Remember that homosexuality on film is banned in Thailand and so this film maker has been very daring.

Europeans on sex holidays to Thailand and transvestites who work in tourist areas may give a different impression, but this country is far from liberal in regard to homosexuality. A candid film maker like Thunska Pansittivorakul is therefore sure to come into contact with censorship sooner or later. So anyone who wonders why the two kids in this film keep their pants on right up to the end now knows the answer.Read More »

PLOT: HANDS UP! is a Polish drama film directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. It is the fourth of a series of semi-autobiographical films in which Skolimowski himself plays his alter ego, Andrzej Leszczyc. The film was originally made in 1967 in monochrome. In a twenty minute section (filmed in colour) added by Skolimowski in 1981 he explains how the original was withheld by Polish censors of the time, and that this was a principal cause of his leaving his country; however following liberalisation in Poland, he was invited to resuscitate it. The introduction includes, apart from some fictional apocalyptic passages, shots of Beirut ruined by the civil wars of the 1970s, where Skolimowski is working as an actor on Volker Schloendorff’s German film CIRCLE OF DECEIT, and also shots of London featuring demonstrations in favour of Solidarnosc, Speaker’s Corner, and an exhibition of Skolimowski’s own paintings. These sections include cameo roles by Bruno Ganz, David Essex, Mike Sarne and others. Some of the music in this introduction is from the 1970 choral work « Kosmogonia » by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.Read More »

A movie director is approached by his old math teacher with a great movie idea: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. The director rejects the idea, but subsequent events in the life of a writer, a friend of the director’s, and a young prostitute he loves seem to prove the math teacher’s idea.Read More »

In Khojpuri ruled by King Bhadrabhoop, citizens sleep and work. Once they got bitten by mysterious mosquitoes, making some citizens rebellious even in their dreams. King bans dreaming. When a young scientist Hunshi gets an m-bite, he becomes violent. He is operated.. But what happens to Hunshi’s love, Parveen?Read More »

A soldier and a beautiful blonde on a train to Harrisburg.Read More »