“Sequences of space-time manipulation that raise the problem of continuity in the shot.” - Yo Ota
Social & External
The people behind it
striations is a two-channel video made by Steve Roden with artist Mary Simpson. It was originally part of a larger exhibition that included painting, drawing, and sculpture related to an unfinished stone sculpture made by Roden’s grandmother. The film attempts to use fragments of “stilled” information whose meanings are unknown or unresolved, to become active again through engagement and use. The imagery includes Roden’s grandmother’s half carved stones, as well as images related to Henry Moore and artifacts of his grandmother’s objects left behind, such as the crayons used in the rubbings, and the photographs of birds she used as inspiration/study for sculpture never realized. striations is accompanied by distance piece, a soundwork that intertwines with the silent film.
A tale of two brothers from babies to adulthood told without words. One brother is upstaged by the other from the crib onward. Eventually the tables are turned.
First fully-realized video work from Sean McCann, circa late 2008. A sensory overload of aquatic and galactic collages, a surreal journey. Featuring an original soundtrack, recorded following the Midnight Orchard sessions - quite mesmerizing and peaceful.
Super 8mm film.
From the Maroon village of Malobi in Suriname, South America, this single-take film offers a strikingly contemporary take on a Jean Rouch classic. It’s Halloween at the Equator, Andrei Tarkovsky for the jungle set.
This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”
Fifteen images of a camera running in a park and in obscurity searching the space of light through distorsion and the sensory of rapid motion.
This cine-portrait of New York City uses digital effects to turn the countless riders of the subway system into living, breathing paintings.
In the Mojave Desert, fields of solar panels follow the sun’s daily journey in perfect synchronicity.
Colossal explores the complexities of grief and the process of grieving as understood through the myth of a Man as he ventures through shifting landscapes ruminating.
ISLANDS explores a cinematic journey of two astronauts. As they enter Earth’s atmosphere the structure transforms. The spacecraft becomes the meteor from a myth of a tribesman; it triggers an old lady’s memory of a lover from her past. As these diverse characters converge in a plane of reality, we confront a particular form of gravity we covertly feel—falling in love.
Rapidly changing images of natural objects, scenery, animals, plants, and people flicker, flash, tumble, and cascade across the screen.
At first, there was Tagalog, Gym Lumbera’s short and, to his mind, unfinished narrative about the infidelity that comes between a husband and wife in their twilight years, shot on film and reflecting his own real-life infidelity.. And then there was a storm, a real storm and not a metaphorical one, that flooded his house and submerged, and subsequently damaged, the only copy of Tagalog. This damaged version, entitled English, became the missing piece that completed the film. The new work is named after Taglish, the bastard hybrid, some say corruption, of Tagalog and English, and has become a meditation on love and language and the ways in which we betray and destroy them.
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
Avant-garde composer John Cage is famous for his experimental pieces and "chance music" but temporarily branched into video in 1992 with this art film about meaningless activity. The work is composed of two segments that are supposed to be played simultaneously: "One 11" contains the artistic statement, and "103" is a 17-part orchestral piece. Also included is a revealing documentary about Cage and director Henning Lohner.
Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.
Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”
"Mapang-akit" is an offshoot of a documentary project made with an Icelandic filmmaker and uses the outtakes from the Hudas Hudas festival in Antique, where a community bonds over a large effigy of Judas Iscariot during Holy Week. Amidst it is a found story of a man who returns home to his death after pursuing a woman in a neighboring village.
The film consists of two identical prints shown simultaneously, one projected inside the image of the other. The inner image is out of sync one second in advance of the larger image creating a dynamic inter-play between the overlapping frames.
Experimental short uses Ray Charles' “What'd I Say” as accompaniment to constantly shifting collage of female nude, cartoons, and newsreels of atomic bomb explosions.
86-year-old Irving Zisman is on a journey across America with the most unlikely companion: his 8 year-old grandson, Billy.
Something sinister's afoot in Kasukabe. Shin-chan doesn't know what it is, but he's pretty sure it involves samba-dancing doppelgängers.
Left on the doorstep of an orphanage run by nuns, three newborn knuckleheads grow up to be finger-poking, nyuk-nyuking janitors named Larry, Curly and Moe. When they learn that financial problems will soon force the only home they've ever known to close, the trio sets out to raise $830,000 in one month. Out in the world for the very first time, the three innocent bumblers become embroiled in a murder plot and find stardom on a TV reality show.
After a fatal test shuts down their project, a disgraced team of scientists enters the criminal underworld to rebuild a forbidden space-bending engine that could rescue humanity or annihilate it entirely.
The Making-of James Cameron's Avatar. It shows interesting parts of the work on the set.
The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once again as the journey of Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron continues. With the power and knowledge of generations behind them, the final battle begins.
Kara, devastated by the loss of Krypton, struggles to adjust to her new life on Earth. Her cousin, Superman, mentors her and suggests she leave their space-time to attend the Legion Academy in the 31st century, where she makes new friends and a new enemy: Brainiac 5. Meanwhile, she must contend with a mysterious group called the Dark Circle as it searches for a powerful weapon held in the Academy’s vault.
In a world where superpowered people are heavily policed by robots, an ex-con teams up with a drug lord he despises to protect a teen from a corrupt cop.
An artificial intelligence escapes her spaceship to turn into a female ghost and challenges two blade runners to a galactic chase.
An uptight advertising exec has his entire life in a filofax organizer which mistakenly ends up in the hands of a friendly convict who poses as him.
Iron Man enlists the help of ruthless vigilante the Punisher to track down War Machine's murderer. All the while, he's being pursued by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Black Widow and Hawkeye, who suspect his involvement in a recent terrorist plot.
Determined to avoid another night of driving aimlessly around Torrance in the Blue Torpedo, Joe and Hubbs set out on a quest for fine chicks. Their paths soon cross with Tack, from whom they learn about a pair of foreign radical chicks hanging out near the Frankie Avalon place. Over Joe's objections, Hubbs worms Tack out of the deal, and the pair take a slow ride toward their destiny.
After his police officer brother is killed by a drug dealer who flees to the protection of his cartel-connected uncle in Mexico, an American man with a diverse law enforcement/military background goes south of the border to get revenge
Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates.
The origin story of former Special Forces operative turned mercenary Wade Wilson, who, after being subjected to a rogue experiment that leaves him with accelerated healing powers, adopts the alter ego Deadpool. Armed with his new abilities and a dark, twisted sense of humor, Deadpool hunts down the man who nearly destroyed his life.
Eddie and Venom are on the run. Hunted by both of their worlds and with the net closing in, the duo are forced into a devastating decision that will bring the curtains down on Venom and Eddie's last dance.
After a construction project begins digging in their neighbourhood, best friends Tuck, Munch and Alex inexplicably begin to receive strange, encoded messages on their cell phones. Convinced something bigger is going on, they go to their parents and the authorities. The three embark on a secret adventure to crack the code and follow it to its source, and discover a mysterious being from another world who desperately needs their help. The journey that follows will change all their lives forever.
In a future where an adult Gwen Tennyson is president and the world is being taken over by the alien horde known as the Xerge, a disillusioned Ben 10,000 is called out of retirement to recruit his 10-year-old version from the past. Based on the 2016 reboot.
Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian.