Leonora Carrington or The Ironic Spell

Cinema and painting establish a fluid dialogue and begins with introspection in the themes and forms of the plastic work of a woman tormented by the elongated specters, originating from her obsessions and nightmares.

The Odd Hour

A student from Sutnar in Pilsen, who is also an animation teacher for children, uses faded old objects, transparencies, and an overhead projector in her film experiment to create different moods. However, these speak to the audience not only through their visuality, but also through the poem of the same name by Ewald Murrer.

Outer Space Diplomacy

A critical essay on the anthropocentric nature of space colonization.

Confession

A filmmaker recalls his youth in the town of Onomichi. In the present, he shoots a film in Onomichi alongside his cast, crew and family.

Above the Lake

Avant-garde homage to pre-revolution Russian silent movies, and to the poet Aleksandr Blok.

Luciano

A sensationalist television show unravels the sordid story of Luciano Fernández and analyzes the possible motives that led him to murder a child. (Inspired by a real event that occurred in the forest of Verrières, Paris, on May 27th, 1964.)

Toast

After Romaine is kidnapped at the hands of the shadowy Spicers, Detective Alfredo Pasta goes undercover to find his missing friend and root out an evil conspiracy in San Pancrisco.

Mad About Being Mad

Setting, settling; still seething as I barely breathe.

Ever Reaching Fairly Preachily

Flitter like tittertatter trying to breathe while working, like a mad hatter; the outofbreath feeling rising from recursive reforgettings (or their resemblances).

Xenoi

The Greek island of Syros is visited by a series of unexpected guests. Immutable forms, outside of time, aloof observants to human conditions.

Daydream Therapy

Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. —Allyson Nadia Field

Supermarket Sweep

Protozoa

Darren Aronofsky’s AFI short opens with angry slacker Dave sitting in a dreary, empty junkyard. Dave stares into space, sips beer, and beats the hell out of a cracked guitar. We quickly realize the emptiness of the dump parallels the emptiness of Dave’s life which consists of smoking weed, staring at television screens and watching school children. Dave’s friend Pete is shortly introduced, along with their friend, Ari, who despite calling her pals losers, doesn’t seem to accomplishing much herself. These three are going nowhere fast. They’re the amoebas of life… protozoa….

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

Transitions

A look at the various modes of transportation made for the Expo '86 World Fair in Vancouver, Canada.

Enigma: Nazo

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

Enter Hamlet

Enter Hamlet is a collage of images in cartoon form of a word put in balloon in each jump-cut scene as that word is said by the narrator Maurice Evans during his “To be or not to be…” soliloquy recording.

Thot-Fal'N

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."

Untouchable

A masseuse's journey to find the human touch.

The Loom

A multiple-superimposition hand-painted visual symphony of animal life of earth. THE LOOM might be compared to musical quartet-form (as there are almost always four superimposed pictures); but the complexity of texture, multiplicity of tone, and the variety of interrelated rhythm, suggest symphonic dimensions. The film is very inspired by George Melies: the animals exist (in Jane's enclosure) as on a stage, their interrelationships edited to the disciplines of dance, so therefore one might say this hardly represents "animal life on earth"; but I would argue that this work at least epitomizes theatrical Nature, magical Creature, and is the outside limit, to date, of my art in that respect. (The balance-of-light was so perfectly realized in making the neg. of this print that I wish to credit Western Cine Lab's "timer" Louise Fujiki as creative collaborator in the accomplishment of this work.)