"How life blooms towards the heart of the city."
'Hibiscus' highlights the city's hidden beauty and the warmth of its people that may go by unnoticed on a daily basis but are beautiful reminders to appreciate.
Social & External
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.”
An experimental film from Jirí Lehovec, mixing the sound process with animated rhythms.
In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.
Drawing on VHS tapes of a programme hosted by her mother on Bulgaria’s national television, the filmmaker gives a pop-style and in-depth chronicle of the gentle – even “over-gentle” – 1989 revolution.
After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.
Return to 'burn' only to find out you're already in that urn.
A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.
The rare short film presents a curious dialogue between filmmaker Julio Bressane and actor Grande Otelo, where, in a mixture of decorated and improvised text, we discover a little manifesto to the Brazilian experimental cinema. Also called "Belair's last film," Chinese Viola reveals the first partnership between photographer Walter Carvalho and Bressane.
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.
A first feature based on sexual events. An actress undertakes her desire of directing her first movie, without a budget or any production company funding her project. She gathers a group of professional actors and actresses, and proposes a project based on a very particular experience: stepping on their fears through a metaphorical 'leap of faith'. As the project advances, individual conflicts will arise affecting the shoot, making the movie crew wonder whether or not they should go on. Will they take the leap of faith with all its consequences?
Today, analogue video is attractive primarily thanks to the distinctive aesthetic quality of its pixelated image and raster errors. But for Czech artists who first explored the possibilities offered by video art in the late 1980s, this medium represented a path towards freedom. Through a portrait of her grandfather Radek Pilař, one of the pioneers of Czech video art, the director explores her own legacy of imperative creative fascination. Her film’s main story, i.e., the process of reconstructing the 1989 exhibition Video Day, contrasts this enchantment with life in the final days of the totalitarian regime, which different sharply with the adventures of those who decided to emigrate – whom the filmmaker also visits in order to discover forgotten works, get to know their creators, and re-establish broken ties.
IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.
The Greek island of Syros is visited by a series of unexpected guests. Immutable forms, outside of time, aloof observants to human conditions.
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."
"My last image of Jonas."—Ken Jacobs
“We never know how high we are till we are called to rise” could be the motto of this stunningly filmed, high impact and suspenseful motion picture that is based on a true story. Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu is a teenage hawker who is drawn into the liberation movement to fight against an oppressive apartheid South African government. When he and his comrades are accosted by police while on a mission he is charged with two counts of murder. He is in a fight for his life and must prove his innocence.
John is an eighteen-year-old Latino male prostitute, living in the poorest area of Hollywood, L.A. He often steals condoms and medicine from the local stores to support himself, due to his inexperience in the hustling world. Peaches is a black trans prostitute, who often helps John financially. Miguel is an older hustler who teaches John how to please men. John often spends his night wandering through the street, looking for older men to buy him for the night. His clients, men who come from all levels of society, share with John their stories and secrets.
A family drama about a young woman who kidnaps a decorated WWII veteran. Their road adventure fills with quirkiness and unforeseen dangers.
A bag full of money lands in front of you. Is it luck? The answer to your prayers? Part of a predetermined plan? Or all of the above? Set in the chaotic streets of Istanbul, 40 is a story of three strangers making their way in a city of 12 million, all searching...for one bag. Shot entirely on location, '40' combines intense story telling with documentary style cinematography embarking on a synchronistic journey dealing with faith, love, luck, destiny, human trafficking...and a bag of cash that falls from the sky.
Hornblower must deliver a French nobleman to a secret rendezvous near Brest, all while coping with enemy agents in his own ranks.
Seventeen's 9th fan meeting took place at INCHEON MUNHAK MAIN STADIUM in Incheon, South Korea from March 20-21, 2025, both in-person and online.
In August 2008, filmmaker Brian Fender posted an add on Craigslist to solicit volunteers for a documentary project. He invited "subjects" into his living room to strip down and reveal themselves physically and emotionally through personal stories about their relationship to their penises. Fender interviewed a vast cross-section of anonymous, naked men about their prized appendage: from monks to transsexuals to ex-marines to designers, ranging in age from 21 to 80. Hoping to demystify, illuminate, and even celebrate this "member" in our society, this DIY documentary is a candid exploration of what it means to have a dick.
For months, Richard Montana has been giving drug lord Mario Gio hell. But it's only when he meets Gio's leggy blonde girlfriend, nightclub singer Lisa, that things get personal. And after Montana and Lisa have been in bed, things get absolutely deadly. Especially because the headstrong beauty has her own plans. Because only she is the key to Gio's next big deal. And Lisa wants the drugs, the dollars and Montana all to herself. And because that's the case, all hell breaks loose and Gio's killers go on the hunt!
"a colorful poem of the first copy-motion film... the system registers images directly from a color (xerox) duplicator model 6500... an original, versatil, unique system developed by Darino" –Back Stage
A mosaic portrait of people who live along the US/Mexico border. Each of the fourteen channels represents one of the many crossing towns from Tijuana on the left to El Paso & the Rio Grande on the right.
In the supercharged world of dirt track racing, a single mistake causes the lives of two men to change forever. One must fight for his family, the other must fight to forgive.
Whilst celebrating Lleu's 18th birthday, Lleu and two friends go for a boat ride, when they discover beneath the water the golden doorway to the Mabinogi (the Otherworld). They swim down and are transported back in time many centuries to the Mabinogi. There they encounter some problems with mediaeval life, and they have to deal with the conflict between fate personal choice and magic
Farhad tells the story of his life to a psychiatrist. In the time of the Iran-Iraq War, Farhad is arrested and charged with illegal migration. When he is freed years later, he goes to his old love, Mahtab. Through conversations with his psychoanalyst and interrogations with the police, Farhad reveals the story of his life.
A volatile young man struggles to control his unnatural powers when he faces a chance encounter in an unfamiliar environment.
