Maska (2010, 23 min., Video, Poland) by The Quay Brothers
The Quay Brothers’ trademark puppet animation is on display in a haunting adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem story about technology and love.
“This beautiful new animation from the Brothers Quay is a dark, terrifying fairytale after the eponymous story by Stanislaw Lem. What seems to be an innocent if somewhat dark love story soon morphs into a horror film when Countess Duenna's true intentions come to light: to mercilessly track down her prince and murder him. Although she is programmed to kill, something akin to a conscience seems to surface in her unscrupulous character. It is this friction between the soul and the machine that keeps us suspended between belief and disbelief.” (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
Zwerk (2004, 8 min., 35mm, The Netherlands) by Bart Vegter
In memory of Bart Vegter (1940-2011), whose film DE TIJD screened in the Onion City 2009 Opening Night Program.
Get Out of the Car (2010, 34 min., 16mm, US): Thom Andersen (LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF) creates a different kind of city symphony of L.A. through its billboards, signage, graffiti art, and rock music history.
“Get Out of the Car [is] a sporadically funny and poignant study of Los Angeles from Thom Andersen, whose disgust for that city is matched only by his transparent love. Working in film, Mr. Andersen tours Los Angeles largely through one of the most despised, contested and quotidian elements clouding our collective field of vision: the billboard. Instead of garish new signs, though, Mr. Andersen reserves his camera and intermittently audible dry wit for weather-beaten, tattered billboard ads in which the original images are absent or hardly recognizable. Like the brightly hued, hand-painted wall murals that also capture his interest here, these derelict billboards fill this film with ephemeral beauty.” (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times)
Atlantique (2009, 15 min., Video, France/Senegal): A beautiful and mysterious work about storytelling and myth-making by Mati Diop (star of Claire Denis’s 35 RHUMS).
“The story of a young stowaway from Dakar who gives up his youth for a new life on the other side of the endless water. Sitting by the campfire, a boy from Dakar named Serigne tells his two friends the story of his sea voyage as a stowaway. Not only he, but everyone in his surroundings seems to be continually obsessed by the idea of trying to cross the sea. His words reverberate like a melancholy poem. A story about boys who are continually travelling: between past, present and future, between life and death, history and myth.” (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
Slave Ship (2010, 6 min., Video, US): T. Marie transforms J.M.W. Turner’s celebrated painting into a delicate and mesmerizing moving canvas.
Zagreb Tram Station (2009, 8 min., Video, Germany): Jürgen Reble combines the chemical and the digital in this roiling abstracted mass portrait of strangers on their business.
House of Days (2011, 3 min., 35mm widescreen, Austria/Germany): Former Chicagoan Peter Miller turns the domestic sphere on its head.
Ouverture (2010, 5 min., 35mm widescreen, Canada): A barn in Normandy becomes the site for in-camera Cinemascope improvisations by Christopher Becks.
Toads (1997/2008, 6 min., Super-8mm blowup to 35mm, Germany): Milena Gierke spies on amphibian mating season.
Resonance (2010, 3 min., Super-8mm, US) by Karen Johannesen
Resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate with larger amplitudes at some frequencies than at others. These are known as the system's resonant frequencies. At these frequencies, even small periodic forces can produce large amplitude oscillations, because the system stores vibrational energy. (KJ)
Between Gold (2011, 11 min., 16mm, US) by Jonathan Schwartz
A dividing line, a division of light, gestures and glances, a body of water, against two continents, amidst a time of reflection and a moment from Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad: "I saw a dog of this kind start to nibble at a flea - a fly attracted his attention, and he made a snatch at him; the flea called for him once more, and that forever unsettled him; he looked sadly at his flea-pasture, then sadly looked at his bald spot. Then he heaved a sigh and dropped his head resignedly upon his paws. He was not equal to the situation." (JS)
Morning Glory (2011, 16 min., 16mm, US) by Robert Todd
Subdued Glow (2010, 3 min., 16mm, US) by Antonio Vargas
A passing glance at a girl’s life that is steeped in a glimmering cinematic world. (AV)
Minong, I Slept (2010, 5 min., 16mm, US) by Vera Brunner-Sung
On the remote wilderness island called Minong (Isle Royale), remains of human industry are absorbed into the forest and shoreline. An inquiry into the push and pull between people and nature, land and sea, intimacy and vastness. (VBS)
Place for Landing (2010, 6 min., Video, US) by Shambhavi Kaul
A household landscape all of mirrors. A child and its reflection are inscribed in a shadowy lunar patchwork. The camera switches its optical pursuit: the child disappears and a bird emerges. The surveying mirror implodes or explodes into space. Its mottled hallway glass both indicates and becomes a Place for Landing. After a series of clever misdirections by the mirror, all is redeemed by a fragment of song in this unsettling haptic illusion. (SK)
…These Blazeing Starrs! (2011, 14 min., 16mm, US) by Deborah Stratman
Since comets have been recorded, they’ve augured disaster: catastrophe, messiahs, upheaval and end times. A short film about these meteoric ice-cored fireballs and their historic ties to divination that combines imagery of 15th-18th century European broadsides with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory footage. (DS)
Sphinx on the Seine (2009, 7 min., Super-8mm, US) by Paul Clipson
The beginning of a journey viewed in a series of brief but enigmatic images taken from around the world. These images follow one after the other, but geographically span thousands of miles and passages of time between each cut. Notions of time, space and memory collide within a visual fabric of landscapes, textures, superimpositions and abstractions, to suggest the first moments of dream-sleep. (PC)
Paper Sun (2010, 2 min., Video, US) by Keith Tassick
Paper Sun was made from footage of a sunset shot with a point-and-shoot camera, broken down into individual frames, printed onto paper, crumpled into a ball, splattered with bleach, scanned as a digital image, randomized and layered. (KT)
Kindless Villain (2010, 5 min., Video, US) by Janie Geiser
Two boys wander through a stone fortress while battles wage in the waters beyond. Seemingly alone in their island world, they succumb to fatigue and to boys’ games of power. Scratched phrases from an ancient recording of Hamlet surface, including a sad cry for vengeance. War is a child’s game, played quietly in this forgotten world. (JG)
Sugar Slim Says (2010, 8 min., Video, US) by Lewis Klahr
Same address, different buildings. “Put the rope in the can.” Mark Anthony Thompson (aka Chocolate Genius) and I became friends because our sons were classmates. He played me his new album and I showed him some of my recent films and we got excited about collaborating. This is the result. (LK)
Posthaste Perennial Pattern (2010, 4 min., 16mm, US) by Jodie Mack
Rapid-fire florals and morning birdsongs bridge interior and exterior, design and nature. (JM)
Berlin Tracks 18h00-20h00 (2011, 2 min., 16mm, Canada) by Shiloh Cinquemani
A mesmerizing and rhythmic view of the railway tracks stretching out from the Warshaure Str. S-Bahn station to the Modersohnbrücke Bridge in Friedrichshain Berlin, Germany (SC)
Echoecho (2011, 4 min., Video, US) by Sabine Gruffat
An abstract computer animation structured by echoing forms and sounds. (SG)
Ceibas: Epilogue: The Well of Representation (2011, 7 min., Video, US) by Evan Meaney
In part a remake of Hollis Frampton’s Gloria! (1979), in part a repurposing of hacked, 16-bit video game technology; the well of representation asks us to reconsider our fear of the liminal. Following the convergent narratives of several voices, ranging from the linearly historical to the cybernetically personal, we come to understand the journey ahead: searching from interface to interface, knowing that whatever home we find will be a collaborative compromise. One where we might live beyond our representations and finally come to say what we mean. (EM)
Vice Versa Et Cetera (2010, 10 min., Video, UK) by Simon Payne
Ten variations of four transitions transform the screen from one field of clashing complementary colours to another, via radiating, sweeping and twisting graphic dividing lines. The course of these transitions is interrupted from the offset and becomes increasingly frenetic, especially as the spectrum turns to black and white. (SP)
Santoscope = Dumontage (2010, 15 min., 35mm on Video, Brazil) by Carlos Adriano
Experimental found footage film made about a 1901 mutoscope film found in Brazil and restored by the director. Based on two principles of mutoscope (the loop and the flicker), the film works in a poetic structure of rhythms, rhymes and concepts. “Santos Dumont explaining his air ship to the Hon. C. S. Rolls” (1901, American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. / British Mutoscope & Biograph Co., Ltd., directed by W. K. L. Dickson) shows the Brazilian aviator Santos Dumont explaining the mechanics of his airship # 6 (with which he won the Deutsch Prize in October 1901) to the British aviator Rolls (who would be one of the founders of Rolls-Royce). (CA)
Bust Chance (2010, 8 min., Video, US) by Stephanie Barber
Forceful cuts underline the stunts of the Chinese circus performers and their effect on the audience. Theatre becomes film in this homage to Bruce Conner. Found footage film with a Chinese circus. The audience embraces the spectacular, theatrical elements. The appreciation is clearly mutual. Suggestive editing, inspired by avant-garde master Bruce Conner, makes the spectacle even more focused. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
The Hunch That Caused the Winning Streak and Fought the Doldrums Mightily (2010, 2 min., Video, US) by Stephanie Barber
the interior was delusional like any visual psyche. the couches and plants, rugs and paintings were all in cahoots and up in arms over the cahootery. the explorers were under-qualified and cowardly. (SB)
The Electric Embrace (2011, 2 min., 16mm, US) by Norbert Shieh
This silent hand-processed and optically printed film shifts like an electric current between positive and negative spaces to examine the electric pylons by the Los Angeles River. The geometric and graphic nature of these structures is further explored through double exposures, step printing, and pixilation. (NS)
Summer Grass 2/10 (2008, 10 min., Super-8mm on Video, Japan) by Mie Kurihara
A hot and quiet summer arrives once again. Only 20% of ants actually do any work. (MK)
Cold Fried Chicken (2010, 2 min., 16mm, Germany) by Frank Biesendorfer
8mm and 16mm footage, found and shot, are assembled – collage style – to foreground splices and sprocket holes and to create a rhythm and a color composition.
All Things Were Now Overtaken by Silence (2009, 61 min., Video, Mexico/Canada) by Nicolás Pereda
“Nicolás Pereda’s stunning and spacious black and white feature is a film within a film, in which a crew sets up for and shoots a performance by actress, director, performance artist and political activist Jesusa Rodriguez. Amidst a sparsely lit set, she recites the poem Primero sueño (First I Dream) by the 17th century Mexican writer Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz while the crew works in fits and starts, positioning and repositioning the lighting and camera in take after take.
A meditation on the concept of silence within filmmaking, Pereda’s film moves at a languorous pace. The film almost completely resists an image, favoring a deep, atmospheric blackout with brief glimpses of light punctuating this emptiness to illustrate a body, a lamp, or the architecture of the room. Echoing this visual relationship between dark and light, Primero sueño – Sor Juana’s most well-known work – is heard in flashes, as a poetic rupture during the banal back-and-forth of the crew as they film Rodriguez. Sor Juana’s poem is composed of a dream-like narrative, which can very generally be described as chronicling a soul’s search for knowledge. The film embodies not only a formal manifestation of these concepts, but a more engaged relationship through the context of Sor Juana’s history and the extensive feminist and political overtones that characterize the work of Jesusa Rodriguez. Pereda’s narrative functions much as the poem: a baroque, poetic account that fluidly moves between the ethereal and the earthly. Using Sor Juana’s narrative and its frequent references to silence, both literal and metaphorical,
Pereda’s film is an exploration of silence as an aesthetic, intellectual and narrative construct.” (Images festival)
Prededed by:
Monologue (2010, 2 min., Video, Ireland) by Maximilian Le Cain
An actress’s performance is shattered into stuttering fragments, calling on the audience’s collective familiarity with cinematic conventions to propose content. (MLC)
Untitled (2010, 15 min., Video, France) by Neil Beloufa
“Silk curtains have been burnt by the full moon though the window. You know that lunar rays knock you out more than those of the sun?” A cardboard decor and photographs reconstitute a luxury Californian-type villa in Algeria. Its inhabitants, neighbours and other protagonists imagine themselves there to explain why and how the latter was occupied by terrorists in order to hide whilst, paradoxically, it is entirely in glass. They even polished it clean so as to leave no traces. This improbable and irresolvable anecdote encourages the characters to invent images of an event given media coverage without the images nor the story and thus missing the main point. (NB)
Mastering Bambi (2011, 13 min., Video, The Netherlands) by Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács
“Beautiful interpretation of the Disney classic. Broersen & Lukács guide you through Bambi's moods, but without the narrative or the characters. Bambi is famous for its protagonists - cute animals with human traits - and its obvious nature theme. An often overlooked character in the film is nature itself: untrammelled wilderness, full of deceptive realism and harmony in which man is the only enemy. The makers strip the forest of its inhabitants and focus on nature's role.” (International Film Festival Rotterdam)
A Thousand Julys (2010, 7 min., Video, US) by Lewis Klahr
This is a film that explores the two sided-ness of the comic book page. Although I’d been wanting to make this film for many years, I couldn’t resolve the technical challenges with 16mm. However, Digital Video’s sensitivity to low light allowed me to use a lightbox to harvest the superimpositions created when the two sides of a comic book page are backlit. Another “Couplet” from my ongoing Prolix Satori series. (LK)
Tempts I (2011, 7 min., Video, US) by Kyle Canterbury
A Reasonable Man (2011, 15 min., Video, US) by Brian Frye
In 2007, the United States Supreme Court decided Scott v. Harris, which held that where “the record blatantly contradicts the plaintiff’s version of events so that no reasonable jury could believe it, a court should not adopt that version of the facts for purposes of ruling on a summary judgment motion.” The court relied on two police videotapes of a car chase to discredit the driver’s account of the car chase. This video consists of those two police videotapes, narrated by an edited version of the oral argument in the case. (BF)
Janiceps (2010, 7 min., Video, France) by Augustin Gimel
Cinematographic Siameses. The music, immaterial by nature, becomes the concrete bond linking projected films. Gathered twins, creatures with two faces, such Janus. (AG)
#25 (2011, 2 min., Video, US) by Jake Barningham
western (2011, 3 min., Video, US) by Jake Barningham
night, day (2011, 7 min., Video, US) by Jake Barningham
trees (2011, 2 min., Video, US) by Jake Barningham
and houses (2011, 3 min., Video, US) by Jake Barningham
color copy (2011, 3 min., Video, US) by Jake Barningham
Sorry (Part One) (2010, 8 min., 16mm, US) by Luther Price
Shelley Winters (2010, 8 min., 16mm, US) by Luther Price
Focus on the Family (2011, 7 min., Video, US) by Lennon Batchelor
Two people who have learned everything they know about values from the TV allow the child they are charged with caring for to wander away… (LB)
sense+innocence (2010, 4 min., Video, Germany) by Nicolaas Schmidt
A scientist experiments on a rodent. The animal seems to think about the meaning of hope, but can't come to a conclusion. (NS)
Once Mars Is Colonized (2010, 13 min., Video, France) by Pierre Yves Clouin
“Once Mars is colonized, we must go to Alpha Centauri.” - Ray Bradbury
All That Sheltering Emptiness (2010, 7 min., 16mm, US) by Gina Carducci and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
All That Sheltering Emptiness is a meditation on elevators, hotel lobbies, hundred dollar bills, the bathroom, a cab, chandeliers, cocktails, the receptionist, arousal, and other routines in the life of a New York City callboy. Gorgeously hand-processed in full 16mm glory, this film is a collaboration between [filmmaker] Gina Carducci and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (author of So Many Ways to Sleep Badly; editor of Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity). All That Sheltering Emptiness explodes the typical narratives of desire, escape and intimacy to evoke something more honest. (GC)
We Would See a Sign (2009, 13 min., Video, US) by Michael A. Morris
We Would See A Sign is a short High-Definition video that considers first hand vs. mediated experience of possible supernatural phenomena. It challenges the viewer to trust or distrust what they see and experience in both solitary and public situations. (MAM)
While You Were Sleeping (2010, 10 min., Video, US) by Mary Helena Clark
This is your life. It rides like a dream. (MHC)
Forged Ways (2010, 15 min., Video, US/Ethiopia) by Ephraim Asili
Photographed on location in Harlem, New York, and various locations throughout Ethiopia the film oscillates between the first person account of a film maker, the third person experience of a man navigating the streets of Harlem, and day to day life in the cities and villages of Ethiopia. By subduing any definitive story-line or 'message' the film is able to function as an audio visual meditation on the constructs surrounding African American culture while simultaneously highlighting some of the more subtle implications of maintaining an identity that spans hundreds of years, and thousands of miles. (EA)
Pigs (2010, 8 min., Video, US) by Pawel Wojtasik
A close-range look at pigs living on a farm in Las Vegas, Nevada. The pigs become a metaphor for humanity as they go from leisurely wallowing in the mud to the wildness of a feeding frenzy. (PW)
To Touch (2010, 15 min., 16mm, US) by JB Mabe
To Turn (2010, 7 min., 16mm, US) by JB Mabe
moonalphabet (2010, 2 min., Video, Turkey) by Yoel Meranda
highway keying (2010, 3 min., Video, Turkey) by Yoel Meranda
highway screening (2010, 2 min., Video, Turkey) by Yoel Meranda
a dream of horses (2010, 1 min., Video, Turkey) by Yoel Meranda
anitkabir (2011, 4 min., Video, Turkey) by Yoel Meranda
Controller (2010, 2 min., Video, Canada) by Ed Janzen
A fly compresses time and captures itself on video by triggering a motion-activated surveillance webcam. (EJ)
Slow Action (2010, 45 min., 16mm widescreen, UK) by Ben Rivers
Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film that brings together a series of four 16mm works which exist somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study, and fiction. Continuing his exploration of curious and extraordinary environments, Slow Action applies the idea of island biogeography - the study of how species and eco-systems evolve differently when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitat - to a conception of the Earth in a few hundred years; the sea level rising to absurd heights, critic hyperbolic utopias that appear as possible future mini-societies. Slow Action is filmed at different sites across the globe: Lanzarote - a beautiful strange island known for its beach resorts yet one of the driest places on the planet, full of dead volcanoes and strange architecture; Gunkanjima - and island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan, a deserted city built on a rock, once home to thousands of families mining its rich coal reserves; Tuvalu - one of the smallest countries in the world, with tiny strips of land barely above sea level in the middle of the Pacific; and Somerset - an as yet to be discovered island and its various clades. This series of constructed realities explores the environments of self-contained lands and the search for information to enable the reconstruction of soon to be lost worlds. The film's soundtrack - narratives by writer Mark von Schlegell - detail each of the four islands' evolutions according to their geographical, geological, climatic and botanical conditions. Slow Action, inspired by novels such as Samuel Butler's Erewhon, Bacon's The New Atlantis, Herbert Read's The Green Child and Mary Shelley's The Last Man, embodies the spirit of exploration, experiment and active research that has come to characterize River's practice. (BR)
Tokyo – Ebisu (2010, 5 min., 16mm, Japan/US) by Tomonari Nishikawa
JR (Japan Railway Company) Yamanote Line is one of the Japan's busiest lines, consisting of 29 stations and running as a loop. The film shows the views from the platforms of 10 stations in Yamanote Line, from Tokyo Station to Ebisu Station clockwise. The in-camera visual effects and the layered soundtrack may exaggerate the sense of the actual locations, while suggesting the equipments that were used for capturing the audio and visual. (TN)
Shibuya – Tokyo (2010, 10 min., 16mm, Japan/US) by Tomonari Nishikawa
As a following sequence of Tokyo - Ebisu, this film shows the views around the exits of 20 stations in JR Yamanote Line, from Shibuya Station to Tokyo Station clockwise. (TN)
Relocation (2011, 23 min., Video, Belgium) by Pieter Geenen
Situated at the point where four countries meet (Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia), mount Ararat is Armenia's most important national symbol, full of mythological meaning and believed to be the place where Noah's Ark stranded. Once part of a larger Armenia, mount Ararat is now located in Turkey. Since 1920, after the Armenian genocide, it's just behind the closed border with Turkey, still dominating the Armenian landscape. But Armenians can only gaze at it with longing.
In ‘relocation' the sun rises over the Ararat valley, with the monumental Ararat twin mountains in the back. Starting from a nearly pitch black image the landscape exposes slowly, revealing human life around the military controlled no man's land, buffering both nations. It is the landscape as seen from Armenia, at the closest accessible point to the border with Turkey. Only, the image is mirrored. Left and right are reversed, implying the (for Armenians) impossible view of the Western side of the mountain. That's how the video refers to an era long gone, when historical Armenia still was one, or quite to an era Armenians wish for it to be. A dialoguing text comments on the landscape, as subtitles to a film. As if both mountains are in dialogue with each other, it is mainly a dialogue between two nations, with historical, political, biblical and utopical connotations. This text is based on testimonies and eyewitnesses from both sides of the mountain, going back to the early 20th century and referring to a turbulent era and tense relations between Turkey and Armenia. 'relocation' reflects on how and to what extent Mount Ararat (still) defines Armenian identity. What is its iconologic value, and how does it play part in Armenian collective memory? (PG)
010101 (2009, 1 min., Video, US) by T. Marie
T. Marie’s 010101 (USA) is an incredibly meticulous digital painting, offering one minute, one second and one frame of shimmering and breathtaking beauty through its diaphanous and forever-changing palette. (Toronto International Film Festival)
In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails (2010, 14 min., Video, US/Brazil) by Fern Silva
Fern Silva’s In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails suggests a future already arrived, merging the destruction with the creation of life as seen in the tiny turtles crawling their way to the sea, or heard in the crackling of a Geiger counter as a masked man sprays plants with pesticides. Though only 13 minutes, the film’s span is enormous. As revelers in Salvador, Bahia, parade through the streets, a gnat-sized Mercury passes across the surface of the sun, and men slowly make their way up the giant steps of an ancient temple; the film resides in a well of deep time, civilizational history swallowed by the life of the planet. (Genevieve Yue, Reverse Shot)
Hotel Nightclub (2011, 3 min., Video, The Netherlands) by Arianne Olthaar
Tableaux Vivants (2011, 11 min., Video, US) by Vincent Grenier
A meditation on cinematic time reversals as versatile continuums. Re-discovering the outdoors as sets where the natural is made to pose as the artifice. (VG)
Cry When It Happens (2010, 14 min., 16mm, Spain/US) by Laida Lertxundi
Los Angeles City Hall is reflected onto the window of the Paradise Motel. It serves as an anchor for this traversal through the natural expanse of California. Here, we discover a restrained psychodrama of play, loss, and the transformation of everyday habitats. Music appears across the interiors and exteriors and speaks of limitlessness and longing. (LL)