Brasifilia
An essay film in which three young people unearth a clandestine archive of Brazilian cinema and plunge into a Dadaist–Third World delirium. Amid forbidden images and personal memories, they implode the very idea of Brazil.
Weeping Rocks
Weeping Rocks follows Art, an entomologist nearing the end of his life, who has spent over five decades walking the same ten trails counting butterflies. His eccentric practice has uncovered patterns of environmental decline that went unnoticed for years. As time reshapes the landscape and species fade, Art’s journey becomes a meditation on mortality, change, and the beauty of what remains.
This is Not a Game
Angela Su’s fictional artist Rosie Leavers is the last remaining person to upload her consciousness to a video game. Contemplating during a pandemic year which also saw people’s resistance movements in many parts of the world, the work pinpoints the uncanny affinities between gaming and warfare strategies. They have mutually informed the infrastructure of both worlds since time immemorial when diplomatic conflicts played out on the battlefield of the 64 squares of a chess board to flight simulation technologies which were adapted to shape gaming experiences as we know it now. When the conflict is between the state and its people, she speculates that gaming strategies empower civilians in resistance movements to counter imperialism through its own operative logic. But once we upload our consciousness, are we able to return to the sensibilities and political motivation that inspired the revolution to begin with?
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.
Panoramas
In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expedition on the trails of Humboldt. To capture the events various cameras were taken along. A non-chronological narration.
F for Fake
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
Fram – Forward
Why do we do incredibly difficult things that have no practical application? Is there a parallel between geographic and artistic exploration? Fram is a documentary and travel film about two friends journeying to the end of the earth, in order to make a dance film in the arctic wilderness of Svalbard. En route, they explore the history of our ideas of the Arctic, along with the grand questions of life, art and our place in the world. Sharing their love of discovering new geographic and artistic frontiers, choreographer-dancer-filmmakers and outdoor enthusiasts Thomas Freundlich and Valtteri Raekallio take the viewer on an engaging journey to a place where few have been and even fewer have danced.
Dr Tscharniblues
Bern, 1979: a tower block called Tscharnergut. A group of friends get together to make a film about their experiences growing up in suburban Switzerland.
Ôrí
A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.
Parallel Lives
Born June 8, 1964, Frank Matter films four "twins", born the same day as him, but in other latitudes. Interweaving their life stories with rich archival material, the filmmaker links these Parallel Lives with elements from his own biography, to compose a fascinating fresco where intimate trajectories are part of the advent of the global village.
Donosti 2730
A youngster writes a letter to his grandmother about his last trip to Donosti (Spain). This city inspires him to ponder about the language of cinema, time, cities, and sharing memories with our loved ones.
The Scars
The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?
Disposable love
In home-movies shot in the ‘90s by her father, the filmmaker discovers in these inherited images powerful fictions of the Argentinian middle class and the country’s recent history.
Frankenstein (Re)Membered
Since its publication 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has influenced vast swathes of popular culture. Adaptations have starred cinema legends from Boris Karloff to Robert De Niro – and even Alvin and the Chipmunks. From tales of science gone mad (Jurassic Park) to stories of understanding the other (ET, The Hulk, Arrival), traces of the story and its themes have spread across our media. With Frankenstein Re-membered, video artist and film historian Chris Gerrard collects these diverse fragments from the birth of cinema until the present day and in the tradition of Victor Frankenstein himself, attempts to stitch them back together into an adaptation of the original Shelley novel.
Vampir Cuadecuc
An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.
Nine Sevilles
"Nueve Sevillas" is a heterodox psycho-geographical profile of the new flamenco in Seville. Nine characters coexist with the great flamenco artists of today.
monument
This singular 6-part essay film on the history of the state of Rhode Island illustrates the adage that the universal is best reached via the particular: the very local issues investigated in the film blossom into a body of insights and speculations extending far beyond the borders of any region. 'monument' weaves statues, plaques and place names together with the routine movements of everyday life. Readings from history books, monologues from a fictional tour guide, and personal home movies are paired with interviews relating to the Colonial Era, the Slave Trade, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, Indigenous Cultures, the Abolitionist Movement, Organized Crime, Urban Planning, Capitalism, Baseball, Ancient Geology, and Apple Pie. Over time stories overlap and voices converge to create a dynamic, multi-layered temporal x-ray, challenging the objectification of history with the animism of storytelling.
Lynch/Oz
Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is one of David Lynch’s most enduring obsessions. This documentary goes over the rainbow to explore this Technicolor through-line in Lynch’s work.
Agit-Prop
A documentary about the life and work of poet and visual artist Moacy Cirne.
Alternate Earth
A scientific expedition travels to an alternative Earth in hope of finding a new home for humanity, which has destroyed its own planet. But is it even possible to escape old patterns?