What We Ask of a Statue is That It Doesn’t Move

Land Without Bread

December 1933 •Spanish

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

As You Are

January 2023 •English

A glimpse into a visual representation of memory; A Christmas-time series of meals, coffees, and movies, with friends, lovers, and housemates. Faced with the compounding of faces and places, each moment begins to collide with one another: voices are muddled, and faces are broken. How is memory created? How are they separated from one another?

Feeler

June 2016 •English

16mm film by Paul Clipson, and music by Sarah Davachi. Filmed in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Krakow, Sidney, Portland, Napa, Oakland and San Francisco.

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head

January 1991 •French

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Weihnacht in Schweden

January 1962 •German

Short documentary by Gunter Otto

Quartet for the End of Time

January 2017 •English

A music documentary about Olivier Messiaen's transcendent masterpiece, that he composed in a World War II prison camp, and debuted there on January 15, 1941. This film was completed on the 75th Anniversary of that historic premiere, and features "The President's Own" United States Marine Band Ensemble performing in rehearsal and at The Phillips Collection, in Washington, D.C. (Note by H. Paul Moon)

Nisei (Second-generation)

April 2024 •Spanish

Follows Iwao Ichikawa, a second-generation Japanese Mexican, navigating racial segregation in Mexicali, Baja California during WWII, offering a poignant exploration of identity and belonging amidst adversity.

Night and Fog

April 1959 •French

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Mer Océane

February 2024 •French

Documentarian Richard Lavoie follows the artists of the Mer Océane symposium which took place on La Grave, in the Magdalen Islands, in 1998.

Hunter Goes to Hollywood

February 2003 •English

Hunter Thompson visits the set of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Empire

April 2005 •French

The Pax Americana takes care on our peace, ensures our comfort, guarantees our prosperity… An idyllic postcard of the new Empire.

The Making of 'The Thing'

June 1982 •English

Another Young Couple

February 2023 •English

Another Young Couple — borne out of a camera test for If Beale Street Could Talk, James and I asked my friends Essence and Jihaari, newly transplanted to LA to allow us into their home for an afternoon tea about their lives and loves, apart and together. We were migrating to the Alexa 65 for Beale Street and wanted to see for ourselves how that large-format sensor would affect intimate portraiture within lived spaces… in particular the faces and spaces of Black folk.

All Still Orbit

January 2016 •English

A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.

Making of a Cult Classic: The Unauthorized Story of 'The Goonies'

July 2010 •English

A retrospective documentary of the cult classic movie The Goonies. Including interviews with the cast, exploration of the film's locations and unique stories you wont hear anywhere else.

Living in a Reversed World

January 1958 •English

Fascinating -- and unintentionally funny -- experiments at Austria's famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures.

Calçada

March 2024 •Portuguese

School of Fine Arts. Juniper Landscape

December 1987 •Russian

About the tragic fate of the Estonian artist Julo Sooster and his work.

A Capital Plan

January 1949 •English

This short documentary features a portrait of Ottawa in the mid-20th century, as the nascent Canadian capital grew with force but without direction. Street congestion, air pollution, and rail traffic were all the negative results of a city that had grown without being properly planned. French architect and urban designer Jacques Gréber stepped in to create a far-sighted plan for the future development of Ottawa. With tracks moved, factories relocated, and neighbourhoods redesigned as separate communities, Ottawa became the capital city of true beauty and dignity we know today.

Lake

December 2019 •English

Lake gazes down at a still body of water from a birds-eye view, while a group of artists peacefully float in and out of the frame or work to stay at the surface. As they glide farther away and draw closer together, they reach out in collective queer and desirous exchanges — holding hands, drifting over and under their neighbors, making space, taking care of each other with a casual, gentle intimacy while they come together as individual parts of a whole. The video reflects on notions of togetherness and feminist theorist Silvia Federici’s call to “reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and our bodies.”