Eros and Thanatos

Normal Porn for Normal People

May 2020 •English

"Normal Porn for Normal People" is an appropriated media piece that explores our societal need to consume violence for entertainment. The film offers a satirical commentary on the romanticizing and normalization of violent imagery, while observing the link to commercial consumerism that exploits human sexuality, while simultaneously demonizing it. Interview segments echo our endless need to devour salacious content by venerating both real and fictional violence. Sexuality and sexual images remain a convenient scapegoat that facilitate a continued avoidance regarding the impact that the glorification of violence has within American culture.

Begotten

June 1991 •English

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

Goodbye, Casanova

January 2000 •English

A aspiring novelist operates a tiny neighborhood bookstore. His wife is a talented painter. Their marriage is disintegrating, and they are about to sign their divorce papers. Meanwhile, the legendary Casanova and his lover Lavinia are characters trapped inside of a 17th-century children's book. The tragedy of the impending divorce triggers the release of Casanova and Lavinia from the confines of the children's pop-up book.

Cremaster 4

October 1995 •

CREMASTER 4 (1994) adheres most closely to the project's biological model. This penultimate episode describes the system's onward rush toward descension despite its resistance to division. The logo for this chapter is the Manx triskelion - three identical armored legs revolving around a central axis. Set on the Isle of Man, the film absorbs the island's folklore ...

Time Piece

May 1965 •English

Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this 9-minute experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson. Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, "Time Piece" enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Short Subject.

Rampo Noir

May 2005 •Japanese

An anthology film consisting of four segments based on literary works by Edogawa Ranpo.

Weird Weird Movie Kids Do Not Watch The Movie

January 2013 •English

Weird Weird Movie Kids Do Not Watch The Movie is the second collaborative feature film between Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian Le Cain. This hypnotic, visually and sonically immersive exploration of a haunted space unfolds in two parts. In the first, a woman (Eadaoin O’Donoghue) dissolves her identity into the ghostly resonances she finds in the rooms and corridors of a sprawling, atmospheric seaside basement property. In the second, a man (Rashidi), existing in a parallel dimension of the same space, pursues a bizarre and perverse amorous obsession.

At Land

January 1944 •English

A woman washes up on a beach and embarks on a surreal journey, encountering others and fragmented versions of herself in a quest for identity.

Ballet Mécanique

September 1924 •French

A pulsing, kaleidoscope of images set to an energetic soundtrack. This is a world in motion, dominated by mechanical and repetitive images, with a few moments of solitude in a garden.

Phantasia

March 2024 •

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

The Very Eye of Night

May 1958 •English

Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion.

Occurrences of Questionable Significance

April 2020 •German

When forest animals invade our cities, the world is in disarray. Office vixen Fiona struggles with her banana phone addiction. Will she succumb to it? Temperamental bunny Barbara only gives her stag sugar daddy Nestor his special massage, after he dines her and plays the big spender. This obscure short film pinpoints postmodern tropes of consumerism, eroticism, and art with an homage to the theater stage and references to literature. This work uses a fantasy language and needs no subtitles.

Lejano Interior

July 2020 •Spanish

A "cinematic object" by Mariano Llinás, divided into 9 chapters, based on the poetry of Henri Michaux.

Husk

Invalid date •English

Something Walks in the Woods

March 2023 •English

A viral video shows a mysterious figure walking along the edge of the woods each day, and filmmaker Bill Howard sets out to spend a night there to find out exactly what it is.

Veined

December 2021 •English

Andrew, a teacher, is attacked while leaving work in a failed mugging which results in him becoming critically injured. While he is bleeding out a Deity appears healing Andrew but this is at a cost.

The Empty Mirror

April 1996 •English

Adolf Hitler faces himself and must come to terms with his infamous career in an imaginary post-war subterranean bunker where he reviews historical films, dictates his memoirs and encounters Eva Braun, Josef Goebbels, Hermann Göring and Sigmund Freud.

The Seashell and the Clergyman

February 1928 •French

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

Midríase

March 2023 •Portuguese

Is the eye the window of the soul? - Mydriasis is a movie that reflects about the early discoveries of queerness and its impact on the self perception of a person.

Proyecciones del Limbo

April 2025 •Spanish