Usmanbaş: Modernist

Hedgehog in Love

January 2015 •Ukrainian

Experimental cartoon which unites various techniques: puppets, sand & water (ebru) animations. About friendship, love and necessity to pay attention not only to the visual appeal.

New Life

March 2023 •English

"Bagong Buhay" is a short experimental film that dispels the common belief that packing up and moving to a new place will magically improve one's quality of life. The film challenges this presumption by portraying two contrasting ways of life through objects and locations, encouraging viewers to think critically about the complexities of what makes a better life. In the Philippines, it's believed that relocating to a new area will bring about positive changes in one's existence. True satisfaction is a complex and multifaceted notion, and "Bagong Buhay" encourages us to ponder that relocating to a new place is not a surefire way to attain it.

Helvetica

September 2007 •English

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Outtakes from Jo

February 2025 •English

Outtakes, commentary from Zefier's third film: Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike.

Las Preguntas que Perdimos

December 2023 •Spanish

FUCK TV

August 2019 •English

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.

Swinging Light

March 2025 •English

An experience of a camera swinging in different gestures facing the optical distortion of the Sun. The last appearance of the smudge.

Deshilando Luz

May 2025 •Spanish

A film essay that intertwines the director's gaze with that of her late mother. Beyond exploring mourning and absence as exclusively painful experiences, the film pays tribute to her mother through memories embodied by places and objects that evidence the traces of her existence. The filmmaker asks herself: What does she owe her mother for who she is and how she films? To what extent does her film belong to her?

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.

Wind

January 2019 •

A commissioned music video for Emmit Fenn’s instrumental track, Wind.

EGGspression

August 2023 •

Egglantine loves salt on her eggs. Eggbert prefers pepper. Who blinks first in this playful Easter ritual?

The More We Are Together

May 1969 •English

A portrait of Eric Lyons and Span, under the scrutiny of Ian Nairn, as well as the residents of their estates.

Homo Sapiens Project (100)

December 2013 •English

HSP 100 is a portrait of experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain. As Le Cain discusses his life, work and relationship with cinema, Rashidi envelops him in a hallucinatory audio-visual ambiance that ultimately results in a poetic dialogue with the ideas and feelings he expresses.

The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight

June 2009 •English

A gang of leather-clad, powerful women take over a traditionally male domain, and hairspray, eyeliner, and bare flesh are on full display in Beth B’s music video for the Arthur Baker–produced club hit from synthpop band Dominatrix. Banned at the time of release, it was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art.

The Beaches of Agnès

December 2008 •French

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

Alternate Spaces

December 2022 •English

A short documentary on the River Ouse, following it downstream from Lewes to Newhaven, meditating on the surrounding area.

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.

Dickson Experimental Sound Film

August 1894 •English

William K.L. Dickson plays the violin while two men dance. This is the oldest surviving sound film where sound is recorded on the phonograph.

It's Not Me

June 2024 •French

This free-form film is a self-portrait, which revisits more than 40 years of the author’s filmography and questions the major stations of his life, while capturing the political tremors of the time.

Mysterious Object at Noon

November 2000 •Thai

A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.