Refrains Happen Like Revolutions in a Song

Dyketactics

January 1974 •English

Born in Los Angeles but a New Yorker by choice, Barbara Hammer is a whole genre unto herself. Her pioneering 1974 short film Dyketactics, a four-minute, hippie wonder consisting of frolicking naked women in the countryside, broke new ground for its exploration of lesbian identity, desire and aesthetic.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

July 1987 •English

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

Rey

November 2017 •Spanish

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating.

Chinese Ping-Pong

March 1972 •English

An experimental sports film made partly during the Scandinavian Open Championships in Halmstad in 1970, partly during the Chinese players' exhibition tour in Denmark immediately after the SOC. First of all, it is a film about their style, about the artistic culmination that is ping-pong at its best, it records China's comeback into the international sports world.

23rd Psalm Branch

January 1967 •English

Made during the height of the Vietnam War, Stan Brakhage has said of this film that he was hoping to bring some clarity to the subject of war. Characteristically for Brakhage there is no direct reference to Vietnam.

American Torso

January 1975 •Hungarian

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

Barn Rushes

January 1971 •English

"…elegant yet rustic in its simplicity of execution; tugged gently toward different sides of the set by hints of color and motion interactions, positive and negative spaces, etc., and the unyielding delivery on one of the great apotheoses of poetic cinema at fade-out time." – Tony Conrad

Closed Vagina

November 1963 •Japanese

Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive

Dream

October 2008 •Korean

In the aftermath of a car crash, a man discovers his dreams are tied to a stranger's sleepwalking.

Kummatty

July 1979 •Malayalam

A stranger who may be the trickster magician Kummatty comes to a village in Malabar, India.

Chelsea Girls

September 1966 •English

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

Enchantment

October 1994 •Malayalam

A mysterious girl, Pennu, comes to a quiet village, creating a strange chasm among the male folks, breaking marriages and old friendships.

Ego Death

May 2020 •English

Three eyes on the back of your head. Three broken clocks in my nightmares. A young psychiatric patient can’t sleep right and is disturbed by distressing and increasingly strange dreams. They struggle with their psychiatrist and the suggestions he gives them.

Heartbeat

January 2001 •English

The Short Films of David Lynch

February 2002 •English

This collection of David Lynch's short films cover the first 29 years of his career. Each film is given a special introduction by the director himself. His earliest underground films Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970) and The Amputee (1974) are showcased as well as two requisitioned works well into his successful career The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988) and his addition for Lumière and Company (1995).

Home Movie: On the Set of Philippe Garrel's 'Le lit de la vierge'

December 1968 •French

An experimental and poetic portrait of a woman.

About Buenos Aires

March 2006 •Spanish

Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.

First Day in the Grave

May 2017 •English

A student movie loosely based on the short story by Sadegh Chubak

The Five Obstructions

November 2003 •Danish

Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.

Infatuation

September 2020 •English

A male artist indulges in his love of the female form. That love is tainted when the female subjects make a choice to admire their own beauty. A short that loudly echoes society's treatment of black beauty. Infatuation is an experimental short film lasting just over four minutes.