23rd Psalm Branch

Contágio

January 2021 •Portuguese

Several Portuguese creators occupy the director's chair in this collective short film shot during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in an unfolding of personal perspectives.

Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box

November 1991 •English

This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.

Casual Workers

December 2020 •English

An abstract perspective into two young South African workers in the heart of Johannesburg's industrial sector during Covid-19

Chinese Viola

May 1975 •Portuguese

The rare short film presents a curious dialogue between filmmaker Julio Bressane and actor Grande Otelo, where, in a mixture of decorated and improvised text, we discover a little manifesto to the Brazilian experimental cinema. Also called "Belair's last film," Chinese Viola reveals the first partnership between photographer Walter Carvalho and Bressane.

Grid

October 2021 •Portuguese

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

PROTOTYPE

September 2017 •English

As a major storm strikes Texas in 1900, a mysterious televisual device is built and tested. Blake Williams’ experimental 3D sci-fi film immerses us in the aftermath of the Galveston disaster to fashion a haunting treatise on technology, cinema, and the medium’s future.

Une certaine histoire du cinéma expérimental français

February 2019 •French

Spirit House

June 2008 •English

A tale of 2 passages within the Spirit house. This is the first in a series that looks at the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged.

Thot-Fal'N

June 1978 •English

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."

Bauhaus 100

August 2019 •English

In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.

Dear

April 2014 •English

Dear features the interior world of two teenage Chinese girls in New York City, whose diary entries reveal their concerns related to growing up as immigrants amidst the ever-gentrifying landscape of Chinatown.

Congo

January 1972 •English

An experimental ethnographic documentary that criticizes the colonizer view of anthropology.

6-18-67

July 1967 •English

6-18-67 is a short quasi-documentary film by George Lucas regarding the making of the Columbia film “Mackenna's Gold”. This non-story, non-character visual tone poem is made up of nature imagery, time-lapse photography, and the subtle sounds of the Arizona desert.

The Afterlife

Invalid date •English

A young adult's first-hand account of "accidentally becoming human again" after, and with, trauma induced depression. Lo-fi, vulnerable, and uniquely youthful, "The Afterlife" is a melancholic affirmation of life after death.

Bliss

June 1967 •

The first film made by Markopoulos after moving to Europe, Bliss was shot over the course of two days using only available light to create a lyrical study of the interior of the Church of St. John on the island of Hydra.

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.

Nipodocumentário Demo

Invalid date •Portuguese

A silent demo of "Sky, Forest, Village City", completed on July 31, 2019.

Kaya

July 1967 •

An experimental film about peaceful and carefree life in a small Dalmatian town, which turns into bloodshed and horror on the Eve of Italian occupation of the country.

The Bomb

June 2017 •English

Filmmakers use archival footage and animation to explore the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert.

OLO, the Boy from Tibet

June 2012 •Japanese

A 6-year-old Tibetan boy leaves his family and flees to a refugee camp in northern India.