Somniloquies

Alaska

March 1969 •German

Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.

1/57: Experiment with Synthetic Sound (Test)

January 1957 •German

Mostly dark, rejecting images which are repeated. A stone wall, the chamber of a revolver which is, at first not recognizable, a close-up of a cactus. The duration of the takes emphasises the photographic character of the pictures, simultaneously with a crackling, brutal sound. (Hans Scheugl)

Duration-Landscape: Road

August 2012 •Galician

The project studies the relationship between observer and landscape in the contemplative experience. A sensory approach to landscape from introspective perception. We start with the external factors of space and time in the environment to go deeper in the temporal and spatial consciousness experiences.

Distance-Landscape: Meeting Between Men

September 2010 •Galician

We approach to invisible details for our eyes, figures disappearing as we move away from them, diluted in space. Parts that are integrated into the whole landscape. The remoteness as disappearance. The human figure betrays us here negligible small in the vastness of the territory, the voracity of the active vacuum that surrounds him. Images captured in the Atlas region in Morocco.

Decasia: The State of Decay

January 2002 •English

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

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.

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.

Notes on the Circus

May 1967 •English

The short film is a montage of sped up clips of The Ringling Brothers Circus in action set to a musical track. The film is separated into four segments, each segment which focuses on different acts within the circus. The later segments often incorporate clips from earlier segments, mostly as background to the featured acts. The speed of the clips match the tempo of the soundtrack music.

Impressions from the Upper Atmosphere

January 1989 •Spanish

Sistiaga painted directly on 70mm film a circular (planetary?) form, around which dance shifting colours in a psychedelic acceleration matched by the soundtrack’s deep-space roar and howl. - Cinema Scope

The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

January 1968 •Finnish

Daumë

January 2000 •English

Culled from four rolls of Super-8 film shot while the maker was a development worker in a small South American village, Daumë is at its center a film about ritual, power, and play. Daumë is both ethnography and critique; it is an interrogation into how to represent a place that can't be represented.

Terra Incognita

January 2002 •English

Terra Incognita is a lensless film whose cloudy pinhole images create a memory of history. Ancient and modern explorer texts of Easter Island are garbled together by a computer narrator, resulting in a forever repeating narrative of discovery, colonialism, loss and departure.

Thaumaturgic Eye

August 1939 •Czech

Scientists demonstrate the wonders of magnified objects.

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.

All Inclusive

June 2024 •Polish

"All Inclusive" tells the story of seven women who are going on holidays to Morocco, getting out of the hotel and confronting women from Morocco. They will look for their own way of life in the desert, confront their world, looking at the reality that surrounds them.

Arquivos Kino-Pop

May 2019 •English

Cine-diaries about rock bands and personalities from the eighties from the archives of Edgar Pêra.

Lapses, Regrets and Qualms

October 2016 •French

A day in the life of director Boris Lehman: he wanders from cafe to bookshop, cinema to museum, writer to musician, and into the storeroom of the film archive... He celebrates his birthday in an alleyway, with a friend, and finishes his journey with an escapade to Bruges and a stroll by the North Sea. The camera plays dirty tricks and the sound recorder gets carried away, to the point that both are clearly telling Boris to stop filming. Yet he persists…

The Liberal War

November 1974 •English

The Vietnam War during the JFK years and beyond. Made in 1972 in the filmmaker's apartment, without documentary footage of the war, metaphors are created through the animation of images and objects, and through guerrilla skits. By rejecting the authority of traditional documentary footage, the anarchist spirit of individual responsibility is established. This is history from one person's point of view, rather than a definitive proclamation.

The Movement of People Working

January 2003 •English

A compilation of non-narrative films shot in the 1970s and 1980s by Phill Niblock concerned with the movement people make when they do menial tasks.

virar mar / meer werden / becoming sea

September 2020 •Portuguese

Water as a physical and metaphysical metaphor and background of human existence. A docu-fictional essay between the Brazilian Sertão-deserts and the Northern-German flood areas of Dithmarschen. Dramas and day-by-day-observations in times of climate change.