Brise-glace : Bateau givre

Man with a Movie Camera

May 1929 •Russian

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Auf der Oder

April 1970 •German

Todo Todo Teros

August 2006 •English

Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.

Apocalisse

January 2010 •Italian

22 people who live on the margins of our society read, one after the other, the 22 chapters of John's Revelation. Homeless, prisoners, AIDS patients and immigrants alternate in this surprising journey into the bleeding heart of the West, in which the sound and spirit of this writing resounds like a river flowing just below the glistening surface of the world, dominated by media conditioning and consumerism.

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.

Let Us Persevere in What We Have Resolved Before We Forget

July 2013 •English

On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.

La deuxième femme

November 2008 •French

Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.

Private Chronicles: Monologue

January 1999 •Russian

The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.

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.

Congo

January 1972 •English

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

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

February 1992 •English

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

Blow Job

July 1964 •English

Andy Warhol directs a single 35-minute shot of a man's face to capture his facial expressions as he receives the sexual act depicted in the title.

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

December 2011 •English

An anthology of one-minute films created by 60 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

Drug Porn

May 2019 •English

An experimental documentary about the spectacle of substance abuse on social media. More than 45 hours of footage, hundreds of pages of blog posts and interviews were distilled and remixed using glitch and cut-up techniques to insure anonymity, transcend the shock factor and unfold this complex, singular and stratified use of social media.

Voz

January 2000 •Spanish

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.

Men Boxing

April 1891 •

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

welcome_home.exe

April 2021 •English

As technology accelerates, our species' collective imagination of the future grows ever more kaleidoscopic. We are all haunted by temporal distortion, perhaps no more than when we attempt to remember what the future looked like to our younger selves. As the mist of time devours our memories, the future recedes; each of us burdened by the gaping mouth of entropy. Yet, emerging technology provides a glimmer of hope; transhumanism promises a future free from mortality, disease and pain. Does our salvation lie in digital simulacra? We're here to sell you the answer to that question, for the low, low price of four hundred and seventy seconds.

Sold

November 2019 •English

A film about friendship and the occasional loneliness.

Atlantis

October 2014 •English

A documentary portrait of Utopia, loosely framed by Plato’s invocation of the lost continent of Atlantis in 360 BC and its re-resurrection via a 1970s science fiction pulp novel.