Sites Unseen

Minot, North Dakota

April 2008 •English

The town Minot is home to a U.S. Air Force base that guards 150 nuclear missiles buried in northern North Dakota. The weapons of mass destruction placed there 50 years ago are still targeted at Russia. Minot, North Dakota portrays an American landscape where people live with nuclear bombs in their backyard.

Devotion

April 2003 •English

A sparing and minimal travelogue of Istanbul. A foreigner meditates on the unraveling of a relationship while moving from hotel room to hotel room. In a city simultaneously devoted to Islam and secular nationalism, she finds refuge in the frailty and severity of the rituals of devotion.

Everyday Life

October 1976 •Polish

Dialogue-free short detailing the daily tasks of a man and his wife.

Rumstick Road

May 2014 •English

A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.

Tree of Knowledge

January 1981 •English

It started with filming the tree. Something was released in that manner of filming seemingly farthest removed from the procedure of the early films. I first thought a simple ordering of this rich material might be enough, something related to BARN RUSHES [...] But the film only came into its form-life with the idea of linking this deep-rooted and far-outreaching tree material with that film on paranoia that had fascinated me for many years. –L. G.

Oat Boy

June 2021 •English

Folk portraiture, images of children in suburbia.

Clouds

December 1969 •English

Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.

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.

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.

Poisons

January 1964 •Slovenian

Industrialization brings progress, but also harmful influences on the environment. Warning of the dangers of waste materials dumped into the air and the waters.

Puenting (Leap of Faith)

April 2019 •Spanish

A first feature based on sexual events. An actress undertakes her desire of directing her first movie, without a budget or any production company funding her project. She gathers a group of professional actors and actresses, and proposes a project based on a very particular experience: stepping on their fears through a metaphorical 'leap of faith'. As the project advances, individual conflicts will arise affecting the shoot, making the movie crew wonder whether or not they should go on. Will they take the leap of faith with all its consequences?

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.

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."

Anônimo e incomum

March 1990 •Portuguese

Dreams of Ice

November 1994 •Spanish

In 1992 the Universal Exhibition in Seville was held in Spain. Chile participated in this exhibition by displaying in its pavilion an ice floe captured and brought especially by sea from Antarctica. In these true facts is based the fantasy narrated in Dreams of Ice. Filmed between November 1991 and May 1992 on board the ships Galvarino, Aconcagua and Maullín, in a voyage that goes from Antarctica to Spain, in this documentary film in which dreams, myths and facts converge towards a poetic tale turned into a seafaring saga, in the manner of the legends of the seafarers that populate the mythology of the American continent and universal literature.

Brise-glace : Bateau givre

December 1987 •Swedish

First part of the collaborative project "Brise-Glace" showing the diverse travels on the icebreaker "Frej". Directed by Jean Rouch.

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.

Lahemaa

November 2010 •English

This film was made with the help of a diary, video tapes and a roll of film found in the Lahemaa forest. The owner has been reported missing

Somniloquies

February 2017 •English

Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

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.