Machete Gillette... Mama

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.

Une certaine histoire du cinéma expérimental français

February 2019 •French

Rytmus

November 1942 •Czech

An experimental film from Jirí Lehovec, mixing the sound process with animated rhythms.

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.

Refrains Happen Like Revolutions in a Song

July 2010 •Tagalog

Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”

Velocity Into Execution

August 2017 •English

In continuous motion with no end or barrier in its way.

Kwaheri

December 1964 •English

Early Mondo film featuring primitive rituals, animals being butchered, unusual birth defects, and a legit trepanation scene.

Photodiary

July 1986 •Japanese

"The majority of my 8-mm works were made for the three-minute "Personal Focus" film special put on in Fukuoka. This film is an animation of photographs I had taken on a regular basis as a sort of diary, and was made to have a rough feel to it." - Takashi Ito

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."

December Hide-and-Go-Seek

July 1993 •Japanese

"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito

Leonora Carrington or The Ironic Spell

February 1965 •Spanish

Cinema and painting establish a fluid dialogue and begins with introspection in the themes and forms of the plastic work of a woman tormented by the elongated specters, originating from her obsessions and nightmares.

It Was Always You, Helen

October 2018 •English

An interview with actor Virginia Madsen about her work in Candyman (1992).

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.

The Hunters

January 1957 •English

An ethnographic film that documents the efforts of four !Kung men (also known as Ju/'hoansi or Bushmen) to hunt a giraffe in the Kalahari Desert of Namibia. The footage was shot by John Marshall during a Smithsonian-Harvard Peabody sponsored expedition in 1952–53. In addition to the giraffe hunt, the film shows other aspects of !Kung life at that time, including family relationships, socializing and storytelling, and the hard work of gathering plant foods and hunting for small game.

Congo

January 1972 •English

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

Divoké kmeny Etiopie

June 2014 •Czech

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.

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

December 2011 •English

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 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.

Age 12: Love with a Little L

July 1991 •English

This film is depicts early lesbian sexuality, using reenacted scenes from the experience of a 12-year old girl as the platform for a meditation on forbidden desire, transgression, and Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of identity formation. Raw adolescent memories counterpoint staged scenes, exploring mechanisms of power and submission.

Every Ambulation a Betrayal

May 2017 •English

Return to 'burn' only to find out you're already in that urn.