Flower Bed

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.

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.

Maison du Bonheur

August 2018 •French

When asked to make a documentary about her friend’s mother—a Parisian astrologer named Juliane—the filmmaker sets off for Montmartre with a Bolex to craft a portrait of an infectiously exuberant personality and the pre-war apartment she’s called home for 50 years.

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 Fish

November 2016 •Portuguese

"A fisherman, dark-skinned and shirtless, sits in a boat on a quiet river and, before long, catches a fish. The fish gasps for air and the fisherman holds it to his chest until it dies. This sequence—performed by a series of fishermen, of various ages and using various styles of capture—is the spine of the work, interrupted by passages of quiet natural beauty; one shot is a steady, stately pan through scores of trees and empty air behind." - Vinson Cunningham

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.

1/57: Experiment with Synthetic Sound (Test)

March 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)

Mozart's Sister

October 2024 •English

For the first 18 years of her life, Mozart’s sister shared equal billing with her brother. Musical partners and collaborators, Wolfgang Mozart and Maria-Anna Mozart played together before Kings and Queens, and were the talk of Europe. What happened to her? Forced into retirement by age 16 because she was a woman, a stunning new investigation explores why she was retired against her will and the explosive theory: did Maria-Anna Mozart continue to compose in secret?

Running Shadow

December 1971 •English

Rapidly changing images of natural objects, scenery, animals, plants, and people flicker, flash, tumble, and cascade across the screen.

Homo Paradoksum I

January 1989 •Russian

An experimental film about life on earth as a cosmic experiment and the curiosity and naivete of reaching out to alien life.

Ich lebe in der Gegenwart - Versuch über Hans Richter

September 1973 •German

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 Displaced View

January 1988 •English

The Displaced View traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history, are revealed. Utilizing an innovative combination of experimental, dramatic and documentary forms, the film emerges as a deeply moving and compassionate love letter. Just as the official history of the Japanese Canadians has been thrown into question, so does the film’s fictionalized narrative, question documentary as truth.

Heartbeat

January 2001 •English

Baa Baa Land

September 2017 •English

An eight-hour contemplative epic, entirely starring sheep.

Convalescing

August 2000 •English

“Convalescing, when you don't have to participate in the world. Time to read, to dream, to look - the blue, the light of the television, the blue, the book, the patterns the light, the blue. Time to appreciate how much that really is.”

Ahasverus

January 1962 •

Short experimental 16mm film.

The Private Life of Plants

January 1995 •English

David Attenborough takes us on a guided tour through the secret world of plants, to see things no unaided eye could witness. Each episode in this six-part series focuses on one of the critical stages through which every plant must pass if it is to survive:- travelling, growing, and flowering; struggling with one another; creating alliances with other organisms both plant and animal; and evolving complex ways of surviving in the earth's most ferociously hostile environments.

DIALOGUE

January 2018 •Japanese

Emerging from a period of withdrawal, a social recluse or ‘hikikomori’ relates her inner experiences against the backdrop of an illuminated and restless urban environment that never sleeps.

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.