Brain Damage

The 99 Names of God

April 2018 •English

Arab-American filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi embraces the rhythmic rituals that have run alongside Islamic tradition throughout the centuries in this surreal and poetic short film. Piecing together old and new, Al-Rashi's dream-like imagery breathes fresh air to a subject hardly seen in positive light.

Feeler

June 2016 •English

16mm film by Paul Clipson, and music by Sarah Davachi. Filmed in New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Brisbane, Krakow, Sidney, Portland, Napa, Oakland and San Francisco.

Persian Series #4

April 1999 •English

Elaborate petal-like and multicolored flowers rising in white space until the whole field is as if crushed by floral designs in madly-swift mixtures of every conceivable previous shape from the Persian Series. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Transfer

January 1966 •English

A psychiatrist and his needy patient discuss their relationship in a snow-covered field.

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.

A Fan

January 1968 •English

A man in drag sits on a couch holding a fan. The wallpaper behind him is floral patterned. Although the man does little more than looking around and waving his fan, Zwartjes created enormous tension.

Little Dog for Roger

January 1967 •English

A nostalgic exploration, comprising fragments of reworked 9.5mm home movie footage. The deterioration of the original film, like memories, contributes to the film’s meaning.

Shoot Me

September 2013 •English

The Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor, daughter of a former advisor of Ahmadinejad's, has been living in exile in Germany for four years. When she hears that the fellow Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi, who is also living in exile in Germany, faces death threats and has to hide because of one of his songs, she doesn't hesitate and has to find him. On her search she encounters fear everywhere. Narges Kalhor has to face her inconvenient memories of suppression, hatred and anger for her past in Iran.

The Game

January 1962 •

In this child's game, a live-action boy and girl draw characters and compete who is better. The girl draws a flower and the boy draws a car that runs it over. Then a drawn lion chases a drawn girl, until it all becomes frightfully serious.

Boys Night

November 2018 •English

"After chasing sunsets, one of life's simple joys is playing with the boys." - Kenneth Clark Loggins

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.

Weatherman '69

November 1989 •English

Featuring a cast that includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Mike Watt of the legendary hardcore band Minutemen, and Pettibon himself, this deadpan narrative pays dubious homage to the 1960's radical underground. In this crudely rendered home video of a commune of stoned revolutionaries, the cameras are hand-held, the edits in-camera, and the dialogue is wryly on-target. Pettibon's band of outsiders reenacts a countercultural moment defined by rock music, drugs, and ideological paradox — and in so doing, captures their own late-80's West Coast grunge milieu as well.

Fake Fiction

September 2018 •German

The Great Ephemeral Skin

October 2012 •German

Inside the claustrophobic scenery of a fancy apartment in the city of Frankfurt three men and a woman lock themselves in for ten days. Oskar and Julia are a couple. They have sex and let themselves be filmed. Benjamin and Bastian are behind the camera, trying to get pictures of absolute intimacy. Closeness as it can only be found among lovers.

EXPRMNTL

October 2016 •English

Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organised in part by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…

C'est Salonique

April 1984 •French

"During the invitation to a film festival in Thessaloniki, Greece, where I presented the Cinématon and my feature film Blue Heart (which won a prize), I filmed the daily life of the city. The seafront, the university and the city where I was staying."

Diwan

February 1974 •German

Diwan, a lyric anthology, an outdoor movie with people. With people living in the surrounding precious and very beautifully photographed nature, are neither more nor less than one part of it. What Nekes manages there with landscape, as a cunning and quote many fine artist in a medium that runs in time, as he defeated the time changed, by themselves for change of scenery uses, as it interferes with the laws of chronology through the rewind ability of the camera or destroyed, which is a compelling and highly aesthetic experimental company.

Memoirs of a Strangler of Blondes

January 1971 •Portuguese

First film by Julio Bressane shot in exile, "Memoirs" is a film about a man who repeatedly kills the same type of woman in same places, the same way. Filmed on the streets of London.

Crazy Love

January 1971 •Portuguese

Bressane's second London film, shot in six days in his apartment. "I had seen the French avant-garde films of the 1920's and naturally the title cites Breton. But underneath it can also be read in many ways. It is a cinema that is invented on the spur of the moment, like you invent an instrument to play music and then abandon it. This film came out like an improvisation, a total risk. It is a deconstruction of meaning but not in the analytical, intellectual sense. I have always tried to lose myself with my films. There is no trace of American or French underground cinema. If anything, it is the idea of home movies, there were many ideas for digital films long before digital film existed. This film made itself, it was like a jazz improvisation. Amor Louco is a lost object, it doesn't speak any language, it has no signs, no letters, no captions. And in the scene where the cataract is cut with the razor blade, it was the adventure of the film itself that was put to the test".

Magnética

September 2020 •Portuguese

In a city inhabited by drawn beings, an indigenous boy witnesses a holographic appearance. It is the arrival of an entity of unknown materiality. With a mysterious presence and exotic allegories, it starts to enchant the residents, awakening their most insane senses.