Cloudscape

Trypps #6 (Malobi)

June 2009 •English

From the Maroon village of Malobi in Suriname, South America, this single-take film offers a strikingly contemporary take on a Jean Rouch classic. It’s Halloween at the Equator, Andrei Tarkovsky for the jungle set.

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.

Colossal

December 2012 •Tagalog

Colossal explores the complexities of grief and the process of grieving as understood through the myth of a Man as he ventures through shifting landscapes ruminating.

Islands

November 2013 •Tagalog

ISLANDS explores a cinematic journey of two astronauts. As they enter Earth’s atmosphere the structure transforms. The spacecraft becomes the meteor from a myth of a tribesman; it triggers an old lady’s memory of a lover from her past. As these diverse characters converge in a plane of reality, we confront a particular form of gravity we covertly feel—falling in love.

Taglish

December 2012 •English

At first, there was Tagalog, Gym Lumbera’s short and, to his mind, unfinished narrative about the infidelity that comes between a husband and wife in their twilight years, shot on film and reflecting his own real-life infidelity.. And then there was a storm, a real storm and not a metaphorical one, that flooded his house and submerged, and subsequently damaged, the only copy of Tagalog. This damaged version, entitled English, became the missing piece that completed the film. The new work is named after Taglish, the bastard hybrid, some say corruption, of Tagalog and English, and has become a meditation on love and language and the ways in which we betray and destroy them.

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.”

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

July 1987 •English

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

Begotten

June 1991 •English

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

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.

Chelsea Girls

September 1966 •English

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

The Red Bank. James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks

March 2013 •Greek

This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”

Afflatus

July 2019 •English

After losing everything beyond time, mankind seek to find inspiration in nature, in the void and in life itself, while struggling with dreams of future existence.

Me, Myself, and My Third Eye: 4 Enlightened Stories For 1 Imperfect God

January 2010 •English

Features four distinct, bizarre, existential tales about people whose lives are in transition, who are each asking questions about themselves, their environments, and about God(s).

Wall

October 2004 •English

Between a man and his lover lies a wall, between the man and the country he loves lies another wall. Can a one-sided dialouge breaks the walls and expresses the man’s feelings and sentiments? Or does the lover or the country wants the wall to be broken in the first place? This short was inspired by Amy Len’s dance choreography “Wall” and colloborated with Loh Bok Lai. The dance was originally choreographed for a performance in Japan Dance Wave Fukuoka ‘06 - Asian Contemporary Dance Now and later made into an experimental video combining elements of an actor and monologue. The video footages were also used for the dance piece itself in KL.

Une certaine histoire du cinéma expérimental français

February 2019 •French

Ich lebe in der Gegenwart - Versuch über Hans Richter

September 1973 •German

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.

My Backyard Was A Mountain

October 2005 •Spanish

Told as the memory of an aging gentleman, this is the story of Adan, a Puerto Rican boy who has one day to find a home for his pet goat, Chivo, before his family relocates to New York City in the late 1950s. While searching for a new owner for Chivo, Adan discovers the promise of first love with his childhood friend, Denise, whom he will also have to leave behind.

On the Heights All Is Peace

January 1998 •Italian

Found footage anti-war film comprising film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian army on the Alpine front, and from first generation picture material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.