In Untitled (Pink Dot), Murata transforms footage from the Sylvester Stallone film First Blood (1982) into a morass of seething electronic abstraction. Subjected to Murata's meticulous digital reprocessing, the action scenes decompose and are subsumed into an almost palpable, cascading digital sludge, presided over by a hypnotically pulsating pink dot.
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.
Hunter Thompson visits the set of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture.
Short documentary presents a high-tension soccer match from the perspective of an ever-vigilant referee.
Puppet animation of Bert Ambrose and His Orchestra performing. A Puppetoon animated short film.
In February 2012, I went to Ishinomaki, a town North of Tokyo that was half destroyed by the tsunami of March 11th, 2011, to meet the disaster victims who now live in temporary housing. I spent several days in the North, under the snow, listening to these people talk candidly about what they had lived through, telling their own stories without the media as an intermediary. Their testimonies were terrifying, harsh and sad, but at the same time touching, sincere and human. From the pictures and interviews that I collected, I decided to make a film, not to reflect how awful the events were, but to communicate the singular and even surreal nature of each person’s experience. My intention wasn’t so much to focus on this particular event in Japan, but rather to make these stories more universal as a way of paying tribute to all the victims of natural disasters throughout the world.
Images set to a tape recording that slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk made in November 1977 to be played in case he was killed.
Explores the hot-button issues around the striking gender gap in Hollywood. Both women and men in the entertainment industry share first-person insights, questions, and anecdotes about the place of women in Hollywood.
A documentary that introduces FIT Hives, a student-run organization whose mission is to educate the FIT community about the importance of bees to the environment, the use of bee-derived resources in the industries related to the majors at FIT and its goal to put a beehive on the roof. FIT Hives is a recipient of an FIT Innovation Grant which also supported the making of this documentary.
DIYSEX is a film that reflects on the use of the image and the language of mainstream pornography, and wonders how far this use can transcend when making your porn film.
Three arrested and detained undocumented immigrants must navigate the system to fight impending deportation.
Kyabakura is a type of hostess club in Japan, inspired by French cabaret. There exists an ambiguous relationship between the clients, the men, and the hostesses, that should never materialize into a sexual relationship...There are strict rules, which of course, are designed to be broken.
Footage of Québec City locations and the artwork of well-known Quebec animator Frédéric Back are used to tell the tale of Champlain’s life in New France – from his first explorations and settlement to his death in 1635.
A light, humorous look at the motor car and the great North American itch for a place on the road. From the comparative peace of Honest Joe's used-car lot, this film hustles you onto our public speedways, where hot rubber erases any distance between all points. Slow-motion and pop-on-pop-off photography make this a provocative, revealing study of motormania unlimited. A 1960 black and white production. (Also released under the title 1/3 Down and 24 Months to Pay.)
The Salvation Army in action. Band rehearsals, personal reminiscences of an Army officer, and an unrehearsed "coming to Christ" in the Army Citadel make for a revealing film study of men and women dedicated to a life of service to humanity.
Short documentary on the Ladakh.region.
Kitty Tsui, Chinese American writer, poet, body builder, and lesbian activist, tells of her arrival as an immigrant to San Francisco and, amidst the anti-Vietnam war protests, finding her way to San Francisco State, which influenced her on her path as an activist and poet. In this first ever documentary about a Chinese American Lesbian, Tsui brings to life her coming of age in San Francisco in the 1970s, her challenges, and her continued rise to celebrity by being re-discovered by a whole new generation of Feminists.
Chicán (chi'kaan), a Mayan word meaning "Boca de Culebra", is a small Mayan community in southern Yucatán where for generations its inhabitants have been born with a particular characteristic and share the same surnames. This documentary portrays the life of a local family and their resilience in a town where tradition will continue unless someone breaks the cycle.