An immersion into the surreal and dreamlike world of painter, photographer and filmmaker Man Ray (1890-1976), one of the most prolific American visual artists, through four of his short films, brought to life by the atmospheric music of SQÜRL.
Nassdja is locked down during a raging pandemic with her brutish boyfriend Luke. With the hope of healing their fractured relationship, they flee to Luke's remote family cabin, but soon find they are not alone.
New York City's various bridges transform into an urban jungle (jazz version) or an alien landscape (electro-acoustic version).
The apparent vertical scratch in celluloid that opens Presents literally opens into a film within the film. When its figure awakens into a woman in a 'real' unreal set, the slapstick satire of structural film begins. It is not the camera that moves, but the whole set, in this first of three material 'investigations' of camera movement. In the second, the camera literally invades the set; a plexiglass sheet in front of the dolly crushes everything in its sight as it zooms through space. Finally, this monster of formalism pushes through the wall of the set and the film cuts to a series of rapidly edited shots as the camera zigzags over lines of force and moving fields of vision in an approximation of the eye in nature. Snow pushes us into acceptance of present moments of vision, but the single drum beat that coincides with each edit in this elegaic section announces each moment of life's irreversible disappearance.
This two-color (green-blue and red) film was produced as a demonstration reel at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, under the direction of Kodak scientist John Capstaff. It features leading actresses, including Mae Murray, Hope Hampton, and Mary Eaton, posing and miming for the camera to showcase the capability of the complex Kodachrome process to capture their translucent movie star complexions and colorful, high-fashion clothing.
An experimental film in which both sound and visuals were created entirely by McLaren drawing directly upon the film with ordinary pen and ink. The titles are in eight languages. Rereleased with multilingual titles in 1949.
Shot over a period of three years. Marie Menken photographed New York window displays during the Christmas holiday. In order to avoid foot and street traffic interrupting the shots, Menken filmed from midnight to 1:00 in the morning, but had to keep the camera under her coat to keep it from freezing.
A film in three parts: a man talking while a telephone rings, a walking tour of New York, and a goldfish swimming.
Pialat's first film was the short Isabelle aux Dombes, shot in 1951 when the director was 26 years old. The film is an entirely silent montage of documentary footage, ragged experimental techniques — mainly some negative-image inserts — and symbolic psychodrama that's surprisingly not too different from the work that Stan Brakhage would begin making just a year or two later. Images of death proliferate throughout the film, and what started as a loose documentary soon becomes an eerie psuedo-horror piece that's obsessed with death and decay.
This portrait of the filmmaker's apartment, painted in the color of the title, was made a few months before his departure from New York. It is dedicated to the filmmaker Stan Brakhage and was shot without a scenario and edited entirely in the camera.
A series of terrifying dramas of male-female relationships offset against the background of a New York tenement. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2012.
A concert by King Crimson recorded at the Arena Frejus, France on August 27th, 1982. Track Listing: Waiting Man, Matte Kudasai, The Sheltering Sky, Neil and Jack and Me, Indiscipline, Heartbeat, Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part II and more.
A man is trapped in a loop somewhere between life and death. Based on Bardo, a Buddhist term for an intermediate state between death and rebirth. This film combines elements of art house, avant-garde, surrealism, and experimental horror.
A drifter spends the night in an abandoned house and encounters a Window of Consciousness. This award-winning film combines elements of art house, avant-garde, surrealism, and experimental horror.
A father must face his dark past when his gifted daughter has visions of a young girl reborn from her deceased mother. This award-winning metaphysical thriller combines elements of art house, avant-garde, surrealism, and experimental horror.
In the aftermath of an emotional shock, a ruthless high-class manager faces her own abyss, becomes pervaded by a sensory spirit and undertakes a purifying voyage.
An experimental study of the inside of a "scattered brain".
Sugar Walls Teardom reveals the contributions of Black womxn’s wombs to the advancement of modern medical science and technology.
"Good-bye G.O.D." was a play written specially for Jack Birkett, 'The INCREDIBLE ORLANDO', to be performed with its author, composer Carlos Miranda. Conceived as a future-fantasy Music Hall operetta, "Good-bye G.O.D." tells the story of General Orson Davis, (known as G.O.D.), one of the heads of the Confederated Armies of the Northern Hemisphere, who have concocted a mass destruction of the world. Sheltered in a bunker in the North Pole, he and his henchmen have saved a chosen team of scientists impelled to work on the vessel that will enable them to eventually evacuate the planet. But he has a secret passion which he will indulge once he encounters Adam, one of his scientists.