Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film (2012)
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About a filmmaker not only revisiting, but also recreating (not in a conventional sense) one of his first films, The Perfect Human / Det perfekte menneske (1967)
Documentary film that examines the rise and fall of the Third Reich, incorporating puppetry, rear-screen projection, and a Wagnerian score into a singular epic vision. The director, who grew up under Nazi tyranny, ruminates on good and evil and the rest of humanity's complicity in the horrors of the holocaust.
Journey Through the Past is a 1972 film by Neil Young. Originally shot in 16mm format and then transferred for theatrical release the experimental film is a self-directed combination of concert footage from 1966 onward, backstage footage and semi-fantastic art film-like sequences. Although Journey Through the Past was Young's film debut it was received poorly by critics. The film was released on DVD in 2009 with the Neil Young Archives.
"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.
Tourfilm (1990) is a documentary-style concert film by American rock band R.E.M. The film chronicles the band's 1989 Green tour of North America. Produced by frontman Michael Stipe and director Jim McKay, the black-and-white film features aspects of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking, including handheld camera shots and stock footage.
Vampir-Cuadecuc is a 1970 experimental feature film by Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella. The entire film is photographed on high contrast black & white film stock, which gives it the appearance of a degraded film print, evoking early Expressionist horror films such as F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu or Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr. It was shot on the set of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula, starring Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom. The sound track is by frequent Portabella collaborator Carles Santos, and the only spoken dialogue in the film appears only in the last scene, which features Lee reading from Bram Stoker's original novel.
Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
My film diaries 1970-1979: my marriage, children are born, you see them growing up. Footage of daily life, fragments of happiness and beauty, trips to France, Italy, Spain, Austria. Seasons of the year as they pass through New York. Friends, home life, nature, unending search for moments of beauty and celebration of life friendships, feelings, brief moments of happiness. The film is also my love poem to New York. Itâs the ultimate Dogme movie, before the birth of Dogme.
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.
ReGeneration is a 2010 American documentary film written and directed by Phillip Montgomery that looks at the issues facing today's youth and young adults, and the influences that contribute to America's current culture of apathy toward to political and social causes.
Experimental film following a bearded Scottish hermit as he goes about his outcast life.
This unusual documentary-style feature starts with ordinary people discussing their private erotic desires; what sets it apart from other documentaries, which often feature a lot of talk, is that in this experimental film, 10 of the subjects then act out their most intimate fantasies. Carl Gurevich and Ralph Rosenblum (the acclaimed editor of Woody Allen's comedies Annie Hall and Sleeper) co-direct this daring peek into the human sexual psyche.
Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974, the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison. After discussing hunger strikes, ways of keeping up the fight, loss of touch with reality, etc., an unexpected situation arises when one of the ex prisoners sings the praises of life in prison. The forceful response of one of his colleagues does not do away with the cathartic effect of the confession. âpereportabella.com
A documentary about fraud and fakery.
This film shows the disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames. In contrast to the common documentary film there are no comments and few interviews. What must have been the hell itself is presented to the viewer in such beautiful sights and beautiful music that one has to be fascinated by it.
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.
Misha (Stephen Papps), a once celebrated filmmaker who has fallen on hard times, resolves to leave his homeland in search of a film-friendly country where he can pursue his career. With his wife Nadia (Elena Stejko) in tow he sets sail from Russia in a tiny lifeboat, drifting cross the Pacific to finally arrive in New Zealand. Before long Misha realises that New Zealand is no more receptive to his ideas and aesthetic than Russia. Yet he perseveres with his experimental film, ignoring his wifeâs pleas to find work. Misha increasingly withdraws into himself, and his relationship with Nadia collapses. Alone, his obsessions take hold and he steadily descends into madness. Only a chance encounter with a young Polynesian woman saves him from the ultimate act of self-destruction. His friendship with Roseanna (Stephanie Tauevihi) inspires a re-awakening, as he begins to reconnect with the world around him.
Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.
A 2002 French experimental film directed by Philippe Grandrieux and starring Zachary Knighton and Anna Mouglalis. The story involves a young American who falls obsessively in love with a mysterious courtesan named Melania against the backdrop of a dilapidated Eastern European landscape.
Ari Rose (Howard) is not your typical romantic. He has two passions in life ... seducing the woman of his dreams (Parillaud) and making sure she NEVER leaves. A very dark comedy with identifiable themes (although quite extreme at times) about love, sex, obsession, paranoia and depression. This was an experimental film that was never intended for commercial release but it's great none the less.
A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.
A filmmaker (van den Driessche) holds a series of boundary-pushing auditions for his project about female pleasure.
Fletcher Munson is a lethargic, passive worker for a Scientology-like self-help corporation called Eventualism...
During the 1970s a student named Gilles gets entangled in contemporary political turmoils although he would rather just be a creative artist. While torn between his solidarity to his friends and his personal ambitions he falls in love with Christine.
Nemo Nobody leads an ordinary existence with his wife and 3 children; one day, he wakes up as a mortal centenarian in the year 2092.
A Mexican master (Alexandro Jodorowsky) leads a Christ figure (Horacio Salinas) and other disciples to a mountain of immortal wise men.
An actress's perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.
Shiva is a new student in the community college. He is welcomed by a group of collegians, including the lovely Asha, to whom Shiva is instantly attracted to. Shiva notices that there is violence within the college by people who are not even students. When he decides to find out their motives, he is met with violence, and threats. Now Shiva must decide to stand up for his college, or just carry on studying, finish college, and move on.
After being released from prison, a young gangster with a chip on his shoulder decides to punish society by making snuff films.
Sing's last two films were flops, but he is given the helm on a Category III sex film and has to cope with a leading lady who won't do nude scenes, Triad backers, and a crumbling relationship with his girlfriend.
An American, Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr) goes to post-war Germany in 1945 to work as a railroad conductor for the Zentropa Rail Line instead of going into the Army because he feels its a more valuable thing to do for the state of the world. He meets Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa), the daughter of the railroad owner and they fall in love.
A young man (Christian Heinisch), recently arrived in New York from Europe, becomes swept up in a series of events that are beyond his knowledge or control.
The same situation is played out in different cities (New York, Berlin and Japan). A lover has to choose whether to commit to a partner who is returning home. In each case there are other people involved, an ex-partner and someone else in a "permanent" relationship, what do they choose to do?
Journey into the mind of the undead, as a talking mummy guides us on grand tour of the timeless "battle of the sexes" between man and woman. A cult classic from Executive Producer Richard Gordon, BIZARRE is an offbeat anthology film that certainly defies description. An interesting mix of sex, horror and humor filmed in varied styles, this is certainly one of the strangest films you are ever likely to see. It is truly⦠BIZARRE!
Tensions between members of a film crew build while they wait for the arrival of the director and star to arrive on location.
In an urban Indian city, A struggling actor battles for his career, but his friend who loses money in a scam deal commits an action that puts both of their lives in danger. The three last days before the incident follows the struggling actor, an ambitious filmmaker, a wannabe hustler, an opportunist, a lover and two cinephile thugs, through an inter-twining vignette of their lives.
An IT company hires an actor to serve as the company's president in order to help the business get sold to a cranky Icelander.
About a man whoâs angry at his wife because sheâs met another man on a park bench and they no longer even speak the same language.
Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
Called by some a visionary masterpiece, and by others a foolâs errand, this controversial film embodies Rayâs last explorations in the medium that he called âthe cathedral of the arts.â Along with its technical innovations unequaled even today, the film explores the face of a community at a critical moment in our cultural-political history and offers a searing portrait of the filmmakerâs soul.
Chotushkone (Bengali: à¦à¦¤à§à¦·à§à¦à§à¦£; English: Quadrangle) is an Indian Bengali thriller film directed by Srijit Mukherji. "Four directors get together and plan to make a film, consisting of four short stories. They have an appointment with the producer on the outskirts of the city. While they are together, each comes up with a story which is unique in its own way, but connected to the other stories by a common theme - death. They spend a night in a nearby bungalow when their car breaks down. It is here that each of them revisits their past and are held at gunpoint by their 'nemesis'."
Five young individuals agree to live in an isolated lodge together and have their daily activities filmed. But soon the house is locked down and they each run into the murderous clutches of a faceless serial killer who may not be working alone.
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.
Oldrich "Fajolo" Fajták (Marián Bielik), a student who directs quasi-existentialist verbal abuse at his girlfriend Bela Blazejová (Jana Beláková), takes off to a formally volunteer summer work camp at a farm where he meets her grandfather.
Eight drug addicts are waiting for their connection in a New York apartment belonging to Leach. Jim Dunn, a budding filmmaker, has agreed to pay for the fix if the addicts will allow him to film the connection scene. After the men get their shots, they talk Dunn into trying heroin in order to understand the subject "first hand." He becomes ill and while sleeping, Leach takes an overdose that puts him into a coma. Dunn recovers, with the aid of the connection, and writes off the film as a failure.
Singapore Sling is chasing after Laura, a romantic memory from his past. One night he finds himself in a mysterious villa, watching two women bury a body. He falls into their trap and, in an atmosphere of isolation and decadence, the trio act out insane pleasure games and a ritual of blood and murder.
The second of Trier's films known collectively as the Europa trilogy. The other two films in the trilogy are The Element of Crime (1984) and Europa (1991). Co-written by Niels Vørsel, the film focuses on the screenwriting process. Vørsel and von Trier play themselves, coming up with a last-minute script for a producer. This story is intercut with scenes from the film they write, in which von Trier plays a renegade doctor trying to cure a modern-day epidemic. In an ironic twist, the doctor discovers that he himself has been spreading the virus.
A French actress filming an anti-war film in Hiroshima has an affair with a married Japanese architect as they share their differing perspectives on war.
In 1933, after leaving Dogville, Grace Margaret Mulligan sees a slave being punished at a cotton farm called Manderlay. Officially slavery is illegal and Grace stands up against the owners of the farm. She stays with some gangsters in Manderlay and tries to influence the situation. But when harvest time comes Grace sees the social and economic reality of Manderlay.
Director Cassavetes created Faces after his first experimental film Shadows. In the style of Cinema Verite the film tells the story of a marriage right before a divorce.
A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre ("Holy Blood"), and then commit suicide. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother.
Chelsea is an in-demand call girl whose $2,000 an hour price tag allows her to live in New York's lap of luxury. Besides her beauty and sexual skill, Chelsea offers her clients companionship and conversation, or, as she dubs it, "the girlfriend experience." With her successful business and a devoted, live-in boyfriend, Chelsea thinks she has it made... until a new client rocks her world.
Life in a flimsy Tel Aviv apartment complex is a sour urban mosaic whose seedy characters, try as they might, can't get out of one another's faces. The character's lives overlap and collide. Gabi, a bobbed haired sexpot, and her lover Heziâwho's older, balding and marriedârent a room to have an affair, while Ezra, a pot bellied divorcee, supervises an illegal construction site next door. All this racket drives Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor, to a mental breakdown. Other characters include illegal immigrants, a teenage boy who's afraid to serve in the army, and a corrupt police officer. In each scene the camera moves through walls, over desks, and around rooms in order to keep focused on the character it's following, in moments of drama as well as in moments of mudane daily activity
A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman) hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace's status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.
Based on a true story. Shortly after World War II, Preston Tucker is a dynamic engineer and an enthusiastic showman who envisions the car of the future. Against mighty odds he manages to build a fleet of them - only to have his factory shut down by Detroit's Big Three automobile manufacturers. They took away his car - but nobody could take away his dream.
Just moments before his third wedding, Zahedi relates with utter sincerity and astonishing candor his obsession with prostitutes. He retraces his romantic and sexual history, including his ideological commitment to open relationships, that led to two disastrous marriages and several very pissed off ex-girlfriends. I Am a Sex Addict is Zahedi's unique brand of comedy at its confessional best.
A man is released from prison and finds the society on the outside less than appealing. With several women as well as the police on his tail, he sets out to find an old friend.
Godard examines the structure of movies, relationships and revolutions through the life of a couple in Paris.
A symphony in three movements. Things such as a Mediterranean cruise, numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday... Our Europe. At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Our humanities. Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.
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