Experimental
This vast collection of experimental films proves just how boundless the genre can be. From Chantal Akerman's aesthetically minimalist and humanist reflection on 'the Israel question' in DOWN THERE, to Robert Kramer and John Douglas's free-associative document of American life in MILESTONES, to pranksters of Contemporary Art Peter Fischli & David Weiss in THE WAY THINGS GO, to Tiffany Sia's assemblages of eye-witness resistance in Hong Kong, to Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento’s Chilean surrealist film THE WANDERING SOAP OPERA, and John Akomfrah’s hybrid films that deploy science fiction in pan-African culture, each of these films challenge the standards of storytelling, break all the rules, and expand our consciousness.
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Well Then There Now
Directed by Lewis Klahr • Animation • 2012 • 13 minutes
An unfaithful and playful interpretation of John Zorn's early 80s film script Treatment For a Film in 15 Scenes, which was written as a shot list.
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Turn It Back (Lewis Klahr)
Directed by Lewis Klahr • Animation • 2012 • 3 minutes
A feature-length melodrama compressed into just under three minutes, in which a quintessential '60s blonde discovers who she really desires.
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Alcestis
Directed by Lewis Klahr • Animation • 2021 • 22 minutes
An interpretive adaptation of the Greek myth and the Euripides play that uses a melange of comic book characters as its cast. Klahr's most explicitly narrative collage film. From the series The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness.
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The Three Friends of the Cold Season
Directed by Lewis Klahr • Animation • 2024 • 15 minutes
A three-act adventure epic that genre hops from swashbucklers to westerns to melodrama. Each act occurs in a different century and is set to a different iconic song from master American song book collagist Dick Connette.
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The Plains
Directed by David Easteal • Drama • With Andrew Rakowski, David Easteal • 2022 • 180 minutes
Every evening a man in his late 50s commutes home at the end of the working day in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. As the seasons pass in gentle rhythm we observe dramatic events of his life as well as m...
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The Embassy (Chris Marker)
Directed by Chris Marker • Drama • 1973 • 21 minutes
One of Chris Marker's few fiction films, THE EMBASSY shows political dissidents seeking refuge in a foreign embassy after a military coup d'état in an unidentified country. Over the next few days, more and more people fleeing the military assa...
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Silent Witnesses
Directed by Luis Ospina, Jerónimo Atehortúa • Experimental/Drama • With Mara Meba, Roberto Estrada Vergara • 2023 • 79 minutes
“Silent Witnesses” tells the impossible love story between Efraín and Alicia during the first half of the 20th century in Colombia.
Based on remnants of the few Colom... -
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Maya Deren)
Directed by Maya Deren • Documentary • 1977 • 52 minutes
A journey into the fascinating world of the Voudoun religion edited from footage shot by Deren in Haiti.
"Maya Deren was a brilliant filmmaker and theorist whose substantial body of films and writings has paled beside the even larger lege...
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The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology
Directed by Jim Finn • Documentary • With Linda Montano, Usama Alshaibi, Jim Finn, Begüm Malkoçlar • 2023 • 64 minutes
A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity. The story of Paul the Apostle’s life, ideology and influence is told by piecing together 20th Century 16mm and ...
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The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah)
Directed by John Akomfrah • Documentary • 1996 • 45 minutes
John Akomfrah, director of Seven Songs of Malcolm X, returns with an engaging and searing examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing c...
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Abstract Cinema
Directed by Keith Griffiths • Documentary • With Stan Brakhage, William Moritz, John Whitney, Michael Scroggins, Jules Engel • 1993 • 51 minutes
Exploration of the work of pioneers in abstract cinema using rare archive film, film clips and interviews to demonstrate the influence of the early cin...
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David Holzman's Diary
Directed by Jim McBride • Drama • With Eileen Dietz, Kit Carson • 1967 • 73 minutes
David Holzman's Diary is one of the most influential films of the 1960s, an "ingenious puzzle movie" (Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader) that charts the self-destruction of a media-saturated youth. As news from the Viet...
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The Way Things Go
Directed by Peter Fischli & David Weiss • Documentary • 1987 • 30 minutes
Inside a warehouse, Swiss artists Peter Fischli (b. 1952) and David Weiss (1946—2012) built an enormous, precarious structure 100 feet long made out of common household items—tea kettles, tires, old shoes, balloons, wooden...
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From The East (Chantal Akerman)
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2003 • 110 minutes
FROM THE EAST retraces a journey from the end of summer to deepest winter, from East Germany, across Poland and the Baltics, to Moscow. It is a voyage Chantal Akerman wanted to make shortly after the collapse of the Soviet bloc "befo...
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Killing Time
Directed by Fronza Woods • Drama • 1979 • 9 minutes
KILLING TIME, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. Part of the mediamaking move...
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Fannie's Film
Directed by Fronza Woods • Documentary • 1981 • 15 minutes
In FANNIE'S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes o...
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In the Mirror of Maya Deren
Directed by Martina Kudlácek • Documentary • With Miriam Arsham, Stan Brakhage, Chao Li Chi, Rita Christiani, Maya Deren • 2002 • 104 minutes
With In The Mirror Of Maya Deren, documentary filmmaker Martina Kudlácek has fashioned not only a fascinating portrait of a groundbreaking and influential...
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Le Navire Night
Directed by Marguerite Duras • Drama • With Bulle Ogier, Dominique Sanda, Mathieu Carrière • 1979 • 90 minutes
With LE NAVIRE NIGHT, writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras (L'Amant, India Song) explores the matrix of love, desire and language in her characteristically oblique and experimental sty...
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Today
Directed by Su Friedrich • Documentary • 2022 • 57 minutes
TODAY opens with filmmaker Su Friedrich’s left foot stretched out in front of her as she lies in bed. Overhead, a ceiling fan whirs. Friedrich takes another deep breath and says to no one in particular, “Try to pay attention to the momen...
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The Wandering Soap Opera
Directed by Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento • Drama • With Luis Alarcón, Patricia Rivadeneira, Francisco Reyes • 2017 • 78 minutes
Filmed by Chilean master Raúl Ruiz in 1990 but left unfinished until it was completed by his wife and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento in 2017, The Wandering Soap Oper...
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An Injury To One
Directed by Travis Wilkerson • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes
AN INJURY TO ONE provides a corrective-and absolutely compelling-glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious ...
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The Annotated Field Guide of Ulysses S. Grant
Directed by Jim Finn • Documentary • 2020 • 61 minutes
For four years in the 1860’s half of the United States was held hostage by an unrecognized white supremacist republic. Shot on 16mm in national military parks, swamps, forests and the suburban sprawl across the former battlefields, the film ...