1. Reflecting Thought: Stan Brakhage
Stan Brakhage is a film maker whose work is shown mainly at film festivals. His work has been likened to poetry. Brakhage explains his techniques and his motivation.
2. Nuuk
Köner uses sequences of images from webcams as raw material. People and their vehicles appear acoustically, but not visually. The shift from day to night and the influence of the weather gives motion to the segments. He condenses a total of 3,000 individual web images taken from the Internet into one scene. Despite the cinematic motion of the image, it seems like a still photo.
It has an average vote of 5 on TMDB.
3. Kenneth Anger: Film as Magical Ritual (Kenneth Anger: Film als magisches Ritual)
Anger discusses his Aleister Crowley-inspired theories of art: How he views his camera like a wand and how he casts his films, preferring to consider his actors, not human beings but as elemental spirits. In fact, he reveals that he goes so far as to use astrology when making these choices. This is as direct an explanation of Anger’s cinemagical modus operandi as I have ever heard him articulate anywhere. It’s a must see for anyone interested in his work and showcases the Magus of cinema at the very height of his artistic powers. Fascinating.
It has an average vote of 5.7 on TMDB.
4. Nathaniel Dorsky: An Interview
In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work operating at the intersection of film materiality and personal language, Dorsky explains how he developed his philosophy of the “devotional film” and the “microcosmic viewer.” Dorsky likens his practice to Buddhist sculpture, referring to himself as a “Japanese poet continuing aspects of the ethos of the Marxist revolution.” In the interview, the artist describes his use of the screen as an “altarpiece for the image” and emphasizes his use of editing to create works which “harmoniously coalesce.” Interview conducted by Jeffrey Skoller in May 2000, edited in 2014.
5. Beautiful Solution
The film poem about pesticides reflects on the return to the natural food chain, in which insect pest serve as food for the higher order. The harmonic cycle of life and death, the temple that is the wildflower field resounding with the inebriating sound of crickets chirping and wheat spikes rustling in the wind, is invaded by the human, the ultimate consumer with no natural predator.
6. good boy
The author's erotic imagination is mixed between desire and magazine clippings, and the trade of collage becomes a ship that travels from outer space to the city itself.
7. Cartas de Arapuca (Cartas de Arapuca)
(Cartas de Arapuca)
8. Afloat
'Afloat' is an experimental film that paints a portrait of Japanese performance artist: Ayumi Lanoire. The film opens as a telephone call between Ayumi and Person X, which meanders the audience through the various layers that make up her personas leading one to wonder whether she is in fact a myth or reality.
9. Las Preguntas que Perdimos (Las Preguntas que Perdimos)
(Las Preguntas que Perdimos)
It has an average vote of 9 on TMDB.
10. Wenn wir blinken können wir das Rauschen sehen (Wenn wir blinken können wir das Rauschen sehen)
A camera rotates around the same four towers. Seasons, weather conditions and the positions of the camera change over the course of the film. The sound goes round in circles and drifts in variations.
11. A Little Love
Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.
It has an average vote of 10 on TMDB.
12. Some precious things (Algumas coisas preciosas)
During an audio message sent to his daughter, a father reflects on how the recent discovery of dusty reels and scratchy VHS tapes capturing childhood moments has propelled him on a journey of ancient memories and forgotten dreams . Using a blend of personal, public domain, and freely available footage, the film deconstructs reality and reimagines the past, questioning where memory ends and imagination begins.
13. My Friend Richard
The life and times of artist Richard Ellis
14. Luminous Void: Docudrama
A documentary like no other. Starting with the bizarre practices and fantasies of a group of filmmakers working under the label Experimental Film Society, it spins off into a manifesto of light and sound. This dazzling journey through a view of cinema as cosmic ritual and erotic delirium is also an idiosyncratic celebration of the medium itself. Rouzbeh Rashidi’s ornate visual style unleashes a parade of visionary scenes that redefine movie magic as a fevered hallucination.
15. Something Walks in the Woods
A viral video shows a mysterious figure walking along the edge of the woods each day, and filmmaker Bill Howard sets out to spend a night there to find out exactly what it is.
It has an average vote of 5.667 on TMDB.
16. It's Not A Picture, It's A Video.
A fragmented look into the memories of two strangers from the same hometown, brought together through a university project.
17. Godard by Godard (Godard par Godard)
Godard by Godard is an archival self-portrait of Jean-Luc Godard. It retraces the unique and unheard-of path, made up of sudden detours and dramatic returns, of a filmmaker who never looks back on his past, never makes the same film twice, and tirelessly pursues his research, in a truly inexhaustible diversity of inspiration. Through Godard’s words, his gaze and his work, the film tells the story of a life of cinema; that of a man who will always demand a lot of himself and his art, to the point of merging with it.
It has an average vote of 7.8 on TMDB.
18. Iris of the Noon (Íris da Tarde)
(Íris da Tarde)
19. From 9 to 5
Passing vignettes of the lives of workers and citizens, what home means to them, and inter-city transportation...
20. Walking
Tommy sets out to document walking. He meets a colorful cast of characters, attaches microphones to his feet, and contends with what it means to capture movement on film.