Les sentiers culturels

A Night at the Garden

Archival footage of an American Nazi rally that attracted 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II.

Cops

Buster Keaton gets involved in a series of misunderstandings involving a horse and cart. Eventually he infuriates every cop in the city when he accidentally interrupts a police parade.

Trifles of Importance

Part of John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series, this short shows how three seemingly unimportant things can affect people. The first is how the number 7 affects a student accused of theft charges. The second segment shows that a person's doodles can reveal personality traits. The final segment shows why certain items are on men's suits, such as lapels.

The Devil's Torturer

Herbert Fux talks about his role in the 1970 film "Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält" also known as "Mark of the Devil"

Avant-Drag!

Avant-Drag! paints portraits of ten drag artists of varying gender expressions and sexualities who take to the streets of Athens to query, problematise and (yes, please!) undermine social strictures. Employing wildly imagined personas – like riot housewives and Albanian turbo-folk girls – who perform acts as revolutionary as praising abortion and as charming as drawing childish pictures, these artists call for social justice by taking aim at conservatism, patriarchy, patriotism, racism and sexism.

Christmas in the Distance

The director documents the events leading to a reunion with her estranged father.

Ein Fenster in die Welt

Students from nine nations unite on August 7, 1950 at the Franco-German border near Germanshof, tear down the barriers and remove the border posts and barriers, which they burn in a ceremony. This act is a commitment to Europe and a protest against the arbitrariness of borders between nations.

What You’ll Remember

Homelessness in the United States takes many forms. For Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima and their four children, housing instability has meant moving between unsafe apartments, motels, relatives’ couches, shelters, the streets and their car. After 15 years of this uncertainty, the family moved into their first stable housing — an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bad Guys: Little Lies and Alibis

A group of former criminals do their best to get to their parole interview on time.

Plastic Him

A self portrait filmed with a modified PXL 2000 Camcorder. The camcorder itself records on to audio cassette tape. The tapes themselves are recycled which means I have recorded over them several causing them to slowly degrade.

Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales

Tis the season for the cheer and charm of the Peanuts kids - and this delight special offers five segments full of unforgettable moments. Snoopy works as a bell-ringer to raise money and tries making peace with the ferocious cat next door. Linus strives to strike the right tone in his letter to Santa - and his friendship with an indecisive girl at school. Sally's idea about gift giving and the identity of Santa may be unusual - but her strange notion about how to obtain a Christmas tree surprisingly does the job. Lucy tries awfully hard to be nice...and still coax everyone around her to buy her presents. Charlie Brown and Sally wait up for Santa (a surprisingly short man), who spreads Christmas gift cheer further than they had thought. Make merry!

The Puppeteer

The Puppeteer is a powerful, moving glimpse into the art of puppetry and the passion of a brilliant artist. The film treats viewers to Igor's street corner magic and following a dramatic turn of events, leaves us to reflect on life, art and the pursuit of dreams.

Without a Mom

Two gay dads fumble to provide their straight son with meaningful support after the loss of his first real love.

The Little Matchgirl

An animated short based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale about a poor young girl with a burning desire to find comfort and happiness in her life. Desperate to keep warm, the girl lights the matches she sells, and envisions a very different life for herself in the fiery flames filled with images of loving relatives, bountiful food, and a place to call home.

Bird

This portrait of a guinea fowl is the first clear vision I've had of the hot-blooded dinosaurs still living among us. (SB)

Worm and Web Love

WORM AND WEB LOVE begins with bracketed light, a throbbing worm in the sand and sea foam mixed with grass and oceanic detritus, soon superimposed upon the dark blue-toned face of a man, then a woman (Michael McClure and Amy Evans McClure), each seen, then on, through superimpositions of drifting smoke and the back-lit stark grid of a spider's web. The obvious affections of the man and woman, their clear display of love, is metaphored in these tenuous superimpositions, culminating in the frantic movements of the spider itself and the dance of joy of the features of the couple in loving resolution.

City Streaming

This is a film made in Toronto, in memoriam, so to speak - a memory piece, a "piecing-together" of the experience of living there. The consciousness of the maker comes to sharply focused visual music - not to arrive at snapshots, as such, but rather to "sing" the city as remembered from daily living...complementary, then, to an earlier film, "Unconscious London Strata." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

Marilyn's Window

This stream-of-consciousness could be nothing less than pathway of the soul, as images of Marilyn's window are remembered from inside-out, its "view" interwoven with all of other windowing and the Elements of the known world.

Flight

Pun on "light" intended - that short preceding expulsion of breath perhaps the "subject matter" of this film which centers in consideration of death. It is the third tone poem film and did much surprise me by thus completing a trilogy of the "4 classical Elements." (SB)