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.

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"

Christmas in the Distance

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

LHR

A colour anamorphic musical look at London's Heathrow airport over 24-hours in November 1971. The subject was shot entirely at Heathrow airport without recording any direct sound. LHR's many layered tracks were all compiled, recorded and laid in post-production.

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.

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.

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.

i.Mirror by China Tracy

Cao Fei recorded her experiences within the online social platform Second Life. The result is a wistful, surreal vision of an alternative reality sprung from the pop culture fantasies and hyper-consumerism of contemporary urban China, while also trying to transcend its real-life limitations. It can be seen as an answer to the challenge posed by River Elegy: how to envision a new Chinese destiny founded on principles of individuality, creativity, discovery, and freedom. The film also reflects the contemporary condition of the virtual supplanting our experience of the real.

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)

Babylon Series #1

After a six -or seven- year study of Hammurabi's Code, original Babylonian Text and translation, I've tried to feel my way into the moving visual thought process of this ancient culture (whose numerical system is composed primarily of building materials, nails, joints and the like): this, then, is a visual music which balances the two thought processes of Structure and Nature.

Babylon Series #2

Out of the vagueries of sometime beseeming repetitive light patterns, and the delicately variable rhythms of thought process, the imagination of The Monumental and of the Ephemeral are born to mind hard as nails.

Babylon Series #3

This is an architectural garden of the variably brash rock-solid liquid-encompassing, but always imitative, human mind as it processes the given light thoughtfully. This film is about that.

Old Romances

There is romance in every corner we turn. In this sequel to the documentary, Old Places, Old Romances takes us on a journey to experience Singapore through the collective voices of ordinary Singaporeans. Through their voices, we hear personal stories from members of the public who shared their anecdotes on radio. Everyday spaces come alive with these special memories, which are bonded forever with these places. Old Romances is a journal of love letters to places that we grew up with.

Drug Abuse: The Chemical Tomb

The dangers of drug use by teenagers are illustrated by showing how well-dressed, happy teens are turned into slovenly, long-haired, drug-addled potheads who don't know that, according to the film's drug expert, “in high dosages, it [marijuana] parallels LSD.”

Le manoir du diable

In a medieval castle, a dark magician thought to be Mephistopheles conjures up a series of bizarre creatures and events in order to torment a pair of interloping cavaliers.

A Nightmare

A man has a fantastical nightmare involving, among other things, a grinning malevolent moon.

The Sprinkler Sprinkled

A gardener is watering his flowers, when a mischievous boy sneaks up behind his back, and puts a foot on the water hose. The gardener is surprised and looks into the nozzle to find out why the water has stopped coming. The boy then lifts his foot from the hose, whereby the water squirts up in the gardener's face. The gardener chases the boy, grips his ear and slaps him in his buttocks. The boy then runs away and the gardener continues his watering. Three separate versions of this film exist, this is the original, filmed by Louis Lumière.

Panorama du grand Canal pris d'un bateau

The first travelling shot.

The Photographical Congress Arrives in Lyon

Down the gangway, photographers leave the deck of a riverboat in large numbers.

Game of Cards

Three men are sitting around a table, two of them playing a game of Écarté. When the game is over, a domestic serves drinks.

The One-Man Band

A band-leader has arranged seven chairs for the members of his band. When he sits down in the first chair, a cymbal player appears in the same chair, then rises and sits in the next chair. As the cymbal player sits down, a drummer appears in the second chair, and then likewise moves on to the third chair. In this way, an entire band is soon formed, and is then ready to perform.

Avenue de l'Opéra

A shot of a busy street in Paris is shown in reverse.

The Calligrapher

With harpsichord music in the background, a dandy, seated at a table, plucks a quill pen from a ceiling full of them above him, dips it in ink, thinks, then draws a straight line down the page in front of him, out of which sprout six more quill pens, each held by a hand. The calligrapher moves all the hands and pens in unison, drawing an elaborate feathered wing, which comes to live, peeling off the page, and, now a quill pen, slips in to his hand. He tucks it behind his left ear.

Carmaux, chargement du coke

Women hauling coke in wheelbarrows.

Panorama de l'arrivée en gare de Perrache pris du train

A train arrives at Perrache station. We see the view from aboard the train.

Vue prise d'une baleinière en marche

Sailors row a whaling boat in a medium-tight shot.

Néron essayant des poisons sur des esclaves

Nero, seated on a throne, has slaves summoned. Each drinks poison and dies, the second even though he can see the corpse of his predecessor.

Bicentennial Man

Richard Martin buys a gift, a new NDR-114 robot. The product is named Andrew by the youngest of the family's children. "Bicentennial Man" follows the life and times of Andrew, a robot purchased as a household appliance programmed to perform menial tasks. As Andrew begins to experience emotions and creative thought, the Martin family soon discovers they don't have an ordinary robot.

World War Z

Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies. After barely escaping the chaos, Lane is persuaded to go on a mission to investigate this disease. What follows is a perilous trek around the world where Lane must brave horrific dangers and long odds to find answers before human civilization falls.

Alien

During its return to the earth, commercial spaceship Nostromo intercepts a distress signal from a distant planet. When a three-member team of the crew discovers a chamber containing thousands of eggs on the planet, a creature inside one of the eggs attacks an explorer. The entire crew is unaware of the impending nightmare set to descend upon them when the alien parasite planted inside its unfortunate host is birthed.

Chopping Mall

High-tech robots equipped with state-of-the-art security devices have been recruited as the new mechanical "night watchmen" for the Park Plaza Mall. When a jolting bolt of lightning short-circuits the main computer control, the robots turn into "killbots" on the loose after unsuspecting shoppers!

Design for Living

An independent woman can't choose between the two men she loves.

Dead of Winter

A fledgling actress is lured to a remote mansion for a screen-test, soon discovering she is actually a prisoner in the middle of a blackmail plot.

'R Xmas

A New York drug dealer is kidnapped, and his wife must try to come up with the money and drugs to free him from his abductors before Christmas.