Pura Sangre

Frankie and Lucky, two young artists navigating love and identity in New York City, cross paths again after years of separation. Their reunion in a bookstore triggers a flood of memories, reopening wounds from their past relationship. As Frankie revisits the apartment they once shared, she reflects on their tumultuous past—Lucky's struggle with trust, Frankie's desire for autonomy, and the emotional weight of unspoken truths.

Ōta Shōgo's The Water Station

The Water Station is a film adaptation by playwright, director, and NYU Abu Dhabi professor Abhishek Majumdar of a play by Japanese playwright Ōta Shōgo, written in 1981. It is about our experience of the world and how it is shaped by what we have to leave behind, who we can leave with, and what happens when we meet others in our journeys.

The Right Side of My Brain

Lydia Lunch and Richard Kern's first collaborative effort, The Right Side of My Brain, is a glimpse into the world of unsatiable female lust, narrated by Lydia Lunch. The film was initially dismissed and dismayed by critics such as J. Hoberman, but the criticism of The Right Side of My Brain received only pushed the two to go one step further with Fingered (1986).

Smash Cuts! Super Sci-Fi Shorts Fest

Host Scott Forrest presents a curated compilation of eight independent short films in this rapid-fire science-fiction feature. Genres collide, narratives twist, aesthetics clash, and even humor, both campy and dystopian, showcase the vast creative possibilities of each story's individual world, offering the viewer a brief glimpse into the lives of every character's attempt to survive the otherworldly chaos around them. Released in 2001, the selected shorts span original creation dates of 1997 to 2001; most of the featured filmmakers also appear as themselves in short video interviews to talk about their inspirations, creative process and motivations while working on their individual shorts.

The Why

The why is an experiential meditation on death, on loves lost, the duality of mind, and ultimately the nature of attachment and memory turned obsession.

Deserted by the Masses

Social media corrupts the mind of a young University student--but can he escape the psychological torment of alienation?

No Ball Games

In this cyclical fever dream, a woman struggles to win over the crowd.

Sasha Grey

“For my film portrait of Sasha Grey, I wanted to focus on her expressive and psychological transformation into a cinematic actor, separate from the cues that have associated Sasha with her previous career as a performance artist working within the adult film world.” – Richard Phillips

L'Image de la culture

The We Should Game

Fame driven Ken Dean becomes the subject of a documentary when he attempts to start a pornography company. Following the failure of the company, Ken uses his father's religious music to start a Christian rock band but finds himself trapped in a gay conversion cult.

Submit to Me

Cinema of Transgression pioneers and participants (Lydia Lunch, Lung Leg, Nick Zedd, etc.) perform a series of acts as they submit to director Richard Kern's camera. Originally created for DTNY acid parties; Submit to Me was eventually edited down to 10 minutes and given an accompanying score.

Locked

A tormented man struggling with his inner demons, seeks desperately a way to be at peace with himself.

Divertente

A funny reflection in a mirror has a funny consequence.

Assassination

"Assassination" - Adaptation of Hermann Hesse's novel "Demian". A young man's detachment from and revolt against the superficial ideals of the world of appearances and eventually awakens into a realization of self. Max Demian is his childhood friend and mentor.

MISU~MISU

An experimental short film from director Luis Zamora, born in the aftermath of the July 2024 protests in Venezuela. An attempt to turn fear, dreams, and fleeting thoughts into images that linger.

Voidland

This is an amateur student mood piece comprised of footage I've filmed with my Camcorder at uni over the course of the first half of 2023. The prompt given for this was 'belonging' and so I've gravitated it around the premise of navigating a place that you feel as though you don't belong in, to the point where you become detached and alienated from your own identity. - Toby.

Crushed Cats

An extremist, comedic, political, surrealist movie about control, a little cat boy, a color changing violent leader with unbelievable hair, and totalitarian violence

Swain

Swain is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe, features a dreamlike narrative of a young man’s ritualized rejection of heterosexuality, as a mysterious woman in white gossamer pursues him through a ruined landscape.

Voicemails For The Unknown Receiver

Through phone call conversations, an aspiring Ilocano filmmaker relates to his mother working in Italy about his dreams and struggles while documenting the invisible betweenness of their language and distance.

The World Is Not a Landscape

A quasi-sequel to Michel Houellebecq's novel The Possibility of an Island, Masbedo's short presents a post-apocalyptic landscape overseen by a distant mother nature or perhaps mother of nature portrayed by French icon Juliette Binoche.

Rogue Agent

Conman Robert Freegard poses as an undercover MI5 agent and kidnaps countless victims amidst a high-stakes manhunt, until the woman who fell for him brings him to justice.

The Transfiguration

When troubled teen Milo, who has a fascination with vampire lore, meets the equally alienated Sophie, the two form a bond that begins to blur Milo's fantasy into reality.

The Truth About Emanuel

A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.

The Congress

An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.

The Inhabitant

Like any other teenage girl, Tara is just surviving high school — yet her father and mother seem strangely distant. Amidst a nearby spree of gruesome ax murders, Tara has sightings of terrifying entities, forcing her to question her own sanity and shocking ancestry.

The Ghoul

A homicide detective goes undercover as a patient to investigate a psychotherapist he believes is linked to a strange double murder. As his therapy sessions continue the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur.

The Jester

A malevolent being known as The Jester terrorizes the inhabitants of a small town on Halloween night, including two estranged sisters who must come together to find a way to defeat this evil entity.

Vicious

When Polly receives a mysterious box, it comes with one rule: place inside something she needs, something she hates, and something she loves. If she doesn’t obey, it will consume everything—and everyone—she’s ever known.

The Good Neighbor

A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.

The Experiment

20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.

My Dinner with Hervé

An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.

Vesper

After the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her paralyzed Father, meets a mysterious Woman with a secret that forces Vesper to use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the possibility of a future.

Extinction

And suddenly, overnight, the world came to a halt. Two men, two survivors, one kid, and hatred that separates them. A place forgotten by everyone, including the creatures that inhabit the Earth... until now.

The Other

Unable to conceive, a couple seeks to build a family with a young orphan, survivor of tragic childhood. But their act of love turns to horror when they realize the violence in their foster's past has returned to destroy the new family.

2073

Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.

The Surrender

A fraught mother-daughter relationship is put to a terrifying test when the family patriarch dies, and the grieving mother hires a mysterious stranger to bring her husband back from the dead.

The Grandmother

To escape neglect and abuse from his parents, a young boy plants some strange seeds and they grow into a grandmother.

They Reach

In 1979, a young girl stumbles upon a possessed tape player. She unknowingly unleashes a demonic entity that haunts her family while slowly dragging the small town of Clarkston to Hell.

The Wasp

Heather bumps into Carla, having not spoken to her in years, and presents her with a very unexpected proposition that could change both of their lives forever.

Bad Girl

Bad girl Amy is given one last chance by her adoptive parents, who think her friendship with local girl Chloe is a step in the right direction. But when Amy discovers that Chloe harbors a dark secret, she finds herself fighting for her life.