A short treatise on the semiotics of capital, happiness, and phenomenology under the flickering neon of global capitalism.
Social & External
The people behind it
After ending a very close relationship, Manuel falls into melancholy and begins to rethink his way of loving. Within his thoughts are the social problems that surround him. He realizes that with these comes a rethinking of what love is. An idea that we have been carrying for a long time: the idea that to love is to possess.
As technology accelerates, our species' collective imagination of the future grows ever more kaleidoscopic. We are all haunted by temporal distortion, perhaps no more than when we attempt to remember what the future looked like to our younger selves. As the mist of time devours our memories, the future recedes; each of us burdened by the gaping mouth of entropy. Yet, emerging technology provides a glimmer of hope; transhumanism promises a future free from mortality, disease and pain. Does our salvation lie in digital simulacra? We're here to sell you the answer to that question, for the low, low price of four hundred and seventy seconds.
This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.
"Thornton's magnum opus, this ongoing and open-ended serial follows its two improvisatory protagonists, children “raised by technology,” through a surreal landscape where pop culture and history, science and science fiction blur." - BAM
"A fisherman, dark-skinned and shirtless, sits in a boat on a quiet river and, before long, catches a fish. The fish gasps for air and the fisherman holds it to his chest until it dies. This sequence—performed by a series of fishermen, of various ages and using various styles of capture—is the spine of the work, interrupted by passages of quiet natural beauty; one shot is a steady, stately pan through scores of trees and empty air behind." - Vinson Cunningham
"A deeply beautiful and disturbing split-screen depiction of the contrasting daily routines of sociologist Gilberto Freyre in 1959 (author of The Masters and the Slaves, originator of Lusotropicalism, proponent of racial integration) and Cristóvão, an ordinary housekeeper in 2016." - Angeline Gragásin
A short experimental film about a fire hydrant, a busy sidewalk nestled between an electrical post and a building.
A watchman at an apartment complex in Assam, India, spends an ordinary evening. A surreal, expressionistic landscape unfolds.
Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
An ahistorical re-enactment of the strange and curious events that led up to the untimely demise of our nation’s sixteenth president.
Culled from four rolls of Super-8 film shot while the maker was a development worker in a small South American village, Daumë is at its center a film about ritual, power, and play. Daumë is both ethnography and critique; it is an interrogation into how to represent a place that can't be represented.
The Breathers-In is a 16mm experimental narrative film in which two Victorian Sisters float through a post-industrial landscape of Loss and Alienation. Through the use of archetypal characters, silent-film aesthetics, and asynchronous sound, The Breathers-In produces a world in which established constructs of identity, race, and narrative itself are slowly splintered apart.
the quarry is a silent document of five minutes in the presence of the sublime. This small, quiet 16mm film serves as a testament both to cinema’s failure to reproduce the lived moment and to its success in replacing that moment with one that is equally wondrous.
Terra Incognita is a lensless film whose cloudy pinhole images create a memory of history. Ancient and modern explorer texts of Easter Island are garbled together by a computer narrator, resulting in a forever repeating narrative of discovery, colonialism, loss and departure.
Where have you been? I have been waiting for you. Let us begin. The Tawny Frogmouth is not an owl. Here is its actual call: hrr hrrrm hrr hrrrm hrr hrrrm.
“A deadpan video art reworking of 1982's highest-grossing movie, EXTRA TERRESTRIAL peels away layers of sentimental narrative goo from its source, exposing a hard core of anxiety, loneliness and dread. Shifting the focus from character to interior, Ben Russell and Rhyne Piggott mine the landscape of a beige-carpeted ranch style house for new insights into the architecture of suburban alienation.” - Anne Reecer, Cinematexas
The Valley of Fire. Oficina Chacabuco. The Calumet Industrial Corridor. From the outskirts of Vegas to the desert ghost towns of Chile - a pinhole travelogue for the world’s end, for what was left behind.
Shot in the abandoned buildings of Gary, Indiana and the cornfields of Western Illinois, The Twenty-One Lives of Billy the Kid presents a fractured historical narrative without any real protagonist, one in which the titular character goes mostly unseen - Billy the Kid as the always-off-screen assailant, as a ghost’s laugh, as a shadow on the road.
An ethnographic field report in which the Anthropologist describes the mythic creation of an unnamed ‘sun-scraping structure’ through the ritualized actions of the Red and the Blue Gods.
Follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City.
Vivian is a carefree, streetwise diamond in the rough when she meets sophisticated billionaire Edward in a chance encounter that turns into a week-long business arrangement. But Vivian's energetic spirit challenges Edward's no-nonsense approach to life, and soon they are teaching each other – and falling in love!
A documentary about the closure of General Motors' plant at Flint, Michigan, which resulted in the loss of 30,000 jobs. Details the attempts of filmmaker Michael Moore to get an interview with GM CEO Roger Smith.
An investigation of "disaster capitalism", based on Naomi Klein's proposition that neo-liberal capitalism feeds on natural disasters, war and terror to establish its dominance.
When a former elite sniper is hunted down by the ruthless warlord who once held her captive, she must fight to the death to protect the daughter she has raised in hiding, on a remote Australian farm.
Michael Moore comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).
On a flight from Los Angeles to New York, Oliver and Emily make a connection, only to decide that they are poorly suited to be together. Over the next seven years, however, they are reunited time and time again, they go from being acquaintances to close friends to... lovers?
While attending a retrospect of his work, a filmmaker recalls his life and his loves: the inspirations for his films.
A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.
In the year 2159, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes, a hard line government official, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn’t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that, if successful, will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.
Alejandro is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador, struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in New York City. As time on his work visa runs out, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast becomes his only hope to stay in the country and realize his dream.
In a near-future city where soaring opulence overshadows economic hardship, Gwen and her daughter, Jules, do all they can to hold on to their joy, despite the instability surfacing in their world.
When he suddenly finds himself without his long-standing blue-collar job, Larry Crowne enrolls at his local college to start over. There, he becomes part of an eclectic community of students and develops a crush on his teacher.
Jane Goodale has everything going for her. She's a producer on a popular daytime talk show, and is in a hot romance with the show's dashing executive producer Ray. But when the relationship goes terribly awry, Jane begins an extensive study of the male animal, including her womanizing roommate Eddie. Jane puts her studies and romantic misadventure to use as a pseudonymous sex columnist -- and becomes a sensation.
On a post-apocalyptic Earth, a robot, built to protect the life of his dying creator's beloved dog, learns about life, love, friendship, and what it means to be human.
This is the story of the internal struggle between a man's Brain—a pragmatic protector who calculates his every move, and his Heart—a free-spirited adventurer who wants to let loose.
A lone drifter stumbles upon a unique pair of sunglasses that reveal aliens are systematically gaining control of the Earth by masquerading as humans and lulling the public into submission.
An ambitious coffee salesman has a series of improbable and ironic adventures seemingly designed to challenge his naive idealism.
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer, James Lee Bartlow; a star, Georgia Lorrison; and a director, Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
Dan Foreman is a seasoned advertisement sales executive at a high-ranking publication when a corporate takeover results in him being placed under naive supervisor Carter Duryea, who is half his age. Matters are made worse when Dan's new supervisor becomes romantically involved with his daughter an 18 year-old college student Alex.
A small, wealthy family in New York City gets progressively torn apart by secrets, lies, and the theft that orchestrates all of it.
