A tale of 2 passages within the Spirit house. This is the first in a series that looks at the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged.
Social & External
The people behind it
This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”
Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.
Sistiaga painted directly on 70mm film a circular (planetary?) form, around which dance shifting colours in a psychedelic acceleration matched by the soundtrack’s deep-space roar and howl. - Cinema Scope
White Sands is a 3 screen projection 16mm film installation which reflects on the visible and invisible manifestations of the nuclear fuel chain on the land, air, water and people of New Mexico.
If Not is a meditation on love, inspired by If Not, Winter by Sappho, translated by Anne Carson. Filmed in Ephesus and Brooklyn.
Bubble is a short film performed by Zeena Parkins and the Plastic Girls, Eleanor Hullihan and Erin Cornell in a public park in Brooklyn, NY.
The town Minot is home to a U.S. Air Force base that guards 150 nuclear missiles buried in northern North Dakota. The weapons of mass destruction placed there 50 years ago are still targeted at Russia. Minot, North Dakota portrays an American landscape where people live with nuclear bombs in their backyard.
Drops of fire that create a universe of magmatic asteroids. Liquid and gravitational reality. Cosmic energy. Atomized Rhythm. Neurons of a liberated unconscious. Elimination of the idea of "soul" as "everything", reducing it to the condition of units of energy in perpetual process, elementary particles, without duration, that arise in perfect dependence. The "I" as a stream of units of force in ceaseless becoming that procures the illusion of an entity. Karmic chain. The idea that eternity resides in the transitory, the eternal belongs to it instantly. Eternity not as infinite duration but as absence of temporality. Universe of a mobile, procedural, relational and interactive nature of everything that exists. Here the "object" is conceived as something that is constituted, completed, lost and recovered with the vibrating rhythm of a universe in constant production.
Burford met Breer in February 1992 and filmed his actions. Breer manipulates some of his mutoscopes: he leafs through some cards of his film in the making, Sparkill Ave! A dome-shaped sculpture slowly moves across the space.
Dear features the interior world of two teenage Chinese girls in New York City, whose diary entries reveal their concerns related to growing up as immigrants amidst the ever-gentrifying landscape of Chinatown.
Jean-Claude Rousseau's Jeune femme à sa fenêtre lisant une lettre is not only his first medium-length film, but a chance to discover this filmmaker whom Jean-Marie Straub has called, along with Frans Van de Staak and Peter Nestler, the greatest working in Europe. With this newly restored print there is also a possibility to discover the relationship between Rousseau's art of filming and Jan Vermeer's famous painting. As Prosper Hillairet wrote in 1988, four years after Rousseau had finished Jeune femme ... (for the first time as we know today): «Without adopting the usual systematic spirit and form of cinéma structurel, Rousseau presents us with simple images and leaves it at that. Keeps the image in hand. A minimalist and ascetic expression of cinema: a shot that lasts.»
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.
"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
Alex and José, is a 16mm single channel projection that explores gender, movement and form.
A silent film portraying winter across three continents.
The PSA Project is a series of 15 videos that speak out against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the act of war.
Still Life gazes unflinchingly at the violence of war, observing the eerie architecture of the West Bank and Gaza Strip collapsed under Israeli occupation. This portrait provides brutal witness to how government sanctioned destruction metes upon structures of home and State. Unlike the mediated images of current warfare, Still Life examines the effects of the destruction of Occupation through the details of cinematic landscapes and its inherent inhabitants. In its relentless questioning reaffirmed with a unique and unremitting soundtrack by composer Zeena Parkins, Still Life forces us to focus on details of devastation.
Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
An inside look at one of the most anticipated movie sequels ever with James Cameron and cast.
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
After another 7 year wait, director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born children from Seven Up! and 7 Plus Seven. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.
RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.
In 1997, Louis Theroux made a documentary about the world of male porn performers in Los Angeles. 15 years later, he returns to find a business struggling with the deluge of free porn on the internet. Louis revisits some of the original programme's contributors as well as meeting the latest crop of porn performers dreaming of porn stardom.
Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.
Examines the life and career of singer Whitney Houston. Features never-before-seen archival footage, exclusive recordings, rare performances and interviews with the people who knew her best.
Interviews with leading authors, philosophers and scientists, with an in-depth discussion of the Law of Attraction. The audience is shown how they can learn and use 'The Secret' in their everyday lives.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
