"How life blooms towards the heart of the city."
'Hibiscus' highlights the city's hidden beauty and the warmth of its people that may go by unnoticed on a daily basis but are beautiful reminders to appreciate.
Social & External
Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.
Sarah is a debt collector who lives among the inhabitants of the village of Guimbal on the island of Panay. She wants to find the young man who appeared to her in a dream and goes to the island of Negros. Here, as she interacts with the inhabitants, Sarah continues her search, gathering memories of life and war, dreams, myths, legends, songs and stories that she takes part in and at times revolve around her. She is the daughter of an ancient mermaid, a revolutionary, a primordial element, a virgin who was kidnapped and hidden away from the sunlight. “The film is a retelling of fragments of the American occupation. Dialogue, shot in the Hiligaynon language, is not translated but used as a tonal guide and a tool for narration. Using unscripted scenes shot where the main character was asked to merely interact with the villagers, I discard dialogue and draw meaning from peoples’ faces, voices, and actions, weaving an entirely different story through the use of subtitles and inter-titles.”
In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.
An experimental film from Jirí Lehovec, mixing the sound process with animated rhythms.
On the island of Tanna, a part of Vanuatu, an archipelago in Melanesia, strange rites are enacted and time passes slowly while the inhabitants await the return of the mysterious John.
Filmmakers use archival footage and animation to explore the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert.
The Displaced View traces a personal search for identity and pride, within the unique and suppressed history of the Japanese in Canada. Through an examination of the emotional and cultural links between the women of one family, the processes of the construction of memory and the re-construction of history, are revealed. Utilizing an innovative combination of experimental, dramatic and documentary forms, the film emerges as a deeply moving and compassionate love letter. Just as the official history of the Japanese Canadians has been thrown into question, so does the film’s fictionalized narrative, question documentary as truth.
An experimental and poetic portrait of a woman.
Anything that complies with standards is a wasted effort to Vlado Kristl: 'I believe in only doing those things that decompose and tear conventional systems apart.' Kristl's métier are borderlines. His paintings and animated films are interspersed with clear dividing lines, only for him to blur and mess them up. His graphics are scribbled over and over again until the whole surface becomes black. His oil paintings, unless someone buys them in time, are painted over and over again. He destroys any form that begins to grow. -Thomas Brandlmeier
A sparing and minimal travelogue of Istanbul. A foreigner meditates on the unraveling of a relationship while moving from hotel room to hotel room. In a city simultaneously devoted to Islam and secular nationalism, she finds refuge in the frailty and severity of the rituals of devotion.
A video reconstruction of the 1977 Wooster Group production Rumstick Road, an experimental theater performance created by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte after the suicide of Gray's mother. Archival recordings are combined with photographs, slides, and other materials to recreate the original production.
"The majority of my 8-mm works were made for the three-minute "Personal Focus" film special put on in Fukuoka. This film is an animation of photographs I had taken on a regular basis as a sort of diary, and was made to have a rough feel to it." - Takashi Ito
"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito
A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.
After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.
"My last image of Jonas."—Ken Jacobs
This film is depicts early lesbian sexuality, using reenacted scenes from the experience of a 12-year old girl as the platform for a meditation on forbidden desire, transgression, and Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts of identity formation. Raw adolescent memories counterpoint staged scenes, exploring mechanisms of power and submission.
The Greek island of Syros is visited by a series of unexpected guests. Immutable forms, outside of time, aloof observants to human conditions.
“We never know how high we are till we are called to rise” could be the motto of this stunningly filmed, high impact and suspenseful motion picture that is based on a true story. Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu is a teenage hawker who is drawn into the liberation movement to fight against an oppressive apartheid South African government. When he and his comrades are accosted by police while on a mission he is charged with two counts of murder. He is in a fight for his life and must prove his innocence.
John is an eighteen-year-old Latino male prostitute, living in the poorest area of Hollywood, L.A. He often steals condoms and medicine from the local stores to support himself, due to his inexperience in the hustling world. Peaches is a black trans prostitute, who often helps John financially. Miguel is an older hustler who teaches John how to please men. John often spends his night wandering through the street, looking for older men to buy him for the night. His clients, men who come from all levels of society, share with John their stories and secrets.
A family drama about a young woman who kidnaps a decorated WWII veteran. Their road adventure fills with quirkiness and unforeseen dangers.
A bag full of money lands in front of you. Is it luck? The answer to your prayers? Part of a predetermined plan? Or all of the above? Set in the chaotic streets of Istanbul, 40 is a story of three strangers making their way in a city of 12 million, all searching...for one bag. Shot entirely on location, '40' combines intense story telling with documentary style cinematography embarking on a synchronistic journey dealing with faith, love, luck, destiny, human trafficking...and a bag of cash that falls from the sky.
Hornblower must deliver a French nobleman to a secret rendezvous near Brest, all while coping with enemy agents in his own ranks.
Seventeen's 9th fan meeting took place at INCHEON MUNHAK MAIN STADIUM in Incheon, South Korea from March 20-21, 2025, both in-person and online.
In August 2008, filmmaker Brian Fender posted an add on Craigslist to solicit volunteers for a documentary project. He invited "subjects" into his living room to strip down and reveal themselves physically and emotionally through personal stories about their relationship to their penises. Fender interviewed a vast cross-section of anonymous, naked men about their prized appendage: from monks to transsexuals to ex-marines to designers, ranging in age from 21 to 80. Hoping to demystify, illuminate, and even celebrate this "member" in our society, this DIY documentary is a candid exploration of what it means to have a dick.
For months, Richard Montana has been giving drug lord Mario Gio hell. But it's only when he meets Gio's leggy blonde girlfriend, nightclub singer Lisa, that things get personal. And after Montana and Lisa have been in bed, things get absolutely deadly. Especially because the headstrong beauty has her own plans. Because only she is the key to Gio's next big deal. And Lisa wants the drugs, the dollars and Montana all to herself. And because that's the case, all hell breaks loose and Gio's killers go on the hunt!
"a colorful poem of the first copy-motion film... the system registers images directly from a color (xerox) duplicator model 6500... an original, versatil, unique system developed by Darino" –Back Stage
A mosaic portrait of people who live along the US/Mexico border. Each of the fourteen channels represents one of the many crossing towns from Tijuana on the left to El Paso & the Rio Grande on the right.
In the supercharged world of dirt track racing, a single mistake causes the lives of two men to change forever. One must fight for his family, the other must fight to forgive.
Whilst celebrating Lleu's 18th birthday, Lleu and two friends go for a boat ride, when they discover beneath the water the golden doorway to the Mabinogi (the Otherworld). They swim down and are transported back in time many centuries to the Mabinogi. There they encounter some problems with mediaeval life, and they have to deal with the conflict between fate personal choice and magic
Farhad tells the story of his life to a psychiatrist. In the time of the Iran-Iraq War, Farhad is arrested and charged with illegal migration. When he is freed years later, he goes to his old love, Mahtab. Through conversations with his psychoanalyst and interrogations with the police, Farhad reveals the story of his life.
A volatile young man struggles to control his unnatural powers when he faces a chance encounter in an unfamiliar environment.
