La Salla

Richard Condie’s unique creatures, motifs, sounds and situations have astonished and delighted audiences and critics around the world for over a quarter of a century. A brilliant animator, he has created a place like none other, filled with apprentices perpetually running into trees, squabbling Scrabble-playing couples, pig birds unleashing strange bugs on Canada, procrastinating pianists and headless boys who are heedless of risk, until it’s too late.

Here, Condie shifts from cell animation to computer-generated animation. Condie calls it “computer animation in opera form. Condie says the film resonates with his temptation to fiddle with the countless options available in computer animation.



In La Salla, the classic tale of temptation is revealed to us in the unique form of a comic opera. We are taken into the world of a character who does as he pleases, mindless of the consequences. In a room full of wind-up toys, he sets a chain of events into motion that ends up disturbing both his own, and the viewer's, sense of reality. Sitting alone in a playroom, our hero is intermittently disturbed by a spectral visitor who holds an apple out to him. When temptation gets the better of him, he is left to suffer the consequences.
Despite the head’s frantic expressions, his torso lights a cannon, rocketing a tiny cow smack in his direction. Nearly frozen with anxiety, the head considers the devastating result, then sings the aria, “Moments ago, I had everything. Now, I have a cow in my nose.”

Tommy Atomic 1

By Ryan Dunlavey.

The Great Cognito (1982)

The Great Cognito was the man of a thousand faces, whose vocal impersonations of people were matched by his face transforming into that person as well. He uses a metamorphosing, magical transforming technique as he performs his one-man comedy routine, all while impersonating a cast of thousands as the Generals MacArthur, Patton and Rommel, Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Wayne, whose death scene forces the Great Cognito to leave the stage.



Will Vinton’s character animation milestones and pioneering productions have contributed immensely to animation history and he has helped launch the careers of countless other filmmakers in 3D animation productions.
It was the first time the studio produced a caricature of an actual person, but its success ensured it would go on to become yet another one of Vinton's specialties. In years to come the studio would animate everything from Bruce Willis as a frog to Michael Jackson as a raisin, but it found the perfect vehicle for displaying this aspect of its repertoire in its next short film.

1

By Marco Milone.

Undersirable Elements (1992)

Undersirable Elements is an on-going series of community-specific works by Ping Chong exploring the effects of history, culture and ethnicity on the lives of individuals in a community. The piece is made through a collaborative workshop process involving Ping Chong and a group of individuals who vary in many ways but share the common experience of having been born in one culture and now being part of another.



Undersirable Elements draws its power from the simple act of naming oneself in public. On one level, Undersirable Elements is an emotionally charged challenge to traditional views of culture and the other; on another level, it is a lyrical expression of the astonishing fact of human similarity, difference and indomitability. Since each individual's experience encompasses that of his or her ancestors and culture, the piece is a journey through the turbulent history of the 20th century from a global perspective.

Boy on Turtle

Kei Acedera, Imaginism Studios (c) 2006.

Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979)

Meetings with Remarkable Men is the second volume of the All and Everything trilogy written by the Greek-Armenian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff. A book of autobiography, it was originally published in 1963 and tells the tale of the young Gurdjieff growing up in a world torn between his unexplainable experiences and the developing modern sciences.
The book was made into a 1979 feature film directed by Peter Brook. Shot on location in Afghanistan, it starred Terence Stamp, and Dragan Maksimovic as the adult Gurdjieff.
The "plot" involves Gurdjieff and his his travels to achieve enlightenment and inner growth in a series of dialogues and vignettes. Beginning with his childhood, the movie follows his journeys through Central Asia as he discovers new levels of spirituality through music, dance and near-encounters with death.
Brook simply leaps from one portentous episode to the next, with an abruptness that will either leave viewers bewildered or send them back to Gurdjieff's own writings, depending upon the extent of their interest.
The film is noteworthy for making public some glimpses of the "Gurdjieff movements".



During his long career, director Peter Brook has conducted a wide range of theatrical experiments, pushing audiences and performers well beyond their typical experience of theater, in an effort to achieve not a temporary catharsis but a transcendent, transformative event. Driven by a sense of unwavering dedication to unraveling the meaning of human existence, he journeys throughout the most unattainable areas of the East, encountering an array of Hindu fakirs, Buddhist monks, whirling dervishes, and gurus of every stripe.
In search of truth, he climbs the Himalayas, walks across the desert on stilts, and uncovers evidence of an ancient order, guards of an arcane wisdom. Most fascinating, perhaps, is the form of dance he created as a form of meditation and later taught in the West.
You can buy Meetings with Remarkable Men.

Empathy

By Thomas Erpich. He's an illustrator and an animator who's done work for Bill Plympton and Spumco, among others. He's also the author of Gongwanadon and Cusp.

Fausto 5.0 (2001)

La Fura dels Baus is a Catalan theatrical group founded in 1979 in Barcelona known for their urban theatre, use of unusual settings and blurring of the boundaries separating audience and actor.
Goethe's classic 'Faust' has been one of la Fura del Baus' obsessions for many years. In this very personal screen version, we find a modern Faust with very human contractions; there's no devil here but only an accurate representation of a two faced character, a very human side which probably lives inside of all of us.
Using the Faust story as a jumping off point, Fausto 5.0 turns out to be more interested in the set designer's vision of an apocalyptic cyberpunk cityscape than in Faust's psychological state.






Fausto is an earnest sombre doctor working with terminally ill patients. He travels to Barcelona for a conference on caring for the terminally ill. Once he arrives there he is met at the station by Santos, a former patient whose stomach he removed, who ends up showing him to his hotel. Once he is there a woman turns up to have sex with him and Santos turns up in his room for breakfast. Hounded by Santos, the doctor asks him to stay away but after Santos seems to grant a wish of remission for one of his patients he gets drunk with him and lets him know his darkest wishes. Will his wishes lead him to his downfall or to his heart’s desire?
The main centre of the film is the doctor’s descent into his desires.
The dark mise en scène reminds us of the claustrophobic and nightmaresque atmospheres created by David Lynch and works perfectly to recreate the duality of this character, whose actions represent the fight between heart and mind, the good and the bad.
You can buy Fausto 5.0.

Ratti

Paolo Parisi is the author of Ratti, Fame, Gli ultimi giorni del Pitbull, Chernobyl – Di cosa sono fatte le nuvole, Il caso Moro and Le cose nascoste.

The Far Side of the Moon (2004)

The Far Side of the Moon is a fantastical voyage into space - outer space, and the space within ourselves. The film is set in the context of the USSR-United States Space Race of the 1960s. The leading characters are the brothers André and Philippe, both played by Robert Lepage.
The script has been written with a clear ear for naturalistic rhythms, but is not limited in the richness or depth of its content. Lepage takes a relatively simple set of reference points and constructs an insightful and moving drama around them, and though the metaphoric linkages between them are far from subtle, they work.



Robert Lepage's glorious investigation of the limits of human perception uses dazzling technical wizardry to tell two stories - the public history of the space race, and the private story of two brothers coming to terms with a personal loss.
After the death of his mother, a man tries to discover a meaning to his life, to the universe and to rebuild a relationship with the only family he has left: his brother.
Poignant, funny, endlessly inventive on a technical level, The Far Side of the Moon is an affecting study of human emotions grounded in a world filled with frustrated aspiration.
You can buy Far Side of the Moon.

New Freelance Piece

By DanielKrall.

The Emperor Jones

The Emperor Jones is a play by Eugene O'Neill which tells the tale of Brutus Jones, an African-American man who kills a man, goes to prison, escapes to a Caribbean island, and sets himself up as emperor. The play recounts his story in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the forest in an attempt to escape former subjects who have rebelled against him.
An experimental video by Christopher Kondek and Elizabeth LeCompte showcases the production of the play by the New York-based performance troupe The Wooster Group, starring Kate Valk and Willem Dafoe.



Voice and movement predominate, bringing the expressionism of the play to a new level. These two figures are specific about their stances, poses, and movement patterns, throughout the stage space, both individually, and in relation to one another.
It is astonishing how a two-character play with an essentially bare stage and few props can produce such a concentrated effect. The flickering TV screen, unique projecting of voices, gamelan, gongs, ticking clock, and embroidered materials of the costumes, work mysteriously with the three performers to create a ritualistic drama that haunts its audience.
You can buy The Wooster Group Work Book

Something Fishy!

By Michael Wandelmaier.

La Société du spectacle (1973)

Society of the Spectacle is a 1973 film by Situationist Guy Debord based on the 1967 book of the same title.
The 90 minute film took a year to make and incorporates footage from The Battleship Potemkin, October, New Babylon, Shanghai Gesture, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rio Grande, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Johnny Guitar, and Confidential Report, as well as Soviet and Polish films, industrial films, American Westerns, news footage, advertisements, and many still photographs. Events such as the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the revolutions in Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1956 and in Paris in 1968, and people such as Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon, and the Spanish Anarchist Durruti are represented. Throughout the movie, there is both a voiceover and inter-titles from "Society of the Spectacle" but also texts from the Committee of Occupation of the Sorbonne, Machiavelli, Marx, Tocqueville, Emile Pouget, and Soloviev.



The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of contemporary consumer culture and commodity fetishism. Before the term ‘globalization’ was popularized, Debord was arguing about issues such as class alienation, cultural homogenization, and the mass media.
In a consumer society, social life is not about living but about having; the spectacle uses the image to convey what people need and must have. Consequently, social life moves further, leaving a state of 'having' and proceeding into a state of 'appearing;' namely the appearance of the image.
You can buy The Society of the Spectacle.

Un-Men 7

Tomer Hanuka is an award-winning Israeli illustrator and cartoonist. His clients include Time Magazine, The New Yorker, Spin, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, MTV, and Saatchi & Saatchi. He is the winner of multiple medals from the Society of Illustrators and the Society of Publication Designers as well as American Illustration and Print magazine.
He also co-creates Bipolar with his identical twin brother Asaf for Alternative Comics.

Body Press (1972)

In the process, the performers are to concentrate on the coexistent, simultaneous identity of both camera's describing them and their body.
The films are projected at the same time on two loop projectors, very large size on two opposite, but very close, room walls.
The camera's angle of orientation/view of the area of the mirror's reflective image is determined by the placement of the cam-era on the body contour at a given moment.
To the spectator the camera's optical vantage is the skin.



Two filmmakers stand within a surrounding and completely mirrorized cylinder, body trunk stationary, hands holding and pressing a camera's back-end flush to, while slowly rotating it about, the surface cylin-der of their individual bodies.
Dan Graham is one of the most significant figures to emerge from the 1960s moment of Conceptual art, with a practice that pioneered a range of art forms, modes, and ideas that are now fundamental to contemporary art. The thrust of his practice has always pointed beyond: beyond the art object, beyond the studio, beyond the medium, beyond the gallery, beyond the self.
You can buy Dan Graham: Beyond.

The Underwold

By Lee-Junghoon.

The Diary of Tortov Roddle (2004)

Tortov Roddle travels the world on his long-legged pig, taking us on an on-going adventure of peaceful contemplation.
Follow Tortov as he journeys through very surreal, magical, picturesque landscapes, meeting interesting characters and circumstances on the way.



The film consists of a series of six dream-like vignettes, each approximately two minutes in length, in which we can find an element of the surreal.
The surrealism of the film is produced by Kunio Kato' slightly off-filter framing choices.The softness of the fill and the warmth of light flooding into scenes, usually from a single light source such as a lamp or window, give the film an atmospheric, slightly melancholy tone but becoming overly gloomy.

Penny and Aggie

Penny and Aggie is by T Campbell and Gisele Lagace.You can continue to read the story.

Our Icarus (2001)

Johanna Vaude studied visual arts at the University and started producing her own films. The experimental cinema gives her complete liberty of expression to translate, through plastic hybridization, her sensory trips and experiences.
In her works, we can find her freedom of thought, her love for human beings and in the heart of these things, the viewer discovers her extraordinary ability to make choices and her incomparable strengh and desire to create.



A man is confronted to violent images of the world. His Icare reacts and soars. Notre Icare is a film that asks every viewer a vast question to which every one will have their own answer : why do we use real sufferings as a consummation and entertainment product? Do we want to take the risk to get out of the labyrinth we ourselves created? We have to call back our Icare, to wake him up together...this Icare asleep in every one of us..this creating desire.
You can buy Hybride.

Istant Families

Abraham "Abe" Levitow was an American animator who worked at Warner Bros. Cartoons, UPA and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Boulder-Brooklin

Joel Schlemowitz is a wizard of cinema. He creates cinema-poems that crack open the infinite.



This is a three minute roll of film shot by Joel Schlemowitz of Brooklyn, NY and mailed to Nicole Koschmann in Nederland, just outside Boulder, CO. The two collaborators shot images on the same undeveloped film, fusing together images from New York and Colorado.
You can buy Joel Schlemowitz - Short Experimental Films: 3-Disc Set.

Illustration for January number of 財訊 (Wealth magazine)

By Stefano Misesti.

Rubicon (2004)

Simon Tarr paints a stunning, sweeping technohistory of the human race, from birth to obsolescence.
Sacred geometry and ominous CGI intertwine with a retelling of the story of Noah to illuminate the illusion of authority and the nature of autonomy in the contemporary digital sphere



The film takes its name from a river in Italy that Julius Ceasar crossed in battle and found himself unable to turn back; this notion frames the filmmaker's presentation of his skepticism regarding the relationship between humanity and technology.
You can buy Rubicon.

Cafe

By Elmar Haardt.

Brilliant Noise (2006)

Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy.
The visual noise in the images is caused by natural and man made interferences. The white noise is cosmic rays impacting the CCD of the satellite camera, while the sound is derived from solar natural radio and controlled via digitally sampling the intensity of the brightness of the image. The sound is intrinsically born from the image, creating a symphony by the Sun.
Working with a documentary approach, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt wanted to indulge in the raw material that is our Sun,
using the image to control the fluctuation of the sound would emphasize the transitions and processes taking place.



After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.
You can buy Worlds in Flux.

Kokiri Teatime

By Amy Sol.

Window Water Baby Moving (1959)

This film is essentially an intense, personal, poetic and graphic film exploring the birth of Stan Brakhage’s first child. We witness his daughter being born without the sugarcoating or hiding the act. We see the birth in all of its glory.
It's Jane Brakhage's raw vulnerability and adamant individuality that we see on display.The human body is very complex, and the birthing process doesn't hide this fact. The images are intercut with shots of the window of the room.

The entire film focuses on the male perspective in the childbirth process, through it’s absence in the film. Attention is continually drawn to it through brief glimpses of fractions of the male anatomy while the attention is drawn to a portion of the female anatomy that is a result of both sexes.
You can buy By Brakhage.