Social & External
The people behind it
Raymond Naval
Protagonista
An omnibus film based on Kim Oki's album Hip Hop Retreat. Twenty characters share the same table at different times, in different emotional states, each with their own story. Shot in one day, edited in one day.
A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.
Christine Vachon’s story of a man haunted by the grotesque memory of having stepped on a dead animal's carcass is an artistic tour de force starring Michael Sean Edwards (the voice of Richard Carpenter in Todd Haynes’ Superstar) and a young Steve Buscemi.
Shot in a series of long-takes over several days, the film follows a flower shop attendant (played by Devereaux, then actually employed at a small flower shop by the beach) in fragmented detail. The order of scenes resists chronology: moments recur, shift, or vanish, creating not the passage of a single day but the jumble of many, refracted into a meditation on routine and its quiet abstractions.
A wall-painting on Earth is too terrifying to exist, so unknown forces remove it.
The people are in turmoil. The ground from which their enchanted garden grows, is trembling. Between bushes and trees, flowerbeds and fountains, everyone has lost their way on their own. Their eyes search for paths, their hands try to remember. Sometimes they spot something. Sometimes they listen. They catch a whisper, a faint promise. They follow the petals downstream. Further.
Seeing himself as a form unable to experience intimacy, he is given the chance when brought to the household of twin sisters.
The end of the world isn’t a global catastrophe, but an inner sense of total collapse, like for a man who’s lost his job and doubts his wife’s loyalty. In despair, he goes fishing and finds a wounded angel. He takes the angel home on his bicycle and introduces him to his family. But soon after, during a party at a local bar, the angel is accidentally shot by a neighborhood policeman. Based on Gabriel García Márquez’s short story 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings'.
A lost and lonely artist drowns in a collection of her dreams in search of her estranged sister.
A man trapped in an aimless routine becomes the spectator of his own life as he wanders through the urban landscapes of his city in search of something that gives him meaning. Between memories and ghosts, he faces his doubts and longings, questioning what is real and what is just a projection of his loneliness.
History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.
An abstract exploration of teenage hood and future discontents. It is the search for an alternative.
The Tragedy of an Artist, is an experimental short shot over the course of a week. This film is meant to illustrate who Hero Foltz is as a person and his struggles with self identity
An abstract exploration of memory and loss.
A student moves into their accomodation, only to find their room already decorated, a strange, inhuman flatmate, and a kettle that won't stop boiling.
A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.
A girl and an older man discuss the nature of reality while doing chores on a pig farm.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. When we die, where does our energy go? Inspired by Vauhini Vara's essay "Ghosts", in which she prompted Al to help her write about her sister's passing, "GHOSTS" takes us on the emotional journey of grief. We see a ghost figure trying to get through to her sister, who is still alive, and let her know she's still around somehow. There are two poems in this piece, one is a poem written by GPT 3, and the next is the director's (Oriana Mejer) response to it. This film uses spoken word poetry, TouchDesigner motion graphics, and is originally scored by French musician Taime.
Omnibus film with 13 short films by students of the HfG Ulm
A lonely man tries to enjoy a regular evening
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Up-and-coming sports reporter rescues a homeless man ("Champ") only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.
Determined to help her son, who has cerebral palsy, Bárbara takes her family to India for an experimental treatment.
A retired boxer intends to return to the ring for one last shot at the title, but first he must make the weight. Holed up in a room in Las Vegas with an unscrupulous trainer, he embarks on an intensive and illegal weight-cutting program.
Louis Menkins is five weeks away from being released after 26 years in prison. He is faced with the decision to put his own release at risk in order to protect a young man named Beecher from growing gang controversies.
A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Stanley manages his boxer brother Lion but when a devastating loss in the ring leaves the pair in debt, an opportunity to recoup the cash leads to a series of misadventures that threaten to break the bond between them.
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.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
When immense pressure threatens a ballerina in a new lead role, she and another dancer escape into a friendship that isolates them from the real world.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
