Omnibus film with 13 short films by students of the HfG Ulm
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The people behind it
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.
A lonely man tries to enjoy a regular evening
Oriana Mejer's niche poem-film style has created "NOISE!". The film dissects late stage capitalism and the effects social media has on the mind. This is a spoken word poem, performed by Mejer, combined with projections. It is a completely new approach to editing. Originally score by Sofia Camarena.
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 true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
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.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
Set in a warm summer in 1990 in former East Germany, it follows a young woman who begins a relationship with a charismatic farmer who is twice her age.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
An attention-seeking psychic is kidnapped and tries to use the situation to boost his popularity.
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.
20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
In the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and murder.
A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.
Two brothers, on either side of the law, face off over organized crime in Brooklyn during the 1970s.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
When a law student accidentally kills the son of a mob boss in a fight, he finds himself relentlessly pursued by the mob and the police.
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.