Obinagụ is not human. They are a spirit who walks among us, taking the form of a worker each day, only to return each evening to the forest they call home, a place where they feel whole and free, where they don’t have to perform or hide.
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The people behind it
Ololade Olokun
Obinagụ
Writes Ando, "Oh! My Mother was the first work I made using a newly bought 16mm camera I had purchased with the writer Shuji Terayama in Paris. This piece was selected for the Oberhausen International Film Festival. In 1969, there were, of course, no video cameras like ones we see now, and color TVs were only found at broadcast television studios. I had just been employed at the TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), and I often snuck into the studios after hours to experiment with the equipment. Oh! My Mother was made using the feedback effect, which is produced by infinitely expanding the image by looping the video."
After his mother's death, a young man edits the family's home videos to bring back her image. As he delves into the occult he begins to reveal the paradoxical magic of memories and cinema.
Ocean was a girl and now just a paper head. Her brother reminisces the times they shared during their childhood, a sorry experience that birthed emotional scars.
A comic study of 20th-century history, reconstructing the life of writer, creator and professional prisoner Tulse Luper. Born in 1911 Newport and last heard of in 1989, Luper’s life is pieced together from the evidence found in 92 suitcases scattered across the globe. In the first of three parts, we follow Luper through three distinct episodes: as a child during the First World War; as an explorer in Mormon Utah; and as a writer in Belgium during the rise of fascism.
Inspired by an infamous online video clip of a son beating his mother, a television crew from Belgrade comes to a remote Serbian village to shoot a report on violence against women. Inquiring with the locals about the protagonists of the video, they encounter a local expert on supernatural phenomena and learn about a ritual of summoning an ancient demon, naprata. Wanting to capture the first authentic footage of something otherworldly, they change their plans. Excited by the prospective success of the recording, they defy the old saying that "it's better to believe than to be convinced."
Homo Sapiens Project (200) was completed in 2020 as part of the 20th anniversary of Experimental Film Society. This eight-hour experimental feature is constituted from short film experiments made between 2000 to 2010. These films have already undergone many metamorphoses over the years. They were always restless wandering spirits seeking a permanent place of rest but so far without success. Each section of Homo Sapiens Project (200) was made under the unique condition of living out a form of subtle therapeutic practice. Collectively they reflect major life-changing events, formalistic mutations and thematic shifts within Rouzbeh Rashidi’s filmography. In spite of this, they could not find the peace of a satisfactory final shape. Indeed, they are about peace, something that rarely (if ever) exists within Rashidi’s work. But now, after twenty years of roaming the subconscious, they have come to rest in a permanent retirement in one world, one very personal floating planet.
Homo Sapiens Project (201) was completed in 2021 as part of re-envisioning and restructuring Rashidi's filmography. This nineteen-hour experimental feature is constituted from many feature films produced between 2002 to 2014. These experimental features were made as a type of test or trial experiment. Rashidi assembled the films from footage accumulated over the years, archival footage, found footage and rushes donated by his close collaborators.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
Little is known of Jean Speck (1860-1933) beyond the fact that he opened Zurich’s first cinema. Rouzbeh Rashidi and Jann Clavadetscher consider the flittering black and white ghosts and shadows that he left in his wake in their phantasmagorical experimental feature film. This journey through a cinematic night probes the very essence of the cinematic image.
Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
The Garden is an experimental work that describes the inner worlds of two sisters manifested through their connection with the garden outside their home. While mourning the passing of their close relative, the sisters encounter a man in the garden, evoking a sense of mortality in one and awakening the sensuality in another. The film was directed by Ong Ann Meng (better known as Meng Ong), who went on to win numerous awards for his short films at the Singapore International Film Festival between 1991 and 1993. His first feature, Miss Wonton (2001), won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival.
Vintage pornography reels from the archives of Italy’s National Film Museum display over an AI recitation of Dante's The Divine Comedy.
After surviving an accident, Alif, a micro-painting artist, is told by his doctor that his memory hasn’t fully recovered. When a woman claiming to be his mother comes to visit, Alif begins to sense something is wrong—he doesn’t recognize her face, and he suspects she might not be his mother.
Aruz, who lost his son during migration, one day finds a strange creature with one eye on his head, brings him to the village and raises him as his own cub. Years pass, Aruz finds his missing son, and Grandpa Gorgud names him Basat. Tepegoz, who has already grown up and finished painting, starts eating people one day. When the people found out about this, they kicked Tepagöz out of the village. After Tepagoz's mother, the fairy, bathed him in the lake of Kir, he is no longer affected by weapons, and Tepagoz made a condition in front of the people that they should bring one man and 500 sheep every day. If not, he will raze the whole place to the ground. Seeing that Oban is in such a difficult situation, Dede Gorgud says, "Basat is the only solution." As a result of the dream he saw, Basat, who returned from his trip incomplete, tricks Tepegoz and defeats him and saves the people from trouble.
An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.
A year after losing her mother, a young girl learns that she must journey across Japan to the annual gathering of gods in the sacred land of Izumo.
An intimate stream of memories reaching out across time and space, taking on a uniquely experimental form that cuts the viewer adrift in a weave of old footage rising to the surface of consciousness like a dream.
A bleak, cryptic vision of life in contemporary Iran that eschews overt social commentary in favour of a very personal vision of stifled lives. Directed remotely by Rashidi from Ireland over Skype, the making of this unique film reflects the alienation it so compellingly portrays.
When Hannah travels to Sweden to surprise her boyfriend and meet his parents, she begins to suspect that his family is hiding a monstrous secret.
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.
In 1917, two children take a photograph, which is soon believed by some to be the first scientific evidence of the existence of fairies. Based on the true story of the Cottingley Fairies.
A bureaucrat interviews five souls to decide which of them will be given a life on Earth. But he soon faces an existential challenge of his own.
A mysterious woman comes in to town and inhabits the local haunted mansion, making everyone wonder if she's a witch or "The Grey Lady".
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
A young girl Abigail lives in a city whose borders were closed many years ago because of an epidemic of a mysterious disease. Abby's father was one of the sick - and he was taken when she was six years old. Going against the authorities to find his father, Abby learns that her city is actually full of magic. And she discovers in herself extraordinary magical abilities.
When a teenaged girl moves to England, with her brothers and parents into the ancient Canterville Hall, she's not at all happy. Especially as there's a ghost and a mysterious re-appearing bloodstain on the hearth. She campaigns to go back home, and her dad, believing the ghost's pranks are Ginny's, is ready to send her back. But then Ginny actually meets the elusive 17th-century Sir Simon de Canterville (not to mention the cute teenaged duke next door), and she sets her hand to the task of freeing Sir Simon from his curse.
On Christmas Eve, a fighter pilot on his way home becomes lost while flying over water and needs a miracle to land safely.
A series of uncanny déjà vu events force a man to re-examine his tragic past, memory, instinct, and future.
While Jane Holman is driving with her two sons, she accidentally runs into a drifter, Jack McCloud, who breaks his leg. Being responsible, Jane invites Jack, and his dog, to stay at her home until his leg has healed. Jack struggles to adapt their lifestyle, and finds himself loved by the family.
Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.
Vincent, an artist with unresolved inner demons, meets a mysterious girl who helps him come to terms with his creative legacy… and eventual death.
After an affair with a queen leads to his demise, an eager traveler encounters a mystical bird with the power to give him another life.
The year is 1955, and a great flood is coming to Northfork, Montana. A new hydroelectric dam is about to be installed in the mountains above the town, ready to submerge the valley in the name of progress. It is the responsibility of a six-man Evacuation Committee to relocate the townsfolk to higher ground. Most have duly departed, but a few stubborn stragglers remain – among them a priest caring for a sickly orphan, a boy whose fevered visions are leading him to believe he is a member of a roaming band of lost angels desperately searching for a way home.
After the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her paralyzed Father, meets a mysterious Woman with a secret that forces Vesper to use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the possibility of a future.
A troubled engineer faces pressure at work and problems at home with his moody wife. American expat Chuck, rescues him from the brink of despair and becomes an unlikely mentor.
Stranded in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, a man sets in motion an unlikely plan to protect the precious cargo he carries: his infant daughter.
The story of a young woman who takes an epic journey to claim her own darkness and sexuality so she can stop putting it into the hands of her abusive lover. When Inanna, a young actress, working as a stripper, becomes obsessed with a mask maker, she sacrifices parts of herself and her life, piece by piece, in order to win his love. At the same time she enters a mythic journey in the theater. One that forces her to face the many abuses endured by women around that world and that blurs her performance, her dreams and her real life and results in a provocative and powerful confrontation that frees her. -- from official website
A dog goes on quest to discover his purpose in life over the course of several lifetimes with multiple owners.
In New York City, Clary Fray, a seemingly ordinary teenager, learns that she is descended from a line of Shadowhunters — half-angel warriors who protect humanity from evil forces. After her mother disappears, Clary joins forces with a group of Shadowhunters and enters Downworld, an alternate realm filled with demons, vampires, and a host of other creatures. Clary and her companions must find and protect an ancient cup that holds the key to her mother's future.