A meditation on the relationship between humans, nature, and technology.
Social & External
The people behind it
Hannah Saidiner
Voice Over
Dodging Raindrops – A Separate Reality is an episodic experimental film, in which documentary and staged scenes intertwine in a mythic-apocalyptic narrative. The film begins in Los Angeles und retraces the field trips into the Southwest assumed to have been taken by the controversial anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, a founder of the New Age movement. Taking up the anthropological concept of othering, the film casts its subjects as others inhabiting another side, another reality and another opposite. In doing so, Dodging Raindrops – A Separate Reality weaves a web of ostensible truths and untruths, of legends and utopias, of historic incidents and visions.
Marcel Duchamp alternates between scrutinizing the camera, and smiling and nodding in response to what seems to be a large crowd of off-screen admirers trying to get his attention. Occasionally he puts his fingers to his lips, indicating that he is not supposed to talk.
Someone falls off the scene and a tree is upside down. In the search for the roots, people are torn from their usual order, while in the dark connections are made. A woman tastes of the primordial soup and we end up in a system of people spinning around themselves. Only one person remains alone, but he gets unexpected comfort from somewhere.
Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey threw himself into the race for Minnesota governor on January 13, 2006. His "coming out" to the media as a Hecate Witch, Satanic Dark Priest and Sanguinary Vampire grabbed international attention, and his candidacy marked the beginning of the largest amount of media coverage ever given to an unknown third party candidate running for governor in American history.
Two criminals take a trip up the coast of California. As they arrive at a small town- what should just be a small stop on the way- one of them begins to feel as though they've been their before.
A British WWII propaganda short warning citizens that Nazi sympathizers could be listening to their everyday conversations to discover important information about the war effort.
An experimental short in which a couple engaged in lovemaking is superimposed over ocean and beach scenes.
During a long hot summer in the forest, Child is forced to grow up. First her Dog becomes ill, then out of the blue her Mother returns to their dacha with a new lover. Child's world is turned upside down. With each unsettling event, her visions become stronger to the point where she decides on a dangerous decision. Chado combines digital animation and Risograph printing to transform a coming of age tale into an enchanting short film.
A piano player is able to perform a Chopin piece backwards and Galeta will film it backwards and forwards creating four different variations of a movement bound to time.
This dazzling stop-motion animation provided Vorkapich with a forum to demonstrate complex perceptual theories related to the persistence of vision and phi phenomenon. The dance of objects and their movements before the camera lens–somewhat similar to Oskar Fischinger’s abstractions–illustrate many visual sensations playfully executed by Vorkapich.
"Now Eat My Script is a precipice, a fluid solution in which some spectral noises of the self float adrift. Narration takes the role of a pregnant writer who continuously affirms her hunger and clumsiness towards language and history. Her body is crossed over by both the years to come and the stories that have been buried. As a would-be pirate, she navigates through the tumult of familiar waters."
White Tape explores the theme of boundaries: the frame, the space between brushstrokes and the implications of occupation.
A short avant-garde film from Finnish director Eino Ruutsalo.
Homeo is a mental construction made from visual reality, just as music is made from auditive reality. I put in this film no personal intentions. All my intentions are personal. I’ve made this film thinking of what the audience would have liked to see, not something specific that I wanted to say: what the film depicts is above all reality, not fiction. Homeo is, for me, the search for an autonomous cinematographic language, which doesn't owe anything to traditional narrative, or maybe everything. Cinema is, above all, part of a way of life which will become more and more self-assured in the years and century to come. We are part of this change, and that’s why I tried in Homeo to establish a series of perpetual changes, in constant evolution or regress, which tries, above all, to focus on things.
One of the very few films made by Etienne O'Leary, all of which emerged from the French underground circa 1968 and can be very loosely designated 'diary films.' Like the contemporaneous films by O'Leary's more famous friend Pierre Clementi, they trippily document the drug-drenched hedonism of that era's dandies. O'Leary worked with an intoxicating style that foregrounded rapid and even subliminal cutting, dense layering of superimposed images and a spontaneous notebook type shooting style. Yet even if much of O'Leary's material was initially 'diaristic,' depicting the friends, lovers, and places that he encountered in his private life, the metamorphoses it underwent during editing transformed it into a series of ambiguously fictionalized, sometimes darkly sexual fantasias. - Experimental Film Club
A woman walks, loves, eats and washes herself, dances. It all takes place in a bedroom. At times flashbacks, or visualizations of previous or following scenes. Unless her life in the bedroom becomes an obsession, she lives through the other scenes.
Footage from summer of 2018 that explores the passing of time regarding the little things in life.
A documentary in réalité style harkening back to the early years of cinema. Composed of scenes around Victoria, BC during February 2019.
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
Lupita Nyong'o narrates a documentary about Peanuts and its creator, Charles M. Schulz. Famous fans—including Drew Barrymore, Kevin Smith, and Al Roker—share its influence on them, and a new animated story finds Charlie Brown on a quest.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Explore the evolution of Buzz Lightyear from toy to human in the making of Pixar’s Lightyear. Dive into the origin and cultural impact of everyone’s favorite Space Ranger, the art of designing a new “human Buzz,” and the challenges faced by the Lightyear crew along the way.
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.
A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.
A purely observational non-fiction film that takes viewers into the ethically murky world of end-of-life decision making in a public hospital.
A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.
Over 35 years after Bob Lazar's revelations, this documentary exposes secrets of a facility the government still denies. Featuring Lazar's testimony, recreations, and new evidence, it reopens a case that continues to spark global curiosity
Never-before-seen footage shows how our living in lockdown opened the door for nature to bounce back and thrive. Across the seas, skies, and lands, Earth found its rhythm when we came to a stop.
A documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED combines acting legend Alec Baldwin with director James Toback as they lead us on a troublesome and often hilarious journey of raising financing for their next feature film. Moving from director to financier to star actor, the two players provide us with a unique look behind the curtain at the world's biggest and most glamourous film festival, shining a light on the bitter-sweet relationship filmmakers have with Cannes and the film business. Featuring insights from directors Martin Scorsese, 'Bernando Bertolucci' and Roman Polanski; actors Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain and a host of film distribution luminaries.
A celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet.
Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.
Combining archival footage with rotoscopic animation, Tower reveals the action-packed untold stories of the witnesses, heroes and survivors of America's first mass school shooting, when the worst in one man brought out the best in so many others.
Captured during Billie Eilish's sold-out world tour, a concert experience from one of the most celebrated and successful artists of her generation, presented in immersive 3D.
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit.
In the mountains of Sichuan, China, a researcher forms a bond with Qian Qian, a panda who is about to experience nature for the first time.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.