Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box

This is a 1991 documentary film about the legendary artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, who made those magnificent and strange collage boxes. He was also one of our great experimental filmmakers and once apparently made Salvador Dali extremely jealous at a screening of his masterpiece, Rose Hobart. In this film we get to hear people like Susan Sontag, Stan Brakhage, and Tony Curtis talk about their friendships with the artist. It turns out that Curtis was quite a collector and he seemed to have a very deep understanding of what Cornell was doing in his work.

What You Mean We?

WHAT YOU MEAN WE is a surreal short film by experimental artist Laurie Anderson.

The Illiac Passion

Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.

Chelsea Girls

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

3part Harmony: Composition in RGB #1

This experimental dance film employs a bastardized version of the 1930s three strip Technicolor process. Shot entirely on black and white film through color filters, the images were recombined into full color through optical printing techniques, one frame at a time. The gestures in this dance work explore the psychological fracturing and reunification in representations of the female body.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

Begotten

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.

Black and White Trypps Number Four

Using a 35mm strip of motion picture slug featuring the recently deceased American comedian Richard Pryor, this extended Rorschach assault on the eyes moves out of a flickering chaos created by incompatible film gauges into a punchline involving historically incompatible racial stereotypes.

Closed Vagina

Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive

The Adventures of *

Life drums the playfulness out of a boy as he grows up.

Jones

A short experimental film about a fire hydrant, a busy sidewalk nestled between an electrical post and a building.

Goldfish

In this surrealist vignette-based film, a goldfish makes conversation with various objects. A TV becomes a writer, a triangle learns it is not a hexagon, and a goldfish sees themself without an audience. // \ / \ \\ \ / \ / /\/ /// \ / \ \\ \ / \ / /\/ /// \ / \ \\ \ / \ / /\/ /

Spirit House

A tale of 2 passages within the Spirit house. This is the first in a series that looks at the places we find our spiritual presence augmented, inflamed, or simply acknowledged.

Alaska

Alaska is a wordless experimental film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum.

42/83: No Film

"In 1983, I got a job as a museum attendant and abandoned film-making entirely. And so the question arose: "no film?," and the conclusion I came to was: no film. Question mark." (K.K.)

Fantaisie érotique

Alien

69SEC

This is a story of love seen from a square, in which a couple gets united, separated and rearranged again. A special kind of puzzle.

HoLy Cycles

Steadily reading while/becomes treading into murky waters.

Out of the Law

Beyond all human restraint lies one's lugubrious layers of paint.