Afloat

Amor

Landscapes revealed themselves through text, paper through movement, while the sun gave them relief. This is a journey across found words, enunciating a discovery, their textures constructing the sea and the waves, in a travelogue from the first exploration, the first step over the sand towards the shore. “Amor” writes this joy to underline it in its time, captured on paper. This film has been composed through a scanner, and it’s the first chapter of the “Reír al Sol” series.

Grid

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

Running Fields II

Fifteen images of a camera running in a park and in obscurity searching the space of light through distorsion and the sensory of rapid motion.

Obinagụ

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.

Homo Sapiens Project (200) (2000-2020)

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) (2002-2021)

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.

Prospero's Books

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'.

Running Fields III

Twenty images of a camera running next to a chemical platform and capturing abstract light throught improvised gestures and asymmetrical motion

Dance for Happiness

It’s just the matter of different stage, why look us down?” It’s the question of Dudu and Barbie, the pole dancers. Everyone usually focuses on the gorgeous side of the pole dancer, but ignore the effort they need to pay. Not only the instable income, but the pole dancing is also high-risking. Furthermore, the society stereotypically values the job with pornography.

Breakdown: 1975

In 1975, as America faced social and political upheaval, filmmakers turned chaos into art.

FUCK TV

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

Nathaniel Dorsky: An Interview

In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky (b.1943) begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work operating at the intersection of film materiality and personal language, Dorsky explains how he developed his philosophy of the “devotional film” and the “microcosmic viewer.” Dorsky likens his practice to Buddhist sculpture, referring to himself as a “Japanese poet continuing aspects of the ethos of the Marxist revolution.” In the interview, the artist describes his use of the screen as an “altarpiece for the image” and emphasizes his use of editing to create works which “harmoniously coalesce.” Interview conducted by Jeffrey Skoller in May 2000, edited in 2014.

The Birds Changed Names And The World Turned Into Ice

Migrant families experience violence, but they also keep beautiful memories when they arrive in new lands. Fantastic and intimate stories, recalled from childhood, travel across time and space, magically intermingling with the help of the four elements and breaking the boundaries of cinema.

Herkules

Hercules travels by bicycle from Krefeld on the Lower Rhine to Olympus, the throne of ancient deities. The Hercules myth, as a primal myth of male power, is questioned through biographical reflections and the staging of mythological echoes. The dramaturgical structure of the hero's journey disintegrates in a multi-material perspective into questions about male identity, ideals and remorse.

Objects of War

‘Objects of War’ is a series of testimonials on the Lebanese war. Each person chooses an object, ordinary or unusual, which serves as a starting point for his / her story. These testimonials while helping to create a collective memory, also show the impossibility of telling a single History of this war. Only fragments of this History are recounted here, held as truth by those expressing them. In ‘Objects of War’, the aim is not to reveal a truth but rather to gather and confront many diverse versions and discourses on the subject. ‘Objects of War’ started in 1999 assembling the testimonials of eleven persons. It was first shown in 2000 . It continued in 2003 with ‘Objects of War n°2’, recording seven additional testimonials. This time however, and since then, the recorded material is left unedited, shown in its integrity. The work of collecting and assembling these stories continued with ‘Objects of War n°3 & n°4’ in 2006 and ‘n°5 & 6’ in 2014.

Las Preguntas que Perdimos

Dance of the Eternal

A young girl is born into an enchanting yet complex world where she must make the crucial decision to follow the path of an angel or a demon, two forces mercilessly competing for her attention, set to the music of Mahler's Eighth Symphony.

Real Geisha, Real Women

Real Geisha Real Women is a documentary by Peter MacIntosh about the lives of several women in Kyoto, Japan of various generations who are, or have been maiko and geiko (the Kyoto terms for geisha). Their stories are told in their own words as a series of vignettes without the use of a narrator. Rare footage of their journeys outside of Kyoto includes a hometown visit, a trip to Tokyo, as well as travels abroad.

You're Leaving Amsterdam / Welcome To Amstelveen: Introduction

A short documentary film functioning as the introduction to the One Minutes x Inter-Architecture Department (Gerrit Rietveld Academy) short-film broadcast episode for Rietveld TV, as aired on SALTO. This broadcast was meant to give an artistic impression of a communal art-project developed by the Inter-Architecture Department for the municipality of Amstelveen, The Netherlands. This short documentary film introduces each duo placed and posing at their respective project-based locations, spread out over Amstelveen, through purposely awkward still-but-moving vignettes. The duo's are reintroduced several times in quick succession, with each consecutive appearance showing more of an awkward inter-personality, meant to evoke a certain liminal playfulness. An overpass, a bridge, a bridge-barrier, a docking port, the border between Amsterdam and Amstelveen, the edges of Amsterdamse Bos, an abandoned railroad.

1/4 Visuals

A silent experimental film, originally made in accompaniment to Josephine Zwaan's '1/4' album release presentation in 2016. The film sees musician Josephine Zwaan persist through a test of endurance, with the foundation of the film being a one-take of her staring deeply into the lens of the camera, haphazardly overlayed and re-framed by graphical elements color-matched to the album's artwork.