Emergency: The Living Theatre (1968)

Dogville

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.

Afloat

'Afloat' is an experimental film that paints a portrait of Japanese performance artist: Ayumi Lanoire. The film opens as a telephone call between Ayumi and Person X, which meanders the audience through the various layers that make up her personas leading one to wonder whether she is in fact a myth or reality.

Medea

After escaping from her homeland and now abandoned by the man she loves, Medea must find strength from within to fight against growing injustice - how far is she willing to go?

The Raspberry Reich

Gudrun has modeled her amateur German terrorist group after the 1970s Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang). She attempts to imitate her heroes by kidnapping the son of a wealthy industrialist and hopes to negotiate leftist demands from the father. When Gudrun’s not spouting leftist verses (including during a hilariously brilliant fuck session), she’s trying to convince her all-male gang to abandon their heterosexuality, which she believes is the result of mass delusion.

The Beaches of Agnès

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

Mirror

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.

Phantom Islands

Phantom Islands is an experimental film that exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. It follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that ultimately results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.

The Connection

A title card announces that the film is a result of found footage assembled by cameraman J.J. Burden working for the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn, who has disappeared. Leach, a heroin addict, introduces the audience to his apartment where other heroin addicts, a mix of current and former jazz musicians, are waiting for Cowboy, their drug connection, to appear. Things go out of control as the men grow increasingly nervous and the cameraman keeps recording.

Escape

An experimental short film that follows a man who arrives home alone during the holidays after a long day of work. Finding himself consumed by his loneliness he looks for a way to escape.

DAN

WHAT IS THE BEST FOR HIM? HIMSELF? THEM? HER? A twenty-year-old young man sees himself as someone who struggles in social life. One day, while looking in the mirror,he sees a change in himself, and from then on, everything started to change.

Some precious things

During an audio message sent to his daughter, a father reflects on how the recent discovery of dusty reels and scratchy VHS tapes capturing childhood moments has propelled him on a journey of ancient memories and forgotten dreams . Using a blend of personal, public domain, and freely available footage, the film deconstructs reality and reimagines the past, questioning where memory ends and imagination begins.

Ballet Mécanique

A pulsing, kaleidoscope of images set to an energetic soundtrack. This is a world in motion, dominated by mechanical and repetitive images, with a few moments of solitude in a garden.

The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra

This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and be dehumanized. He is identified by the number 9413 written on his forehead.

Kino Kopf

Born from steel and glass Kino Kopf is created by two inventors. They are assembled by their mother, a nurturing artist, and their Father a greedy entrepreneur. Kino Kopf is the first of its kind a sentient humanoid VHS camera. They are given a life by their mother but presented to the world by their father. Kino Kopf is the next big sensation and spurs a technological revolution. They are soon forgotten and alone as new models surpass them. Kino Kopf is left alone to contemplate if they ever had a soul, as visions of an electric cowboy dance through their dreams.

The Love of Zero

While playing his trombone one Sunday, the enthusiastic Zero sees Beatrix and falls in love. He returns the next week to express his feelings, and it's mutual. Over the next few months, they spoon, kiss, and find happiness. Then, she receives a letter from Kabul, demanding that she return to the palace of the Grand Vizier. The lovers part, heartbroken. Zero tries expressing himself to a woman on the street. He meets derision. Then, news of Beatrix. Does this romance end in smiles or tears?

CU: Farewell

The protagonist recalls her past while her daughter is going to leave her forever. Years ago, the protagonist came from a province to a big city to get rid of poverty. Marriage to a gangster didn’t make her happy. She fell in love with her husband’s accomplice and soon got pregnant. Murder seems the only solution to the lovers…

Mysterious Object at Noon

A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.

Godard by Godard

Godard by Godard is an archival self-portrait of Jean-Luc Godard. It retraces the unique and unheard-of path, made up of sudden detours and dramatic returns, of a filmmaker who never looks back on his past, never makes the same film twice, and tirelessly pursues his research, in a truly inexhaustible diversity of inspiration. Through Godard’s words, his gaze and his work, the film tells the story of a life of cinema; that of a man who will always demand a lot of himself and his art, to the point of merging with it.

Letter

A teenager leaves his classmates and heads home for the evening. Feeling frustrated and lonely, he sends a neutral text-message to a friend. From this point, this one-man DV experimental film presents a real-time exchange of incoming and outgoing messages, depicting a digital-era study of text-message relationships. Letter is the directorial debut of Japanese artist, filmmaker, and scholar Sasaki Yusuke when he was only 17. The film screened at the 2004 International Film Festival Rotterdam and won the Grand Prix at Image Forum Festival Tokyo in 2003. Sasaki holds a doctoral degree from the Tokyo University of the Arts and is currently a lecturer at Tottori University.

The Brig

Jonas Mekas’s film captures The Living Theatre’s stage production of The Brig, an unflinching portrait of life inside a U.S. Marine Corps jail in Japan in 1957. Over the course of a single day, prisoners endure relentless drills, abuse, and dehumanization, exposing the brutality of military discipline with stark immediacy.

Paradise Now

At least forty films have been made about the Living Theatre; it remained to the American underground filmmaker Sheldon Rochlin (previously responsible for the marvellous Vali) to make the 'definitive' film about one of the most famous of their works, Paradise Now, shot in Brussels and at the Berlin Sportpalast. Made on videotape, with expressionist colouring 'injected' by electronic means, this emerges as a hypnotic transmutation of a theatrical event into poetic cinema, capturing the ambiance and frenzy of the original. No documentary record could have done it justice.

Endless Content Forever

A small Youtuber occasionally makes half ironic videos for few to see. A half narrative, half experimental view of the numb feeling of consuming endless amounts of content online instead of doing anything else, forever.

The Wild Racers

Promising young racing car driver Joe Joe Quillico leaves the stock car racing scene in the United States in order to pursue Grand Prix racing in Europe. After limited success he manages to win the Spanish Grand Prix. His love life however, is much less successful and his winning on the track only serves to alienate the woman he loves - with unhappy consequences.

It's Not Me

This free-form film is a self-portrait, which revisits more than 40 years of the author’s filmography and questions the major stations of his life, while capturing the political tremors of the time.

Astronaut's Uniform

Mockumentary experimental film, which shows one day in the life of a young man. The action takes place on the Day of Soviet Cosmonautics, April 12, one of the last years of the USSR. Outside the window, it is gradually getting warmer, the onset of spring is felt, promising hope for the possibility of changes in the country. The hero of the film is fond of space. The young man, who idolizes Gagarin, is engaged in reconstruction, making the uniform in which the cosmonaut walked in the prime of his glory. Our hero is also a film enthusiast. He makes films with stories of space flights and shows them to his friends. The film is stylized as amateur films of the 1980s and was shot on a 16-mm color film made by the company" Svema", made in the Soviet Union. The quality of this film allows the viewer to fully immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the time of the film, which is dedicated to Soviet cosmonautics and Edward D. Wood Jr.

Golden Chains

A new exploration of familiar places located in the region of Rhône and Isère throught an reinvention of digital nuances, a study of perceptions and fluidity around the nature of motion in landscapes and human interactions.

Friends, Foes & Fireworks

Fiona has recently received a life-changing health diagnosis, so in an attempt to curb feelings of isolation and anxiety she hosts a NYE reunion with her closest female friends. However, not everything goes to plan. Old tensions surface, past rivalries are reignited, truths are told and sparks fly, forcing each of the women to reflect on and re-evaluate past decisions going forward into the new year.

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).

Bhed Bakri Bhoot

A brass band member's hate comment in a public toilet triggers a chain reaction of diverse social expressions.

Breath

On the verge of losing her sense of self, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship must summon the strength to break free, symbolized by the shattering of a neglected fishbowl, or risk being consumed by her captivity.

This Is Not Me

This Is Not Me is an intimate, haunting exploration of identity, longing, and the truths we try to hide. A raw, dreamlike film built from five striking monologues. Each character reveals the parts of themselves they’d rather keep hidden, blurring the line between confession and performance.

Tama asobi

A man named Shiki has been sent to a company in Matsuyama. Since Shiki was famous as a baseball club member at a previous company, there is a story about baseball clubs in the company. Ken, who was a player in high school, participated without being reluctant, supported by his lover Michiko.

(NULL)

An unknown girl breaks out of her daily grind by undergoing an intense audio-visual trip.

Doina

Doina, a shepherd’s wife in ancient Romania, turns her daily routine into ritual. When nature foretells his death, her journey through grief blends realism, myth, and magic, where despair meets imagination.