An Asian Ghost Story (2023)

Jurnal Risa by Risa Saraswati

When a woman becomes possessed by an evil spirit, a team of horror-mystery journalists goes to the village that the spirit came from to try to free her.

The Mermaid

A trip that the author makes to a distant beach trying to find the place where his grandfather made a painting years ago.

Classroom 8

From his modest apartment in Lima, a teacher gives virtual classes, seeking to reflect with his young students with low socio-economic backgrounds on racism, politics and inequality: issues that resonate in an increasingly fractured country.

Time to Change

Angolan director and screenwriter Pocas Pascoal reminds us that it’s time for a change, proposing through this film a look at colonialism, capitalism, and their impact on global biodiversity. We observe that the destruction of the ecosystem goes back a long way and is already underway through land exploitation, big game hunting, and the exploitation of man by man.

Demon House

As mass hysteria breaks-out over an alleged demonic possession in an Indiana home, referred to as a “Portal to Hell,” Ghost Adventures host and paranormal investigator Zak Bagans buys the house, sight unseen, over the phone. He and his crew then become the next victims of the most documented case of demonic possession in US history… the “house of 200 demons.

Ghost Adventures

In 2007, The Sci-Fi Channel premiered "Ghost Adventures," a raw documentary in which 3 men go to Virginia City, NV and Goldfield, NV on a ghost hunting expedition. Virginia City is rife with macabre lore and reputed to be one of the most haunted cities in America. Ghost Adventures has won a Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary that was given by the New York International Film & Video Festival.

I Needed Color

Jim Carrey exhibits his talent as a painter and reflects on the value and power of art.

He Who Dances Passes

A being from the beyond returns to Chile in 2019, embodied in a worker who dreams of social upheaval. Viral videos intertwine with fiction to narrate the experiences of a polarized country that wanders between drama and absurdity, illusion and failure.

Here We Are

A housekeeper received a film made by her daughter. It's a film that combines found footages of Thailand during the Cold War with the present days images of Bangkok. Through these images she tells a story of the house owner and her own story of coming to the capital.

Winter Portrait

A misty afternoon returns a Mapuche couple to their wedding video. In their civil ceremony, they are noted as one of only two couples married in the indigenous language of Mapudungun.

Anhell69

A funeral car cruises the streets of Medellín, while a young director tells the story of his past in this violent and conservative city. He remembers the pre-production of his first film, a Class-B movie with ghosts. The young queer scene of Medellín is casted for the film, but the main protagonist dies of a heroin overdose at the age of 21, just like many friends of the director. Anhell69 explores the dreams, doubts and fears of an annihilated generation, and the struggle to carry on making cinema.

The Haunting Lodge

Filmmakers stay at a haunted lodge and find themselves in over their heads when they encounter something otherworldly.

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).

Echo

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

Es Para Un Videodiario

Mike is a young student of cinema, who receive the task to make a Videodiary for his fiction production class in the fifth semester of his career; with only a cellphone in hand begins to document his life day after day, without imagining that he will capture important and emotional moments that will remember forever.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

The Grass Dwellers

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

1/2 Man

A visual documentary of Einstürzende Neubauten, the German underground band, by Japanese cult director Sogo Ishii, made during their 1985 tour of Japan. The band makes an elaborate and remarkably choreographed appearance in the ruins of an old ironworks which was scheduled for demolition; footage of same was incorporated into the movie and a brief appearance on stage.

Pacho's visual archive

After the death of my only brother I found rolls of undeveloped film. This documentary is a reenactment of those stills and an exploration of the aspects of my brother's life that I didn't know.

Hotel Camarillo

Hotel Camarillo' is a documentary focusing on paranormal investigations over the past 10 years at former Camarillo State Mental Hospital. Using a decade of archival footage, EVP, ITC, and photos along with new interviews with the investigators, 'Hotel Camarillo' is the complete history of paranormal activity in the old abandoned buildings, some that no longer exist on the campus.

The Garden Cadences

Jone is ready to fly. She finds herself at the beginning of something new, but before she moves on, there needs to be a closure. Jone is one of Mollies, the queer-feminist collective that had been living for a decade at a trailer park next to Ostkreuz, Berlin.

One

Collected as part of the Fluxfilm Anthology (a multi-reel compendium of 37 short films assembled by Fluxus founder and central operator George Maciunas), One captures the lifespan of a single match recorded at 2,000 frames per second using a 16mm high-speed camera. The frame rate is then decelerated to the standard 24fps for presentation. The film emphasizes each gesture, sway and flare of flame as the small pinewood carrier ignites across the landscape of the filmstrip and screen, signalling the drama and poetics of this ”minor” event before the fire is extinguished. One also stands as an unassuming beacon, immortalizing on film the essence of some of Ono’s early concerns as an artist. At the slightest touch of fire, they burst into flame. Strike everywhere. Strike often.

The Tuba Thieves

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

My Memory Is Full of Ghosts

Like a visual elegy, My Memory Is Full of Ghosts explores a reality caught between past, present and future in Homs, Syria. Behind the self-portrait of an exsanguinated population in search of normality emerge memories of the city, haunted by destruction, disfigurement and loss. A deeply moving film, a painful echo of the absurdity of war and the strength of human beings.

The Psychedelic Experience

Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.

Vibrant Matter

A silent city symphony, projected from gorgeous black and white 16mm film. Materia vibrante lets the resonating frequencies of the urban environment create the inaudible hum that keeps the engines of society running, absent of the inhabitants running around like little ants toiling away.

Logistics

Logistics or Logistics Art Project is an experimental art film. At 51,420 minutes (857 hours or 35 days and 17 hours), it is the longest movie ever made. A 37 day-long road movie in the true sense of the meaning. The work is about Time and Consumption. It brings to the fore what is often forgotten in our digital, ostensibly fast-paced world: the slow, physical freight transportation that underpins our economic reality.

Metropia

Plot unavailable

The Unseen Realm

Rebellion in God's council. Spirits of dead giants. Rival gods creating chaos. These are the things of myth and fairy tales, right? The Bible tells a different story. In the documentary The Unseen Realm, a light is cast on the strange and enigmatic plane of the supernatural that lies within the pages of Scripture. And what we discover are two distinct worlds—with vastly different inhabitants—created and ruled by one loving triune God. Based on the book by Michael Heiser. Featured exclusively at: faithlifetv.com/the-unseen-realm

Between Earth & Sky

For her entire professional life, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study "what grows back” after an ecological disturbance in the rainforest canopy. Now, after surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself in order to understand the effects of disturbance and recovery throughout her life.

Nostalgia for the Lake

A vision from Limbo, where the canoeist of the eternal lake floats in his boat, between sleep and wakefulness. When he sleeps, he dreams of the everyday of a parallel time. when he wakes up, the same song haunts him again and again. his boat, “ara” (time, in guarani) travels through time like a shooting star.

Empire

Filmed by Jonas Mekas from the 44th floor of the Time-Life Building, “Empire” explores the passage of time without the use of characters or a traditional narrative. The film, that consists of one stationary shot of the Empire State Building, was made from standard 1,200-foot rolls of 16mm film with a more than eight-hour runtime.

Lake

Lake gazes down at a still body of water from a birds-eye view, while a group of artists peacefully float in and out of the frame or work to stay at the surface. As they glide farther away and draw closer together, they reach out in collective queer and desirous exchanges — holding hands, drifting over and under their neighbors, making space, taking care of each other with a casual, gentle intimacy while they come together as individual parts of a whole. The video reflects on notions of togetherness and feminist theorist Silvia Federici’s call to “reconnect what capitalism has divided: our relation with nature, with others, and our bodies.”

The Ghost

Two college students set out to capture a ghost on film to make millions instead of doing their finals.

The Blackwell Ghost 5

In this 5th installment of "The Blackwell Ghost" series, the ghost hunting filmmaker returns to the "Lightfoot House" where he hopes to solve a newly discovered puzzle which may lead to the location of more undiscovered victims.

The Severed Heads Are Smiling.

A passenger picks up a woman at dawn who is to be a guest until midnight. Their journey begins...

FLOAT!

With depth, intimacy, and humor, FLOAT! captures filmmaker Azza Cohen's magnetic grandma’s life-affirming journey learning to swim at 82, inspiring audiences to defy societal expectations of aging and to boldly look forward at every stage.

The Noise of Time

In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.

Highland Tower

In December 1993, a luxury condominium tower block collapse after ground erosion from the neighbouring hillside. About 50 people lost their lives and to this day has become one of the darkest and saddest tragic incidents in Malaysian history. Twenty years later in 2013, a group of documentary filmmakers venture into the remaining two blocks that is left standing to do a ghost hunting expedition. What they discovered is not for the faint-hearted.

Otro sol

Otro Sol is a group of real and invented characters trapped in a film. It is also a purgatory of retired thieves that takes place on the coast of the Atacama Desert. The film is circular and seeks to invent and verify the myth of Alberto Cándia, a Chilean international thief who stole the Cathedral of Cadiz in Andalucia in the late 1980s.

The Afterlife Investigations: The Scole Experiments

The aim of the Scole Experimental Group was to produce not just one tangible object but such a huge number and variety that scientists would have to sit up and take notice. In fact, it was not long before a variety of senior scientists, including some very experienced researchers into the unknown, became interested in the phenomena being produced. The Scole Group was happy to allow scientific scrutiny of their work, a fact which impressed the scrutineers. Among the investigating team were electrical engineers, astrophysicists, criminologists, psychologists and mathematicians.

Me voy. Me voy

December 31, 2015. The Valencian bookstore Valdeska closed its doors permanently after forty years of activity. The result of four years of monitoring and filming, these 31 minuts of run time are part of a book unread, unknown and undiscovered. "Me voy. Me voy" it's not the story of a bookstore, not the portrait of an exceptional bookseller, it's a will to attach the things in the filmed image, to make something lasting showing the moment of its disappearence.

USSR (1917-1991)

Experimental short film that explores the rise and decline of the Soviet Union, from the revolutionary spark of 1917 to the challenges and sacrifices endured during World War II, until its dissolution in 1991.

INFRASTRATA

Amongst the contemplative static shots of decaying architecture weaves an abstract narrative unveiling the life-cycle of a higher perception, too large to perceive. Shot at various sites across south-east England, INFRASTRATA is a study on the concept of super-organisms, and the relationship between structure and nature.

Blade Rollers

Honour West and Joan Camuglia-May share their experiences in this upbeat roller-skating documentary.

AS AN EARTHQUAKE

On February 6, 2023, an earthquake on the border of Turkey and Syria claims more than 55,000 lives. On this day, I am in an oncology center, 6 days since having my tumor removed, and in the afternoon my partner ends our relationships. Blending memory and theory, this autofiction documentary unfolds the relationships between love(s) and catastrophes.

American Reflexxx

American Reflexxx is a short film documenting a social experiment that took place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Alli Coates filmed performance artist Signe Pierce as she strutted down a busy oceanside street in stripper garb and a reflective mask. The pair agreed not to communicate until the experiment was completed, but never anticipated the horror that would unfold in under an hour. The result is a heart wrenching technicolor spectacle that raises questions about gender stereotypes, mob mentality, and violence in America.

The Dark Side

A real initiatory journey that, through the discovery and the story of myths, legends, inexplicable events and macabre details, will lead the viewer and the conductor to confront each one with their own fears.