Cormorant (2023)

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.

Les vendredis d'Apostrophes

Hours and historical meetings, Pierre Assouline has composed an anthology of the best extracts presented in the form of a primer, which he had commented on by a surprised Bernard Pivot.

Aaahh Belinda

Serap is a successful theater actress. Although she rejects the traditional roles assigned to women in her personal life, she agrees to play the role of a traditional housewife in a shampoo commercial. However, she is unaware that this commercial will turn into her worst nightmare.

Magick Lantern Cycle

Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, and author of Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger was a unique figure in post-war American culture. His iconic short films are characterised by a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential. Anger’s work fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, the visual lexicon of pop and music videos and queer iconography. These nine films form the basis of Anger’s reputation as one of the most influential pioneers of avant-garde film and video art. Fireworks, 1947, 14 min Puce Moment, 1949, 6 min Rabbit's Moon, 1950/1971, 16 min Eaux d'Artifice, 1953, 13 min Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1954, 37 min Scorpio Rising, 1964, 28 min Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1965, 3 min Invocation of My Demon Brother, 1969, 11 min Lucifer Rising, 1981, 27 min

Nickel Boys

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell

In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).

Foujita

A biopic of seminal 20th century artist Leonard Foujita, a contemporary of Picasso and Modigliani, who was famous for mixing up European and Japanese styles.

DARKMAN

Seeing himself as a form unable to experience intimacy, he is given the chance when brought to the household of twin sisters.

Don't Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

As the Metropolitan Museum of Art closes, Big Bird decides to leave his Sesame Street friends behind in search of Snuffy. Once locked inside for the night, educational hilarity ensues as Big Bird and Snuffy team up to help a small Egyptian boy solve a riddle - as the rest of the cast searches for their big, yellow friend.

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 Very Eye of Night

Dancers, shown in photographic negative, perform a series of ballet moves, solos, pas de deux, larger groupings. The dancers glide and rotate untroubled by gravity against a slowly changing starfield background. Their movements are accompanied by music scored for a small ensemble of woodwind and percussion.

Ambrosia

A young woman, on holiday with a group of her artist friends, meets a strange and enigmatic woman who threatens to divide the group's bonds of love and friendship.

The Arc de Triomphe: A Nation's Passion

The pride of Napoleon's victories, the Arc de Triomphe, whose first stone was laid in 1806 at the top of the Champs-Élysées, is, along with the Eiffel Tower, one of the most visited monuments in the French capital. Wanted by an emperor, inaugurated under the reign of a king (Louis-Philippe) and sanctuarized by the Republic, this patriotic temple polarizes the passions of a whole nation. A historical portrait before "packaging", which teems with anecdotes and unsuspected details.

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.

From the Notebook of...

"From the Notebook of..." was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and Paul Valéry's essay on da Vinci's process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The film marks a critical development in the artist's work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city's buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers' presence and suggests his investigative gaze.

Calxophobia

Helen suffers from a rare fear of chalk. One day she feels encroached by several chalk figures in Helsinki and decides to confront her fear. In the Amos Rex museum, she discovers the works of Keith Haring in a catalogue and adapts his style to her needs for catharsis.

Shunga: The Lost Japanese Erotica

In the foundation of the culture of Japanese MANGA and animation, there lies the humor filled art form, shunga. Shunga is a type of Japanese art by famous ukiyo-e artists of the Edo Period, such as Utamaro, Hokusai, and Kiyonaga, but the artform’s development was thwarted by social norms that tabooed sex. The film Introduces the world of shunga through enthusiasts - collectors, curators, and scholars, including Andrew Gerstle who inspired The British Museum’s historical shunga exhibition in 2013 and Michael Fornitz who owns an auction house in Denmark. Exploring the significance of shunga by analyzing it from historical, cultural, artistic and contemporary female points of view.

Baja's Studio: Baja and the Sea

The second anime short based on Kyoto Animation studio mascot character Baja.

The Age of the Earth

Drawing inspiration from a poem penned by Castro Alves, this film vividly captures the political, cultural, and intellectual climate of Brazil during the late 1970s. At its core, the story revolves around four distinctive embodiments of Christ's image: a black man, a soldier, an Indian, and a guerrilla fighter. These courageous individuals, hailed as the harbingers of doom in the tupiniquim lands, valiantly combat the insatiable avarice and oppressive "civilizing" brutality propagated by the formidable John Brahms—a foreign exploiter devoid of morals.

Caravaggio: The Soul and the Blood

An exciting and unsettling cinematic journey through the life, work and torments of Caravaggio.

Touki Bouki

Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind.

Meow Wolf: Origin Story

When a group of young DIY artists in Santa Fe can’t find a door into the art world, they blow open an entirely new portal with their grit, passion, and tenacity. Within just a few short years – and with a little help from George R.R. Martin – this group called Meow Wolf ultimately hits a cultural nerve and garners massive, unexpected success with their exhibit, House of Eternal Return.

Fox & Penguin

How do German couples communicate in private? What are they arguing about? Is the way to a man’s heart really through his stomach? This docu-fictional hybrid production discusses such questions with the help of authentic interview snippets that were edited under the staged plot. We get an insight into the life of an animal couple, who experience typical everyday situations on behalf of us humans. At first, our fox is emotionally contained, while the penguin lady may get wild as hell. With a wink, the filmmakers hold up a mirror to the audience in the cinema.

Omniac

Plot unavailable

A Little Love

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

Hitler Versus Picasso

In 1937 the Nazi regime held two exhibitions in Munich: one to stigmatize “Degenerate Art” (which they systematically looted and destroyed) and one, personally curated by Hitler, to glorify “Classic Art”. This immersive new documentary reveals the Nazi’s complicated relationship with classical and modern art, displaying an incredible number of masterpieces by Botticelli, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Chagall, Renoir and Gauguin amongst others, intertwined with human stories from the most infamous period of the twentieth century. A state-of-the-art detective story exploring the Nazis’ obsession with creative expression, Hitler versus Picasso combines history, art and human drama for an unforgettable cinema experience.

Hinter dem Vorhang: Das Geheimnis Vermeer

Plot unavailable

Caravaggio's Shadow

The Catholic Church secretly investigates Caravaggio as the Pope weighs whether to grant him clemency for killing a rival.

Dalíland

In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.

Art Gave the World a Voice

A young artist journals her surroundings in an attempt to discover the meaning of art.

The Song of the Butterflies

Rember Yahuarcani is an indigenous artist from the Uitoto Nation who lives in Lima, Peru. From his clan, the White Heron, only two families remain in Peru. Rember's paintings are inspired by the stories his grandmother Martha told him before she died. However, he has never dived into the darkest part of his nation’s history: the indigenous massacre during the rubber boom. Martha is a survivor of the horror and she speaks to Rember in dreams guiding him in a spiritual journey back to the jungle. He first visits his parents, who are also artists, in the Peruvian jungle. And finally, he sails to La Chorrera, in Colombia, where he confronts the past and meets other members of his clan.

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?

Blue

Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.

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.

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.

The Impressionists: And the Man Who Made Them

Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir: some of the world’s most popular artists. Their works, and that of their contemporaries, fetch tens of millions of dollars around the globe. But who were they really? Why & how exactly did they paint? What lies behind their enduring appeal? To help answer these questions, this unique film secured unparalleled access to a major exhibition focussing on the man credited with inventing impressionism as we know it: 19th-century Parisian art collector Paul Durand-Ruel. This eagerly anticipated international exhibition is possibly the most comprehensive exploration of the Impressionists in history.

Before We Go

Brussels, La Monnaie Opera House. Three people near the end of their lives meet with choreographers, actors and musicians. They take part in a unique experience which involves music, dance and silence. Their journey becomes a tribute to the fragility of the human condition, between reality and representation, tragedy of the body and freedom of the spirit. Together they question their own relationship with death.

The Autumn Alley

A docudrama about art and creativity; based on modern art gallery in Tehran and its founder Jazeh Tabatabai.

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 Contact

In search of housing, a student stumbles upon an advertisement for renting an apartment at a very reasonable fee—and promptly agrees with a woman who recently laid her son to rest, complying with all her conditions. The young man settles into the apartment and gradually becomes a witness to inexplicable mystical phenomena.

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

Scatterbrained Polly gets a job as a secretary in Gabrielle's art gallery. Polly aspires to be a professional photographer, and idolizes Gabrielle for her artistic ability. When Gabrielle rekindles an old romantic relationship with the younger painter Mary, Polly becomes jealous, and discovers Gabrielle isn’t exactly who she claims to be.

Mondongo II: Portrait of Mondongo

“This is a film about the end of a friendship. It wasn’t meant to be. Fifteen years ago, they painted my portrait.” (Mariano Llinás)

The Seashell and the Clergyman

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

The Virgin's Bed

30 year old child enters the new city, riding on a donkey. He says he is the Savior. He has spent no time among men. He is trembling with cold. His clothes are soaked. His mother was overprotective ; his father conspicuously absent. He knows that he must face the mockery, refusal, ignorance and blindness of the men around him. They travel in gangs, in large numbers : soldiers, mercenaries or the like, on majestic, imposing horses. Everything is out of proportion to his thin, bewildered, innocent body ; he is the madman of the new city...

Late Anthropocene

Hand processed expired Kodak 7291, Camera: Beaulieu R16, Lens: Angenieux 12-120mm with +3 Diopter, Polarising filter for the clouds. Hand processed in C-41 chem using a Lomo UPB-1A tank. Still haven't mastered removal of the rem-jet anti-halation layer (thats all the white 'static' on the film). The film expired about 40 years ago.

Necrology

The faces of a 5:00 PM crowd descending via the Pan Am building escalators in one continuous shot. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces stare into the empty space, in the 5:00 PM tiredness and mechanical impersonality, like faces from the grave.

Zappa

With the help of more than 10,000 dedicated Zappa fans, this is the long-awaited definitive documentary project of Alex Winter documenting the life and career of enigmatic groundbreaking rock star Frank Zappa. Alex also utilizes in this picture thousands of hours of painstakingly digitized videos, photos, audio, writing, and everything in between from Zappa's private archives. These chronicles have never been brought to a public audience before, until now.

People on Paper

Americans are preoccupied with the news, but need an escape from many of the events reported in the news. These escapes in the past have included dime store novels. The most accessible of these escapes is what are known as the funny papers, the set of serialized comic strips that are included within many newspapers. They appeal to all socio-economic classes, and all ages. Some of the earliest known from the late 19th century include the Yellow Kid, Little Nemo, Happy Hooligan, the Katzenjammer Kids, Mutt & Jeff, and Bringing Up Father. Many cartoonists are seen in action. Some originated their characters, while others have taken over following the passing of the originator. The joy of many comic strips are the absurd and the fantastical, which are limited only by the imagination of the cartoonist. Others are grounded in reality, which add to their poignancy within the public mindset.