Chantal Akerman: Her First Look Behind the Camera (2023)

Cormorant

A 16mm experimental short film loosely following a cormorant as it attempts to dry its wings.

Nexum

Questions how we as individuals are psychologically relying on our inhabit spaces and how we as society are influencing and being influenced by our surroundings.

Black Box Investigations

Cracking open the human-camera body.

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.

Paint Showers

Cosmos of paint unleash a storm of color.

Ophelia

Plot unavailable

Escargots

An adaptation of a children's poem called Chanson des escargots qui vont à l'enterrement by Jacques Prévert, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California.

It’s Only a Film

Bobby breadcrumb lives a terrible life of hitting his head on doorways, running out of milk, and slipping on banana peels. In an effort to find meaning and change the script of his life, he journeys beyond the fourth wall to fight against the powers that be.

Sea of Glass

The creation of an infinite space. Light modulations over water surfaces, conjugating into multiple alterations. Time and light being reshaped through a liquid lens. The illusion of a starry night turns into a sea “roofed over by rainbows.”

Circles

Using the opening paragraphs of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay of the same name as a point of departure, Circles employs lofi environmental textures to explore concepts surrounding circularity, sight, and the passage of time. Its world is flickering in and out of existence. It begins with footage of recognizable spaces and objects and gradually transitions into ever more manipulated, glitchy and transparently artificial and abstracted images. Textual interludes put the film in conversation with the viewer, contextualizing its images and their aged digital patina.

Acoustic Ocean

Acoustic Ocean is an artistic exploration of the sonic ecology of marine life in the North Atlantic. Located on the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway, the video centers on the performance of a marine-biologist diver who is using a life-size model of a submersible equipped with all sorts of hydrophones and recording devices. In this science-fictional quest, her task is to sense the submarine space for acoustic and bioluminescent forms of expression.

Cochlea

Plot unavailable

Memory

Memory is a collaboration with musician Noah Lennox (Panda Bear), exploring the relationship between a musician and filmmaker and their personal reflection on memories. From Super 8 home movies and entirely handmade, this film explores familiar memories, the present moment combined with past experiences and how it all seems to evade from our present memory.

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?

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.

Ground Control

A journey to an unknown star, a children's theatre play, an untalented writer and the fear of becoming the worst version of oneself. A mixture of live-action footage and animated scenes. A stream of (un)conscious stereotypes.

Yo, Diablo

Joey works as a waiter for a hedonistic community of summer holiday makers in a small Mediterranean paradise. It is unclear if their exaggerated behaviors are due to the fact that the summer is coming to an end or if its just the last of their summers.

October Is Yours

A man in distress.

Rift

Daniela (24) is a ghost in pain. Her life ended suddenly and painfully, leaving her friend and roommate, Mónica (22) alone in their shared apartment in Santiago, Chile. Daniela feels her frustration grow within her, as she fears that her time in limbo will never end.

Panoramic Images of a Loving Home

A documentary short created by Olivia Lancaster while moving into a new home, 08/31/23.

SHIFTING VISIONS

SHIFTING VISIONS is a video essay that revolves around the transition between the different stages of human consciousness. From the most intense state of full attention to the most abstract and dreamlike state, passing through all its nuances. We know that the mind remains a mystery to science, but, through combining neuroscientific theory and personal perceptions, we represent these mental dynamics transferred to images, sounds and metaphors. We thoroughly analyse each of these stages to translate concepts and create audiovisual imaginaries through symbolic mental limbos. A piece that drags the viewer on an inner journey to their own lucidity.

Seance of the Past

A person spends most of their life mourning the things they have lost, unable to move on. They frequent a silent but helpful medium and embark on a spiritual journey where they linger among their past lives.

Ego

The permanence of awareness and the transient nature of ego. An external look into an internal awakening. The stark realization, the sudden death, and the everlasting peace.

Dirt

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.

Fungi

As he falls down the spiral of personal obsession; a delusional mycologist finds himself in the midst of seeking the unattainable. Morals won't play a role in his relentless pursuit of transforming his being into fungus.

Seven Heavens

With enough force, will, and determination, rivers can flow in reverse. But the truth of the water is revealed where it meets the sky. This trance-inducing film was produced in a collaboration with Chicago’s Fifth House Ensemble; a modular feature film designed to be in conversation with seven works by some of America’s greatest living composers.

Mother of the World

Six million tons, suspended by the slightest gesture. Mother of the World presents a series of brief vignettes of Cairo just prior to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. These fragmented scenes choreograph class structure and foreign influence into an intimate, poetic view of a nation about to change.

Giri Chit

GIRI CHIT tells a tale of the subtle trace of irreconcilable worlds. A worker driving a mobile sweeper in hypnotic circles across an already immaculate surface. The high drama of cosplay aficionados clamoring to be seen. A cast of thousands toiling hundreds of feet above the street. Giri translates as ‘duty’ in Japanese, but the concept is in fact far more complicated. Giri is a sort of interpersonal political capital that informs careers, family relations, and much more. Its presence and flow is palpable in Japan, where this film was shot. A “giri chit” then may be a hypothetical voucher for this intangible flow (with a tip of the cap to Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”). Selected Screenings and Awards: DaVinci Film Festival (Best Experimental Film), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Dallas Videofest, ICDOCS Film Festival, NewFilmmakers at Anthology Film Archives, Oxford Film Festival, Director’s Lounge Berlin

Darwin's Darlings

Standing near the reptile section in a zoo for 26 minutes we can learn a lot about the animals on both sides of the separating glass.

Made of Air

A dream lament for a drowned world. Filmed in London, Zurich, San Francisco, Berkeley and Napa. Music by Grouper.

What Humans See As Blood Jaguars See As Chicha

In the rural desert of Bolivia, where the most important presence is the wind moving between papa flowers and animals, the people who harvest the land, those who built the ancient artifacts and sacred objects and the musicians who play moseñada – songs linked to the first products of the harvest – on the streets of the city have one point in common: labor. With a successful inclusion of stories of enchanted lakes, legends that pass from mouth to mouth – or from orality to audiovisual, in this case – and give a fantastic aura to those lands, Luciana Decker Orozco not only manages to capture life without oscillations . field, but resorts to the incessant movement of images and sound accompaniment to define a sensory and transcendental experience for the viewer.

Digest Diversity

Experimental short-film made by brazilian students about the trópicalia and cinema novo movement. The narrative revolves around the song Géleia Geral from the album Tropicália ou Panis Et Circensis and also around the political, artistical and social time from that period.