The First Light Show (2024)

Barreira

Plot unavailable

Death in Vegas

The life, death, and resurrection of Elvis Presley, as he is transformed from man into product. Composed primarily of an illustrated biography filmed with a microscope camera.

Mother of Fog

In what could be considered a follow up to Al Qasimi’s 2020 work Mother of Fire, she once again invokes the figure of the jinn (spirits in Islamic mythology) to explore the ghosts of British imperialism in the UAE. As its spectre lingers on the horizon, two teenage girls seek to liberate a pirate damned to spend purgatory on a site now being developed into a hotel. Originally commissioned for Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Al Qasimi entangles historical narratives with contemporary notions of piracy. In examining how it has been historically and culturally represented, new perspectives of old mythographies come into focus. (Myriam Mouflih)

Woolgathering

A collection of interwoven images are threaded together by a string of unspecified women who roam their dreamscape which they are unable to escape. They are displaced, belonging to no particular point in time or place, and a disoriented sense of self pervades. Together, the film becomes a quietly throbbing organism of reality and unreality, and the gaps between an impending present and a perpetual past are frail.

Blue Bedroom

June has had the same dream every night for the past three months. Lorelai is worried something bad is going to happen. Things get weird.

Something Walks in the Woods

A viral video shows a mysterious figure walking along the edge of the woods each day, and filmmaker Bill Howard sets out to spend a night there to find out exactly what it is.

Men in Black II

Kay and Jay reunite to provide our best, last and only line of defense against a sinister seductress who levels the toughest challenge yet to the MIB's untarnished mission statement – protecting Earth from the scum of the universe. It's been four years since the alien-seeking agents averted an intergalactic disaster of epic proportions. Now it's a race against the clock as Jay must convince Kay – who not only has absolutely no memory of his time spent with the MIB, but is also the only living person left with the expertise to save the galaxy – to reunite with the MIB before the earth submits to ultimate destruction.

Dogville

When a beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.

An Asian Ghost Story

A cinematic and conceptually inventive film that explores the haunting memories of Asia’s late 20th-century modernization through the large-scale export of wigs during the Cold War. Yet, in every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past.

just a fleeting memory.

The desolation of vast retail spaces is not so far off from the decay of one's memories.

Alchimie au rhodium

Plot unavailable

Caterpillar

A half-hour experimental film that shows Fukui moving towards cyberpunk imagery in a manner similar to Tsukamoto, featuring industrial locations, a malfunctioning cyborg/android and a hulking metallic ‘caterpillar’ that stalks characters.

The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes

1982. 15'50". A French black and white experimental film. Bloody, violent, and disturbing. Full production credits unconfirmed.

In The Pines

This work re-examines the relationship between the elements that make up the quality of space, namely: "subject" and "object", "organic" and "mechanical", "reality" and "representation", "wholeness" and "partiality", " determinacy” and “indeterminacy”, “visibility” and “invisibility”, “natural” and “non-natural”.

I Should Call Her

An overly anxious man mysteriously finds himself unable to leave a bathroom.

Burning Lights

A series of lights flashed on screen in the form of 36 pictures and 3 videos, all contributing to a pattern.

Nossos Filhos Estão Destinados a Morte

Plot unavailable

Leda + Swans

“Leda + Swans” depicts an infernal, mythic birth of cinema, dredging the violence and horror from Wallace McCutcheon’s comic short film “Photographing a Female Crook” (1904). Leda, who may or may not be a falsely accused young woman, is brought in for a mugshot by two officers. She first attempts to avoid the camera’s gaze, and, when overpowered and manhandled, contorts her face to ruin the photograph. However, her small rebellion proves futile; she was already being recorded, objectified, mapped, and co-opted by the Godhead of the director. As her body and image are repurposed and transmuted ad infinitum, the filmic universe also explodes into a supernova. What is born out of this suffering and manipulation is another example of our sublime medium and modern muse. She will not be last the Leda, and she may not even be the first. Who is the guilty party here? Is beauty a chimera in traditional cinema? Has the ephemeral cinema of the attractions and distractions era gone anywhere?

Queens of the Qing Dynasty

A suicidal teen develops a candid rapport with the student from Shanghai assigned to watch her in hospital. A nightly exchange of secrets, text messages and possessions quickly expands the boundaries of their relationship and alters their inner chemistry.

[W I N G S O F L O V E]

An experimental short film about becoming lost in the hypnotic pull of the city, set to music.

EGGspression

Egglantine loves salt on her eggs. Eggbert prefers pepper. Who blinks first in this playful Easter ritual?

The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight

A gang of leather-clad, powerful women take over a traditionally male domain, and hairspray, eyeliner, and bare flesh are on full display in Beth B’s music video for the Arthur Baker–produced club hit from synthpop band Dominatrix. Banned at the time of release, it was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art.

Dreamed to sea

A monster that lives in the darkest part of the sea, a dreamlike representation of the journey towards the depths of something that one wants to avoid and that is finally faced.

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.

The Blue Light

Hans the farmer is drawn into war as a soldier. Returning from the front, having been defrauded of his pay by his own king, he makes his way home. On his trip, he encounters a witch who asks him to fetch the light from a spring. He keeps it when the witch tries to deceive him and he discovers her foul magic. When the light is ignited, a little man appears who must serve the owner of the light, but it only has power if the owner has faith in himself. His courage bolstered, Hans goes to the king once more to demand his wages be paid.

Resonances

Plot unavailable

What's In a Number

National insurance made amusing by the eccentric Richard Massingham.