looking backward to look forward (2024)

Seagull dog child

A seagull, a dog, a child, a call to prayer; Looking through a window, the corridor of a train, the wall of a medina; Everyday life is momentarily paused through the eyes of a stranger in an unknown land.

¿Por qué la gallina cruzó el camino?

A hen questions the meaning of her life on a farm.

Las Preguntas que Perdimos

Plot unavailable

Dream of the Wild Horses

The horses in Denys Colomb Daunant’s dream poem are the white beasts of the marshlands of the Camargue in South West France. Daunant was haunted by these creatures. His obsession was first visualized when he wrote the autobiographical script for Albert Lamorisse’s award-winning 1953 film White Mane. In this short the beauty of the horses is captured with a variety of film techniques and by Jacques Lasry’s beautiful electronic score.

Jo

Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike is Zefier's third film.

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.

Ventana en Carrer de Badajoz

Sara and Alberto spend their days at home. They look out the window and watch: spring is approaching and the sun is setting later and later. Alberto entertains himself by playing with the light, the shadows and the nooks and crannies they leave on the living room. Sara goes out on the balcony in the evenings and examines the neighborhood with her camera. When they are in bed, they talk about what worries them. About job expectations. About being creative and why keep trying, if someone else has done it before you. About living in confinement, but at the same time, realizing that things haven't changed as much as they seem.

Congregation

People leave (and return) from a church after Sunday Mass more than 120 years ago. The creaking of time and the darkness behind the ancient ritual of praying for our existence dance eternally, like a river of souls. Liz Taylor's visualy noisy reinterpretation of the film "Congregation Leaving St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral, Dublin" (1901) by the Edwardian filmmaking duo James Kenyon and Sagar Mitchell.

Adagio

«I often have dreams. Careless dreams. When the sun was shining. It was calm and quiet. And a peaceful sky overhead.» An experimental musical film on the theme of love. Memories of the past excite the imagination and make you evaluate what is happening in the present in a new way.

Stained Night

The light and the noise stain the dark night.

The Grey Machine

In 1921, an untitled text reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's writings was discovered in Boston. It was made by unknown creators, perhaps a techno-spiritualist cult of enthusiasts, for an automaton, that would attempt to model Poe's mind.

Quando o sol se pôr, o amanhã será tão incerto quanto antes

On a sunny day, three individuals reflect on the space they inhabit and the people around them.

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.

Still Nature

A woman, an artist and dancer, sets out to reclaim her childhood memories shared with her late grandmother—a bond forged through their mutual passion for painting. Through the delicate recovery of her grandmother’s floral works, she engages in a silent dialogue with the gestures of an ancient practice. She conjures a fictional exchange, a spellbinding journey between dimensions. This intimate quest transcends disciplines, seeking intergenerational connection and answers.

Broadway by Light

An experimental meditation on Times Square's marquees and iconic advertising that captures the concurrently seedy and dazzling aspects of New York's Great White Way.

In the Labyrinth

"Labyrinth" is a groundbreaking multi-screen 45-minute presentation produced for Chamber III of the Labyrinth at Expo 67 in Montreal, using 35 mm and 70 mm film projected simultaneously on multiple screens. A film without commentary in which multiple images, sometimes complementary, sometimes contrasting, draw the viewer through the different stages of a labyrinth. The tone of the film moves from great joy to wrenching sorrow; from stark simplicity to ceremonial pomp. It is life as it is lived by the people of the world, each one, as the film suggests, in a personal labyrinth. Re-released in 1979 as "In the Labyrinth" by the National Film Board of Canada in a 21-minute single projection format.

Running Fields II

Fifteen images of a camera running in a park and in obscurity searching the space of light through distorsion and the sensory of rapid motion.

Don Barry: A Quixotic Exploration

Amid Guanajuato's vibrant streets, an aging filmmaker becomes a modern Don Quixote, joined by a spirited young animator as his loyal Sanchia. Together, they navigate themes of mortality, unfulfilled dreams, and the fragile line between madness and clarity, uncovering the transformative power of light, art, and the landscapes that shape our souls.

After Hours

Something strange and unpredictable takes inthe mysteriously vacant rooms of Berlin’s infamous Techno club Berghain. A group of wild animals occupy the monumental spaces of the former power station. We explore the building together with the animals and experience its dimensions from a new, nonhuman perspective. The brutality of the industrial architecture is confronted with the beauty of these shy creatures.

Dancing not to be dead

Some spaces draw attention, as if they evoke something that’s about to happen. These are the places where we escape when we dream or die. The only thing that exists is time; we wait for the moment to arrive.

Todos tienen algo Desierto

Documentary-essay short film about a inner/outter trip to the flowery desert in the north of Chile. A student film by Gabriel Lizama AKA Liz Taylor.

The Image Book

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.

Quando a noite ainda não existia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a trans body dreams of the birth of night.

Lumière!

A collection of restored prints from the Lumière Brothers.

Projections

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.

Those Who Wander

What are they? What do they seek? When all the lights go out, they will wander. And you will never see them.

Godard Cinema

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

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.

Fragments of a Revolution (Sahneye Tarikh)

An experimental film about narrations of two journal photos from Iran's revolution in 1979.

Jesus Is King

Filmed during summer 2019, Jesus Is King brings Kanye West’s famed Sunday Service to life in the Roden Crater, visionary artist James Turrell’s never-before-seen installation in Arizona’s Painted Desert. This one-of-a-kind experience features songs arranged by West in the gospel tradition along with new music from his forthcoming album.

Variations on Iserois Landscapes

Thirty-three shots based on the landscapes of the Isère region near Vienne. A work of observation on light, the dilation of Time, wind, calm and storm.

That Child with AID$

That Child with AID$ tells the story of Brazilian advocate and artist Lili Nascimento, who was born with HIV in 1990. Lili has worked to expand narratives about living with HIV beyond the limited images and ideologies that permeate the AIDS industry.

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).

The Phantom Liberty

Art is a freedom for those who make it and for those who look at it. A freedom that ends when the violence starts. In Mexico, every day eleven women are murdered and in more than ninety percent of the cases impunity prevails. Through the testimony of seven women, this documentary essay reflects on femicide and the destruction that this leaves a country and its culture. Because in times of horror, art cannot be the same, every time a woman is murdered, a museum or a library collapses in the world.