The Bek Show: End of Civilization (2024)

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.

Theophany

a young timid boy who is doubtful about faith and religion is beaten by curiosity and ends up wandering into a peculiar church and encountering a celestial yet godlike girl.

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.

House

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Money, Fascism, and Some Sort of Acid

A collection of five short films tackling the military industrial complex, the rise of fascism, political polarization and various issues in modern society.

2bhk

2 flatmates unfold the layers of their relationship on a random Sunday afternoon after they encounter a power cut.

SIN PIEDAD

Under the relentless sun, a killer stalks through the mountains, where the innocence of a young couple becomes prey. With no shadows to hide their fate, the hunt is a macabre game in broad daylight, where fear is not hidden in the darkness, but burns with the rawness of the unperturbed noon.

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.

Flaming Creatures

Filmmaker and artist Jack Smith described his own film as a “comedy set in a haunted movie studio.” Flaming Creatures begins humorously enough with several men and women, mostly of indeterminate gender, vamping it up in front of the camera and participating in a mock advertisement for an indelible, heart-shaped brand of lipstick. However, things take a dark, nightmarish turn when a transvestite chases, catches and begins molesting a woman. Soon, all of the titular “creatures” participate in a (mostly clothed) orgy that causes a massive earthquake. After the creatures are killed in the resulting chaos, a vampire dressed like an old Hollywood starlet rises from her coffin to resurrect the dead. All ends happily enough when the now undead creatures dance with each other, even though another orgy and earthquake loom over the end title card.

Shearing Animation

An abstract animated film inspired by the work of jazz musician Chico Hamilton.

Drums West

This newly rediscovered short was created in Jim's home studio in Bethesda, MD around 1961. It is one of several experimental shorts inspired by the music of jazz great Chico Hamilton. At the end, in footage probably shot by Jerry Juhl, Jim demonstrates his working method.

Ray's World

A guy named Ray tries to go to sleep and a sasquatch gets into funky business.

A Pattern

A man starts following a pattern.

Revolution or Bust

A surreal music video where a pop-up world of greed, rebellion, and revolution unfolds as cherubs, a devil, and a modern-day Jesus clash in a satirical battle for justice.

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.

Declan Sennott’s A Fair Trade

In this black comedy crime epic, eighth grader Tommy Uris is pushed into a teenage drug dealing business run by his two classmates Frank Newton and Patrick Reynolds after walking in on a drug deal between them. As their business falls apart, so does their trust for each other, and they need to either resolve, or kill each other in the process.

Possibly in Michigan

A musical horror story about two young women who are stalked through a shopping mall by a cannibal. He follows them home, and here the victims become the aggressors.

Lohengrin

A short experimental film shot on Super 8, inspired by the music of Richard Wagner.

Cobweb

In the 1970s, Director Kim is obsessed by the desire to re-shoot the ending of his completed film Cobweb, but chaos and turmoil grip the set with interference from the censorship authorities, and the complaints of actors and producers who can't understand the re-written ending. Will Kim be able to find a way through this chaos to fulfill his artistic ambitions and complete his masterpiece?

Nocturne

A musical fantasia on religion and the nature of exploitation.

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.

Happy End

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

Plague Mass

A conceptual live concert by Diamanda Galás, "Plague Mass" continues the themes of the suffering and misery of the infected found in her "Masque of the Red Death" trilogy.

EGGspression

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

Il telefonetto

A killer hates and punishes people who are using the small phone.

Torpore internazionale

In a country house a patriarch lords over his community made up of a tired woman and a boy in the midst of an economic-adolescent crisis. The guest of the facility is Dr. Girarda, a chemist extradited from Poland.

I’d like that corner seat over there

An omnibus film based on Kim Oki's album Hip Hop Retreat. Twenty characters share the same table at different times, in different emotional states, each with their own story. Shot in one day, edited in one day.

A Heist Film

In a local cafeteria, an unlikely trio of friends argue about how to rob the bank from across the street. It all changes when the waitress who serves them discovers their plans.

Revés

The portrait of a world in reverse, a society of different tonalities and shades. Aspiration as a refuge from systematization.

I Am Your Grandma

An autobiographical video diary log recorded by Jillian Mayer for her unborn grandchildren.

Desert Vows

Hunter, a bride-to-be, feels overworked and unappreciated. Her artistic spirit is squelched by the shallow corporate world she’s in and she has had enough. Unfortunately, she feels as if she can’t turn to Ian, her commercial executive fiancé, for solace. As her wedding day approaches, Hunter and her three bridesmaids embark on a road trip to Las Vegas for one last hoorah together. As the girls venture from the city, they decompress and let their personal barriers fall. An impromptu sightseeing excursion into the desert leads to a clash of anxieties and attitudes between Hunter, the bridesmaids, and her fiancé as Hunter searches for the road that’s right for her.

It's a Mind Game

In a dimly lit room, two boys engage in an intense chess match. As tension rises and strategies unfold, the game becomes a battleground of wits and wills, leading to an unexpected climax that goes beyond the boundaries of the board.

What's In a Number

National insurance made amusing by the eccentric Richard Massingham.

115

A girl trapped in a time loop leaves an AI replica to relive her final days. Glitches and burned-in subtitles reveal the machine’s fractured view, until the loop shifts to the real her — blurring the line between memory, code, and consciousness. "Told from the memory stream of a trapped A.I., the film visually glitches as it attempts to 'escape,' including encoded flashes of an 'ESC' key."

Il Piantone

An electoral campaign is underway in an imaginary country. Two leaders fight over the voters, who cry in exasperation. The first leader is fat and whiny, the second smiling and aloof. A man with a laptop computer and a teenager with a stony face and muscular body look on as the political battle unfolds. An aggressive woman removes herself from the melancholy scene. After the victory of democratic optimism, the two observers kill the leader, who dies with a smile on his lips. Civil war breaks out.

Hai Mangiato?

A mother feeds her son to the point of possessing him.

Different Love

Max Devereaux and Suko Pyramid documentary about the making of their first three albums together as a duo and the story of their inspiring, international collaboration. Produced entirely remotely, featuring never-before-seen photos, videos and audio as well as interviews with close collaborators from all over the world.

First Drafts: The Outcasts

What if you rediscovered the script you wrote when you were 12? And what if you performed it with real actors, without changing a word? In this unique comedy, actors faithfully bring their director's hilariously bad childhood script to life, while their "Teacher" Michael Smallwood uproariously reacts to the chaos.