Athabasca (2019)

The Shining: Forwards and Backwards

An experimental film comprised of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING played forwards and backwards at the same time on the same screen, creating bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities

The Big Departure

This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...

House

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Man with a Movie Camera

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Beyond Fear

A martial arts expert turned wilderness guide has to defend her tour group against two killers out to retrieve an incriminating videotape.

Meshes of the Afternoon

A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.

Wildness of Waves

An audio-visual installation by Helena Wittmann and Nika Son, based on the interaction of the shape and the sound from waves. The delicate image-installation arouses an awe of audiovisual senses to the audience. The shape of waves, the pitch of sound, and the innumerably changing waves made by screens of two different sizes, create the message of formation, evolution and extinction in the audio-visual, synesthetic sense.

Dounreay: The Atomic Dream

Documentary telling the story of the rise and fall of a daring experiment into atomic energy as the history of the Dounreay fast reactor is charted by the pioneers involved.

The Virtues of Solitude

In the future, a second great flood covers most of the known world. Country borders collapse and language barrier disappear. All salvageable books are taken to a deep underground vault facility for protection. Run by priests, the facility is called The Stacks. As Olivia wanders the facility she discovers that she may not be alone and that a dark part of her past may have followed her into the narrow corridors of this inescapable purgatory.

GIRLZ NIGHT

A negative free and playful sitcom is hijacked by an entity daunting a pig mask, as it tears apart the mindless glee hiding the real horrors.

The Game

In this child's game, a live-action boy and girl draw characters and compete who is better. The girl draws a flower and the boy draws a car that runs it over. Then a drawn lion chases a drawn girl, until it all becomes frightfully serious.

Chado

During a long hot summer in the forest, Child is forced to grow up. First her Dog becomes ill, then out of the blue her Mother returns to their dacha with a new lover. Child's world is turned upside down. With each unsettling event, her visions become stronger to the point where she decides on a dangerous decision. Chado combines digital animation and Risograph printing to transform a coming of age tale into an enchanting short film.

SEED: The Untold Story

A film about the importance of heirloom seeds to the agriculture of the world, focusing on seed keepers and activists from around the world.

Magueyes

Experimental filmmaker Rubén Gámez explores the iconography of the maguey plant in Mexican cinematic history.

The 99 Names of God

Arab-American filmmaker Yumna Al-Arashi embraces the rhythmic rituals that have run alongside Islamic tradition throughout the centuries in this surreal and poetic short film. Piecing together old and new, Al-Rashi's dream-like imagery breathes fresh air to a subject hardly seen in positive light.

La deuxième femme

Over the course of more than fifteen years, Clémenti films a series of intimate diaries, starting from daily encounters. In La deuxième femme, we see Bulle Ogier and Viva, Nico and Tina Aumont, Philippe Garrel and Udo Kier, a performance by Béjart, a piece by Marc’O, concerts by Bob Marley and Patti Smith (not always recognisable)... It’s like a maelstrom of psychedelic images that are passed through a particle accelerator.

Patagonia Treasure Trail

A large commercial mining company has claimed the Patagonia Mountains, and the environmentalist mother wants to enjoy the area before the digging begins. The daughter devastated by her recent job loss from the Albuquerque Symphony finds her mother’s political correctness infuriating. When a magical and breathtaking encounter occurs with an endangered animal, hope emerges as they realize their discovery may be a possible key to saving the environmentally sensitive area.

Chinese Viola

The rare short film presents a curious dialogue between filmmaker Julio Bressane and actor Grande Otelo, where, in a mixture of decorated and improvised text, we discover a little manifesto to the Brazilian experimental cinema. Also called "Belair's last film," Chinese Viola reveals the first partnership between photographer Walter Carvalho and Bressane.

Confession

A filmmaker recalls his youth in the town of Onomichi. In the present, he shoots a film in Onomichi alongside his cast, crew and family.

The Shore That Falls

La orilla que se Abisma is conceived as a journey, a trip along a river. Like rivers, like all journeys, the film has meanders, small riverbeds, detours and moments of rest.

The Bomb

Filmmakers use archival footage and animation to explore the culture surrounding nuclear weapons, the fascination they inspire and the perverse appeal they still exert.

Dog Star Man

Experimental film following a cycle of seasons as well as the stretch of a single day as a man and his dog slowly ascend a mountain.

The Five Obstructions

Lars von Trier challenges his mentor, filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to remake Leth’s 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each with a different set of bizarre and challenging rules.

Kong: Return to the Jungle

Hunters transport a great ape from his island habitat to a zoo in New York.

O'er the Land

A meditation on freedom and technological approaches to manifest destiny.

Amazonia, an Encounter with the Guardians of the Rainforest

With a hybrid style blending political essay and road movie, this documentary by Santiago Bertolino takes us into the heart of the Amazonian reality. Following Marie-Josée Béliveau, an ecologist and ethnogeographer, they journey together along the 4000 km from the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil to one of its sources in Ecuador where they meet with the guardians of the forest. As a result, we witness powerful and spontaneous testimonies from local communities who are doing everything to preserve what remains of their lands, which are disappearing due to the inexorable advance of Western modernity.

The Focus

The Focus is the film about easy death on the Mediterranean sun.

Hinterlands

Through a structuralist and simultaneously ambiguous form, the image's reality treads closer to the abstract, leaving the sunset and trees behind. As we enter the image's gloaming, it reveals its true eye: reality's pure haptic energy, where there is nothing but sonorous light, and the dregs of the Unknown.

La Maison en Petits Cubes

La Maison en Petits Cubes tells the story of a grandfather's memories as he adds more blocks to his house to stem the flooding waters.