Self-defense (2021)

The Role of Chance

"The Role of Chance" ("La part du hasard") focuses exclusively on drawing and painting techniques used by the painter Henri Dimier. Shot over several weeks in the same artist's studio, the film shows works in their different phases, processes rarely explained or little known. It also addresses many practical issues (choice of paper, pigment grinding, reports drawings, put the tiles, cliches, etc) as well as broader questions of method and inspiration (use of space, the role of contours, power of suggestion perspectives, use of random processes). Patrick Bokanowski sought with this film to restore the spirit of this teaching, showing how to bend a note or sometimes revealing an essential mystery of creation.

Moments choisis des Histoire(s) du cinéma

A very personal look at the history of cinema directed, written and edited by Jean-Luc Godard in his Swiss residence in Rolle for ten years (1988-98); a monumental collage, constructed from film fragments, texts and quotations, photos and paintings, music and sound, and diverse readings; a critical, beautiful and melancholic vision of cinematographic art. (Abridged version of the original collection of eight short films).

By the Lake

Bokanowski returns to the complex - and mind-bending - optical array of pinholes, mirrors, prisms, and refractive substrates of his earlier film, La Plage to create the whimsical and playful Au bord du lac. The film is composed of mundane, everyday scenes of recreation and leisure on an idyllic, sunny day at a park that overlooks a lake - rowing a boat, playing a game of volleyball, rollerskating, bicycling, reading a newspaper, sunbathing, riding on horseback, or strolling on the promenade - shot through optical distortions to create fractured and knotted images that resemble embellished, gothic fairytale illustrations or appear to resolve into morphing, geometric patterns of fluid motion. Evoking the vibrant colors and sun-soaked palette of an invigorated Vincent van Gogh in Arles, Bokanowski transforms the quotidian into an infinitely mesmerizing dynamic kaleidoscope of shape-shifting textures and self-reconstituting objects of organic, abstract art.

Reflections of Nature

Reflections of Nature is an experimental short film, touching on the relationship man has with mother nature, and how they coexist in this ever changing modern world.

Solar Beats

Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions. French filmmaker Patrick Bokanowski’s work is hard to classify - and all the richer for it. Together with his wife Michèle, whose musique concrète compositions form the basis of the sound design, Bokanowski offers a prolonged, dense and visually visceral experience of the kind that is rare in cinema today. Difficult to define and locate, its strangeness is quite unique.

The Sacred Laptop

A man named Cukik trapped in a paradoxical dream about the man he is watching on his laptop. This madness was contagious even to the mysterious man in his dreams.

The Dream Machine

A woman experiments with a Dreamachine, hoping to escape trouble. Within the light and dark of the machine, violent emotions awaken.

Janapada

Rudra has come back one morning, has return to his friend Saruar's home. He had disappeared from home leaving no cue, a year ago. Saruar first came to know about Rudra's disappearance in Rudra's mother's call. Then he had gone to Rudra's home and saw how his agitated parents and elder brother were tracing out reasons of his desertion. Rudra do not answer any of these questions of Saruar now. He become immutable and eloquent. He only replies that he is tired and cinema experience Rudra's exhaustion from this world's journey in a non-narrative way. Rudra's consciousness become aware of a bigger crisis. Rudra just express interest to go to sleep for a while.

Soar

Choreography of an imaginary journey.

The Achalunés

Organic forms are beating and resorbing, reflections dance to the rhythm of Henk BADINGS 'music, circles of light flash like disturbing eyes, perpetual metamorphoses evoke a great living and throbbing organism.

The Angel

The climbing of an immense staircase made up of the most varied stairs. Symbolic scenes occur on different levels where characters seem to be prisoners of their deeds and of their own folly. The steep staircase leads little by little towards the zones of great light where human beings and nonhuman beings meet.

The Woman Who Powders Herself

A study of human anxieties about beauty, youth and objectification.

Une visite au musée

Plot unavailable

Le Canard à l'orange

A housewife is preparing a duck à l'orange in her kitchen. But the reluctant bird tries to escape from her but the woman manages to recaptures it and plucks it savagely. Once the duck is put in the oven, an alligator unexpectedly appears in the kitchen, threatening the cook.

A Solar Dream

Behold the struggle between light and dark, the two principles that are at the very heart of the cinematic deed. A Solar Dream takes the seventh art’s ability to generate imaginary and phantasmagorical worlds to the limit, multiplied here by Michèle Bokanowski’s enveloping music. A precious plastic and sonic gem.

The Beach

Reworked and colored images of people playing at the seashore.

Breakfast

Relentlessly reworking ‘real’ images, using techniques borrowed from painting and animated film, Patrick Bokanowski is an author of stature, capable of creating an insane and cataclysmic universe of unquestionable beauty.

Aniquilação

An experiment on language and its inability to contain reality, "Aniquilação" is a collage made with sounds, images and words. From a continuous pulse, noises and sound traces form a cadence that merges with landscapes and details of a world full of things, colors, phenomena and creatures. The language is represented by scraps of word-search magazines, of which words, crosswords and riddles insist on defining and conceptualizing the things, sounds and images, which creates a gradual saturation that leads to the complete abstraction of everything. Concept, images and editing by Xavier Braun, soundtrack and sound design by Victor Rodrigues – as QORPO. Brasil, 2021

L'indomptable

2018 short film by Patrick Bokanowski

Living In a Daydream

A film about a person who is remembering the outside world when he is trapped in restrictions during the covid-19 outbreak.

Vers Syracuse

Dreamlike sea bathing and horse rides. Colors take the plunge, the horizon blazes, breaking waves pound endlessly. A strange journey through depths of sound and vision.

Hum Drum

A painter in his studio: his pencils, brushes, tubes, table, easel and drawings set themselves in motion in an explosion of colors and flashes of light.

Flammes

Memories split in the space.

Ballerina Boys

Discover Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (The Trocks), an all-male company that for 45 years has offered audiences their passion for ballet classics mixed with exuberant comedy. With every step they poke fun at their strictly gendered art form.

Argentina del Bicentenario. Las voces y los silencios.

Plot unavailable

No Goodbyes

Love in a concentration camp. A young Jewish gay man, Otto, is protected by a "kapo" (a fellow prisoner) and an SS guard who unexpectedly ends up saving his life.

Spreadsheet Champions

Spreadsheet Champions follows six students as they put their Excel-lent skills to the ultimate test in Microsoft's most prestigious and difficult category. A heartwarming tale of formulas and friendship, Spreadsheet Champions reveals the far-reaching influence of spreadsheets in today’s world and the power of young minds to shape our future.

A Modern Man

You could be forgiven for mistaking Charlie Siem for James Bond. Whether he's driving an orange Porsche to his cliff-top Monaco mansion, ordering martinis or looking suave in a designer suit, he is a man on a mission. It isn't to hunt down SPECTRE, but to find perfection in everything he does. Whether it's performing on stage, recording albums, or selecting a suit, Charlie demands the best, of himself and others. Despite an entourage dubbed ‘Charlie's Angels', he's lonesome, and complains that people can't relate to him. Danish filmmaker Eva Mulvad, with patience and panache, delves into this life of privilege to find commonalities of ambition and desire.

What We Started

Bert Marcus and Cyrus Saidi present an informed and absorbing exploration of the history of EDM, boosted by an energetic soundtrack and anchored by the personal stories of legendary DJ Carl Cox and superstar newcomer Martin Garrix. Insights from numerous other DJs and musical talents like Moby, David Guetta, Paul Oakenfold and Usher help tell the often oppositional tales of old school vs. new school and mainstream vs. underground.

One Direction: Ruling The World

Documentary / Music/Musical - Harry, Liam, Zayn, Niall and Louis continue to take the music world by storm . This program takes us through their incredible journey from 5 unknown X Factor hopefuls to worldwide superstars.