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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Flammes

Memories split in the space.

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.

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.

Un rêve

Experimental film by Patrick Bokanowski.

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.

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.

The Beach

Reworked and colored images of people playing at the seashore.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Dream Machine

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

Une visite au musée

Plot unavailable

Still Alive - Dramma Sul Monte Kenya

Plot unavailable

Into The Light

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Groenlandia - The Shark Tooth

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The Space: Theatre of Survival

When everything about you falls one man decides that theatre is the key, and the way to begin to unify a people. A film about the life and times of The Space theatre (a.k.a. 'The Space', 'Die Ruimte' in Afrikaans, and 'Indawo' in Xhosa).

Aitana Bonmatí

Plot unavailable

The Last Lioness: Birth of a Pride

A haunting call echoes across the Liuwa Plain. There is no answer, there hasn't been for years. She has no pride, no support - she alone must safeguard her own survival. Her name is Lady Liuwa, and she is the Last Lioness. Isolated by a scourge of illegal trophy hunting that wiped out the rest of her species in the region, Lady Liuwa is the only known resident lion surviving on Zambia's Liuwa Plain. For four years, cameraman Herbert Brauer watched her lonely life unfold, until, in her solitude, she reached out to him for companionship. But Herbert knows he is not the companion this lonely lioness needs - she should be amongst her own kind. Now, in May of 2009, plans for a male lion translocation have come through, and there is hope for ending her isolation. For the first time in more than five years, Lady Liuwa will no longer be the Last Lioness This is just a re-titled version of "The Last Lioness"

Pigeon People

Following the final race of the season, this eccentric bunch of pigeon fanciers explain the inner workings of their niche sport: pigeon racing.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

This film tries to blow the whistle on what it calls the biggest swindle in modern history: 'Man Made Global Warming'. Watch this film and make up your own mind.

Jago: A Life Underwater

Jago tells the story of an 80 year old sea nomad called Rohani who has spent his life plying the waters of South East Asia’s Coral Triangle. The story is told entirely from Rohani’s perspective, against the spectacular backdrop of the Togian Islands, and recreates events that capture the turning points in his life, as a hunter and as a man. We were able to bring Rohani’s past experiences to life by working closely with his family and friends in the village where he grew up. These are the people you see representing Rohani in the film at various stages in his life. Story telling is a big part of Bajau culture, and a way of preserving traditions through generations, so everyone was very enthusiastic about what we were trying to do and brought lots of ideas of their own, especially Rohani. Although he had never had a camera pointed at him, it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d sat around telling stories. We were just lucky that he let us capture it on film.

Louis Theroux: Savile

Sixteen years after his documentary When Louis Met Jimmy, Theroux seeks to understand how he was tricked by a man who became his friend.

Last Hijack

Documentary that follows the lives of two pirates and their community on the Somali coastline; what are the incentives of the pirates, why did they become pirates, how did they grow up in a country with political chaos, war and extreme poverty? The narrative structure is built around two interweaving story-lines; one depicting the "present", the daily lives of the pirates and their community, and the second in the "past", revealing through epic animation, the unfolding of a recent hijacking.

Oliver

A documentary about a gay nightclub performer with an especially lurid "Spider-man" act. Oliver is a female impersonator who supports his family by performing in Manila's gay bars.

Fenómeno Twin Melody

Plot unavailable

I Love You, East Garrison (A Video Essay by Haley Hoult)

Haley Hoult, a student of Est Harrison High, creates a sarcastic video essay about his school.

Gorgona

Inmates on the remote island of Gorgona, Europe's last agricultural penal colony. They farm the land, care for the animals, hoping for a second chance at life. Through a precise observation of the place and a select group of its people, the film invites viewers to reflect on the role of prison as punishment vs. rehabilitation.

The Hummingbird Effect

Costa Rica's motto is Pura Vida - Pure Life - and this deceptively small country is bursting with some of the most spectacular wildlife and pristine ecosystems in the world. All this diversity thrives, in part, thanks to one surprising little creature: hummingbirds. Venture across Costa Rica's wild and rugged landscapes, from volcanic peaks to coastal jungle to misty cloud forests and discover the nation's dazzling diversity of hummingbirds. Watch how these tiny birds play an outsize role in maintaining some of the richest and wildest environments on Earth, where a whole community of creatures, such as macaws and monkeys, enjoys The Hummingbird Effect.

Santa's Wild Home

Green lights dance across a star-filled sky, and snowflakes sparkle on the trees. It is little wonder Lapland is famous as a realm of elves and flying reindeer, the magical home of Santa Claus. This northernmost region of mainland Europe, however, is a real place, with real animals such as reindeer, Great Gray owls, wolverines, eagles, wolves, musk oxen and Brown bears who live out their lives in the tundra and forest.

Paris, années folles - De Montmartre à Montparnasse

Plot unavailable

That's It, That's All

Dedicated to everything snowboarding, Travis Rice and a dream team crew set out on a seek-and-destroy operation for the new zone, the new trick and the new perspective on the sport. Aspiring to bring you closer, the Hi Def, 35mm, super16 footage answers the question why Trice and his friends have poured blood, sweat, tears and soul into a simple thing like snowboarding.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

A homeless musician finds meaning in his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.

The Last Beekeeper

An intimate look at the struggles of three American beekeepers becomes a painful meditation on the devastating effects of economic and ecological change when a mysterious illness among the bees threatens both insects and businesses.

The Great Museum

This feature documentary portrays one of the most important museums in the world, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. It presents a unique look behind the scenes of this fascinating institution and encounters a number of charismatic protagonists and their working fields unfolding the museum’s special world – as an art institution as well a vehicle for state representation.

I Am FEMEN

Oxana is a woman, a fighter, an artist. As a teenager, her passion for iconography almost inspires her to join a convent, but in the end she decides to devote her talents to the Femen movement. With Anna, Inna and Sasha, she founds the famous feminist group which protests against the regime and which will see her leave her homeland, Ukraine, and travel all over Europe. Driven by a creative zeal and a desire to change the world, Oxana allows us a glimpse into her world and her personality, which is as unassuming, mesmerising and vibrant as her passionate artworks.

Babi Yar. Context

Nazi troops massacre 30,000 Jews over a three-day period in September 1941. Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv, Ukraine.

On the Come Up at the Source Awards

Three hip-hop lovin' gals from New York attempt to hustle their way into the sold-out Source Awards in this documentary that shows anything is possible if you put your mind - and body - to it. From stripping down for a skinny-dipping session in the pool of a four-star hotel, to exposing their charms in hopes of coaxing a free dinner out of a desperate diner, there's nothing these ladies won't do to make their dreams of mingling with the hip-hop elite come true.