Answering the Sun (2023)

Stellar

This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.

Drizzle in Johnson

A scientist obsessively seeking the answers of the universe is thrust into a mind-bending odyssey of grotesqueries and genitalia.

Mothlight

Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.

Eye Myth

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Trade Tattoo

Trade Tattoo went even further than Rainbow Dance in its manipulation of the Gasparcolor process. The original black and white footage consisted of outtakes from GPO Film Unit documentaries such as Night Mail. Lye transformed this footage in what has been described as the most intricate job of film printing and color grading ever attempted. Animated words and patterns combine with the live-action footage to create images as complex and multi-layered as a Cubist painting. Music was provided by the Cuban Lecuona Band. With its dynamic rhythms, the film seeks (in Lye’s words) to convey “a romanticism about the work of the everyday in all walks of life."

sfumato

Derived from an installation, an asymmetrical orchestration of "motion paintings" pushing the limits of abstraction in the digital age.

By Winds and Tides

Exploring the conscious, the unconscious and the self, By Winds and Tides takes a deep experimental dive into the birth of an idea—how it takes shape, how it is released. An allegorical quest, the film combines images and words into a singular sigh.

Orbit

The sun’s energy circulates throughout the earth, feeding the cycle of life. Everything is connected in a natural loop, which repeats, like the circular discs of magical optical toys. This perfectly balanced rhythm is disrupted by human excess, throwing the cycle out of orbit and temporarily stopping the circulation of energy in nature.

Atman

ĀTMAN is a visual tour-de-force based on the idea of the subject at the centre of the circle created by camera positions (480 such positions). Shooting frame-by-frame the filmmaker set up an increasingly rapid circular motion. ĀTMAN is an early Buddhist deity often connected with destruction; the Japanese aspect is stressed by the devil mask of Hangan, from the Noh, and by using both Noh music and the general principle of acceleration often associated with Noh drama.

The Man Who Wrote About His Past

An experimental, non-sensical comedy about bringing a stone age man back to our time, made with the app “Plotagon”.

OCCHIO

An important sensory organ, the eye, is damaged. The exhausting healing process takes us on an inner journey full of pain, fragility and mental unrest, in which even superstition and witchcraft seem to have an influence on recovery.

removed

Starting with a piece of vintage porn, filmmaker Naomi Uman painstakingly removed each female figure from the footage using nail polish remover, leaving a striking absence where there's usually a fleshy presence. Uman's celebrated film is a smart retort to pornography's obsessive gaze at the female body.

5am

A collection of solitary urban images intersect with each other.

The Long Walk

An animated short based on a scene from "The Long Walk" by Stephen King

LAND

LAND is a fluid series of formal land animation experiments based upon the imprint of landscapes in various locations and intuitive interpretations of those movements. Shot in New York, Thimble Islands Bear Island, Connecticut, Armstrong Redwoods, Sonoma County, California, Hastings, England. note* (part of the EYE Filmmuseum Permanent Collection)

Memory of a Displaced Body

A ritual in the form of a film essay that explores, through collage, the sense of exile experienced during early childhood migration. It examines the primal configuration of detachment from one’s homeland, family environment, and body, and the reclamation of origins as a symbolic center.

A Visual Poem

Surreal environments take center stage in this visual odyssey.

Macabre Metrics

A young, wannabe streetwear influencer dying to make an impact on the world gets a lot more than he bargained for when a shy but obsessive fan decides to help him become a star for his own gain at the expense of everyone else involved. Macabre Metrics is an almost feature-length, visually experimental exploration into the world of image culture set in Seoul. Shot entirely on iPhone with animated sequences.

Demi-Goddesses

The second essay about still dominant dark aspects of our modern society. It is conceived as a surreal anti-patriarchal thought experiment and raises important questions about gender, power, and social change, prompting us to reflect on how historical patterns of discrimination and oppression might be either repeated or overcome in a reversed gendered world. It challenges the viewer to confront their own assumptions and biases, and to consider the possibilities of a more equitable society.

Sunstone

Experimental computer animation from pioneering artist Ed Emshwiller.

The Angel Descends

A romance scene, an opening theme, a high-speed train of perception. The tropes and aesthetic of anime are deconstructed and reexamined, the frames accelerated, and blasted into a different realm of the cinematic language.

A Paw Over Dark

A washed up actor performs night after night in a grimy theater to a nearly empty audience. However, everything changes when a clueless dog jumps on stage.

Gemini

Sarah and her two cats go about their separate lives. The cats have strange dreams about their desires, and Sarah develops an unshakable paranoia that something is wrong with them. Sarah's paranoia bleeds into her social life, and her two cats have their dreams come true.

reMemBer2.human

In an indeterminate future, forbidden memories challenge a database containing all human memories. An experimental cinematic search between past and future, fiction and fact, Prishtina and Tirana. The future, a glitch.

Shearing Animation

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

Fluids

16mm color work by Stan Vanderbeek that takes his work away from the cutups and the commentary and lands him in the psychedelic and abstract. Opticals, repetitions, camera moves and zooms are what make up the bulk of this exploration into fluids. The results bridge that realm between hangout art piece and intersteller stoner trip.