All Films

The Great Art of Knowing

2004 • 37 min • United States of America

"This chapter of my ongoing exploration of the Byrd library finds its name and shape within a single volume from that collection: Athanasius Kircher's 17th century encyclopedia, THE GREAT ART OF KNOWING. Herein find tangled texts and crossed destinies, filled with figures at once buried deep and tossed high by History, lined with traces of a hidden romance. Love finds purchase between tightly shelved volumes. In the spaces between the letters. In the lines themselves. An antinomian cinema seems possible. A gentle iconoclasm? The image is always backwards in a mirror. The story unfolds slowly. The fourth film from the Byrd project." - David Gatten

Postcard from Sun City, Arizona

2004 • 3 min

Joshua Oppenheimer sets images of life in a retirement community in Arizona (as seen through television commercials) to a talk radio interview with a female convict extolling the benefits of her time on Sherriff Joe Arpaio's chain gang. It is two different kinds of sale jobs working at cross-purposes. Oppenheimer takes the luster off the idealistic advertising images through video distortion and electronic interference and cuts-up both the video and audio tracks until the weird poetry of the chain gang prisoner's lessons in life and death gives the commercial presentation a creepy disconnection from any kind of living ideal. It follows A BRIEF HISTORY OF PARADISE AS TOLD BY THE COCKROACHES and MARKET UPDATE as another sharp jab at consumerism as an illusory promise.

Ebullition

2004 • 2 min • United Kingdom

Colors and bubbles bustle energetically via oil, ink and clear acetate.

Let Me Count the Ways: 10...9…8…7…6

2004 • 22 min

The title simultaneously references the countdown to the dropping of the bomb and suggests anticipation. Minus 10 juxtaposes footage of the artist’s father in Los Alamos and on the way to Tinian Island with an interview with a woman in Japanese about the bombing. Minus 9 aligns an American nurse’s eyewitness account of the bombing and its aftermath with aerial landscape shots blocked by a blinking blue circle which could represent a mutant sun, an eye, planet Earth, an afterimage, or the inverted “rising sun” of Japanese national symbolism. Minus 8 and Minus 7 show excerpts from a documentary, The Growth of Plants overlaid by running text describing radiation-induced botanical mutations. Minus 6 explores current American war policies and ethics contrasted against the histrionics of Adolf Hitler; as the dictator gesticulates on-screen, women’s voices recite a diatribe by Goebbels.

Kashtanka

2004 • 21 min • Russia

The film is dedicated to the adventures and reflections of a small dog named Kashtanka.

Harry’s Passion

2004 • 54 min

Collaboration with Grandpa’s Ghost.

Gender Equality

2004 • 3 min • South Korea

A pictogram of a woman in a toilet comes out to the outside world and reproduces herself. She tries to enter all male-oriented pictograms such as exit signs, elevator signboards and traffic lights.

Altitude Zero

2004 • 5 min • United States of America

a feminist palimpsest of cinematic representation

Primary

2004 • 3 min

Impressions of a day in primary colours, applied to the eyes via paint, ink and clear leader.

I Can't Marry You

2004 • 59 min

An exploration of the issues surrounding same sex marriages in the USA. 20 gay and lesbian couples recount their experiences and discuss why same sex marriage is needed.

Moon Man

2004 • 3 min

Codfish Dan is a folk hero. One night, he went fishing on the Milky Way, and the results of that legendary catch are still making Newfoundland history. Moon Man is a stereoscopic animated short from Paul Morstad inspired by the song "Moon Man Newfie," composed and sung by Canadian music legend Stompin' Tom Connors.

Vitrail (effacement / disparition)

2004 • 1 min • France

The Whale

2004 • 10 min

A deliberation on the state of nature and the nature of the State…. The Whale combines several disparate components (including a parent-child dialogue on the relative threats posed by wild animals, an archival television interview with notorious RAF operative Ulrike Meinhof and citations from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan) to consider the need for a renewed communal sensibility in contemporary society.

K (Désert)

2004 • 4 min • Algeria, France

K (Désert) is the forth part of a series on Kabylia, including a documentary and a feature film. K (Désert) examines the fragmentation of a culture (Berber culture) through the Algerian desert populations by means of collage. Shot in 8mm and blown-up on 16mm film, the groundwork has been reworked by layers in the optical printer.

You Were There With Your Friend Frank

2004 • 10 min • Sweden

Annelie asks for a Jörgen in a magazine from 1980. She met him at a Gyllene Tider concert in Karlshamn. Now, 22 years later... Did Annelie get any answer to her request?

Sediments

2004 • 22 min • France

Intimate and tactile capture of the outside world through its original material (water, earth, sky, light) in the time of a look, a presence.

Daredevil Issue #1: Motion Comic

2004 • 30 min

The origin of Daredevil, The Man Without Fear! Matt Murdock is blinded but gains super power abilities he uses to patrol the streets of Hell's Kitchen.

Gardens of the National Trust - Volume 1

2004 • 60 min

Alan Titchmarsh visits six of England's most beautiful gardens, including Killerton in Devon, Barrington Court in Somerset, Peckover House in Cambridgeshire, Dunham Massey in Cheshire, Cragside in Northumberland, and Sheffield Park in Sussex.

Benetton

2004 • 4 min • United States of America

Lampert writes, "Chelsea thieves market, Sunday morning. Overloaded front table, sunglasses, cell phones, Viagra (sold by the pill, $10), assorted hot goods. Inaccessible back table, more of same, two 35mm film cans marked BENETTON. 'Excuse me, what's in those cans?' 'Twenty dollars.' 'Is there film in the cans?' 'Twenty dollars.' 'No, I want to know what is in the cans.' 'Twenty dollars.' Twenty dollars later, four giant 16mm reels, 2 hours of color double-perforated reversal footage, three female models. An entire mid-90s ad campaign shoot obviously orphaned or cast away footage now, curiously, in my hands. BENETTON is the first installment in the ongoing imperfect series produced from an all too perfect source."

Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations In Miniature

2004 • 8 min

A kinematographic film comprised of five brief fictions in which the mystery of insect flight is explored. Interpretations of a mythological and fantastical nature are illuminated in motion and time. Includes: Thin Breath-quivering, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Departure from the Garden, Conjuring Forth the Firefly and Keepers of the Labyrinth.

El día de mi boda

2004 • 25 min

My Wedding Day - whay could go wrong?

Strip Show 1850

2004 • 11 min • Netherlands

Strip Show 1850 (11 min.) is a remarkably detailed yet simple film on Zeeland's magnificent traditional costumes, which are removed layer by layer. This short costume drama gives new meaning to the museum film genre. Strip Show 1850 is part of a series of museum films specially produced by Paul and Menno de Nooijer for the reopening of the Zeeland Museum.

Suika: Manatsu no Okurimono

2004 • 15 min • Japan

Short that takes place after the SUIKA OVA.

Interior Ape

2004 • 7 min

«Swimming or fluidly moving in pattern - like lust or love or something weird. A communication halt: cue the apes to speak or make music». - JS