All Films

It was during one of our usual visits to this famous bar, or “Library” as we often call it. Jonas Mekas, Julius Ziz, August Varkalis, Moira Tierney and I were engaging in our daily activity – “reading books”, which lasted from dusk till dawn.

Often the images are held for awhile and then left to themselves - only to fade out just as they begin to move. For me this enhances the feeling of memory - and the sensation that when you leave a place you know that everything is still there, without you. And so the film is both elongated and fragmented.

With Heaven's Gate, Ahwesh employs a strategy similar to that used in 73 Suspect Words: against a blank screen, a metronomic procession of single words unfolds, gradually building into a cool, minimal portrait of the apocalyptic paranoia that runs through the American social body. While 73 Suspect Words appropriated text from the writings of Theodore Kaczynski, aka the "Unabomber," Heaven's Gate takes up words from the Web site of the cult organization of that name, whose beliefs in extraterrestrial contact led to their 1997 mass suicide.

"He stole her girlfriend, and never said thank you for that. super self centered I will pay for that. I did it all. No I won't pay for that. To you NEVER. You did nothing. It's all your fault. I told all my friends how shitty you are. And no, I won't pay for that. You really didn't do nothing. I didn't like your films. Same things over and over again. Label starts walking by itself. You always talk about drug. Stupid shouck value vs. scummy elite attitute. Expressing bullshit psych. You ended up saying the words that you know; society, culture, people and art, ya, fuck sake. Then, closer always gets used, and you act like an asshole, whole equally wasted, isn't that big anyway..." (Stom Sogo, 2002 NYUFF program notes)

A domestic incident during the Cirio de Nazare, the huge religious event from Belem, Brazil.

Aaron Carter - the 13 year-old Little Prince of Pop is back and better than ever in his first live concert video. Aaron's Party... Live In Concert! features sizzling live performances of now-classic Aaron Carter songs from Aaron's Double-Platinum Jive debut album, Aaron's Party (Come Get It), plus the previously unreleased nugget, "One For The Summer." Aaron's Party... Live In Concert! is Aaron's version of what he'd do if he could throw a party for all his fans around the world. Come join in the celebration!

The concept of Spin, the inherent turning momentum of electrons, stands for the passing of time and for time itself. The unceasing transformation of the world is translated into film via the gliding movement of the camera. Bright light and blurring portray the environment of the film’s elderly subject, my mother, as pure atmosphere. Her few calm gestures in the face of diminishing time and energy convey a personal presence undisturbed by specific goals. She sits and breathes quietly. When walking she travels across space. The turning away of a tree full of apples evokes regret, as does a sharp light that narrows and dissolves. In the final image my mother seems to taste a bitterness that eludes comprehension.

“The Dark Room” is homage to a 16th century apparatus, camera obscura. I tried to create a uniquely cinematic sensory experience. The views of Pacific Ocean could provide the powerful sense of moving water as mass and volume.

Playing a part or stepping outside it. Lisa, who looks like Friedl vom Gröller´s sister, practises looking into the camera. She adjusts her gestures according to a vocabulary of expressions that has more to do with pain than joy. Only when the filmmaker joins her in the picture does the inscribed sadness disappear, and a loving, to an extent passionate warmth fills the space.

Four friends are reunited at a funeral.

The projected image is constructed from deteriorated colour film (old loops from the the installation Little Girl), the agitated rhythm of the movements of colour and form underscore the movement of the spectator and the rapid eye movement. To renforce the movement the film was edited in a series of mirco-loops, similar material was assembled to create a sense of progresssion and familiarity with the image, brief passages of figurative material were kept as a sort of visual conterpoint to the flow of the abstract colour sections. This duality of material seems to change the speed of the images we percieve a double dynamic dynamics produced within the same material.

Super 8 film by Masaharu Oki.

Cows in frenzy

Ghosts of matter, luminous traces, original worlds, made of internal sedimentations, surface, merge, vanish.

Short epic fairytale inspired by the 900 yrs old manuscript written by the Georgian monk, Shotha Rustaveli. The work is a cinematic intervention into painting honoring the byzantine poetics and Georgian lineage.

A dense montage of graphics, charts, and animations, Industrial Synth takes up the tradition of the experimental essay film and flattens it into an oblique composition that reflects on the technological and consumerist dimensions of Modernity. Negating cinematic elements of narrative, performance, and conventional signification, Price's video nonetheless conveys a sense of the pathos of a contemporary digital society, which, despite its promise of the new, relentlessly circles around issues of obsolescence and death.

"In a way, making street films is daydreaming with a camera. It's capturing a fantasy you're having when you're wide awake and life is going on around you. There is, of course, a similarity between daydreaming and making any kind of art because they both spring from that narrow groove between the subconscious and the conscious. That's when self-expression and technical problem-solving both flow together in an almost mystical way. For me this film represents that mental state. I shot it in late July 2001 but put it away for some forgotten reason. It's very much about everyday life–a nondescript New York neighborhood on a calm Sunday afternoon, garbage cans piled high, feet reading here and there . . . but it's also about the magic I can see in that world when I free my subconscious. I made this film so effortlessly (I just cut out one brief shot) because I was so fully in that mindset, which, I think, shows in the nature of the images."

Compared to analogue b/w-photography and my experimental work in the colorlab, I tried to find out, what digital photography and computer processing is able to do, what the other techniques can't. We asked ourselves how does abstract film begin, what's its progress, how does it create suspense and how does it end? My model was the division of acts in greek tragedy. The length, the division of the different parts and the different cuts. The first abstract film made from pictures of plants was a purely abstract exercise, without any symbolic meaning nor background. The name stems from a misspelling of my Turkish flowersalesman, which I copied by accident. It is an abstraction of an Ilex twig. Another difference to all the other “flower pieces“ is that the film was made with a graphic-programme, that means each picture was constructed seperately, 25 pictures per second. That makes 4500 pictures which I worked on. Technically it is an animation film.

Concordia College's 75th Christmas Concert is celebrated on this recording. Walter Cronkite narrates the introduction. The 2001 Christmas Concert, O Holy Night, comes to your living room!

An experiment with orientation movement and shape combined with musical improvisation. A continuous rolling, tumbling motion determined by a geometric shape creates a visual rhythm and images that roll, dip and soar with the improvised soundtrack.

Father Sao Roberto is unique among many foreign missionaries dedicated to the Korean democratic movement.

Cradle of Sun

Skaters: Damian Smith, Eric Bork, Jayme Fortune, Mike Frazier, Ron Whaley, Ryan Parsons, Stacy Lowery, Stefan Attardo, Tim Brauch. Soundtrack: Steffan Attardo – Billy Idol Dancing With Myself. Eric Bork – Bjork Cover Me. Mike Frazier – Beatsteaks Panic. Ron Whaley – Sister Nancy Bam Bam. Ryan Parsons – Onyx Shut ‘Em Down instrumental. Damian Smith – Dave Brubeck Quartet Far More Drums. Stacy Lowery – Creedence Clearwater Revival Fortunate Son. Jayme Fortune & Credits – Jets to Brazil One Summer Last Fall.