All Films

The Most Unknowable Thing

1999 • 56 min

Mary Patiernio set out to make a documentary about what she thought might be the last few years of her brother’s life when she found out about his HIV-positive status. However, as the title suggests, things didn’t quite pan out as she expected. Beginning with the video footage from her brother’s surprise marriage to his female chiropractor, following his break up with boyfriend Carlo, the documentary (which was five years in the making), cleverly unwinds to tell one of those stories you simply wouldn’t believe in a fictional film.

Theme: Murder

1999 • 54 min

The brutal murder of her father in 1968 not only left a hole in filmmaker Martha Swetzoff’s life, but also many questions as to who he really was. His figure became shrouded in mystery when she discovered that he was gay and the murder ‘’gay-related’’. Confronting her own grief in the deeply personal Theme: Murder, Swtzoff uncovers scores of journals and letters, and contacts former friends of her father to assemble a portrait of a man curiously obsessed with death, who may have led a rich, gay life in ‘50s and ‘60s Boston – a man who had not only secrets, but an entirely separate life.

human tragedy on a grand scale

1999 • 50 min

"human tragedy on a grand scale" is a response to "never confuse movement with action" and the struggle of dealing with the Hemingway family. What results is a piece very different from its predecessor - a visual poem, episodic in nature, made up of travel diaries compiled while working with Patrick. The issue now is the reconciliation and cathartic transformation from a Hemingway biography to a re-consideration of autobiography. The biographer takes us on a journey away from Patrick Hemingway - the cool, controlled persona - to East Vancouver, documenting lives stripped bare of pretension. The scope is broadened. Patrick Hemingway and all things Hemingway become insignificant.

Bri(n)s d'images

1999 • 5 min

"Bri(n) d'images is composed in the form of a mosaic. Playing on the transparency effects of the film and the color inks used, it is more like a stained glass film. This work of plastic composition is accompanied by music itself made of fragments from 'Amériques' by Varèse" — Vincent Deville & Pip Chodorov

Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in all the World

1999 • 8 min • United States of America

Although America's gay sweethearts (Rick & Steve) and America's lesbian sweethearts (Kirsten & Dana) do not get along at all, they decide to have a baby together. Steve is jealous that the lesbians prefer Rick's sperm, so he comes up with an alternate plan - with the help of Pussy the cat.

Santana: Lightdance

1999 • 34 min

Light Dance is one of those wallpaper DVDs, the kind you leave on to add to the atmosphere of a party or to unwind after a stressful day. Inspired by and featuring the music of Santana, the film offers landscapes matched with mood music.

Phat Free

1999 • 6 min • United States of America

Phat Free begins with several minutes of darkness overlaid with an unidentifiable loud, metallic sound. As the video image is revealed, a man—Hammons himself—appears dressed in a long coat, felt hat, and sneakers, kicking a metal bucket down a deserted city sidewalk late at night. The work was shot in 1995 to document Hammons’s late-night performance and edited into an independent video work four years later. At first seemingly violent, the noise evolves into an almost musical rhythm that is synchronized with the protagonist’s methodical movements. The title elaborates this musical allusion, conjuring both the streetwise lyricism of rap and hip-hop and the improvisational nature of jazz.

Amerikanos

1999 • 23 min

Tony, a Greek immigrant, arrives in San Francisco chasing the “other” American dream.

Décembre 1999, Ramadan 1420, Une faim de siècle

1999 • 26 min

Samir Abdallah, the director, leads his son, Nessim, a teenager, for his first fast in Ramadan, in a spiritual quest. We are at the dawn of the second millennium. In the Muslim calendar, we are in the Hijri year 1420.

Reflex

1999 • 3 min • United States of America

8mm film by Glen Fogel blown up to 16mm

Züri Metzgete

1999 • 33 min

In Zurich, a dealer named Mike, who is also dependent, buys a mysterious dagger in a back yard. He has no idea that it is a victim tool of a Nazi sect. That's why his girlfriend is kidnapped and brutally tortured by the Nazis shortly afterwards. But Mike wants revenge...

Forefinger

1999 • 40 min

Multimedia artist Jiang Zhi's third video art film. About a poet who had influenced a generation and was completely obliterated. Due to his special identity and the fate closely related to the turbulent times, the description of the characters inevitably does not involve history. But the author's interest is obviously not here, not in the poet's life experience and the social significance it may reveal. He used a variety of materials, including some symbolic historical images, old photos, interviews, and subtitles, to present the poet ’s life history and its background; he also inserted a scene drama performance: the index finger poem "Mad Dog" Obtained a visual interpretation. Through this absurd parable of survival, the author expressed his understanding of a poet and his destiny.

Dou Dou

1999 • 45 min

Documentary on the life of a young fellow drifting in the city.

Living Elsewhere

1999 • 40 min

Along the newly constructed expressway to Chengdu's airport, there is a group of villas built in the beginning of the nineties and left uncompleted for almost seven years. In this marginal area between the city and the country, four peasant families from different parts of China live under primitive conditions as squatters, growing some vegetables, collecting waste metals, and sewing clothes. Unable to return to their homes after losing land in a bubble economy, they decided to migrate and seek a new beginning.

Twitch

1999 • 5 min • United States of America

Short experimental film by Amit Desai.

A Set of Glances

1999 • 3 min

A study on celluloid of the Siegessäule in Berlin, a series of furtive views and images. A cubist vision reduces a golden statue, by summing up its fragments, to the mere material and sculptural presence. Punctuated by interruptions in space and time, the absence of a constant visual flow makes us wait for the next image-- Retinal relief.

The Bible Under Fire

1999 • 45 min • United States of America

For more than three hundred years, the King James Version of the Bible had been dominant. Then, in 1952, a Revised Standard Version (RSV) was published to a firestorm of controversy. Some dubbed it the "Red Bible" and called it a Communist plot to undermine American society. At the same time, the RSV broke sales records. This film tells the story of the RSV against the backdrop of American history, both secular and sacred. It was the first to incorporate the discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the first distinctly American Bible to be a success and the first to be successfully promoted by an advertising agency.

Dreaming of Axu

1999 • 50 min

The Wen brothers lived and traveled together with the living lama, Bajia, in Beijing and to his homeland in Ganzi Zangzu Zizhizhou in 1990s. This film documents that period. With the Wen brothers' help, Bajia made his dream come true -- building a Buddhist temple in his homeland.

China Action

1999 • 54 min

A documentary about politically-charged Chinese performance art -- contains footage of the most significant performance art activities that took place in Mainland China during the 1980s and 1990s.

Face, les 99 noms de dieu

1999 • 10 min

The video « Face, the 99 Names of God » lists the 99 designations of God as they can be found in religious scriptures and as commonly inventoried by Islamic theology, and shows them one after the other on the screen, using the technique of crossfading. The belief is that reciting these 99 names is beneficial for the faithful who make the effort and that it allows them to access the perception of the essence of divinity. In the foreground, the video shows the names written in western alphabet, along with their translation. The background is a green backdrop where the names appear written in Arabic calligraphy.

Unmapping Desire

1999 • 7 min • Canada

Unmapping Desire is an experimental video-poem exploring separation, political borders and social boundaries, which keep women from loving women. Set to evocative images and music, the poem unfolds charting the journey of two South Asian women and their victory of through imagining "borderless countries in a county-less world."

Through the Looking Glass

1999 • 15 min • Canada

Half-breed Alice attempts to become queen and struggles with the Red Queen and the White Queen's disapproval of her racial transgressions.

How to Fake an Orgasm

1999 • 10 min • Canada

How to Fake an Orgasm will give you insight into your lover’s needs and expectations. With clear, concise examples, this tape will show you exactly what to do and when to do it to get you through your faked orgasm worry free. Faking it will give you instant results that will satisfy your lover’s waning ego and indefinitely postpone those uncomfortable talks about sexual fulfillment.

Hollywood Harems

1999 • 23 min

A documentary taking critical aim at Hollywood's abiding fascination with and fantasies about all things eastern. Juxtaposing film clips from the 20s through the 80s, HOLLYWOOD HAREMS explores the organization of gender, race, and sexuality in Hollywood's portrayal of the exotic east an indiscriminate fusion of things Arab, Persian, Chinese and Indian. In abridging cultural plurality and difference, these technicolor fantasies have worked both to shape and reinforce often derogative assumptions about peoples of the east while at the same time reinscribing the moral, spiritual, and cultural supremacy of the Anglo-European west.