Giri Chit

GIRI CHIT tells a tale of the subtle trace of irreconcilable worlds. A worker driving a mobile sweeper in hypnotic circles across an already immaculate surface. The high drama of cosplay aficionados clamoring to be seen. A cast of thousands toiling hundreds of feet above the street. Giri translates as ‘duty’ in Japanese, but the concept is in fact far more complicated. Giri is a sort of interpersonal political capital that informs careers, family relations, and much more. Its presence and flow is palpable in Japan, where this film was shot. A “giri chit” then may be a hypothetical voucher for this intangible flow (with a tip of the cap to Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland”). Selected Screenings and Awards: DaVinci Film Festival (Best Experimental Film), Chicago Underground Film Festival, Athens International Film and Video Festival, Dallas Videofest, ICDOCS Film Festival, NewFilmmakers at Anthology Film Archives, Oxford Film Festival, Director’s Lounge Berlin

Flesh Flows

“[T]he sense of moving forward [in space or time] alternates with a sense of expansion and contraction, as the finished cycle [of movement] returns to itself and rushes to catch up with its successor.” (Gadassik) Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.

You Should Have Been Here Yesterday

You Should Have Been Here Yesterday combines hundreds of hours of lovingly restored 16mm footage with a salt-infused soundscape by Headland. This cinematic poem tells the story of a wild community who took off up the coast and discovered a whole new way to live. Going back to the never-before-seen camera reels to ask the question – what do we keep and what do we leave behind? Featuring Tim Winton, Wayne Lynch, Bob McTavish, Albe Falzon, Evelyn Rich, Maurice Cole and many more. Inspired by Moonage Daydream and Jen Peedom’s Mountain.

Homage to Tarzan

Avant-garde analog animation techniques in stark black and white dramatize the effect of white men’s violence on an African jungle.

ACT III

Abstract video art set to the music of Philip Glass.

Voyage

An NTSC space opera.

Omniac

FUCK TV

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

Luminare

Abstract video art by John Sanborn and Dean Winkler. Dedicated to Ed Emshwiller.

Trapline

Ellie Epp’s 12-shot study of a soon-to-be-demolished public bath in London, which “maps another way out of structural film toward a cinema of delicate implication".

4to Piso

On the Road to Kandahar

One of Rimmer's early 2000s video works which he made by hand-painting 35mm film, running it on a flatbed viewer, and shooting it off the screen with a video camera to then subject it to further manipulation.

Squares

An abstract computer-generated film. The image is of squares revolving in space around and through each other. Colors and forms multiply and divide against a beautiful symphonic score by George Kleinsinger.

and?

an experimental short shot completely in black and white and attempts a new technique.

Grid

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

Witness

Experimental short film by Barbara Sykes

Le Village au cimetière

A village in Brittany. During the ten days leading up to All Souls Day, we can see it in its entirety "inhabiting" the cemetery, going from gravestone to gravestone for the rituals of cleaning, flowering and praying. Telling its story through its faces, its voices and its ambulations.

The Afterlife

A young adult's first-hand account of "accidentally becoming human again" after, and with, trauma induced depression. Lo-fi, vulnerable, and uniquely youthful, "The Afterlife" is a melancholic affirmation of life after death.

Parergon

“All that which in Picture is not of the body or argument thereof is Landskip, Parergon, or By-work” (Thomas Blount, Glossographia, 1656).

Projections

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.