Experimental Film

Radical Closure
Radical Closure
Radical Closure, Program 1: The Captives
Radical Closure, Program 2: War/The Visible Signs
Radical Closure, Program 3: At the Border
Radical Closure, Program 4: Intensive Care
Radical Closure, Program 5: The Trace That Remains

Curated by Lebanese video artist Akram Zaatari, and originally presented by the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Radical Closure features works produced in response to situations of physical or ideological closure resulting from war and territorial conflicts. The program looks at what is known as the Middle East, and how the moving image has functioned throughout its history, charged with division, political tension, and mobilization.

Mon ami Imad et le taxi (My Friend Imad and the Taxi)
Olga Nakkas, Hassan Zbib
Mon ami Imad et le taxi (My Friend Imad and the Taxi)

In 1985, Hassan Zbib and Olga Nakkas separately started to develop film scenarios based on simple narratives, and would shoot them on Super 8, which was still possible to develop in Beirut at the time. Their work featured the city as a stage where lonely characters drifted: a taxi driver in his car, a man walking around, talking to a Rambo poster.

Blessed are the Dreams of Men
Jem Cohen
Blessed Are the Dreams of Men

Moving towards an unknown destination, a group of anonymous passengers float through an unidentified landscape. Built from Cohen’s archive documenting his travels, the film can be seen as a curious parable. The film's subheading refers to the Old Testament, Daniel chapter 11, verse 40:  “And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.” 

Black Hole Radio
Jem Cohen
Black Hole Radio

"In the late 1980s I saw ads in New York for a telephone 'Confession Line'.  To call in and 'confess' was free; listening in incurred a by-the-minute charge. The soundtrack was built from a collection of these actual, anonymous calls. Adultery, theft, and regret; ghosts spun through phone wires and televisions. An installation version was created for the 1992 Worldwide Video Festival (Amsterdam).

Soundtrack: Jem Cohen with Ian MacKaye.

This title is also available on Jem Cohen: Early Works. 

Big Ones Hurt
George Kuchar
Big Ones Hurt

The unstable earth becomes the epicenter of this videotape document which explores—in a fractured way—the relationships between the people, places, and furniture that sit atop the San Andreas Fault.

Betweem Two Wars
Harun Farocki
Between Two Wars

"A film about the time of the blast furnaces--1917-1933--about the development of an industry, about a perfect machinery which had to run itself to the point of its own destruction. This essay... on heavy industry and the gas of the blast furnace, convinces through the author's cool abstraction and manic obsession, and through the utilization of a single example of the self-destructive character of capitalistic production: 'The image of the blast furnace gas is real and metaphoric; an energy blows away uselessly into the air. Guided through a system of pipes, the pressure increases.

The Bats
Jim Trainor
The Bats

The Bats details the mating habits of flying mammals in an abandoned Mayan temple in the 14th Century.

This title is only available on Soft Science.

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