A video poem about the nature of social relations and mass media, Half Lies exposes the seemingly innocuous ways we distort truth.

On Photography People and Modern Times is the outcome of three years of research on photography conducted by the artist in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt during the founding years of the Arab Image Foundation (AIF).

Chantal Akerman (1950-2015) gained international recognition with her three-and-a-half hour masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), which portrays a housewife’s dull existence and eventual violent action. She has continued to be one of Europe’s most innovative filmmakers with more than forty film and television projects to her credit. Akerman’s work is minimalist, structuralist, and feminist. Major themes in her films include women at work and at home; women’s relationships to men, other women, and children; food, love, sex, romance, art, and storytelling. In this interview from 1976 Akerman discusses her early films, and the development of her particular vision.

A lighting psalmody by the current Mexican conflagration. Light through the veins.

A voyage through a California Christmas that begins in the turd-smeared streets of San Francisco and ends in a botanical wonder of ethnic endurance and faith. A journey that incorporates pelicans, palaces, and platters of plenty.

Lossless #2 is a mesmerizing assemblage of compressed digital images of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s 1943 masterpiece Meshes of the Afternoon.

Among the handful of video recordings of Lanesville TV that exist today, this tape is particularly special for its documentation of one of its very first programs to run on the air.

American sculptor and land artist Robert Smithson made art as a meditation on transition and change.

Woman, monster, animal? A portrait of a woman's face, the movement slowed down and reversed, the grotesquely made-up face examined in close-up.

This is an over-the-top Video bouquet audaciously delivered by flamboyant "Pan" – like poets determined to paint the world pink.

Sites Unseen is a 16mm film of the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, a photograph of a great Aunt who died in Treblinka, and my late grandmother eating her morning cornflakes.

Music by Zeena Parkins

In response to the 1994 Republican campaign Contract with America that ushered in the first GOP House majority in over 42 years, Ligorano Reese screen printed men’s and women’s cotton briefs with the face of Newt Gingrich on the crotch a

A grinding mortar and pestle vignette analogously describes the evolution of digital resolution; from a single color to a high definition image to an infinite splitting of that image back into the pixels themselves.

In collaboration with Rebekkah Palov. 

A behind-the-scenes look at the man behind the trophy and the poisons that taint an otherwise jubilant jamboree.

This title is also available on The World of George Kuchar.

Phalloi Phaerie emerges from the wood. Forest nymphs with carnivorous flowers begin their mating rituals in a playful, polymorphously perverse return to arcadia.

Less than two minutes long, this short tape makes playful and surreal use of video’s editing capabilities.

3 Peonies is a brief, poetic 16mm film of a simple sculptural action.

Peggy and Fred, sole inhabitants of post-apocalyptic Earth, weather a prairie twister and scavenge for sense and sustenance amid the ruined devices of a ghosted culture.

Parry Teasdale is one of the founding members of the video art collective Videofreex, which was active in the 1960s and 70s.

Northern Irish artist Willie Doherty (b. 1959) works in photography and video installation. Since the late 1980s, his work has responded to the urban setting and rural outskirts of his hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland.

The planting of the "cempasuchil" for the celebrations of the "Day of Death" is one of the last jobs that the Ayotzianapa normal students did before they were brutally disappeared, with small Lomokino 35mm cameras, which we had to compose-hit several ti

With Cold Harbor, Donigan Cumming uses a minimum of elements to create a powerful anti-war message. Initially, the video seems enigmatic, almost abstract.

This real-time video-meets-digital-animation trilogy of shorts features the highly excited and mildly delusional Joe Gibbons. Against a background of live action and animation, the caddy’s golf club turns into a guitar as he reminisces about playing golf with Iggy Pop: “Hell of a guy, hell of a golfer." 

The violent overreaction to 9/11 and to the revolutions of the 1960s cannot be explained only with fear and politics.

California-based painterJoan Brown (1938-1990) attended the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute).

This episode includes: two more adverts, considerations of the future, a multiple projection spectacular in miniature, a riverine jaunt, much fog, and an ending x 2.

Produced in 1974, and restaged in 2002, near Pilot Butte in southwestern Wyoming.

The artist makes a pilot light using ice, which he has fashioned into a magnifying lens to start a small fire.

A conjuring and convocation to begin the chronomorphic process of ‘giving it back’.

Part of The Savage Philosophy of Endless Acknowledgment suite.

A trip to a barren landscape of jagged peaks and deep crevasses becomes a playground for an over-dressed hiker and his beefcake buddy as they secrete and imbibe fluids from various containers.

Netherlands, January 29th 2006/January 29th 2007

Tom Kalin is a screenwriter, film director, producer, and educator. As a key figure in New Queer Cinema, his work focuses on the portrayal of gay sexuality both in the age of AIDS and historically.

Juxtaposing the text of Off Limits, a film made in 1987 about Saigon circa 1968, with the soundtrack and image of the last five minutes of Easy Rider, made in 1968, Tajiri parallel edits these representations to play with the evocation

a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert extends Coco Fusco’s in-depth examination of racialized imagery.

French performance artist Orlan uses her own body as a sculptural medium.

This is the invocation to the gods, the incense to the gods. A kinetic dance to the gods.

Video Data Bank is proud to present the wonderful work of artist Laura Parnes.

Between 1892 and 1927, almost 16 million people came to Ellis Island attempting to immigrate to the United States.

In this 2001 interview, filmmaker Jem Cohen discusses the origins of his film philosophy, and the circuitous route he has taken in his pursuit of an anti-narrative film practice outside the mainstream. Cohen sheds light on the many influences that have impacted his sentiments towards conventional film, and his desire to eschew both classical avant-garde and theatrical filmmaking in favor of a model rooted in the tradition of the 1940s New York School of street photography. Cohen also locates his aesthetic as being impacted by the 1970s hardcore and DIY scenes he was exposed to as a youth in Washington, DC.

The tale of a fanatical tool collector who recreates the world according to a logic dictated by his cross-wrench.

April 26, 1976. San Francisco. Doug Hall and Jody Procter of T.R.

The distant future. An orbital facility of unknown origin. Here, the debt of taking a life will be finally repaid…. through resurrection.

Featuring Ricky and Cecelia from Wendy Clarke's One on One video series, this video exchange between the pair explores topics concerning sibling love, decaying family relationships, and a shared interest in professional football.

The frame is filled with two concentric magnifying lenses, one larger than the other. Behind them is a mirror. The mirror turns and reflects the landscape around it.

A collaboration with DonChristian Jones.
Filmed during the Rauschenberg Foundation Residency November 2017.

A journey that begins in a Kansas City hotel and ends up in New Mexico. The bumpy ride is fuelled with libidinous juices as it lurches through college dormitories and sun-baked ghost towns. Rocks are lifted and things crawl out for all to see.

The disparate chronicles of a high school wrestling team, a flooded town of aliens, and the love affair between two young men.

This compilation features several of Cohen’s pieces from the late 1980s and early 1990s: a paean to both the physical and mental aspects of the New York City landscape, an exploration of cinematic genres from narrative to music video, a sensual and roma

Cuerpos de Papel is a dense visual meditation on sexuality, loss, jealousy and intimacy. It uses rich sensual images to weave a digital portrait of an intimate, erotic, and emotional past.

Repurposing an ancient confessional video diary made about 40 years ago, this 11-minute narrative creates a poignant and humorous conversation where both ‘selves’ question, enlighten, and warn one another about things in life that really matter.