Experimental Film

In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.

A Kafkian vision of the New World. The arrival of Karl Rossman to the contemporary Babylon under the spell of the paranoid avant-garde. Kinetic coexistence of the archaic forms in dissolution.

A series of numbers that form infamous years that are uttered in a repetitive pedagogical litany. Ominous dates as a correlate of forgotten apolitical portraits. Portraits of a remembered royalty whose wealth was made possible by infamous times. Political faces accompanied by their corresponding dates. Peaceful figures whose placid portrait rests on the automated civilizational barbarism. This is part of the educational film cycle.

Part of the paraconsistent sequence series.

Based on a photograph taken in the mid 1970s of two African Americans playing foosball.

This title is only available on Can You Move Like This: Black Fire.

Adopting the movements of various animals, Forti begins the performance by walking hypnotically in circles. She falls to the floor and begins a cycle of walking and crawling that becomes an open metaphor for evolution and aging. Through the course of the performance, the camera follows Forti's circling motion at increasingly close range, creating an interactive dance between camera and performer. While "rustic" in respect to the quality of the video image and sound, Solo No. 1 serves as an engaging document of Forti's dedicated study of natural movement.

These are the dancing bodies in an agitated rapture: prelude to trance, invocation of the gods, consecration of intermittence. Here our point of view sparkles under the spell and trance of things gathered, fallen, yielding, pluvial, Mesoamerican wind, goddess breath, breeze of sticks. percussive woods.

Part of paraconsistent sequence series.

Part of paraconsistent sequence series.

An intimate interview with filmmaker, videomaker, film critic, poet, lecturer, and curator Jonas Mekas. Born into a farming family in Lithuania on December 24, 1922, Mekas was imprisoned in a forced labor camp in Nazi Germany from 1944 to 1945, studied philosophy at the University of Mainz from 1946 to 1948, and relocated to the U. S. in 1949. In 1954, Mekas became editor-in-chief of Film Culture magazine and wrote a film column in The Village Voice from 1958 to 1975.

Laurie was inspired by Laurie Weeks’ uncanny ability to simultaneously embody her characters and write them from a clear distance. The text in question is just a few paragraphs from a draft of the novel Zipper Mouth, more than ten years in the making, and published by the Feminist Press.

At this time even the flowery wars are ready to begin and the flowery atavism begins to flash. The flowers, the skulls, the moon and the sun are ready for the sacrificial trance. Part of Tonalli.

Part of paraconsistent sequence series.

Vision of Anahúac: Traveler, you have reached the most transparent region of the air.

This is the invocation to the gods, the incense to the gods. A kinetic dance to the gods. Behold the hieratic nature of Tonatiuh (The Sun) and the ferocity of Tlaltecuhtli (Goddess of the Earth) raising her agitation from the white smoke of the burned Copalli, Mesoamerican aromatic resin, sacred resin that tears celluloid with smoke, white hair, on the dark background of the world.

Blind Huber is a film interpretation of a poem by the American writer Nick Flynn loosely based on the life of Francois Huber, the blind 18th Century beekeeper, who sat before a series of hives for fifty years unlocking an unknown world.

Written by Nick Flynn. Cinematographer: Alex Stockwell.

This title is only available on Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson.

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.

An adaptation of the gruesome and fantastical ending chapter of the notorious experimental anti-novel Maldoror, first published in 1868 and written by a young man (who died soon after writing it) who called himself Comte De Lautréamont. A joyful return to the necessity of Super-8 film tricks, this is part of a larger Anglo-German collaborative feature film Maldoror, shot entirely on Super-8 in sections by 15 underground filmmakers working independently. Includes Super 8 Film, model animation, photo animation and live action.

Pitayas are the sacred Mesoamerican fruits that grow on Mexican nopales, an ancient plant. This is the colorful body, the vibrant blood and the radiant skin of the open life.

Cinnamon presents a glimpse into the world of African American drag racing. It follows the consistent routine of a bank teller and a mechanic as they prepare for the sport. Once the routine is disrupted, the result of the race comes into doubt. The bank teller is a driver who tries to stay focused before races. The mechanic’s job is to constantly examine the driver’s behavior. He has to adjust the racecar to the driver’s skill and ability and modify the racecar for the weather conditions.

“APP APPAP APP APAPPAP APP APP APP APAPPAPAPPAP APPAP APP”

Memory in three acts. A boy opens his presents. Two men open a suitcase stuffed with photographs. An aging actress opens her heart to lost love and ancient rivalries.

In Dry Blood (Sagre Seca), various historical moments of political activism in Mexico are superimposed and corroded on the emulsion of expired film. Footage from the International Women's Day in 2017 is coupled with the recording of a powerful speech about the gruesome aftermath of the 2006 civil unrest in San Salvador Atenco.

Through the floating garden, into the mountain of signs and chants, arise the path of the winged stone. A stone that used to be a fossil.

The Erosions series develops the concepts of oxidation, wear and entropy from an audiovisual and cinematographic perspective.

Other works in the Erosions series include Barranca and Viral.