Rumination
2009 · 110m · History
An exploration of the Cultural Revolution that depicts both its chaotic later years – through the story of a squad of Red Army guards running amok in the countryside – and its continuing legacy in today’s China.
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Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
1987 · ★ 7
The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
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Towards a Black Testimony: Prayer/Protest/Peace
2019
Towards a Black Testimony: Prayer, Protest, Peace is a new work by Languid Hands that examines Black Testimony as obscured, ignored and undermined. Drawing on archival imagery, Black geographies, and the dying declarations of Black Martyrs, it explores the complexities of truth, empathy, justice, the law, life and death for the Black Mass.
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Shattered
2011 · ★ 8.6
A microcosm of China past and present flows through Xu Tong’s intimate docu “Shattered,” in which the maverick indie filmmaker continues to refine his techniques and concerns shown in his previous “Wheat Harvest” and “Fortune Teller.”
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Balkan Erotic Epic - Single Channel Version
2005 · ★ 3.7
The film explores the sexual aspects of Serbian folklore. Ancient myths that have trickled into everyday household remedies or explanations are juxtaposed with the joys of the female and male sexual forms from which all human life originates. Functioning as both sexual liberation and reinvented modern myth, Balkan Erotic Epic is a display of the need for a cultural change in viewpoint around sex.
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Since
1966
Andy Warhol's experimental reconstruction of the assassination of the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, which serves as his critical commentary on the way the media presented the tragic event.
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Blind Bombing, Filmed by a Bat
2020
During WWII, the Japanese army developed experimental balloons able to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the West Coast of North America in 3-6 days. Armed with explosives, they were given the code name fu-go, or fusen bakudan (“fire balloons,” or balloon bombs) in an attempt to instill a culture of fear like that caused by the far more deadly American firebombing of Japanese cities. The U.S. responded by enacting a censorship campaign, requesting newspapers avoid reports of fu-go landings or sightings. Living near the remains of a fu-go launch site in Fukushima Prefecture, Takeuchi mimics their flight take-off using a drone camera, and, traveling to North America, follows their arrival across the shoreline and rural landscapes, using a bat’s echolocation as narrative device to place fu-go and Fukushima as echos across history.
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The Bigmoon Nights
1991 · ★ 4.7
The film "Nights full moon" shows the tendency of moral decay in society. The main character is torn apart by internal contradictions, leading him to the path of Evil. Bans on self-identification - philosophical, existential, sexual, and then permissiveness spawn a monster that is not aware of its true nature and genuine desires. Throughout the film-trilogy, the protagonist goes through a series of temptations that ruin his soul and lead, after all, to a madhouse. In a general sense, the film allegorically shows the tragic path of the Russian lumpen intellectual, lost between the past and the present, not finding the strength to accept and comprehend the unexpected changes that happened in our country twenty years ago. In the global sense - the tragic circle of Russian history.
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Blood of Two
2009
The first collaboration between Matthew Barney & Elizabeth Peyton, Blood of Two is a unique, site-specific work that draws its references from Hydra itself – the surrounding environment, animals, humans, and local traditions are all part of the project in equal measure. Blood of Two centers on the former function of the Slaughterhouse and the customs of Hydra to establish connections between paganism and religion, ancient and modern, the ritualistic and familiar. As much as its conflicted terms strive for balance and fusion, it is Blood of Two’s greater resistance to these impulses, its failure to surrender unconditionally to them that ultimately counts, as a network of overlaps and crisscrosses.
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The Nine Muses
2010 · ★ 5.6
Part documentary, part personal essay, this experimental film combines archive imagery with the striking wintry landscapes of Alaska to tell the story of immigrant experience coming into the UK from 1960 onwards.
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