Social & External
The people behind it
This is a didactic film in disguise. A progression of brilliant geometric shapes bombard the screen to the insistent beat of drums. The filmmaker programmed a computer to coordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.
Dongnan, a 58-year-old restaurant employee, has long been known for his slacking off and unreliability, which led to his demotion to a security guard. Struggling with stagnant career prospects and family tensions, he dreams of becoming his own boss. With his friend Douyin Jie's help, Dongnan opens a restaurant and experiences initial success. Seeking to improve his home life, he purchases an AI robot that helps manage household chores and mediates family conflicts. However, his apprentice Steven betrays him by stealing secret recipes and using AI technology against him. Through a challenging journey of intense competition and personal crisis, Dongnan undergoes a transformative experience that forces him to confront his past behaviors and relationships.
With only three weeks left in his three-year contract, Sam Bell is eager to return to Earth. Stationed alone at a Moon-based facility with his computer assistant GERTY, an unexpected accident sets off a series of unsettling events that shake his isolation.
Video art by Vibeke Sorensen made at Calarts in 1989
This introspective short animation takes place In the village of Carcross, in the Tagish First Nation. Neighbourhood pillar Grandma Kay tell the local children the tale of how Crow brought fire to people. As the story unfolds, we also meet 12-year-old Tish, an introspective, talented girl who feels drawn to the elder. Here, past and present blend, myth and reality meet, and the metaphor of fire infuses all in a location that lies at the heart of this Native community’s spiritual and cultural memory.
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.
Migrant families experience violence, but they also keep beautiful memories when they arrive in new lands. Fantastic and intimate stories, recalled from childhood, travel across time and space, magically intermingling with the help of the four elements and breaking the boundaries of cinema.
A disturbing cinematic opera from Melbourne film-maker, Michael Lee, presenting an intense emotional collage of film clips, original footage and complex object animation, structured loosely in the form of a Catholic Mass, to communicate the film-maker's traumatic Catholic experience. The film is intended in part as 'anti-imagery' in response to the iconography of Catholicism.
With the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, the line between humans and machines continues to blur, and everything is evolving at an astonishing pace as this technology offers tantalizing promises. However, some researchers, including 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate Geoffrey Hinton, warn about its exponential power. A deep dive into the dizzying complexities of AI.
Haunted by flooding memories of their parents' verbal abuse, an insecure person decides to stop reflecting and start living the life they never knew they could have.
Resistance Sahara, a haunting yet playful exploration of the liminal space between experimental, documentary, and fictive filmmaking, presents an artistic response to the Sahrawi refugee crisis from the frozen war in Western Sahara. Bringing international artists from a mix of disciplines to the Sahara Desert, and with them will create something new, a response to what they encounter. The film mix testimony from the mouths of the people who live in each zone of crisis with music; image; and symbolism. The audience is invited to reconsider their view of the nature of human suffering, and to build a new bridge of empathy with the people in these remote and sometimes forgotten places..
An experimental film about the relation of Time and Space.
When the individual lifestyles of the embodiments of urban and nature meet... They clash, and create a new parasitic relationship.
Zane is a deep space scout exploring the unknown in his two-legged vehicle, the PROBOID. He’s utterly alone except for an emergency chat channel filled with viewers spamming his only lifeline with expired memes, emote spam, and shoutout requests. Will any of his fellow scouts find him?
Director Adam Bhala Lough sets out to better understand the technology and people at the center of the AI boom. His quest sends him on a path towards the father of AI, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. When he isn’t able to sit down with Altman himself, Adam travels to India to create an AI version of him to interview instead.
David, a robotic boy—the first of his kind programmed to love—is adopted as a test case by a Cybertronics employee and his wife. Though he gradually becomes their child, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for David.
In early 1860s New York, Irish immigrant Amsterdam Vallon is released from prison and returns to the Five Points, seeking revenge against his father's killer, William Cutting, a powerful anti-immigrant gang leader. He knows that revenge can only be attained by infiltrating Cutting's inner circle. Vallon's journey becomes a fight for personal survival and to find a place for the Irish people.
A solitary Frenchman seeks inspiration in a ruined duchy, meeting eccentric figures with their visions of art, madness, and myth. During 15 minutes he wanders across the broken edges of reality and sanity, he questions what form inspiration can still take among fragments of ruins and environment, as the viewer steps into his eyes and ears, discovering beauty within decay.
After struggling to choose an ice cream flavor, Guido discovers his whole life has been a simulation engineered for that single decision. As reality unravels, he's forced to question identity, destiny, and the meaning of choice itself.
Two feuding siblings carrying on a heroic family tradition as Chicago firefighters. But when a puzzling series of arson attacks is reported, they are forced to set aside their differences to solve the mystery surrounding these crimes.
Lupita Nyong'o narrates a documentary about Peanuts and its creator, Charles M. Schulz. Famous fans—including Drew Barrymore, Kevin Smith, and Al Roker—share its influence on them, and a new animated story finds Charlie Brown on a quest.
Ten Minutes Older is a 2002 film project consisting of two compilation feature films entitled The Trumpet and The Cello. The project was conceived by the producer Nicolas McClintock as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the Millennium. Fifteen celebrated film-makers were invited to create their own vision of what time means in ten minutes of film.
Centres on Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who in later years lived on skid row in Montreal following a history of drug and alcohol abuse.
A unique cinematic experience that invites audiences on a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams. Told through the lens of LEGO® animation, turn up the volume on your imagination and witness the evolution of one of music's most innovative minds.
One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows-Primo Levi. The Oscar®-winning Helen Mirren will introduce audiences to Anne Frank's story through the words in her diary. The set will be her room in the secret refuge in Amsterdam, reconstructed in every detail by set designers from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan. Anne Frank this year would have been 90 years old. Anne's story is intertwined with that of five Holocaust survivors, teenage girls just like her, with the same ideals, the same desire to live: Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Helga Weiss and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Their testimonies alternate with those of their children and grandchildren.
A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.
Follows the dramatic journeys of video game developers as they create and release their games to the world. It's about making video games, but at its core, it's about the creative process, and exposing yourself through your work.
A documentary chronicling the shared experiences of prominent former child stars and the personal and professional price of fame and failure on a child.
A painter recounts the life of Michelangelo.
An examination that goes beyond the celebrity-driven headlines and dives into the methods used by Rick Singer, the man at the center of the shocking 2019 college admissions scandal, to persuade his wealthy clients to cheat an educational system already designed to benefit the privileged.
A look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin.
With the departure of the Bush Administration and the arrival of an “era of transparency,” opportunities are arising for the disclosure of new information that may shed more light on the events that took place before and after 9/11/2001. Loaded with powerful, new footage and in-depth interviews this documentary presents a wide array of evidence both known and unknown…until now.
An ecological drama/documentary, filmed throughout the globe. Part thriller, part meditation on the vanishing wonders of the sub-aquatic world.
The story of life on our planet by the man who has seen more of the natural world than any other. In more than 90 years, Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe, exploring the wild places of our planet and documenting the living world in all its variety and wonder. Addressing the biggest challenges facing life on our planet, the film offers a powerful message of hope for future generations.
Two ten year-old boys are detained by police under suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler.
A 3D feature film about Sir Edmund Hillary's monumental and historical ascent of Mt. Everest in 1953 - an event that stunned the world and defined a nation.
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
No special effects. No stuntmen. No stereotypes. No other feeling comes close. Surfers and secret spots from around the world are profiled in this documentary.
A documentary on the life of the people of the Aran Islands, who were believed to contain the essence of the ancient Irish life, represented by a pure uncorrupted peasant existence centred around the struggle between man and his hostile but magnificent surroundings. A blend of documentary and fictional narrative, the film captures the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands.
Filling the giant screen with stunning time-lapse vistas of Antarctica, and detailing year-round life at McMurdo and Scott Base, Anthony Powell’s documentary is a potent hymn to the icy continent and the heavens above.
