New York Portrait, Chapter II

Chapter Two represents a continuation of daily observations from the environment of Manhattan compiled over a period from 1980-1981. This is the second part of an extended life's portrait of New York.

Zombie Strain

During the zombie apocalypse, survivors trapped in a sound stage make an amazing discovery about a potent strain of marijuana. But tensions rise, mistakes are made, and they start to wonder, who's more dangerous, the undead or each other?

Fall 2

Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.

I'm Too Sad to Tell You

This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.

Signatures of the Soul

Tattooing — "the world's oldest skin game" — is the subject of this iconic documentary. Writer/director Geoff Steven scored a major coup by signing Easy Rider legend Peter Fonda as his presenter. Travelling to Aotearoa, Samoa, Japan and the United States, the doco traces key developments in tattooing, including its importance in the Pacific, prison-inspired styles, and the influence of 1960s counterculture. Legendary tattooists feature (including Americans Ed Hardy and Jack Rudy), while the closing credits parade some eye-opening full body tattoos.

The Bek Show: End of Civilization

The versatile artist, BEK Hyunjin ventures into theater direction, leaving the actors in a state of confusion. His unconventional direction unfolds into strange scenes on stage. Scenes of people howling, a woman's monologue, another woman lip-syncing a song appear in random order, and BEK Hyunjin himself appears on stage as a primitive man, a singer and a narrator.

Block Pass

Friendship and rebellion - but how will a secret play out in the masculine world of motocross? Willy and Jojo are best friends. They share a passion for motocross - whereas Willy uses it to honour his deceased father, it is only by excelling in the sport that Jojo’s father will notice him. Also the masculine world or racing is perfectly suited to suppress their own insecurities. Yet when Willy one fateful night discovers the hidden love life of Jojo, he will be forced to take sides in the wave of homophobia that follows.

Julie's Smile

The life of Julie, a peaceful and nature-loving young woman, strikes out of control as she begins to lose her grip on reality.

Fallen

By confronting the devastating truth of fatal violence against women, this experimental dance short shifts focus from passive victimhood to the strength and power of resilience.

Audition

We are thrust in media res to an actor audtioning, but why is there a blank screen?

Le crash

Mirror Mirror

A curator at a high-profile art gallery finds herself drawn to a young, polyamorous artist who introduces her to a lifestyle that reflects a part of herself she had once abandoned.

Ecopoiesis

Cosmic horror explores the elements and matter of so-called inanimate nature, which become actors and form a new ecosystem. A stream of depictions of fluid materials embedded into each other is accompanied by an unsettling soundtrack that reinforces the uncertainty of whether we are watching a cosmogonic or eschatological vision.

Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Late Years

Simon Schama explains the style, theme and concept of Rembrandt's late masterpieces.

The Red Bank. James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks

This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”

A Test of Violence

Stuart Cooper's short about the work of Spanish artist Juan Genovés is an inspired introduction to the works of this extraordinary artist, exploring its minimalist aesthetic and storytelling qualities through a variety of cinematic techniques, including rostrum, animation, news footage and live action recreations.

Floating Away

The Art of Warez

The rise and fall of ANSI art in the 1980s and early 90s. ANSI graphics were made from small rectangles. There were 256 rectangles to choose from - 4 density patterns and 16 colors per pattern.

Looby

Looby is the story of what happens when an artist chooses to speak out. For Australian painter Keith Looby, it cost him almost everything. Winner of prestigious art prizes and collected by major galleries at home and abroad, Keith's addiction to speaking his mind has left a string of failed business relationships, marriages and friendships. Bludgeoned into coherence by the film-makers, assessed by dealers, curators, critics and fellow artists, Looby is a chance to look at a brilliant artist who had his moment in the sun, and to ask whether he should have another.

pixel skin

The body collapses in the ruins of the digital abyss, merging into pixel molecules in a cybernetic dissolution that disrupts the boundaries between human and machine through motion-tracking software applied to a body no longer legible within the colonial grammar of the algorithm.

The Simpsons: O C'mon All Ye Faithful

The residents of Springfield search for Christmas cheer.

Magic in the Moonlight

Set in the 1920s French Riviera, a master magician is commissioned to try and expose a psychic as a fraud.

Memoir of a Snail

Forcibly separated from her twin brother when they are orphaned, a melancholic misfit learns how to find confidence within herself amid the clutter of misfortunes and everyday life.

Onward

In a suburban fantasy world, two teenage elf brothers embark on an extraordinary quest to discover if there is still a little magic left out there.

Under the Sea: A Descendants Story

Mal emerges from the shadows of a mystical forest onto a dark coastline where she crosses paths with Dizzy.

The Gnome-Mobile

An eccentric millionaire and his grandchildren are embroiled in the plights of some forest gnomes who are searching for the rest of their tribe. While helping them, the millionaire is suspected of being crazy because he's seeing gnomes! He's committed, and the niece and nephew and the gnomes have to find him and free him.

Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring

The Oscar-winning cat-and-mouse twosome--Tom and Jerry--returns with another adventure. When Tom and Jerry's irrepressible curiosity gets the best of them, the mysterious magic ring that Tom guards with his life ends up stuck over Jerry's head. Now, Jerry must find a way to free himself of the ring while fleeing Tom, who wants to remove the ring any way he can! Find out if the pair can conjure up a solution in this fur-raising, madcap escapade.

David Blaine: Beyond Magic

In his most revealing performance yet, the one-hour special features an exploration into Blaine’s trademark style of street magic as he once again stuns his audience.

Magician Mickey

Donald continually heckles Mickey's magic act, but Mickey bests him at every turn. Donald shoots off a magic pistol that causes all the stage props to fall down on them at the finish of the act.

Encanto

The tale of an extraordinary family, the Madrigals, who live hidden in the mountains of Colombia, in a magical house, in a vibrant town, in a wondrous, charmed place called an Encanto. The magic of the Encanto has blessed every child in the family—every child except one, Mirabel. But when she discovers that the magic surrounding the Encanto is in danger, Mirabel decides that she, the only ordinary Madrigal, might just be her exceptional family's last hope.

The House

Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.

In Your Dreams

Stevie and her little brother Elliot journey into the wildly absurd landscape of their own dreams to ask the Sandman to grant them the perfect family.

Monkey Business

Research chemist Barnaby Fulton works on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company. One of the labs chimps gets loose in the laboratory and mixes chemicals, but then pours the mix into the water cooler. When trying one of his own samples, washed down with water from the cooler, Fulton begins to act just like a twenty-year-old and believes his potion is working. Soon his wife and boss are also behaving like children.

From Straight A's to XXX

When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.

Nekrotronic

A man discovers that he is part of a secret sect of magical beings who hunt down and destroy demons in the internet.

Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra-Doo

The gang goes on a trip to check on Velma's younger sister, Madelyn. She's been studying stage magic at the Whirlen Merlin Magic Academy, where apparently there have been sightings of a giant griffin. The gang decides to investigate.

Jesus' Son

A young man turns from drug addiction and petty crime to a life redeemed by a discovery of compassion.

Houdini

By the early 1900s, the extraordinary Houdini earned an international reputation for his theatrical tricks and daring feats of extrication from shackles, ropes, handcuffs and... Scotland Yard's jails.

Kung Pow: Enter the Fist

A movie within a movie, created to spoof the martial arts genre. Writer/director Steve Oedekerk uses contemporary characters and splices them into a 1970s kung-fu film, weaving the new and old together. As the main character, The Chosen One, Oedekerk sets off to avenge the deaths of his parents at the hands of kung-fu legend Master Pain. Along the way he encounters some strange characters.

Strange Magic

A love potion works its devious charms on fairies, elves and the swamp-dwelling Bog King as they all try to possess the potion for themselves.