All Films

The Fountain

2003 • 60 min

A film by James Fotopoulos

Hitler's Hat

2003 • 47 min

A documentary about Richard Marowitz, a Jewish GI who found Hitler's top hat, crushed it, and took it home as a souvenir of war. For 50 years, Hitler’s hat fittingly sat buried at the bottom of Marowitz's magic trick closet. In 1996, Marowitz went public with his story and loaned the hat to the American Museum of Jewish military history.

With What Shall I Wash

2003 • 10 min • Spain

An animated short film in which the images blend with humor and originality. Sixteenth-century music sung brings an emotional dimension, which makes this short with a touch of brilliant production in gay cinematography. The short film won the TEDDY AWARD for short films at the 54th International Film Festival in Berlin in 2004. Day break in the red-light district of a Spanish town. Someone who earns their living in these parts makes their way home, sits down in front of the mirror and begins to remove their make-up. As they do so, they reflect on the events of the night to the strains of a song from the Middle Ages entitled "¿Con qué la lavaré?", a lament about single women which was once sung in four-part harmony. A celluloid tribute to homosexual artistes of the late 1970s, just after Franco's dictatorship.

The Helmet

2003 • 25 min

Seeking Grace

2003 • 4 min • Canada

"In Seeking Grace an elegant older woman (Gina) walks calmly with a flower pot on her head, her physical balance and confidence a metaphor for the grace I seek in my own life. Indeed, this footage was shot because Gina told me I had terrible posture and demonstrated for me her ability to walk straight while balancing a heavy object, something the nuns had forced her to do in school. In Seeking Grace, the idea of grace encompasses but also goes beyond the notion of the body, referring to a deeper ongoing metaphysical quest." - Sara Angelucci

pb

2003 • 2 min • Japan

This nonsense short drama was created for the film festival "Very Very Short" at the Tollywood Theatre in Shimokitazawa. At that time, the condition was (1) two minutes, (2) insert a date, and (3) within the film include the word of "Sa-yo-na-ra".

Les filles en orange

2003 • 31 min

The girls in orange are neighbors and spend time in the backyards. They lead a quiet, joyful and casual life. Until the day when one of them accidentally hangs a young man's sweater with his basket... A poetic, funny and astonishing film, close to the worlds of Jacques Tati and Jacques Demy. "Girls in Orange" is an educational film, which contains: a method for whitening goldfish, a classification of sexes according to color, a formula for making soap bubbles, a way to rewind threads that unwind, a observation from the top of roofs, a theory of up and down, angling maxims, a five-step dance manual, a method of communicating in the palms of the hands, a way of singing out of tune, and, finally , a method for filming clumsily but surely.

The Birthday Party: Pleasure Heads Must Burn

2003 • 60 min • United Kingdom

Featuring footage from two live performances at the Hacienda club in Manchester, England, as well as the original promotional videos for "Nick the Stripper" and "Deep In the Woods," Pleasure Heads Must Burn offers a solid collection of footage from The Birthday Party's musical history. Some of the songs featured include "Sonny's Burning," "The Six Strings that Drew Blood," and "Pleasure Avalanche," among many others. Bonus material includes footage from several television appearances which originally aired on British and Dutch stations.

High School Reunion

2003 • 16 min

San Francisco video maker Sarah Jacobson returns to Edina, Minnesota, to settle scores with her old classmates a decade after they graduated.

Der Henker

2003 • 36 min • Germany

A masked madman goes out for revenge after his mother kills his father during his childhood.

How High Is The Mountain

2003 • 56 min • Taiwan

In this documentary, director Tang records his own son's birth and growing up, his father's recovering from a stroke and a nostalgic trip home to China. (In the 1940's his father evacuated with the Nationalist troops to Taiwan after it lost the Mainland to the Communist in the war. It wasn't until 1980's were people allowed to go home to visit in Mainland China). From his search for the earliest memory of life, with a close observation and sensitivity, he exams the parallels of the different lives of a different time. In his previous work, "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN," director Tang ends it with the ultrasound image of his unborn child, representing the beginning of a new life. With this work, "HOW HIGH IS THE MOUNTAIN," it is rather a beginning of a series of questions about life and a continuation of examination of his own life and the longing of a perfect world.

CODENAME NABI Mission 2: The Beautiful Prey

2003 • 60 min • Japan

Navi, an assassin who takes on dangerous missions under the orders of a mysterious organization. Her current target is Park Gi-su, the president of the Korean pharmaceutical company Korea Medical. Park is secretly developing biological weapons and plans to dominate the underworld. Navi is given five days, the time before Park contacts a weapons broker known as the 'Merchant of Death' in Seoul. Navi gets close to Park's beloved daughter..

The Music of 'The Wicker Man'

2003 • 16 min

Gary Carpenter discusses how the music in The Wicker Man was created.

Curtains for Roy Earle

2003 • 15 min

A featurette exploring the gangster films made at Warner Bros., actor Humphrey Bogart's career and the making of HIGH SIERRA (1941).

While You Were Sleeping

2003 • 3 min

The fleeting inverted image of the landscape in the raindrops as they swell from drop to drip is an optical phenomenon, but to me it’s pure magic. And then they form streams and pulse hypnotically like luminous quicksilver. (..) I shot this film with a Beaulieu wind-up 16 mm. movie camera from the ’60s and film stock that was at least ten years out of date. The film was shot on a balcony with an awning while my wife napped in the next room with one of our boys. They slept so deeply that even the thunder did not wake them. - Jeff Scher

Out Yonder — Teeth

2003 • 14 min • United States of America

On a quiet winter morning, Austin, son of David Lynch, breaks his silence and decides to talk about his troubling functional incapacitation.

Hard Good Life

2003 • 43 min • Taiwan

An elderly man cooks himself some noodles and eats them straight from the pot while watching TV by himself. He dozes off at his job as a security guard. Alone since the death of his wife, the father’s daily life is filmed by his daughter. While turning her gaze on ordinary things like garbage, keys, puppies, flies and lizards, we can almost sense the strong smells of summer and the sound of thunder at night. Suddenly, the father turns and waves to us. The father-daughter bond is expressed here in very few words.

Yo

2003 • 3 min • Canada

John Weldon dissects the nature of personal space, community, and crime and punishment in this macabre whimsy. Employing the simplest of animation styles to enhance a mock Zen spirituality, Weldon and composer Chris Crilly debate the Old Testament notion of "punishment fitting the crime." A film without words.

Six and Seven-Eighths

2003 • 9 min

Grant Munro dances to New Orleans jazz music.

No

2003 • 43 min

Academy of arts students and professors return from a trip without driver. Group guide tells about the one week lasting drama to driver's relatives. Film about the challenges in extreme situation, tolerance for art and illness.

Jet

2003 • 6 min • Austria

Dynamic recycling of treated and degraded video, structured to a track by electronic sound artists Radian.

Kiki and Tiger

2003 • 55 min

1997. Tiger, a Serb living in Germany is best friends with an illegal Albanian refugee, Kiki. A natural hustler, Kiki sweet-talks his way into odd jobs and women's hearts. The bond between the two men appears unbreakable, but the combination of Tiger's malicious father, who despises Albanians, and Kiki's new German girlfriend conspires to draw them apart. Then fate steps in and Kiki is deported, but the final straw comes when Tiger's father threatens to send Tiger to fight in the Balkans.

A Family Undertaking

2003 • 57 min • United States of America

Before the Civil War, preparing the dead for burial and funeral rites generally fell to friends and family members of the deceased. The 20th century saw the rise of the professional undertaker, a trend that changed American attitudes toward death and distanced grievers from their loved ones. This eye-opening film uncovers a growing movement advocating a return to a more traditional, personal approach to honoring the dead.

Amelia

2003 • 60 min • Canada

The multi-award-winning dance film Amelia (2002), directed and choreographed by Edouard Lock and performed by the acclaimed dance company La La La Human Steps, explores the use of point technique using extended intertwining solos, complex partnering sequences and extreme speed to generate powerful performances with unexpected moments of tender emotion and serenity.