All Films

Karel Doing follows the route taken by his uncle Ed Huis in ‘t Veld, who was executed in 1942 by Japanese forces on the Indonesian island of Tarakan. In this intimate travelogue, Doing visits the harbours where the mail ships stopped on their way to the Dutch Indies (Amsterdam, Genoa, Port Said) and films in Jakarta, Surabaya, Borneo and the oil-rich island of Tarakan. Fragments from his uncle’s letters, archival footage from the extensive Eye Filmmuseum collection and the director’s diary are combined in a fascinating mix.

Zone shows a group of children in a desolate piece of urban land. Besides their behavior as children, they seem to act as tramps. For example they attempt to make a bed out of cardboard boxes, but also pelt each other with them. Franzson's sombre, repetitive music enhances the sinister atmosphere of Mik's film, while the images give an extra charge to the music, which consists of improvisation on ceramic windpipes and double bass. The low, constant tone of the windpipe, played by the composer himself, has its equivalent in the highly repetitive nature of Mik's work. Franzson wanted to imitate the sound of the wind till the point were nature meets culture.

From the "Contacts" series

Union Pacific's steam locomotive #3985 is the largest operating steam locomotive in the world. This 4-6-6-4 locomotive, built in 1943 still runs today as part of the railroad's public relations program. In this DVD, we'll follow 3985, which is also called the "Challenger", in Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma & Texas as she shows the public what big steam was really like. Highlights *Visit the Cheyenne Steam Shop to see where 3985 is maintained. *See some of the historical equipment still in the roundhouse *Follow the engine on it's ferry move across Nebraska *Enjoy her pulling an excursion from Council Bluffs to Sioux City, Iowa *See 3985's NRHS convention trip from St. Louis to Gorham, IL *Follow her through Oklahoma and Texas!

Lola, a bitter, burnt-out drag queen dishes the dirt in this claymation, gin-soaked, stumble down memory lane. It ain't easy being gay and clay.

Multimedia artist Jiang Zhi's eighth video art film. "One day in 2001, just before the day I was about to move again in Shenzhen, a strange homeless girl caught my attention. She stayed under a wire pole in front of my building, reading the same piece of newspaper though she held it up-side-down sometimes. When the night fell, she went to sleep under the pole covering herself with the newspaper. She carried an empty and bottomless bird cage with her all the time like some kind of treasure. It is certain that the empty cage meant a lot to her. I am not sure what it means to her, maybe it is the only thing that she can take hold of, it is a symbol of home. Of course, this is only my guess. For me, the feeling of emptiness is very strong when I shot the film. Passengers passing by the girl like winds, time that looks still by flies away like an arrow…About sympathy and indifferent, about slowness and rapidity…about consistence and random…Everything seems to be about emptiness."

Doctor Liu, a work and entertainment therapist in a mental hospital, uses drama rehearsals to let mental patients who have basically recovered in the hospital re-enter the society, learn to be grateful, and get along with others in harmony.

Director Wei Xing independently filmed the documentary "Jesus Bless You" in 2002, as both director and cinematographer. The film won the 10th Beijing University Student Film Festival Student Unit Professional Group Documentary Excellence Award (the best vacancy), the second Beijing International University Student Film Festival Silver Award in 2003, the 2003 Hong Kong Independent Film and Video Competition. the 2003 "Jesus "Bless You" is collected by the University of San Diego Library.

A fragment of tinted nitrate. An acetate recording of a wedding ceremony. Echoes of the bitter sweetness of the Spirit on the tongue of Man. As Frampton tipped his hat to Gloria, so might I.

On December 12, 1863, General Ambrose Burnside's Army of the Potomac engaged General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia... Close combat through the streets of Fredericksburg and multiple assaults on the Confederate army entrenched in the heights behind the town resulted in heavy Federal casualties, which forced an eventual withdrawal. In November, 2001, I attended a small and relatively informal reenactment of the battle of Fredericksburg. About a hundred men and women did their best to illustrate the actions of the thousands of young men who offered their lives a century earlier. An air of absurd theater suffused the entire event, which provided the ground for its peculiar truth. Everyone played their part exceedingly honestly and well, and left something on the film I was myself surprised to find there.

Multimedia artist Jiang Zhi's ninth video art film. From his website: "This work...is taken when I begged outside a supermarket. Begging is a way of collecting people’s responses towards major event and attitude about international affairs."

Traditional opera is well known in Fujian, and the women clown (played by men) of Gaojia Opera are the most famous. This film records the last days of Master Ke Xianxi, one of four most famous 'clowns' in China, and his caring for the existence and development of Gaojia Opera in modern times. It depicts the major challenges facing Chinese traditional opera today.

"Elusive and compelling, Have a Nice Day Alone is surpassingly strange, even for Leslie Thornton, an acknowledged genius of the unexpected. The entire spatial field of the film is activated by a technological nervous twitch, a bizarrely beautiful and hypnotic pulsing. The image shrinks, flows, collapses, seeming to follow some strange and hidden agenda. There is a text about speech on screen, visible through the pulse. In the background, extreme forms of vocalization, yodeling and macabre laughter punctuate the visual space. As the image flutters, a robotic voice speaks about various conditions of speech. Language is dislocated.It is unclear whether the voice mimics or generates the text." (Thomas Zummer)

A picture of the daily life of girls, painted with fashionable music and design work. While using free and uninhibited images, the director also knowingly conducts a study on the model of "film".

Song of the Mushroom (2002), completed in December 2002, is a collaboration between filmmakers Joel Haertling and Stan Brakhage. With interest in mycology, Haertling made mushroom spore prints directly onto clear 16mm film. A 7.25-second loop was passed from Haertling to Brakhage who added hand painting. This loop was then step-processed utilizing a variety of lighting aspects. Brakhage did the final edit. This was one of the very last films Brakhage made before he left Boulder in January 2003. He died in Canada in March 2003.

What does an American ambassador really do, and how does he or she deal with the dangers of serving in a potentially hostile nation? In this unique program, National Geographic ventures past the heavily guarded gates of four American embassies to find out. Among those profiled is single mother Wendy Chamberlain, who was the new ambassador to Islamic Pakistan when al Queda terrorists attacked America on September 11. She relates how, with family and staff members sent back to the U.S. for security reasons, she held talks with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to determine whether the one-time Taliban ally would support President Bush's war on terrorism. It was a turning point in the crisis, and one of several dramatic moments in this fascinating, highly personal look at American foreign policy.

"In her day-in-the-life portrait of an African-American woman, Simpson uses tropes of cinema, diary, and surveillance. The portrait appears on 31 12-by-9-inch flat video screens arrayed on a gallery wall to resemble a month on a calendar: a row of three screens tops four rows of seven screens. Each video runs about 20 minutes and appears to chronicle the events of a single day; most shots last around five seconds and the streams of imagery are not synchronized, so viewers face a kinetic panorama." -Bill Stamets

2nd Story CD "Thanatos" (August 11, 2002) 1. Sound Horizon [mode: Thanatos] 2. Soko ni Aru Fuukei / The scenery there 3. Kowareta Marionette / Broken Marionette 4. Giniro no Basha / Silver carriage 5. Rinne no Sunadokei 6. Sango no Shiro / Coral Castle 7. Thanatos no Gensou / Thanatos fantasy

One day, 'I' request an interview with 'Him' whom I had loved in vain for a long time in the old days. Although I record his words and see his face through my camera, I don't really listen or look at him. As he tells his story, I'm remembering the past. After the interview, I take out my worn and rusty passion and blow it away with ease.

An exciting day in the life of a rookie lawman. He has never had to fire his weapon, respects his superiors, and is always ready for any emergency - day or night.

Sister Noella Marcellino, "The Cheese Nun," takes viewers on a fascinating and delightful personal journey as she becomes a champion for artisanal cheesemakers on both sides of the Atlantic. While making a 20,000-mile odyssey through some of the most remote cheesemaking regions of France, little did she realize that she was on her way to becoming a leading international expert in the art of natural-milk cheesemaking.

An imagining of a bee’s eye view of a spring day in Golden Gate Park. A primitive, home-made camera reveals a world of vibrant, frenetic color, racing between flowers and losing itself in the revelry of survival and sunshine.

In 1889, a Chinese man using decayed, ancient tortoise shells in his malaria medicine noticed that the shells were covered with scrolls of mysterious inscriptions. The oracle bones, as the shells were called, told the story of an ancient people known as the Shang - a civilisation which had long been dismissed as legend. Since then, historians have found more evidence of this ancient city, but the city itself has never been found.