The footage in this rare film by legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali was shot by a French news team, after which Abu Ali edited it into one of the earliest films about the occupied territory in Gaza.
In deze surrealistische film van Henri Storck koopt een jongeman een glazen oog dat hij via de post verstuurt. Op een bijzondere manier komen erotiek en maatschappijkritiek erin samen.
In Hus, Inger-Lise Hansen attempts to reveal the private layers of our lives through stop-motion and time-lapse photography. Each shot of the film opens on a hidden part of a house and exposes it to the passing light.
The Octopus is a cinematic masterpiece that was restored in 2020. As a historical document, it not only depicts an utterly fascinating creature in all its splendour and mystery but also displays the infinite possibilities of the medium of film.
Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid took inspiration from surrealist films like Un chien andalou and L'Age d'Or by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel for their own avant-garde short film—even though they repeatedly denied it themselves. Following a similar dream logic, Meshes of the Afternoon tells a circular story about a dreaming woman.
Scorpio Rising is perhaps Kenneth Anger's best-known work. Set to the beats of 1960s pop music, the film follows a group of bikers and explores the occult, homosexuality, and Nazism. It also idolises rebellious public figures such as James Dean and Marlon Brando.
In 45th Parallel, a monologue is performed in a building on a borderline. Lawrence Abu Hamdan intelligently exposes the absurdity of borders and the often hypocritical legislation around them.
Irani Bag is a split-screen video essay that questions the alleged innocence of handbags in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. In doing so, Maryam Tafakory provides a robust political analysis of censorship and intimacy.
This French short film is highly regarded in many film history books. Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel wrote his first feat together with Salvador Dalí, based on their dreams.
On May 27th, 2019, Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh, half of the Belgian-Congolese film collective Collectif Faire-Part, landed at Luanda airport in Angola. Despite a scheduled connecting flight, the duo will only take off again two days later to continue their journey to Frankfurt.
Hungarian Flóra Anna Buda won no less than three major film awards (in Cannes, Annecy, and Sarajevo) with her dreamy short animation film 27. It is a story about a young woman exploring her sexuality to her heart's content: lurking in the background is a socio-political message about the soured housing market in France.
Dream of Silk was banned from screening in Iran. In the film, Nahid Rezaei returns to the high school she attended as a young woman twenty years ago, to talk to the young students. She asks them about their hopes for the future and their vision of an ideal life.
Parviz Kimiavi is one of the most prominent figures of 20th-century Persian cinema.In his documentaries, he highlights various subjects in an often poetic and impressionistic way.In P Like Pelican, an old hermit in a slum wants to teach the alphabet to the street children who often come to play in his neighbourhood.
Brussels-based filmmakers Elie Maissin and Mieriën Coppens often collaborate with the collective La Voix des Sans Papiers. In doing so, the duo gives a voice to those without documents. Their understated film language evokes diverse ways of communicating: in different spoken languages, with the silent language of the body, with an environment.
American filmmaker Robert Breer first experimented with rotoscoping in Gulls and Buoys, although by 1972, the technique was already considered outdated.The film is reminiscent of an abstract holiday video on the beach.
The mystery of the filmmaking process is a crucial element in Robert Beavers' artistic signature. Winged Dialogue is characteristic of many of his films: at once lyrical and rigorous, sensual and complex. Mediterranean cities, landscapes, and cultural traditions unveil deeper personal and aesthetic themes. The sexuality of the body and the purity of the soul come together glowingly.
Nocturnal Butterflies is the only film entirely made in Servaisgraphy, a technique that fuses live-action and animation. The late Raoul Servais, a key figure in the history of Belgian animation, already experimented with this style in his film Harpya.
Using a typical American family car, avant-garde queer filmmaker Su Friedrich tells the story of a love affair and its demise. Here, the old, beige station wagon with faux wood panelling is the vehicle of an atypical lesbian couple. When their relationship ends, the vehicle becomes the property of one of them and curses the existence of the other.
Harry Kramer dances his way through an industrial landscape to the rhythm of groovy jazz music. Filmed and edited in a clever but alienating way, slowly but surely, the urban setting and the impact of a dizzying and all-consuming metropolis take over.
In a mix of documentary and fiction, Emotional Architecture 1959 explores several Madrid neighbourhoods in the wake of Sebas and Andrea, two literature and philosophy students who fall in love during the 1958-59 academic year. Their love affair is marked by differences in social class and in outlook on life.
Like fellow filmmakers Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard, French director Bruno Muel belonged to the militant Medvedkine, a group of socially engaged filmmakers active between 1967 and 1974. In Septembre Chilien, a documentary about the 1973 coup, he mixes official footage with clandestine shots of the rising opposition.
A documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman’s efforts to educate her small, Southern community. DiAna DiAna is a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.
Following a premonition, a young woman tries to persuade her fiancé not to go out to sea in his fishing boat, but the boy ignores her and sets out. Soon, a storm occurs, and the girl frantically tries to find out his fate.
In a world where everything is forbidden except what is obligatory, a man recalls for what reasons he came to work in a very strange fast food restaurant.
A detailed account of a failed bank robbery. A single take where over ninety people perform a meticulous choreography for the camera. The film recreates an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006.
Fifty-nine-year-old factory worker Beryl is totally obsessed with drawing, and her fixation dominates the entire household. Apart from her husband, her model and muse, every member of the family is addicted to something.
Time travel, still images, a past, present and future and the aftermath of World War III. The tale of a man, a slave, sent back and forth, in and out of time, to find a solution to the world’s fate.
As a young Chinese filmmaker returns to his hometown in search for himself, a long due conversation with his mother dives the two of them into a quest for acceptance and love.
Eén maal per jaar mogen de voormalige inwoners van Ma’loul terug keren naar hun door Israël bezette dorp. Tijdens de traditionele picknick documenteert de Palestijns-Belgische filmmaker Michel Khleifi hoe de geschiedenis van deze plek in de herinneringen van de oude generaties en in de verbeelding van hun kinderen verder leeft.
A devastating portrait of the artist's niece, haunted by the abuse she suffered as a child and the passivity of the family members who allowed it to continue.
A Hollywood villa on a sultry summer night. The escort does what he was hired to do and gives his client the illusion he has paid for. “I’ll make you a star”, the customer says, before the tide turns abruptly and the power dynamics are unsettled.
A sensory insight into the life of an Iranian refugee. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, numerous Iranian intellectuals and artists had to flee their beloved country. Many of them settled in Paris and tried to build a new life, often without success.
Udo Kier dies his way through film history. He screams, falls, is dismembered, shot or commits suicide. Again and again his empty gaze, again and again his rigid body.
Large parts of Goma were covered with lava after the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano in January 2002. Today kids live in the ruins on the lava. They sell paper hankies to grown-ups in the city, and lava rocks to construction builders.
Surrounded by the sound of nocturnal animals, a girl falls into a deep sleep. Gradually we slip into her dream that takes us on a cosmic journey through the meadows of Erpe-Mere.
In Dominique Loreau's very first (short) film, a woman wanders the streets of Brussels, waiting to leave for the tropics with a man she happened to meet in a pub.
A recently retired father invites his son to help him with the cherry picking in the garden. The father is in no hurry to finish the cherry job though, as he tries to catch up with his son. The cherries remain in the background.
