Agenda

This is My Kingdom shows a group of exuberant partying locals. Loud music, lots of booze. During the party, guests begin throwing bricks at an already smashed car. Eventually, the party culminates in the destruction of everything in sight. A revolution, perhaps?  

The dark comedy La Cigarette is Germaine Dulac’s earliest surviving film, and although on the surface it follows the classic pattern of a domestic farce, something dark dances underneath it. Everything is bathed in a willfully unreal atmosphere, built around an imagined infidelity. La Cigarette is one of the first films that uses the psychology of the image quite explicitly.

Filmmaker Elahe Esmaili helps pack up their parents’ house. As the boxes pile up, intergenerational discussions also flare up: Elahe does not wear a hijab, embodying the courage of her generation. Esmaili longs for a deep, existential shift, driven by the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement that pervaded Iran.

This compilation of short silent films on the theme of ‘flowers’ was produced between 1906 and 1920, with spectacular colors applied to each image using the Pathé Color process, or similar stencil techniques. The films attest to the specific color aesthetic of early cinema.

In Luces del desierto, strange lights appear over the Mexican desert. The residents tell what they have seen: a fireball, flying lights, flashes, lightning perhaps? The uniqueness of each experience builds to a larger story, formed by a chorus of people. The film invites the viewer to open their eyes wide and listen to  the sounds hidden in the darkness.