Cinema Regained

A documentary revolutionary in its unconventionality, which, as a result, captures more about its subject (rock 'n roll), and more vividly and emotionally, than would ever be conventionally possible.

Narrative films depend on inserts, but at the same time they are utterly marginal. 'Parenthesis' is a Greek word that means the act of inserting.

Interfering patterns based on a moving line provide a fine structure and an hypnotic film.Tekst 1999:Abstract composition of light and sound in which the mechanics and optics of cinema are not the means but the end. Images are generated using long stroboscopic exposures, resulting in a neo-primitive kind of op-art. A tribute to the scientists who laid the foundations for the film medium.

Investigation into the zero degree of film making. Film camera records at spots determined by a Fibonacci series on the zero meridian and on the line of latitude from the two points where the zero meridian leaves the European continent. The result is a conceptual film that everyone could shoot.

Short impression from the Lithuanian city of Vilnius. An old man is sitting on the pavement and asks passers by to help him stand up. Once on his feet, he falls over and his head hits the kerb. The man is dead, life goes on.

Between the wartime bombing, the latest fashion in ladies' hats is showed off from a manhole cover in an asphalt road in Warsaw, and the maker himself can be recognised in one of the made up women's heads.

see Accelerated Under-Development: In the Idiom of Santiago Alvarez

Intimate portrait of Abel Ferrara: the result is an eccentric road movie, with the restless film maker as a charming, shabby guide around New York by night.

Working very much in the master's own style, Wilkerson presents a portrait of the great radical Cuban film maker Santiago Alvarez. Screened with two of Alvarez' still vibrant masterpieces of agit-cinema.

Furniture flies through the back wall of an artificial world.

In several series of observational short films, Ruud Monster shows us various facets of Holland and its inhabitants. Part five gives a different view of the Dutch landscape through the inventive camerawork.

Coarse film as a cry of despair made on an optical printer.

A very physical film in which the maker, sitting on a horse, investigates and marks out the surroundings.

Joyce Weiland: `A collage film. We started out with a dull film about a little girl named Mary and ended up with something that made us get crazy.'

In an alarmingly undynamic film, a girl visits a boy and a girl. Afterwards, they all leave.

Film edited in the camera about a woman, a Japanese toy bird and their relationship to the viewer.

The powerful image of the artist confronting the elements.

The powerful image of the artist confronting the elements.

The inhabitants of a block of flats show off their living rooms. The result is a very clear form of demographic research. Keep an eye on the house numbers.

Work and approach of five experimental film makers (Henri Plaat, Joost Rekveld, Gerard Holthuis, Lonnie van Brummelen, Jeroen Eisinga) depicted fetchingly.

A vintage newsreel that was for home viewing and covered World War II events and Bikini Atoll atomic testing.

Faces turning away and a stalking camera: two confrontational encounters with the film maker.

Faces turning away and a stalking camera: two confrontational encounters with the film maker.

Lengthy photo series by architect Fred Schoen about the demolition, opposite his own house, of the Twentse Bank and the construction of the Literature Faculty in Amsterdam. The result led eventually to the only film in his oeuvre. Made in close cooperation with Kees Hin.

Again Van Munster tests the effects of his repetitive action on the medium, in this case video.

Visual artist Van Munster uses a repeated action to investigate the physical characteristics of film. How a film camera cuts an uninterrupted motion into pieces.

A fictional story about a 15 metre high sculpture by Geurt van Dijk, told with associative images that originate in apocalyptic notions on the theme of life and death.

Excessive and physical film about death in life, inspired by Le Mort and Madame Edwarda by Georges Bataille.

Discarded takes from advertising films are presented almost untouched, as documents that unwittingly offer valuable and humorous insights into the human condition.

Photo film about the erotic fantasies of a respectably married woman who dreams of a life in which she could have been nude model, seductress, prostitute and finally murderer of her goofy husband.

Camera motions and long exposures leave traces of lights in the emulsion of extremely high contrast ortho chromatic film material. A wonderfully abstract play of light.

The essence of the object becomes visible in the only possible movement.

The essence of the object becomes visible in the only possible movement.

Not very subtle dance film about the battle with gravity on a staircase.

The epitome of a 1960s wuxia and a must-see by King Hu. Mostly taking place at one location - the inn - the scenes are never repetitive with impressive feats of acrobatics. Dragon Gate Inn elevated the wu xia genre to a whole new status.

A night in Bunker Hill, a poor district of Los Angeles inhabited by Arizona Indians some time in the 1950s. Meditative and sour. See also Los Angeles Plays Itself.

The artist turns out to be unable to conquer gravity in both films.

The artist turns out to be unable to conquer gravity in both films.

Sound and visual performance by Karel Doing and Pierre Bastien with a special video system. Four mini cameras that look like eyes on stalks record details of the 'operating' tables.

Derelict houses and old people: they express a desire for the good old days.

`Die Böhm', a photographic cooperation between the artist friends Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber, is a project that has appeared since September 1999 in the form of a magazine. It is published about four times a year in Düsseldorf, each time with a different umbrella subject. The photographic project reflects the differences, but also the similarities between the visual interest of both artists. They work independently of each other: the photos by one form a commentary, addition or new framework of interpretation for the photos of the other. For the episode 'Frau Böhm: Unser Film', original locations of legendary Hollywood films have been sought out and photographed in their present state. Looking for the fictional in the real, in some cases the spectacular elements of reality can barely be found; other locations are not even accessible anymore. The viewer's expectations and associations automatically evoked by these places are charmingly provided with a question mark.

Fragmentary pictures of reality in nocturnal living rooms filmed surreptitiously.

Exciting journey around the eighteenth century sculpted facial expressions of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

Everyone tries to drive out the loneliness - from the visitors to the box office clerk - in nostalgic cinephile film about the last day in the life of a cinema. King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn can be seen once more.

Nervous poet wrestles with everyday utensils. His clumsy movements also cause trouble in bed.

In a disconsolate white space, a man and a woman do their best to make things work out.

Poetic depiction of planes screaming overhead on their way to Kai Tak Airport in the heart of Hong Kong.Tekst IFFR 1999:While landing at Hong Kong Airport, you could read the newspapers on the street, many travellers reported. Kai Tak Airport, that is in the heart of Hong Kong, was closed last year. A film about life in a city and its air traffic, an observation at the end of this century.

A grand and imaginary isosceles triangle is visualised.

A film without an outer subject. Only light and motion. Like sunlight, reflected by waves of water on a white wall. By moving a surface vertically in front of the camera and using an eightfold exposure of the film, an image emerges of horizontal stripes in various tints of grey.

It's always party time with the De Nooijer family at home. Innocent pleasure or a political film?

You spend an afternoon playing with your Super-8 camera with friends as if you are Godard or Warhol. Twenty five years later, you take your films out of the drawer and see the early days of cinema. A silent film from the time of Lou Reed.

Julie Murray: `The sea sucks the seed back into the ocean, the flowers fold like umbrellas, shoots recoil into hiding, in seeds that shrink. The plants accelerate their tremble and wobble and glass unbreaks all around them. Strawberries blanch and tomatoes grow pale. The father, leering, holds forth a flower and suddenly his smile fades to awful seriousness. In an odd concentrated ritual the father and son carefully tip over all the flower pots, laying the plants to rest and it is in this end, around the time he figures the flowers are talking to him, that the son wishes his father had killed him.'

The story of a soldier who doesn't get permission to visit his sick wife, the graduation film by the most striking of Dutch feature directors. All the elements from his later work are already present. In a personal variation on nouvelle vague, he expresses his disgust at established institutions.

A woman returns to her parental home that she left when she was six. The cold winter turns to a summer filled with scent and memories; memories of a crash on the bike, a tree blown down and a crawl through the surrounding undergrowth. Inside the house is quiet and familiar until someone starts screaming in terror.

Portrait of the famous experimental film maker James Benning in the style of Benning. Meticulous, patient and sensitive. The art of landscape film making.

First 'making of' that is better than the film itself - and that isn't bad either! 14-year-old Hana Makhmalbaf foloows her elder sister Samira in Afghanistan when she made 5 O'clock in the Afternoon, and primary reveals social conventions, fear and self-censorship as well as the (necessary?) nagging.

Observations of a docking ship. The optical printer brings people on the quayside closer.

1990, Leningrad, Russia, Soviet Union. Perestroika hits home and Igor Yaruskin, a fairly old fashioned painter, tries to maintain himself in turbulent times.

Sitting in a canoe in a creek, the man has forgotten something essential. The canoe only starts moving when he looks back and is in danger of losing his balance.

A man is present who follows a rhythm in both pictures and sound that can be felt deep down into the belly.

Geometric animation with dizzying depth.

zie Accelerated Under-Development: In the Idiom of Santiago Alvarez

Man, woman and camera live in mutual tension with each other and the empty space. Zwartjes' masterpiece.tekst IFFR 1992:Living is a demonstration of the virtuoso camera-work in the films of Zwartjes from this period. He plays the lead in the film, but at the same time operates the (hand-held) camera which he points at himself. Zwartjes' technique of hand-held filming (without looking through the viewfinder which he couldn't anyway in this case) in rapid yet flowing movements reaches its perfection here. Zwartjes: 'I was as strong as an ox in those days.' The film is part of the series Home Sweet Home, exploring the various rooms in a house (Zwartjes' own house, new at the time, in The Hague). Zwartjes' wife Trix also plays a role in Living.The film was shot with an extremely wide-angle lens which distorted the surroundings and the people. The latter move restlessly through the house; the mood is that of a nightmare. The journey through the house to the top ends in the light.

Film connoisseur Thom Andersen shows the many realities and representations in countless films (including many unique shots) of his beloved Los Angeles. Would the real Los Angeles now stand up? See also The Exiles.

Are those an acrobat, a nurse, an officer and a majorette girl who are moving through the rooms so confrontationally?

Animation film with a simple yet eloquent act.

A short film about the experience of four people in between so called sanity and other states of mind and heart. Expressions of outsiders combined with the film maker's quest for the common ground between spirituality, art and psychosis. This includes the contributions of three novice artists.

Diary of a sculptor as a stream of (un-) consciousness. Everyday life as an artwork. The living sound of the maker himself.

A film about decay, ritual and random process. A reel of super 8 film, shot by a participant of a cruise in the Far East, was mixed with food and fungus and stored to mature in a dark place. A strange chemical reaction took place and new imagery was born in the process. MOLD BOAT was created from the highlights of this forgotten and rotten trip.

Famous milestone in the genre of the collage film.

Unique and indespensible to gain an insight into Korean cinema. Starting with his own roots in the film business, the festival director, commissioner and film maker Kim Hong-Joon shows fascinating Korean fragments since the 1960s.

Storyboards summarise a complete film in just a few images. A sequence of apparently loose images is transformed with the fantasy and ideas of the viewer into action. In her work `My Personal Hitchcock', Katja Stuke combines still images from several films by Alfred Hitchcock into a new, personal storyboard. By taking film images out of their original context, she manages to create a new space of interpretation, even though we know where the images come from. In this way, she creates an opportunity for the viewer to construct complex, individual stories, in which we can project our own thoughts and ideas.

Processed landscape images slide in a rhythmic pattern over the screen, accompanied by minimal violin music by the Danish composer Martin Hall.

We cannot abstain from watching the revelation of a being that would be an object neither for herself nor for any other gaze and yet which would effect, in the mystery of her own invisibility, the condensation of all objectivity.

In very detailed images of huge road junctions fractured by road works, teeming road users try to master the confusing situation with resignation.

A formal study from the Super 8 oeuvre of Pieters, filmed in one uninterrupted shot in his direct surroundings.

Investigation printed on an optical printer of inside and outside a film window.

The time that passes between a car crash and the arrival of the ambulance always seems to last for ever.

A man alone in a factory. Loneliness visualised with fascinating moving camera techniques.

A brief flood of water changes the realistic picture into an abstraction.

The supple camera feels its way along the walls of corridors and rooms, with the complicating double image accentuating the camera movement.

Five kids in a strange and intoxicated ballet. Is it a mugging? A fight? A drugs deal that got out of hand? Or is it poetic drunkenness?

Inhabitants of the same street in Haarlem together tell the fairy tale from the title, each in 15 words..

A dense and highly detailed film exploring sexuality in the specific realms of Mexican wrestling and kitsch paintings through rapid fire transformations.

Dead zebra in stop motion becomes an undead apparition thanks to unexpected movements.

The holy grail of Independent Cinema. John Cassavetes' classic feature début from 1959 is screened here in the rarely seen original version that has only recently been rediscovered. A semi-improvised story about the love between a white boy and a black girl.

Registration of the musical performance that Toebosch made for Volkskrant critic Rudy Koopmans. An incredible, improvised work in which the only two spectators are left in amazement.

Academy film showed budding talent and led e.g. to the controversial feature UNTER DEN PALMEN.

In quarantine, the protagonist leads a lonely migrant existence.

Moniek Toebosch and Christian Manders can be seen as two sombre characters who attract and repel each other in a claustrophobic way.

A reservoir of forgotten film material forms a metaphorical biography of the film history and a partial autobiography of Fisher himself.

A cinematographic look at a man in front of a wall. The lens glides dramatically and almost tangibly over the surface.

Sad movie: about all the good things that country life has to offer, especially in the summer.

Small peepholes give us a glimpse of a hidden colourful world.

In front of a static camera in the studio, the energetic wealth of ideas of the maker unfolds in the form of dozens of appearing and disappearing artworks.

Michele Smith: `They Say consists of two reels of heavily edited (frame by frame) and overlaid 16mm film. It was then intercut with the grainy and scratchy Greek melodrama rental films on VHS. I used fewer 16mm found footage source reels and focused on a few reels as the bulk of material to play with narrative structure in a way related to but different than in my first work. I used quite a bit of footage from one narrative short film about a boy and a wild horse. When nearing the end I was getting tired of editing it and decided to put it out in my garden and dumped a few litter boxes on top of it. Contents -wood pellets and bunny poop. I forgot how long I left it out -it rained a few times. Perhaps a week. I then washed it with laundry detergent and hot water. I want my films to be open. The viewer creates the version of the film they will see by the way in which they view it. This is on a narrative/symbolic/metaphorical level as well as on a visual and structural level. The rapid intercutting and weaving of strands of different footage and elements creates a time space where one must mix what they are seeing for themselves. There is no one way to perceive the links of still images into an illusion of movement. One can, with a readjusting of their viewing, change their experience of the work throughout.'

Static landscape film with one recurring action.tekst IFFR 1992:Tourniquet is an extraordinary landscape painting in time and motion. The makers used the tourniquets in the Limburg farmland as an instrument in making the film. These turnstiles allow people to pass, but stop the cattle. The chance location of the tourniquet (nine different ones were used in the film) determine the panoramic view. By each tourniquet a complete circle was filmed in all four seasons. This approach based on a strictly formal point of departuredoes however provide an amount of material which can equally be regarded as a documentary. It provides a picture of the location in different conditions and the lengthy gaps between shooting also help reveal the changes in the landscape.Jochems and Hamelberg edited the numerous panoramas they collected into a kind of musical composition of images, in which sound also plays an important role. The iron turnstiles make noises as they are turned which were painstakingly recorded and used in the film. 'Each turnstile is different, crooked or level, stiff or fluid in rotation, and if you're lucky sounds like a complex composition in contemporary music,' according to the makers. 'There are a few melodious ones which provide a wealth of lower and upper tones, sharp and hollow sounding noises in an apparently random series to the sensitive ear.'The tourniquette itself, as the camera mount, remains out of sight.

Film camera records the maker who looks back with a Polaroid camera.

Sad movie: the almost motionless statue of a vase of tulips on a modern dresser.

Abstract animation in two parts: 'Dutch Light', a tribute to the source of light and 'Nymphaion', a tribute to the source that emerges in the dark.

After September 11, immigrants from Moslem countries living and working in America were labeled as second-class citizens. Or even imprisoned. Or just deported. Three film makers each found their own powerful way to tackle this issue, this injustice. (GjZ)

Fresh film made on an optical printer that combines a rigid structure with a loving choice of subject.

A simple meal of meticulously photographed ingredients with gruesome close ups.

In these DVD extras, we find out more about the death of Peter, it turns out that his parents had their doubts about his cooperation with the director and Chiquita says what she thinks about her role in the film VERGEEF ME (Forgive Me).

In Paris in 1955, Shinkichi Tajiri sketches in a hallucinogenic way the emergence of the counter culture.

A sharp observation from the Super 8 oeuvre of Pieters.

Special complete version of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen in a condensed form.

Attentive delay and tranquillity on a station platform. Beautiful use of film material by an artist who usually works on video.

Intimate, poetic film takes us to the inner world of Ysabel, alone in her room.

Found 'home movie' of an innocent looking party of unpleasant people.