Blues

Larry Gottheim | USA | 1970 | 9' |

| IFFR 2023

You think films today are slow and minimal? Get back to the pure avant-garde with Larry Gottheim’s silent, single-take record of a bowl of blueberries in milk disappearing. Light, colour, action, time – all the essential elements of cinema are here. He has said it’s his “first real film; all the others rise out of this one.” Hang on for the dazzling shock ending, courtesy of the end of the camera reel.

– Adrian Martin

Also in this combined programme

Untitled Part 9: This Time

Images of Bamiyan in Afghanistan alternate with children telling crazy stories. A chronicle of displacement.
Short & Mid-length
Ultramint

A work of strange, almost perverse sensuality, organised in clusters of analogies and contrasts.
Short & Mid-length
Sinisukka 1948

An experimental dance choreography that goes beyond human bodies and into a micro-universe of relational aesthetics.
Short & Mid-length
Per una selva oscura

The dark forest beloved of poets, cinematically recreated in a timely, materialist and apocalyptic vein.
Short & Mid-length
Kajanaqtuq

Faded Super-8 images accompany an Inuk Elder’s memories in this powerful invocation of Inuit life and mythology.
Short & Mid-length
Fear Factor

A reflection on the perils triggered by cultural appropriation and stereotypical representations of black bodies.
Short & Mid-length
A.R.T.

A parody of disco music and dance treated with live video multiplications of images.
Short & Mid-length
3 Peonies

Flowers are stuck down and covered by tape: a wry comment on 20th-century modernist art.
Short & Mid-length
3 Lieder

Timeless, silent film vignettes based on songs from Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe. A tribute to early film.
Short & Mid-length