Imagina

Dreams often take on a very concrete form, and yet capturing them on film is incredibly tricky. In Shigeo Arikawa’s imaginative world, a geometric and yet absolutely unpredictable surrealistic vision materializes into a disturbing and, at the same time, alluring form.

Twenty-five old movies, three men under the spell of one woman, and 3-D. Oscar nominee Virgil Widrich has created a precise and playful noir mystery that also serves as a tribute to period cinematography while simultaneously reconstructing it into a form that distorts the boundaries of the cinematic illusion. Whoever said that experimental film can’t be hedonistic?

Do you know how to take a bath properly? And did you know that when a submarine starts running out of air you can get oxygen from pancake bubbles? In his latest phantasmagoric offering, Guy Maddin (aided by Geraldine Chaplin and Udo Kier) demonstrates the indefatigability of his imagination while reinvigorating the spirit of movies that once existed but have been lost forever.

This compilation film by Jindřich Chalupecký Award-winner Roman Štětina employes scenes from the cult series “Columbo” to create an entirely new story that highlights moments we would not have expected from the original. Columbo’s lost case is, at the same time, the one which gives the celebrated detective the most gray hair and wrinkles.

The Morning Star turns up in a remote Mexican village, intent on helping people. But could this change come from on high? In this final part of his trilogy – another original work – Gust Van den Berghe looks to notions of an earthly paradise, using an entirely new film format to portray it. Might the boundaries of the spiritual world be in the shape of a circle?

A somewhat different kind of excursion to Vienna’s Museum of Natural History that doesn’t urge us to view the exhibits with a sense of wonder. Forty-five engaging but essentially common static shots encourage us instead to revise our perception of the film image and the way we look at history.

Dva is an unrelentingly imaginative Czech band. Nipomo is the name of their successful album and also of the inspired and playful song chosen by Marek Partyš for his first music video, which won Best LoFi at the Berlin Music Video Awards.

A tram crisscrosses through the streets, kids play on the grass, the cemetery is devoid of markers. This unostentatious film, concisely capturing the mood of an intriguing site, ushers the viewer into a world ruled over by the stark atemporality of a place of burial from before the Second World War.

Ivan Cardoso is an icon of Brazilian underground film whose works shy away from neither nudity nor the macabre, and his creations have never subscribed to the notion of high or low art. In a compilation film that sums up his rich career, a notion stands out that entertainment was never more intense and unscrupulous, and yet, at its core, benign.

Foggy memories of a French nightclub from the mid-20th century; glitchy stuttering electronic music by Lanuk, 2014. A video edited in real time by a leading Czech experimenter which revitalizes the voyeuristic nature of the film image.

Father? – Yes, son! Father Murphy are the crown princes of the Italian psychedelic scene. Luca Dipierro is an artist working in cutout animation. This is his vision of the crucifixion as mediated by the hypnotic eponymous composition from the band’s album Croce.

Penetrating the bowels of the monster isn’t easy but this film anatomy of the renowned Milan stadium succeeded in doing just that. Although the roar of the match wafts in from a distance, this elegantly concise film brings to life the magic of a fascinating place dedicated to a ritual with today’s greatest mass appeal.

A silent film that speaks with eloquence. Composed into attractive images, this excursion to the empty apartments of Moscow’s enormous prefab housing complexes invites us to contemplate the things that form our memories of the places in which we live.

Although entirely abstract, even this horror film employs suspense and shock to upset our equanimity. This time, a mysterious epidemic isn’t out to annihilate humanity, but the film itself. The horror approaches. But from where? The terrifying sounds will provide a clue.…

Each season of the year ushers in a different mood, the nature of which leading British experimenter Ben Rivers investigates in his latest, highly personal film. Although some of its images seem to have come from another world, their essence reveals something universal.

Every Hollywood film starts with the trailer of the studio that made it. With mathematical precision, this four-minute 3-D deconstruction of grandiosity edits together 12 of these iconic intros to demonstrate that the stories from these dream factories can also be written by the factories themselves.

This dreamlike movie, created under the influence of Chris Marker’s legendary film La jetée (1962), introduces a man who begins to perceive the world through the eyes of a complete stranger. This fragile cinematic poem takes us to the Japanese metropolis, traversing it with a perception that is both pacifying and provocative.