Imagina

In the ruins of a house one afternoon, director Tsai Ming Liang meets Lee Kang Sheng, with whom he has shared his life for 20 years. The result is an original documentary shot in one take about an improvised meeting between two men who open up in front of the camera about their personal lives and about the back story behind long years of working together.

Observing a rather personal poetic, the film draws attention to the relationship between radioactive waste sites and the majestic landscapes surrounding them – a relationship we may well have initiated but whose dynamic stretches far beyond our short lives.

In their new picture, a trio of directors exploit their experiences from making behind-the-scenes videos. This psychedelic essay, originally intended as a straight documentary about the shooting of a war picture, combines the original video footage and the filmmakers’ own wildly staged visions to become a rather provocative brew; the result is an engrossing discussion on Hollywood’s depiction of war. Further, it functions as a general consideration of war’s perception and consumption with respect to Western civilization.

A visual experiment inventively exploring the possibilities of capturing a three-dimensional space with a two-dimensional video camera. This careful consideration of the perception of space, which allows us to enter deep into a camera’s perspective, is graced with minimalist elegance and creative intrigue.

What would happen to the world we know so intimately if humanity suddenly vanished? Nikolaus Geyrhalter poses this question as he locates his latest movie in the abandoned and still prohibited zone surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Today the once thriving city, evidence of Homo sapiens’ ingenuity, is again furtively yielding to the inexorable power of nature.

An original tribute to the famed Lumière brothers’ Workers Leaving the Factory shot on 12 different cameras and capturing the comings and goings through the staff entrance of an art school. Drawing on elements of structural cinema, this experiment offers a fascinating journey through the space of the shot and across time materialized in a variety of motion picture cameras.

A quiet journey through the architecture of three cities, across abstract interiors, to gallery and everyday living spaces in order to contemplate the relationship between time, space, and our human presence. A fascinating tribute to urbanism, art, and, above all, to the cinematography inspired by the municipal symphonies of silent film.

A man and a woman. Not yet 30, Zakaria meets 55-year-old Giulia on the island of Lampedusa. The past and future, memories, the sea, the landscape – everything associatively merges in the precise black-and-white visual component created by an uncompromising director who asks fundamental questions about the meaning of existence.

In 1983, after years of progressive illness, theologian and writer John Hull completely lost his sight. “I knew that if I didn’t understand blindness, it would destroy me.” This powerful and formally original collage presents a fascinating philosophical portrait of a strong individual who was able to turn a challenge into a gift.

This portrait of distinctive Norman artist Bernard Legay, who creates original artistic works based on their materiality, takes an effecting and intimate look at the artist’s isolated life. The film, like Legay’s artefacts, provokes a virtually tactile visual experience as it investigates the creative process itself.

This feature from one of the most intriguing experimental directors working today takes us to the Moroccan desert where director Oliver Laxe is making his movie Mimosas, but later we find ourselves in Ben River’s own story, and end up asking about the nature of reality versus cinematic illusion. The viewer is invited to be the co-creator of this multilayered, genre-defying film.

Ben Rivers reveals the internal magic of life in the Vanuatu archipelago before it was devastated by Cyclone Pam. This meditative look at a distant world, where the fleeting lives of the native inhabitants come up against the perpetuity of capricious elements, is enhanced by recited verse from Henri Michaux.

This near psychological trip through time along the path of technological development is built upon the strobe-like flickering of the image as it slowly merges an old photograph into its film and digital counterparts. The conflict between analog and digital media, between the present and the past, confidently tests the sensory limits of the viewer’s experience.

A contemplative picture bearing witness to the physical and spiritual wanderings of the director’s brother Ján, who finds himself in a critical life situation. This visually elegant film employs sensitivity without pathos as it follows Ján on his journey, his only limit a date on the calendar: October 5th – the day set for a hazardous life-saving operation.