Imagina

This unique cinematic portrait takes us to Route 110, one of Los Angeles’ major freeways. Using time-lapse photography, the filmmakers capture the relentless bustle of the city and its inhabitants, and present a commentary on the environs and the communities whose lives are defined by the urbanistic concept and infrastructure of the town.

Inspired by the 1980s Taiwanese erotic fantasy The Glamorous Boys of Tang, this film reimagines certain scenes which didn’t make it into the original picture for censorship and funding reasons. Taken together, the precise sets, costumes and staging of the sex orgies and murders during the Tang dynasty create spectral moments that are at once beautiful and repulsive.

This kaleidoscopic ride takes us into a world governed by fabric, brightly coloured patterns and sundry textures. The film’s extravagant kinetic stop-motion animation conjures up a highly original image of a globally connected world, of the relentless movement of objects and people, and of their cultures and lives, whose nature is reflected in textiles and their circulation.

Recounted against a backdrop of major 20th century events, seasoned nonconformist and true intellectual Thomas Heise immerses himself in four generations of his family’s history, employing a serenity that the nourishing three-and-a-half-hour footage demands. The cinephilic hit of this year’s Berlinale asks out loud for a peckish audience that won’t be put off by narratives scored with all manner of grooves and crevices.

Beneath the modern city of Madrid lies a vast labyrinth of subterranean galleries, tunnels and sewers – a perfectly devised system which controls the way the metropolis breathes. That the world above appears to function entirely naturally is attributable to a system of heavy-duty engineering and technological advancement. An unconventional, contemplative viewing experience that goes hand in hand with the film’s sophisticated audiovisual composition.

Contact, touch, trust? The Swedish artist uses unconventional technology to create her piece: the film is composed of shots taken with a thermal camera, which exposes the invisible traces that remain after fleeting, chance encounters, and after physical contact with those close to us and with unknown passers-by. An intriguing portrayal of intimacy and its presence in a public space.

Frank Beauvais’s supremely original audiovisual diary uses filmmaking as a therapeutic device which enables the director to work his way through to the depths of his being. This isn’t a generic movie mashup, it’s an unstoppable stream of consciousness steeped in depression, but it also promises redemption and reflects a love of cinema.

What remains of an image whose original representation becomes unrecognizable after the process of creative intervention? The film sequences bring to life some kind of elementary matter which gives rise to all living and non-living things. A remarkable film with a compelling hallucinogenic rhythm that allows us to experience fundamental existential issues of consciousness and being.

A small group of men dressed in national costume move through a mountainous region dotted with meteorite craters. Monitored by the enigmatic voice of the narrator, they have come to perform an unusual ritual. These “bird men” have to die in order to create life and find the place where the sun rises. A contemplation of the cycle of life which borrows much from the stories of the origin of mankind, as told in Mesoamerican mythology.

An impressive experiment in which abstract patterns are used as source material for creating similar figurative images as interpreted by an online search engine with its own algorithm. The result is an exhilarating visual experience assimilating artificial intelligence, the ineffability of the analogue world, and the limits of the human retina, through which we perceive the individual film frames.

Mist lapping the edges of the surface of the earth and an infinitely dark night. Materialising somewhere in between is a mysterious, electrical substance – both ineffably intimate and cosmically remote. An entrancing cinematic poem that sets off into the unknown, inspired by medieval tales about mythical matter and 19th century photographic techniques.

The sacred space of the motion-picture theatre is where the magic of cinematography unfolds time and again. The rapid sequence of film frames, which only capture a momentary fragment of the whole, creates the illusion of an uninterrupted continuum. Here the filmmakers reverse the relationship between time and space, drawing their viewers in as they experience each frame as an impression of the entire time while only seeing part of the filmed space.

Perhaps never before has global society manifested such an urge to build mighty walls to safeguard sovereignty. At the same time, it has likewise invested vast sums of money and energy in technology and increasingly inventive methods to facilitate the traversal of these physical barriers. A resourcefully constructed film examining the very essence of the modern world in a contemplation of isolationism and the endless attempts to overcome it.

Employing his inimitable creative style, the Austrian structuralist rolls out another fascinating study of movement and rest, during which a wooden bucket travels to get water and comes back again. Original tracking shots and stop-motion techniques give rise to an audiovisually disarming piece in which sudden motionlessness only reinforces the dynamism of the film.