
Manipulating a variety of sources, Vasulka uses creative imaging tools to situate historical images against Southwestern landscapes of incredible beauty. Contorting the images into a variety of isomorphic forms, Vasulka creates a literal shape for these memories, developing these shapes as metaphors for the processes of fragmentation, condensation, and inversion, that inevitably contort fact into memory. While much of the raw material for the tape is drawn from World War II and its rehearsals, the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution, The Art of Memory is really an extended meditation seeking to reconcile the blurry, banal photographs of historic figures with the mass destruction they helped engineer.
Voices (voice)
6.9During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.
6.8Based on the true story of Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war captured in Britain to escape back to Germany during the Second World War.
6.2During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.
7.0Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
5.9A by-the-book Captain is ordered to capture a strategic village in Italy. The Italian soldiers are willing to surrender, if they can have a festival first. The lieutenant convinces the Captain this is the only way. Because of aerial reconnaissance, they must look like they are fighting. To sort this out an intelligence officer is sent in. Meanwhile the festival gets complicated with the Mayors daughter.
6.4Henry Fleming is a young Union soldier in the American Civil War. During his unit's first engagement, Henry flees the battlefield in fear. When he learns that the Union actually won the battle, shame over his cowardice leads him to lie to his friend Tom and the other soldiers, saying that he had been injured in battle. However, when he learns that his unit will be leading a charge against the enemy, Henry takes the opportunity to face his fears and redeem himself.
7.5Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the film’s message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
6.2A war criminal in hiding forms a relationship with his only connection to the outside world - his maid.
6.4Inspired by the real-life German special operations unit KG 200 that shot down, repaired, and flew Allied aircraft as Trojan horses, "Wolf Hound" takes place in 1944 German-occupied France and follows the daring exploits of Jewish-American fighter pilot Captain David Holden. Ambushed behind enemy lines, Holden must rescue a captured B-17 Flying Fortress crew, evade a ruthless enemy stalking him at every turn, and foil a plot that could completely alter the outcome of World War II.
6.3A conflict develops between a troubled Vietnam veteran and the sister he lives with when she becomes involved romantically with the army buddy who reminds him of the tragic battle they both survived.
6.6A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but inspirational journey to France to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, finding the courage to face the ghosts of his past.
6.1A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.
6.6The crew of the merchant ship Glencairn hope to survive a transatlantic crossing during World War II. Adapted from four Eugene O'Neill one-act plays.
6.4When Andrew Briggman — a young soldier in the US Army during the invasion of Afghanistan — witnesses the murderous behavior of fellow soldiers, under the direction of a malevolent Sergeant, he faces a moral dilemma. His increasingly-violent platoon becomes suspicious that someone in their ranks has turned on them, and Andrew begins to fear for his safety. A fictionalized dramatization based on a true story.
6.1Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?
6.1A group of teenage cadets sheltered from war at the Virginia Military Institute must confront the horrors of an adult world when they are called upon to defend the Shenandoah Valley.
6.4Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. This film examines the differences between democratic and fascist states.
7.0During the war in Afghanistan a Soviet tank crew commanded by a tyrannical officer find themselves lost and in a struggle against a band of Mujahadeen guerrillas in the mountains.
6.8A chronicle of the Cristeros War (1926-1929), which was touched off by a rebellion against the Mexican government's attempt to secularize the country.
0.0After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.
0.0Commissioned for the Irish representation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, The Enclave is an immersive, six-screen video art installation by Irish contemporary artist Richard Mosse. Partly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s modernist literary masterpiece Heart of Darkness, the visceral and moving work was filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo using 16mm colour infra-red film, which captures otherwise invisible parts of the spectrum. The resulting imagery in Mosse’s work is hallucinatory and dream-like with the usual greens of jungle and forest replaced by shimmering violet. The Enclave depicts a complicated, strife-ridden place in a way that reflects its complexity, using a strategy of beauty and transfixion to combat the wider invisibility of a conflict that has claimed so many.
0.0A vlogger whose life is seemingly controlled by an unknown presence begins to spiral as he falls further into surrealism and imaginary worlds.
6.0A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).
0.0SHIFTING VISIONS is a video essay that revolves around the transition between the different stages of human consciousness. From the most intense state of full attention to the most abstract and dreamlike state, passing through all its nuances. We know that the mind remains a mystery to science, but, through combining neuroscientific theory and personal perceptions, we represent these mental dynamics transferred to images, sounds and metaphors. We thoroughly analyse each of these stages to translate concepts and create audiovisual imaginaries through symbolic mental limbos. A piece that drags the viewer on an inner journey to their own lucidity.
0.0The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.
1.0Best known for his work in video, Richard Fung has made the politics of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation his central focus. Chinese Characters (1986) examines the ambiguous relationship of gay Asian men with white gay porn.
10.0In the nearby future, the Gulf stream may certainly collapse in itself as the percentage of saltwater and sweet water in the oceans is changing dramatically. More and more glaciers are melting worldwide introducing an enormous amount of sweet water into the seas which causes a disbalance of the ocean water streams. There will be not only a rise of the sea levels which may flood coast by cities but also the "power engine" of the Gulf stream which is the "heating system" for Northern Europe is losing its force and energy. Therefore parts of the earth might become very cold and at the same point other parts too hot to live on. So the equilibrium of the earth's temperature is going to be mad. Is there any escape? Maybe leaving mother earth to explore the deep space of our universe? There will be neither sounds nor noises, only freezing silence as there is no echo, no resonance in space. 12x12 Moving Images = 144 moments of cold space
10.0It’s often a sense of shakiness which emerges in seeking affordable rent. Furthermore, leasing a real estate in the time of Covid it’s an enough though enterprise due to the different restrictions in moving freely and without any fear even visiting the venue, still not to mention the angst before the future that a change in life like a relocation involves so that everything starts spinning around. Such a pretty much postmodern sensation should have had Hazel in the Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman when she rents a burning house, which becomes quite her home yet with this persisting sense of precarity still not precluding to keep going. The experience is now translocated in another city, Turin. It still remains a burning house in a burning city, however it becomes home to someone.
7.0Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.
7.3'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.
10.0White Homeland Commando takes the familiar terrain of network action drama and tilts the playing field. Reminiscent of today's popular reality-based cop shows, White Homeland Commando offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organization. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in a highly textured visual style, the colors are subdued yet somehow garish, and the sound is deliberately just out of sync with the speaker's lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot — the editing is reminiscent of a television viewer flipping channels.
10.0TEMPORALLY tells the story of an Italian thunderstorm through the eyes of a Japanese painter. The lightning itself fusions with its environment and creates a hypnotic point of view. The sound in the video was recorded on the occasion of the exceptionally high water alert in Venice, Italy. The alarm is composed of two parts. The first was the sirene in use under bombardments during WW2, whereas the second is designed by the University of Venice and should be heard during all the sleep phases, yet not causing any panic. The images themselves were shot during multiple thunderstorms in the mountains between Lake Lugano and Lake Como. So, an interplay of salt and sweet water. Furthermore, the title TEMPORALLY is a combination of the Italian word for storm "temporale", and the word for atmospheric weather "tempo" which in English means rhythm and rally, thus a race of lightning, in the end, following in a recovery.
10.0Queen of the Luna Par(k)ing is a moving image produced by Sara Ferro and Chris Weil. The title itself is a combination of the element moon (from the Italian “luna” ) shining over a parking slot, where a girl is waiting for encountering someone, perhaps the king of the luna park. While acting in the gap of certainties like a lonely queen the moonshine splits its aura into the colours red/blue/yellow, interpreting the interstellar communication signals of Voyager 1 launched by the NASA in 1977. Exactly the year when the protagonist Wundersaar (Luna Queen) was born. Therefore the journey of the Voyager space probe can be seen as a metaphor for the expedition of every human being discovering the unknown in the deep space of life.
10.0SPEED is the result of an artificial intelligence transforming bin footage into something beautiful in order to free the planet from pixel pollution. By video recycling trash shots into video art using the latest algorithm technology, visual art may help to understand our limited resources on earth and how to use them in a respectful manner. Every day we produce millions of clips sharing them on social media without even noticing anymore how much pixel garbage we create. At the same time, we produce every day millions of tons of plastic waste, polluting our environment without even noticing it anymore. SPEED wants to be a symbol of change as we are running out of time.
10.0Bits and blocks are the home of the Super Vario Birds who are dancing to the 8bit symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven.
10.0A dream where obsession for German as a second language mixes up with an obsession for neatness and cleanliness as a distinctive feature of the national culture in question seen from the perspective of a foreigner. The dream is not a nightmare only because the set it is dreamt into is the seashore of the mare nostrum, where the dreaming subject is perfectly at home. A homeland which she, in turn, in her more secret thus naïf dreams would dream of being cleaner and tidier as in the reality, especially in front of such beauty of nature. As is right and proper.
10.0IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.
0.0In Junior War, a throng of highschoolers congregate at night for a party in the woods sometime in the year 2000. A band plays, the kids get drunk, the boys and girls tepidly flirt, and groups deploy into cars for the purpose of destroying mailboxes, tee-peeing houses, breaking lawn ornaments, and sparring with the police. The film is composed entirely of footage Trecartin took during his senior year of high school in exurban Ohio; as such, it baits the viewer with genealogical significance.