After James Benning's YouTube

Divided into 26 parts, an attempt to remake James Benning's film, YouTube (2011) with similar internet footage after 13 years.

My Name Is Jonah

What is the secret origin of this self-proclaimed 'real-life warrior, adventurer and musician'? How has he gained his tremendous cult following? Steel yourselves for a quest to explore how this enigmatic personality came to be and the powerful effect he has on all those he meets.

Rope’s End

A fictionalized biography on John Dall who was in two great movies - Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950).

Частные хроники. Монолог

The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.

CARA-B

A desktop documentary that focuses on the Golden Record that NASA sent into space in the late 1970s. The piece reflects on issues such as the power of scientific discourse to produce revisions of the world, the evolution of the concept of the archive and the resignification of borders in the rhetoric of space colonialism.

« La Planète des singes » : une odyssée de l'espèce

Since its release in 1968, Planet of the Apes, the masterful film directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starring Charlton Heston, and its subsequent sequels have asked its viewers challenging questions about contemporary society under the guise of a bold science fiction saga: a fascinating look at a hugely successful pop culture phenomenon.

Ueli Steck – Auf schmalem Grat

Deceased but not forgotten. In 2017, Switzerland's most famous mountaineer, "Swiss Machine" Ueli Steck, fell to his death in the Himalayas when he was just 40 years old. Three close friends travel again to the Everest region where he died. His family in Emmental has to deal with premature death.

Functions of Film Sound

This visual essay sets clips from Robert Bresson's "A Man Escaped" to a reading of "Functions of Film Sound," a chapter from David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson's book "Film Art." The chapter analyzes the sound design of Bresson's masterpiece as a means of discussing the use of sound in film.

Rebuild of Evangelion Series Analysis

Swimming, Dancing

Swimming, Dancing examines audiovisual representations of the Yangtze (1934–present), from silent film to video art to the contemporary vlog. Inspired by the city symphonies of the 1920s, Swimming, Dancing pieces together a “river symphony”, evoking the images, sounds and contradictions that make up the river’s turbulent history.

Autorretrato

Daedalus

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." Daedalus weaves a tale of ambition and caution through an ancient myth, set in a nation below sea level. Shot in just seven consecutive days during the summer of 2023, it concludes the first volume of Bliss, a playlist of sounds and shapes. As the master craftsman gifts his son wings and wisdom, the film delves into the perilous dance between striving for greatness and the suffocating pull of stagnancy. This chaotic exploration bridges the warnings and epiphanic thoughts of 20th-century thinkers with the responses of today's dreamers.

Le Mozart Noir: Reviving a Legend

Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges overcame class and race prejudices in 18th century France to become a musical genius who would inspire Mozart.

My Mexican Bretzel

Lies are just another way of telling the truth. The desire to believe is the hand of the man hanging from a cliff and clinging to the only stone that would seem to save him. But he always ends up falling because the stone is a mirage, just as the cliff is. Death is awakening from this dream in which the essential can be said and in which the continuous and infinite has a beginning, an end and a meaning.

The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey

Joan Crawford's close-up in Humoresque. Michelangelo's David and Boticelli's "Birth of Venus". Stendhal was overwhelmed by the cultural overstimulation in Florence, which Graziella Magherini described scientifically in 1979 as Stendhal syndrome. Mark Rappaport describes his fascination for the Austrian actor Turhan Bey, who made a career in exotic roles in Hollywood in the 1940s. A very personal essay about the effect of close-ups, the canvas idols of the dream factory and the role of their admirers and fans.

Chris Elliott's FDR -- A One-Man Show

Chris Elliot plays FDR in his live "One Man Show" about the life and times of the president, however, he looks and sounds nothing like the man and he re-enacts events from Roosevelt's life that never happened.

A Brief History of Circles

An experimental video essay which uses circles and waves to explore neurodivergent experience.

Rock Hudson's Home Movies

In this revisionist documentary, actor Eric Farr re-creates the character of Rock Hudson in order to take a look back at his films. It compares the actor's screen (and public) image with his real life and shows certain scenes, lines and situations in his films to insinuate that Hudson may have been gay.

Wild Plants of Palestine

Wild Flowers Plants of Palestine follows journeys of observational tours solicited by the Palestinian Museum and conducted by two professors from Birzeit University to collect photos of and information on the Palestinian Flora. The title is adapted from a collection of 123 images (circa 1900 to 1920) of wild flowers in Palestine found in the Matson Collection in the Library of Congress. Despite the tendency to trace the wild plants, the text in general aims at questioning the territorial extension of what is meant by the term “Palestinian”, while standing on insignificant topographical features of the (postcolonial) landscape in West Bank. Furthermore, it addresses photography as a practice and a tool of distributing and restricting information at once.

Rat Race : A Short Documentary

Join College Student Parker Bennink and he interviews four of Rowan University's most prolific filmmakers, to uncover what life as a student filmmaker is really like in today's day and age.