Directed by Cannes-award winner Sándor Reisenbüchler, Holdmese is a psychedelic animated short that mixes pulp sci-fi, Tibetan mysticism and Slavic folklore. Two scientists propose that the moon is an ancient, derelict spaceship, and go on a journey through deep space to discover its origins. The influence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 is clear, but Reisenbüchler’s collage technique is distinctively- and irreverently- his own. Holdmese stands as a brilliant forgotten work of Communist animation.
Author: Jon W.
An almost psychedelically luminous invocation of the Battle of Borodino set to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (1880). As Reisenbüchler put it: the film deals with “self-destruction in the power struggle for the conquest of empires”.
If we split the Spanish word “cadáveres” (corpses) in three parts, we obtain another three different words: “Cada-ver-es”, that can be roughly translated in English as “Every-sight-is”. This experimental documentary follows the life and work of Juan Espada, the man in charge at the morgue of the Medicine Faculty in València, Spain, and deals with our visual taboos, the ones that we evade to watch: madness, solitude, death,… and several more that get portraited during its shocking footage. Shot on 16mm with a budget so low that the filmmaker had to sell his camera to finish post-production.
The World is Watching is a political documentary about the ethical dilemmas of news gathering in the electronic age. Focusing on international journalists in Nicaragua during the negotiations of the Arias Peace Plan in November 1987, the film follows an ABC News crew in the field and their interaction with editors in New York, offering a rare look at how news is reported, shaped, and broadcast.
The son of computer graphics pioneer John Whitney, Sr., Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as animator for Hollywood films like Westworld and The Last Starfighter. He also made this experimental short in 1972, with abstract and swirling color patterns familiar from the visual music tradition of animation. These patterns gradually reveal themselves as a human face, derived from long exposure photography of a nude model.
This first feature film on homosexuality from sub-Saharan Africa is a contemporary African reinterpretation of the age-old Romeo and Juliet conflict between love and social convention. When Sori and Manga tell their parents they are in love, they respond that, “It’s impossible; since time began, it’s never happened. Boys don’t do that.
A white red-haired girl has been raised by the Cherokee Indians after her family was massacred. She considers herself a Native American and she regards all whites as her enemies. Her feelings are justified when outlaws kill her Indian parents. Realizing she can’t seek vengeance alone; she grudgingly accepts the help of white marshal Hollister and is now called the ‘Rose of Cimmarron’.
If you can read a face like a book, then here it is a book of poetry. Loose brushstrokes sketch a series of portraits of two faces, one male and one female, whilst the verse on the soundtrack tells the tale of both one and a thousand relationships. Alison de Vere was responsible for both the text and images, and the film was released in the same year she worked as a designer on the animated Beatles feature, Yellow Submarine.