Inspired by Leos Janacek’s Sinfonietta, The Queen’s Monastery is about a woman whose lover, a former acrobat, has returned to her from war a changed man. Using a highly individual watercolour technique the narrative explores themes of love, escapist fantasy, obsession and guilt.
Category: Short
Edward Owens’ first film contains a series of super impositions and fleeting images of bodies suggesting illicit desire, and demonstrates a masterful use of baroque lighting. Scenes of quarrels unfold along closeups of glossy magazine cutouts and classical paintings.
The film attempts to negotiate with the duality that is associated with the ceremonial veneration of the Mother Goddess Kali. It ruminates on the nuanced transness that is prevalent, in the ceremonial performance of male devotees cross dressing as Kali. This is interwoven with grotesque elements of a sacrificial ceremony, which forms a vital part of the worship of the Goddess.
Here the different poses of the artist provide the raw material for Peter Kubelka to create an ecstatic work that deals with rhythm and repetition, as much as with human actions and automatisms. Together with Mosaic and Afrikareise, Kubelka considers this to belong to his metaphoric film work.
A compassionate study of aged women living in a retirement home through the observations of Jean Campbell as she moves from room to room talking with other inmates and discussing her experiences within the institution.
In 1930s, hard-working girl Betty Boop sings at nights at her uncle Mischa’s popular NY nightclub and dreams of marrying a posh rich playboy, Waldo. Gangster Johnny “Throat” and a nice hard-working ice-seller, Freddy, also woo her.
John Wilson’s student film from his days at SUNY Binghamton, an important pivot away from his earlier juvenilia of self-made parodies and inquisitive pranks. In this loosely journalistic, genuinely receptive, no-frills portrait of balloon fetishists, we sense the filmmaker first discovering and cherishing what he would later describe as “that moment you try to stop giggling and get serious.”