What if you took a film in which all the traditional elements—dramatic through line, character development, narrative causality—were reliably in place, and then perfectly undid them all? In this utterly engrossing and iconic work of editorial alchemy, artist Anne McGuire disassembled Robert Wise’s 1971 thriller The Andromeda Strain and put it back together with each of the film’s individual shots in exact reverse structural order. The result is an uncanny experience, creating a destabilized disaster narrative in which every expected property of cinematic storytelling is subverted. Cause-and-effect becomes effect-and-cause as McGuire genetically engineers her source material to uncover an entirely new and strange layer of narrative engagement.
Tag: USA
Tommy has lost his job, his love and his life. He lives in a small apartment above the Trees Lounge, a bar which he frequents along with a few other regulars without lives. He gets a job driving an ice cream truck and ends up getting involved with the seventeen-year-old niece of his ex-girlfriend. This gets him into serious trouble with her father.
In 1940, a man becomes a hermit after rejection. By 1950, a plague kills all post-pubescent males except him. Now desired by millions of women, he still yearns for his initial love interest, making him a treasured last man.
Produced in 1927 at the height of the silent era, these fascinating short subjects were presented in serial format in theaters with a new installment weekly. We are taken behind the scenes in the town where 85% of all American motion pictures were created. We are taken backstage where some of the many highlights include what movie sets look like in real life, Cecil B. DeMille pondering a new story, directors on the set directing, Lon Chaney hamming it up on the set of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Hollywood Boulevard, Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre and much more.
Since the turn of the century, popular media in the U.S. have promoted a stereotyped image of Latin America in order to justify the concept of U.S. dominance in the hemisphere. The Gringo in Mañanaland uses travelogues, dramatic films, industrial films, newsreels, military footage, geographical textbook illustrations, and political cartoons to take a detailed look at United States media representations of Latin America.
Surveying representative moments from the history of Mesoamerican antiquarianism, this experimental documentary suggests how diplomacy and Pan-Americanism framed the recontexualization of archeological objects as art. Part faked newsreel, part diffusionist rant, Ruins uses appropriated sounds and images to contemplate a history of appropriated objects. The film visits with Brigido Lara, master forger, and suggests parallels between the documentary film and the fake.
A remarkably colourful and absorbing documentary, Power Trip takes us to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia where AES, a multinational conglomerate based in Virginia, has bought into the recently privatised business of electricity supply. First task: persuade consumers accustomed to getting their power for free to part with half their incomes to pay for it. Second task: deal with riots. Next, dismantle countless homemade wiring systems, detect elaborate power diversion mechanisms and install meters… The obstacles to commercial success pile up on each other like an escalating absurdist nightmare that takes us into the highest echelons of political power and corruption.