ACÉPHALE

Patrick Deval (France)

“An ascetic prince wanders aimlessly, lectures at a university, wanders again, meets other underfed individuals, plunges into the maze of the city, wanders again, discovers virgin forest and builds a community, feels trapped, returns by himself, wanders in desperation, arrives at a crossroads at night-time, insults a woman passing by and apologizes…

AMERICA DREAMS (LOST & FOUND) / LANDSCAPE SUICIDE

James Benning (US)

This publication by Edition Filmmuseum presents two major works by James Benning: each recently restored by the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, and; inaugurating an extensive publication effort by the institution, on DVD and in print, to celebrate an artist whose unique personal vision of America has established him as one of the most significant...

AVANT-GARDE 1927-1937: SURREALISM AND EXPERIMENT IN BELGIAN CINEMA

Various Directors (Belgium)

The debut films of Charles Dekeukeleire and Henri Storck, who would later become famous as documentary filmmakers, consisted of experiments, at the end of the 1920s, in search of a ‘pure cinema’. Collected together: Dekeukeleire’s COMBAT DE BOXE (1927), IMPATIENCE (1928), HISTOIRE DE DÉTECTIVE (1929), and VISIONS DE LOURDES (1932)...

DER BOMBERPILOT & NEL REGNO DI NAPOLI

Werner Schroeter (West Germany)

DER BOMBERPILOT & NEL REGNO DI NAPOLI presents new, restored versions of two rare classics by Werner Schroeter that connect private stories with history: DER BOMBERPILOT tells the story of three eccentric women in Germany during the Nazi period who try to become show stars in America after the war; NEL REGNO DI NAPOLI is a chronicle of…

BOUQUET D'IMAGES

Rose Lowder (France)

For many years Rose Lowder has been developing an exceptional technique of weaving together images gathered frame- by-frame to form meticulous patterns of light. By oscillating the focal plane of photographs shot in the same place over time, her layered tapestries produce a new relationship between filmed reality and filmic image. From the movement of a...

CALIFORNIA TRILOGY

James Benning (US)

Produced at the junction of two millennia, the CALIFORNIA TRILOGY is James Benning's three-part topographical study of America's "Golden State". Looking to the past while investigating the present, the mathematician-turned-filmmaker condenses three distinct Californian landscapes into a total of 105 shots, each exactly 2½ minutes long. Formal…

CASTING A GLANCE / RR

James Benning (US)

In CASTING A GLANCE one artist pays tribute to another as James Benning offers his filmic paean to Robert Smithson's legendary "earthwork" sculpture, the Spiral Jetty. With RR, his homage to the American railroad, the filmmaker brings an era to its close by going back to cinema's roots. Shot back-to-back over a period of two years, these works marked James… 

CINÉMA DADA

Various Directors (France)

This DVD is published to coincide with the Pompidou Centre's major Dada exhibition which travelled to the National Gallery, Washington D.C. and The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2006. The disc presents the eight films cited by Hans Richter in his famous text Dada und Film (1961). In his portrait of Dadaist cinema Richter saw these films as unified by...

THE CURTIS HARRINGTON SHORT FILM COLLECTION

Curtis Harrington (US)

Curtis Harrington, widely regarded as one of the important avant-garde directors of the 1940’s, as well as an early influential figure in what would come to be known as ‘New Queer Cinema,’ was born in Los Angeles in 1926. He began making films as a teenager, often deeply surreal, intuitive, and owing much to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. After...

DEPARTURES

Gunvor Nelson (US)

Gunvor Nelson was born in Sweden, but left her native country in the mid-1950s to study in the United States. Later, she and her husband, filmmaker Bob Nelson settled in the San Francisco Bay Area and raised their daughter, Oona. Gunvor Nelson's first film work was with her husband, then with her neighbor Dorothy Wiley, and finally on her own. In 1965...

DESERET / FOUR CORNERS

James Benning (US)

In the 1990s, James Benning's films were characterized primarily by an ongoing investigation of the relationship between the image and the (spoken or written) word. This 2-disc set features the two key works representing the peak of this "text-image film" period. In DESERET Benning (by way of the "The New…

DÉTRUISEZ-VOUS

Serge Bard (France)

“The phrase ‘Aidez-nous, detruisez-vous’ (‘Help us, destroy yourselves’) was a rabble-rousing graffito that marked the walls of University of Paris’s Nanterre campus in May 1968. It was in this place and at this volatile time in world politics that a generation of French artists and thinkers defined themselves around youth and workers’ movements (recently chronicled...

DEUX FOIS

Jackie Raynal (France)

Jackie Raynal is perhaps best known as the former programmer of two of New York’s premiere art cinemas – the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street – who began her career in the 1960s as the film editor for New Wave directors such as Eric Rohmer, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jean Eustache.  Challenged by Zanzibar patroness Sylvina Boissonnas to stop...

DREAMINIMALIST

Tony Conrad & Marie Losier (US / France)

"THE FLICKER sweeps away reality, transports us into another environment and acts as a sort of instrument of perceptual experimentation. The filmmaker himself considers it as a kind of science fiction film which, instead of entering us into strange worlds – which have everything to do with this world and the development of conventional narrative structures...

DYN AMO

Stephen Dwoskin (UK)

“Free and intimist, sensual and cerebral, experimental and political. Dwoskin’s cinema is heir to the surrealists and Georges Bataille, to Andy Warhol and Jack Smith”

—Isabelle Régnier

“Each Dwoskin film could be described thus: a man watches a woman who returns his gaze. This...

EIKA KATAPPA & DER TOD DER MARIA MALIBRAN

Werner Schroeter (West Germany)

Werner Schroeter's unique melodramas about love and death are fascinating amalgamations of opera, theater and cinema elements. Art and kitsch, high and low brow, Maria Callas and Caterina Valente, myths and genre elements. The 2-disc DVD set presents the first two feature-length films by Schroeter in beautifully restored versions. Additionally it offers...

ENTUZIAZM (SIMFONIJA DONBASSA)

Dziga Vertov (USSR)

Dziga Vertov's ENTUZIAZM is considered a masterpiece of early sound film and of Soviet avant-garde cinema. Dealing with the Five Year Plan of the late 1920s, it was praised by artists like Charlie Chaplin, was subsequently forgotten, and rediscovered by the avant-garde movement of the 1960s.

FLUXFILM ANTHOLOGY

Various Directors (US)

"Fluxus is a community of individuals scattered throughout many countries, grouping together a vast quantity of behaviors and attitudes. All are singular in their personalities and their work, but their position regarding the Art world is appreciably the same: as stated by Fluxus artist George Brecht, to fight against 'the immense stupidity, sadness and lack of meaning…

FRAGMENTS OF KUBELKA

Martina Kudláček (Austria)

"Kubelka's films play and work with the flow of time, compressing the continuous now and presence. His films digest the manifold things of the universe: the elemental energies of light and dark; movement and stillness; the life of animals and patterns of landscape; gesture and dance. With another mode of time Kudláček shared…

FROM ECSTASY TO RAPTURE (DEL ÉXTASIS AL ARREBATO): A Journey Through Spanish Experimental Cinema

Various Directors (Spain)

This 2-DVD collection was designed to accompany the international traveling film exhibition, DEL ÉXTASIS AL ARREBATO (FROM ECSTASY TO RAPTURE): 50 Years of the Other Spanish Cinema. Curators Andrés Hispano and Antoni Pinent bring together 31 key films, showcasing works "with an obvious experimental drive — that is films that display a...

FUN AND GAMES FOR EVERYONE

Serge Bard (France)

“One of the major revelations to emerge from the resurgence of the Zanzibar films is Bard's FUN AND GAMES FOR EVERYONE, a velveteen, chiaroscuro boogie-woogie chess match of a film, which documents a vernissage for an Olivier Mosset exhibition. The new print practically drips inky blacks and blinding whites as art circle dandies dissolve...

GUNS OF THE TREES

Jonas Mekas (US)

"Four young people are trying to understand why their friend, a young woman, committed a suicide. A film made up of disconnected scenes weaving between past and present. The title of the film comes from a poem by Stuart Perkoff which tells that some young people felt (around 1960) that everything is against them, so much that even the trees in the parks...

HALLELUJAH THE HILLS

Adolfas Mekas (US)

Born in Lithuania, Adolfas Mekas and his brother Jonas arrived in the United States in 1949. Together they studied with Hans Richter and, in 1954, founded Film Culture, the magazine of independent cinema. In 1970, Jonas Mekas co-founded Anthology Film Archives in New York city.

HALLELUJAH THE HILLS, Adolfas Mekas's debut...

HANS RICHTER: EARLY WORKS

Hans Richter (Germany)

During the period in the 1920's that Gerhard Lamprecht was directing narrative films based on working class life in postwar Berlin (see SLUMS OF BERLIN (DIE VERRUFENEN) & CHILDREN OF NO IMPORTANCE (DIE UNEHELICHEN) and THE PEOPLE AMONG US (MENSCHEN UNTEREINANDER) & UNDER THE LANTERN…

HEAVEN AND EARTH (HIMMEL UND ERDE)

Michael Pilz (Austria)

Michael Pilz's HEAVEN AND EARTH (HIMMEL UND ERDE) is an epic documentary, in two parts, about life in the Styrian mountain village of St. Anna. The film is a documentary in the best sense of the word - a meditation on time, on nature and the struggles of man, as well as a record of a lifestyle ceasing to exist.

“The inhabitants of St. Anna, a mountain village...

HEINZ EMIGHOLZ: THE FORMATIVE YEARS (VOL. 1 & 2)

Heinz Emigholz (Germany)

These two volumes publish, in DVD form, the seven Emigholz films presented in installation versions as part of the FORUM EXPANDED at the Berlin Film Festival in 2010. More recently, the films of Heinz Emigholz have been the subject of a career retrospective at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2014.

IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR? - STRATEGIES OF APPROPRIATION AND AUDIO-VISUAL COLLAGE

Abigail Child (US)

The condensed filmic work of Abigail Child, borrowing strategies from found footage, Appropriation Art, Language Poetry and experimental music, stands a a landmark in the experimental cinema of the 1980's. The processing of interruption and fragmentation inform the series IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR? , reactivating the stakes of montage applied...

JONAS MEKAS: THE MAJOR WORKS

Jonas Mekas (US)

This 7-Disc DVD Box Set, co-published by Re:Voir Video, Agnès B DVD and Potemkine, brings together, for the very first time, the key films created by Jonas Mekas. These collected works, that span a filming career of more than 60 years, re-affirm his stature as one of the most prolific avant-garde filmmakers and pre-eminent cinema poets.

LE LIT DE LA VIERGE

Philippe Garrel (France)

“I believe my point of view on the Christian myth is quite clear in LE LIT DE LA VIERGE (THE VIRGIN’S BED). It is a non-violent parable in which Zouzou incarnates both Mary and Mary Magdalene, while Pierre Clémenti incarnates a discouraged Christ who throws down his arms in face of world cruelty. In spite of its allegorical nature, the film contains a denunciation...

MANDALA FILMS

Paul Sharits (US)

In the mid-1960s, Paul Sharits developed an abstract cinema in radical opposition to the pictorial tradition. His works taken together propose a reflection on the very nature of cinema and its component parts: the film strip, single frames, the flow of film through the projector, sprocket holes, screen, projection… Using mainly the flicker technique (flickering between…

NATURAL HISTORY / RUHR

James Benning (Germany / Austria)

Since the late 1970s, James Benning's films have been a regular fixture at festivals in Germany and Austria, while frequent television broadcasts have helped expose his work to an even larger audience here than perhaps at home. This 2-disc set presents the products of this intercontinental relationship: RUHR, Benning's first foray into…

THE PRIMAL SCENE (DIE URSZENE)

Christine Noll Brinckmann (Germany / US / China)

"The term 'avant-garde' is only outdone in its perfidy by the adjective 'experimental'", writes Heinz Emigholz, who in 1993 inaugurated the "Experimental Film Design" class at the Berlin University of the Arts. Christine Noll Brinckmann uses this citation in her 1993 text "Experimental Film 1920-1990: Collective Movements and Solitary Thrusts," which remains...

'RAMEAU'S NEPHEW' BY DIDEROT (THANX TO DENNIS YOUNG) BY WILMA SCHOEN

Michael Snow (Canada)

Each of Michael Snow's works, spanning across painting, sculpture, video, film, photography, holography, drawing, publishing and music, invites us to experience, question and contemplate the representation, its process and material.'RAMEAU'S NEWPHEW' BY DIDEROT (THANX TO DENNIS YOUNG) BY WILMA SCHOEN illustrates his research both in...

LE RÉVÉLATEUR

Philippe Garrel (France)

In LE RÉVÉLATEUR, the first of his four Zanzibar films, Philippe Garrel (LA CONCENTRATION, LE LIT DE LA VIERGE, LA CICATRICE INTÉRIEURE) creates an elegy in simple language that follows a sinuous path enclosing its spectators in a timeless, symbolic universe that seems prone at any moment to self-destruct. The shots drip with a desperate poetry...

THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN

Germaine Dulac (France)

Directed in 1927 by Germaine Dulac and scripted by Antonin Artaud, THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN is generally considered to be the first Surrealist film, even if at its Studio des Ursulines premiere, the Surrealist group provoked an uproar that would become one of the great “scandals” of the 1920s.  Along with contemporary musical...

A SIXTH PART OF THE WORLD (ŠESTAJA ČAST' MIRA) / THE ELEVENTH YEAR (ODINNADCATYJ)

Dziga Vertov (USSR)

The poetic travelogue A SIXTH PART OF THE WORLD and the “visual symphony” THE ELEVENTH YEAR mark the beginning of Dziga Vertov’s most creative period, which peaked in the canonical film MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA. Vertov’s Kino-Eye aesthetic attempted “to give [back] the filmic to non-fiction film” as Barbara Wurm notes, as well as, in...

THE SIXTIES QUARTET

Jonas Mekas (US)

SCENES FROM THE LIFE Of ANDY WARHOL: FRIENDSHIPS AND INTERSECTIONS: Jonas Mekas is know for his rapid-fire diary films. His Scenes from the Life chronicles not only Andy Warhol, but also the social and cultural excitement that swirled around him, throbbing to a hypnotic Velvet Underground beat...

SLOW SUMMER (LANGSAMMER SOMMER) / CLINCH (SCHWITZKASTEN)

John Cook (Austria)

"To live in Vienna, you either have to be cynical or stupid," says the director’s alter ego at the end of the semi-documentary feature SLOW SUMMER. John Cook (1935-2001), a Canadian fashion photographer who had ended up in Vienna, was certainly neither cynical nor stupid. With only four films, made between 1972 and 1982, he gave Austrian cinema a taste of the...

STEPHEN DWOSKIN: 14 FILMS BOX 1/3

Stephen Dwoskin (UK / US / France / Germany)

This 5-disc set is a limited edition of 1,000 copies and includes a 58-page full-color bilingual booklet with specially commissioned texts in English & French.

Containing 12 hours of material, the 14 works included were chosen with the artist and represent the first of three planned publications of Stephen...

TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ

Isidore Isou (France)

Isidore Isou arrived in Paris from Romania in 1945 where he founded the Letterist movement, an art and literary movement that owed inspiration to Dada and Surrealism. Letterism attempted to break down poetry into letters and syllables, and then all arts into their constituent parts, to build up new languages for each art form. Isou wrote, directed, photographed...

VAL DEL OMAR: ELEMENTAL DE ESPAÑA

Various Directors (Spain)

José Val del Omar (1904-1982) was one of the most significant figures of Spanish avant-garde cinema. He was a contemporary and comrade of Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, María Zambrano and other figures of the Silver Age of Spanish culture, interrupted by the Civil War, that formed the Generación del 36 (Generation of ’36). He was a…

VISIONS OF WARHOL

Jonas Mekas, William Mass & Marie Menken (US)

VISIONS OF WARHOL presents images from the life of Andy Warhol, as seen by three pioneer avant-garde film-makers and close friends of the Pop-artist. Jonas Mekas, the irrepressible force behind the promotion and preservation of experimental film, is also known for his rapid-fire diary films. Mekas documents giving Warhol the Film Culture Independent Film Award...