Movies: Avant garde

SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity....

A woman washes up on a beach and embarks on a surreal journey, encountering others and fragmented versions of herself in a quest for identity....

Drawing inspiration from a poem penned by Castro Alves, this film vividly captures the political, cultural, and intellectual climate of Brazil during the late 1970s. At its core, the story revolves around four distinctive embodiments of Christ's imag...

A pulsing, kaleidoscope of images set to an energetic soundtrack. This is a world in motion, dominated by mechanical and repetitive images, with a few moments of solitude in a garden....

Little Stabs at Happiness is a collection of silent shorts Jacobs shot from the period of 1959-1963. Jaunty tunes (and a somber reflection) accompany the footage....

Part of the larger filmic Four Journeys Into Mystic Time, in this work director Shirley Clarke makes use of a dancer’s body not only as the primary performer, but also as a canvas on which to paint projected images. Further enhanced by editing and e...

A movie by Jon Jost, who is the maestro of the American experimental movie world. The film tells us the strange incidents that happen in the ruined old village. Comparing to Jon Jost’s previous movies, this film has a clearer narrative and is more ex...

An abstract work featuring three dancers, the performers interact with large screens as well as each other. Included in Shirley Clarke’s Four Journeys Into Mystic Time, costuming and color play an integral role in this piece....

A manifesto of sorts for the Czech New Wave, this five-part anthology shows off the breadth of expression and the versatility of the movement’s directors. Based on stories by the legendary writer Bohumil Hrabal, the shorts range from the surreally ch...

This short film documents the daily life of the goings-on on Orchard Street, a commercial street in the Lower East Side New York City....

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life....

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot ...

Events take a sinister turn one night in London, when two very different couples arrive at a double-booked apartment. Actions have consequences and not all debts are paid for with money. Leaving, it's harder than you think....

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film....

In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike K...

Global Groove was a collaborative piece by Nam June Paik and John Godfrey. Paik, amongst other artists who shared the same vision in the 1960s, saw the potential in the television beyond it being a one-sided medium to present programs and commercials...

Conducting a series of experiments in his makeshift home-lab, a skeptic IT worker tries to cure his harrowing hearing impairment. But where will his research lead him? "Masking Threshold" combines a chamber play, a scientific procedural, an unpacking...

During its 85-minute running time, this jarring experimental film takes a no-holds-barred look at the way women have been treated and depicted in Western art....

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filme...

Frank Zappa: Phase Two is a 2002 documentary about Frank Zappa. It features a lot of footage from Scheffer's previous film, but new material from Malcolm McNab's private achive....