Essay
280 products
A Film for Max
Duration: 1h14
Subscription access
In this film, filmmaker Derek May turns his camera on his own domestic life, attempting to show it "as it is," without the conventional structure imposed by filmmaking. He seeks to reflect the essential aloneness of human existence—a life suspended, a being unmotivated. Adult life is depicted in black and white, while the life of his infant son, Max, is shown in color. This contrast evokes the ...
American Journal
Duration: 1h51
Subscription access
Remember America. Remember the cities, the houses, all the people, the arrivals, the departures, the children coming, the children leaving, death, life, movement, speech. Remember the deep inner sigh of everything that lives in America. Bend down. Pick up what others have lost from life. And do something with it...
Dry Ground Burning
Duration: 5h08
Subscription access
Just released from prison, Léa (Léa Alves Silva) returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and joins up with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), the fearless leader of an all-female gang that steals and refines oil from underground pipes and sells gasoline to a clandestine network of motorcyclists. Living in constant opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s fiercely authoritarian and ...
Silence of the Tides
Silence of the Tides is a cinematic portrait of the largest tidal wetlands in the world: the Wadden Sea. The film plays witness to the rough, yet fragile relationship between man and nature as it pulsates with the inhaling and exhaling of the tides. It’s a hypnotizing large screen look into the cycles and contrasts of the seasons: life and death, storm and silence, the masses and the individua...
Videoletters
Between February and June 1991, filmmakers Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin exchanged several video letters (four by Kramer, three by Dwoskin) shot in Hi-8. These _Videoletters_ freed them from the formalities that burdened their work and reflections at the time. Through this exchange, they began to learn and observe anew.
This House
Bridgeport, January 17, 2008. A teenage girl is found hanged in her room. While everything points to suicide, the autopsy report reveals something else. Ten years later, the director and cousin of the teenager examine the past causes and future consequences of this unsolved crime. Like an imagined biography, the film will explore the relationship between the security of the living space and the...
Happy Life
In this time of anxiety and turmoil, this film explores the unusual outlets where the torments of the body and mind are soothed. In a meditative journey to the heart of these analgesic places, this documentary essay paints a portrait of a society in search of meaning and comfort.
A Short History Of Madness
\_A Short History Of Madness\_ is a contemporary dance film. Traveling through time in six architectural scenes, it touches on key moments in the treatment of mental illness in Quebec, from the end of the 19th century to today. The film introduces us to six mentally ill characters who are interpreted by dancers. It then goes on to follow a woman, Jacqueline, who ends up on the street after losi...
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Subscription accessComposed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community in Alabama’s Black Belt, \_Hale County This Morning, This Evening\_ offers an emotive impression of the Historic South. Daniel Collins attends college in search of opportunity while Quincy Bryant becomes a father to an energetic son. Creating a poetic form that privileges the patiently observed interstices of their lives, Ra...
The Last Bolshevik
Based on the life and work of the Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), \_The Last Bolshevik\_ is a tribute from one filmmaker to another. An archeological expedition into film history that reveals new cinematic treasures, the film prompts a reflection on the relation between art and politics in the former Soviet Union.
The Filmmaker's Holiday
A small village in the Aude region, its inhabitants, their joys, their sufferings and the camera of the filmmaker on vacation capturing these intermittent moments which, in the memory we keep, resemble happiness so strongly.
Impetus
Une cinéaste en plein tournage à New York se questionne sur l'origine de l’impulsion. Alors que son acteur principal quitte le tournage, elle devra faire preuve d’ingéniosité afin de mener à terme son projet. Entre fiction et documentaire, New York et Montréal, \_Impetus\_ est une réflexion sur la création et la remise en mouvement. Mariant l'essai poétique et l'autofiction, c'est aussi un film...
Mutts
Les pelages bruns, beiges, blancs et noirs se fondent à l’ocre de la terre et des murs inondés de soleil. Calme à l’heure du repos, l’endroit devient assourdissant quand vient le moment de nourrir les bêtes qui entament alors leur concert d’aboiements. Dans le refuge pour chiens errants d’Agadir au Maroc, plus de 750 animaux trouvent aide et protection en attendant d’être adoptés par une famill...
The Long Holiday
Octobre 1998, Johan van der Keuken apprend que son cancer de la prostate ne lui laisse que quelques années à vivre. Caméra à l’épaule, il part en compagnie de sa femme pour un dernier voyage, dont il fera son dernier film. De Noël 1998 à l’été 1999, il sillonne les pistes du Mali, les contreforts himalayens du Bhoutan, les aéroports américains... Partout, des êtres dans leur quotidien : le ritu...
Time of the Buffoons
Chaque année, la bourgeoisie canadienne se réunit au banquet du Beaver Club. Elle y célèbre le vieux système d'exploitation coloniale britannique et son avatar moderne, le néocolonialisme canadien.
Waiting for Casimir
Subscription access
In the village of Saint-Casimir, a seniors’ residence houses five people. At the heart of this confined space shaped by daily routines, a parallel world unfolds. Hours pass slowly in an endless waiting, punctuated by the presence of a local community TV station that intrudes into their universe through the television screen. Alternating between the sweetness of childhood memories and the presen...
A Robot of One's Own
Subscription access
Marketing pitches between 1940 and 1970 lead to believe that new technologies facilitating household chores were responsible for women's emancipation in the 20th century. By reusing commercials and television archives, this retro futurist feminist essay questions this capitalist discourse in order to examine the relationship between women and technology.
Mother-To-Be
Subscription access
Can a woman fully realize herself while embracing the demands of motherhood? Filmed during an actual pregnancy and based on the journal director Anne Claire Poirier kept during one of her own, this documentary captures the pregnant female body, revealing the emotions and anxieties that accompany this transformative experience.
Users
Subscription access
Drawing from her experience of motherhood and the unfailing perfection of machines, Natalia Almada envisions, in the form of a dystopian essay, the future of her children in a technological world. Between wonder and dread, the film’s strikingly beautiful images portray a terrifyingly “perfect” society.
Last Things
Subscription access
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks and various future others. The geo-biosphere is introduced as a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
A Film for Max
Duration: 1h14
Subscription access
In this film, filmmaker Derek May turns his camera on his own domestic life, attempting to show it "as it is," without the conventional structure imposed by filmmaking. He seeks to reflect the essential aloneness of human existence—a life suspended, a being unmotivated. Adult life is depicted in black and white, while the life of his infant son, Max, is shown in color. This contrast evokes the ...
American Journal
Duration: 1h51
Subscription access
Remember America. Remember the cities, the houses, all the people, the arrivals, the departures, the children coming, the children leaving, death, life, movement, speech. Remember the deep inner sigh of everything that lives in America. Bend down. Pick up what others have lost from life. And do something with it...
Dry Ground Burning
Duration: 5h08
Subscription access
Just released from prison, Léa (Léa Alves Silva) returns home to the Brasilia favela of Sol Nascente and joins up with her half-sister Chitara (Joana Darc Furtado), the fearless leader of an all-female gang that steals and refines oil from underground pipes and sells gasoline to a clandestine network of motorcyclists. Living in constant opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s fiercely authoritarian and ...
Silence of the Tides
Silence of the Tides is a cinematic portrait of the largest tidal wetlands in the world: the Wadden Sea. The film plays witness to the rough, yet fragile relationship between man and nature as it pulsates with the inhaling and exhaling of the tides. It’s a hypnotizing large screen look into the cycles and contrasts of the seasons: life and death, storm and silence, the masses and the individua...
Videoletters
Between February and June 1991, filmmakers Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin exchanged several video letters (four by Kramer, three by Dwoskin) shot in Hi-8. These _Videoletters_ freed them from the formalities that burdened their work and reflections at the time. Through this exchange, they began to learn and observe anew.
This House
Bridgeport, January 17, 2008. A teenage girl is found hanged in her room. While everything points to suicide, the autopsy report reveals something else. Ten years later, the director and cousin of the teenager examine the past causes and future consequences of this unsolved crime. Like an imagined biography, the film will explore the relationship between the security of the living space and the...
Happy Life
In this time of anxiety and turmoil, this film explores the unusual outlets where the torments of the body and mind are soothed. In a meditative journey to the heart of these analgesic places, this documentary essay paints a portrait of a society in search of meaning and comfort.
A Short History Of Madness
\_A Short History Of Madness\_ is a contemporary dance film. Traveling through time in six architectural scenes, it touches on key moments in the treatment of mental illness in Quebec, from the end of the 19th century to today. The film introduces us to six mentally ill characters who are interpreted by dancers. It then goes on to follow a woman, Jacqueline, who ends up on the street after losi...
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Subscription accessComposed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community in Alabama’s Black Belt, \_Hale County This Morning, This Evening\_ offers an emotive impression of the Historic South. Daniel Collins attends college in search of opportunity while Quincy Bryant becomes a father to an energetic son. Creating a poetic form that privileges the patiently observed interstices of their lives, Ra...
The Last Bolshevik
Based on the life and work of the Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), \_The Last Bolshevik\_ is a tribute from one filmmaker to another. An archeological expedition into film history that reveals new cinematic treasures, the film prompts a reflection on the relation between art and politics in the former Soviet Union.
The Filmmaker's Holiday
A small village in the Aude region, its inhabitants, their joys, their sufferings and the camera of the filmmaker on vacation capturing these intermittent moments which, in the memory we keep, resemble happiness so strongly.
Impetus
Une cinéaste en plein tournage à New York se questionne sur l'origine de l’impulsion. Alors que son acteur principal quitte le tournage, elle devra faire preuve d’ingéniosité afin de mener à terme son projet. Entre fiction et documentaire, New York et Montréal, \_Impetus\_ est une réflexion sur la création et la remise en mouvement. Mariant l'essai poétique et l'autofiction, c'est aussi un film...
Mutts
Les pelages bruns, beiges, blancs et noirs se fondent à l’ocre de la terre et des murs inondés de soleil. Calme à l’heure du repos, l’endroit devient assourdissant quand vient le moment de nourrir les bêtes qui entament alors leur concert d’aboiements. Dans le refuge pour chiens errants d’Agadir au Maroc, plus de 750 animaux trouvent aide et protection en attendant d’être adoptés par une famill...
The Long Holiday
Octobre 1998, Johan van der Keuken apprend que son cancer de la prostate ne lui laisse que quelques années à vivre. Caméra à l’épaule, il part en compagnie de sa femme pour un dernier voyage, dont il fera son dernier film. De Noël 1998 à l’été 1999, il sillonne les pistes du Mali, les contreforts himalayens du Bhoutan, les aéroports américains... Partout, des êtres dans leur quotidien : le ritu...
Time of the Buffoons
Chaque année, la bourgeoisie canadienne se réunit au banquet du Beaver Club. Elle y célèbre le vieux système d'exploitation coloniale britannique et son avatar moderne, le néocolonialisme canadien.
Waiting for Casimir
Subscription access
In the village of Saint-Casimir, a seniors’ residence houses five people. At the heart of this confined space shaped by daily routines, a parallel world unfolds. Hours pass slowly in an endless waiting, punctuated by the presence of a local community TV station that intrudes into their universe through the television screen. Alternating between the sweetness of childhood memories and the presen...
A Robot of One's Own
Subscription access
Marketing pitches between 1940 and 1970 lead to believe that new technologies facilitating household chores were responsible for women's emancipation in the 20th century. By reusing commercials and television archives, this retro futurist feminist essay questions this capitalist discourse in order to examine the relationship between women and technology.
Mother-To-Be
Subscription access
Can a woman fully realize herself while embracing the demands of motherhood? Filmed during an actual pregnancy and based on the journal director Anne Claire Poirier kept during one of her own, this documentary captures the pregnant female body, revealing the emotions and anxieties that accompany this transformative experience.
Users
Subscription access
Drawing from her experience of motherhood and the unfailing perfection of machines, Natalia Almada envisions, in the form of a dystopian essay, the future of her children in a technological world. Between wonder and dread, the film’s strikingly beautiful images portray a terrifyingly “perfect” society.
Last Things
Subscription access
Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks and various future others. The geo-biosphere is introduced as a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
