Ante Meridiem

Ante Meridiem is a sensory journey through the first hours of dawn. Kind but vehement, he explores the dichotomy between silence and bustle, patience and haste, taking both to their ultimate consequences.

Locations: Looking for Rusty James

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

Ôrí

A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.

The Red Bank. James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks

This documentary aims to register this unknown side of James Joyce: His Greek Notebooks. Trieste. Bloomsday, 2013. Dance in slow motion, accompanied by text. By deconstructing the body, we turn it into a memory: of the body, of life, of texts. The biographical references to Joyce and Mando Aravantinou, combined with the diagonal slicing of the image, cancel the realism of the landscape, including that of the Narrator’s space/study. As a culmination, Joyce’s letter “A request for a loan in Greek” functions as a timely denunciation. Various routes through cities, such as Trieste, London, New York, and Athens; languages such as Greek and English. In addition to the primal myth of Ulysses, there is another issue: Greek is “the language of the subject of Ulysses”

Undercurrents: Meditations on Power

Made from reimagined/recycled images and sounds from the filmmaker’s archive and other found materials, Undercurrents is a poetic essay documentary about the undercurrents of history playing out in the present. It is also (at its heart) about the power of resistance.

Bohemia Docta or the Labyrinth of the World and the Lust-House of the Heart (A Divine Comedy)

A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.

From the West

A film essay investigating the question of what “the West” means beyond the cardinal direction: a model of society inscribed itself in the Federal Republic of Germany’s postwar history and architecture. The narrator shifts among reflections on modern architecture and property relations, detailed scenes from childhood, and a passed-down memory of a “hemmed-in West Germany,” recalling the years of her parents’ membership in a 1970s communist splinter group.

Sam in the Bag

While Trevor and Sam are smoking pot, Trevor’s mom comes home. When she finds out, Trevor reveals his father’s adulterous ways and destroys his family.

A Portrait of N. B.

Through his own photographs, the Basque artist Néstor Basterretxea (1924-2014) is portrayed by the art critic and exhibition curator Peio Aguirre, a great connoisseur of his work and personal archives.

Lynch/Oz

Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is one of David Lynch’s most enduring obsessions. This documentary goes over the rainbow to explore this Technicolor through-line in Lynch’s work.

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Weeping Rocks

Weeping Rocks follows Art, an entomologist nearing the end of his life, who has spent over five decades walking the same ten trails, meticulously counting every butterfly he sees and witnessing the slow erosion of the world. His eccentric, patient research has uncovered patterns of decline that went unnoticed for years, revealing the deep environmental impact of detrimental human activities. As time reshapes the landscape and species fade, Art’s journey becomes a meditation on mortality, change, and the beauty of what remains.

My Korean Cinema

A personal and subjective video essay series on the Korean cinema, consisting of 9 episodes. Its episodes include fragments of memory about Korean films and their ‘field’, actual moments of what is happening here and now, and images excerpted from Korean films. [Ep 1] My Chungmuro (2002) [Ep 2] For March of Fools (2003) [Ep 3] Smoking Women (2003) [Ep 4] Kino 99 (2003) [Ep 5] Song of Keumsoon (2004) [Ep 6] The Creative Restoration of ‘An Empty Dream’ (2005) [Ep 7] Reflection on Kim Gu (2005) [Ep 8] Garibong, Again (2006) [Ep 9] A Short Film about Pre-1945 Korean Cinema (2006)

To Stay Alive: A Method

Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.

8 Seconds at the Three Sisters

A filmmaker canoes up North Carolina’s Black River to the Three Sisters Swamp, chasing light through ancient bald cypress groves. What begins as a familiar act of observation and recording takes an uncanny turn. Using past footage and sound, the film reconstructs what was seen, what was heard—and what cannot be explained.

Mediocre

El Estado soy Yo

The images from the landing of the first expedition of the spaceship Columbia are juxtaposed to a reflection on the function of the visual medium, and artistic creation as a whole.

Desolate Rome

Chronicles of a male homosexual drug addict in 1980's in voice-over with long take scenes from Rome, television snippets of news of Gulf War and commercials.

Eautopsie

An enigmatic glimpse of life through precarious vignettes, propelling a narrative through a nebulous and opaque structure that sutures the filmmaker's home movie footage to archival material—from Hollywood narrative films to political selfie videos. A handmade impression of a time suspended between past and present and the ghosts and places occupying it, contemplating the nature and meaning of vision, memory and image making.

What Is to Be Done? A Journey from Prague to Ceský Krumlov, or How I Formed a New Government

Quite a few years have passed since November 1989. Czechoslovakia has been divided up and, in the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus’s right-wing government is in power. Karel Vachek follows on from his film New Hyperion, thus continuing his series of comprehensive film documentaries in which he maps out Czech society and its real and imagined elites in his own unique way.