A Common Sequence
An interconnected look at tradition, colonialism, property, faith, and science, as seen through labor practices that link an endangered salamander, mass-produced apples, and the evolving fields of genomics and machine learning.
An interconnected look at tradition, colonialism, property, faith, and science, as seen through labor practices that link an endangered salamander, mass-produced apples, and the evolving fields of genomics and machine learning.
In the summer of 1900, the first film camera was purchased by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar for Iran, and immediately the first Iranian moving images were captured by this camera. These images, in an obsessive manner, have embodied the mesmerized gaze of people. In the span of 79 years since the purchase of this camera, Iran has undergone two revolutions and two coups, and throughout all these moments, the camera has been present as the recorder of people's mesmerized gazes. These mesmerized gazes are in a way as if they are the ones looking at us, not the other way around. It seems like these gazes are trying to convey something, but what? No one knows. Now, we gaze at those who have gazed at us from a distant time.
A 1970 projection of what may come when pollution over powers nature.
These are the dancing bodies in an agitated rapture: prelude to trance, invocation of the gods, consecration of intermittence. Here our point of view sparkles under the spell and trance of things gathered, fallen, yielding, pluvial, Mesoamerican wind, goddess breath, breeze of sticks. percussive woods. Here the audiovisual diagram that guides us, the kinetic breath that inspires us, the serpentine spear that snatches us away, the agitated plumes that trembles at us are the sound and rumbble of Teponaztli, a Mesoamerican percussive instrument: serpentine, dancing, bouncing sticks, trunks, branches and wood. Kinetic and audiovisual serialism from the embers of the Earth. This is the Earth in a Trance.
Through an imagined dialogue with Jean Paul Riopelle, this experimental film updates the painter's legacy by seeking to build bridges with today's generation. Part homage, part self-portrait, this short film is above all an intimate reflection on the courage to be oneself.
Archive footage from 2006 - 2010 of a young girl growing up during the ages of four to eight. Only fragments of what is remembered exists. Words from a transgender man float to the surface as fleeting memories go on.
Using variations of color and light, this is a method that I attempted to translate how I feel for a special someone on her special day.
How do German couples communicate in private? What are they arguing about? Is the way to a man’s heart really through his stomach? This docu-fictional hybrid production discusses such questions with the help of authentic interview snippets that were edited under the staged plot. We get an insight into the life of an animal couple, who experience typical everyday situations on behalf of us humans. At first, our fox is emotionally contained, while the penguin lady may get wild as hell. With a wink, the filmmakers hold up a mirror to the audience in the cinema.
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A vacant theater still has “screenings” of its own: apparitions that come to life on a curved screen without anyone to see them, creating spectacular scenes without any projectors at all.
In Untitled (Pink Dot), Murata transforms footage from the Sylvester Stallone film First Blood (1982) into a morass of seething electronic abstraction. Subjected to Murata's meticulous digital reprocessing, the action scenes decompose and are subsumed into an almost palpable, cascading digital sludge, presided over by a hypnotically pulsating pink dot.
Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.
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Seven actors are brought to an isolated house where they must stay in character for three days under constant surveillance.
This experimental short traces the lifespan of the graffiti and murals present at the occupation of NYC’s City Hall in June and July of 2020. The encampment formed to demand the abolishment of the NYPD and the reallocation of its resources to housing, education, and other social programs.
Daily observations and reflections of the second year of living in a pandemic. Our lives are limited to visits to the local Windmill Hill City Farm where animals and humans seem to live in harmony. I came across articles and videos about horseshoe crabs and their amazing survival through centuries and their impact on our survival. The farm shuts down and reopens as the vaccines roll out. The horseshoe crabs are on the verge of being added to the endangered species list. Like the old Farsi rhyme that Jonah tries to learn, we are in a circle tightly entangled.
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"Soap Opera of a Frozen Filmmaker" project is a series of seven episodes of cinematic diaries. It is the unique point of view of an anonymous artist whose entire essence of existence is to make films, but he is rejected on every front time after time. During the process he ponders his life as an artist, the nature of material society and life in general, in which his owm life eventually become a tragedy.
A five-year visual ethnography of traditional yet practical orchestration of Semana Santa in a small town where religious woodcarving is the livelihood. An experiential film on neocolonial Philippines’ interpretation of Saints and Gods through many forms of rituals and iconographies, exposing wood as raw material that undergoes production processes before becoming a spiritual object of devotion. - A sculpture believed to have been imported in town during Spanish colonial conquest, locally known as Mahal na Señor Sepulcro, is celebrating its 500 years. Meanwhile, composed of non-actors, Senakulo re-enacts the sufferings and death of Jesus. As the local community yearly unites to commemorate the Passion of Christ, a laborious journey unfolds following local craftsmen in transforming blocks of wood into a larger than life Jesus crucified on a 12-ft cross.