Movies: Avant garde

Recorded Live in Paris in 1980, this is a rare recording of Frank Zappa performing at the peak of his career with his incredible backing band, including Ike Willis (guitar/vocals), Ray White (guitar/vocals), Tommy Mars (keys), Arthur Barrow (bass) an...

Moving through its five parts, the work describes a cycle of birth through to death, depicting both an eternal, universal Mary, and an earthly Mary representing human life on Earth....

Through abrupt soundtrack shifts, this short film jumps between historical political imagery to explore the cinematic language of propaganda, unpacking complex concepts through sensory explosions — from the Brazilian military dictatorship to the Chin...

Lost Boundaries is comprised of footage shot by Julien on location, in England in the summer of 1985, during the making of the Sankofa film and video collective's first experimental feature film The Passion of Remembrance (1986), which he co-directed...

After the end of civilization, an aged man undergoes a mysterious journey through space and time that takes him through memories, visions, and historical events, ultimately transcending the limitations of the senses and into a new cosmic rebirth....

"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." Shot in just seven consecutive days during the summer of 2023, it concludes the first volume of Bliss, a playlist of sounds and shapes. Daedalus delves into the perilous dance betwee...

Shirley Clarke's frenetic documentary about multi-talented musician Ornette Coleman....

Ayush suffers from sleep paralysis and dark hallucinations, haunted by shadowy figures that represent his repressed fears. Trapped between dream and reality, he confronts these manifestations of his inner turmoil....

Face in Motion depicts Chang Chao-Tang from the shoulders up, dressed in a light tank top, shaking his head and contorting his face. The background is pitch black, and he is lit with an almost otherworldly glow. The artist recorded at two frames per ...

Rediscovered film showing a host sell a gum holder with help from Aaron Judge....

Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and '70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers - brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane - are today acknowledged as central to the evol...

By light, or lack thereof, and sound, or lack thereof, I’ve tried to disassociate and then return to find something strange in the most familiar....

A film by Osnat Shalev from the Department of Visual Communications, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design...

This live recording was culled from seven September 1992 concerts given in Vienna, Berlin, and Frankfurt by the Ensemble Modern, a Frankfurt-based chamber orchestra that performs only contemporary music. Composed and conducted by Frank Zappa....

Shot on July 23, 1968, this historical 16mm footage of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention at Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, CA has been newly restored from the Vault! The film has been newly synced to the 2023 mixes, marking the first time i...

Waves crashing against the rocks, a journey to the beaches of El Tabo (Chile)....

A dreamy, impressionistic 16mm film of light on water, comprised mostly of sepia tones....

A corridor of an apartment is transformed into a claustrophobic and vertiginous vortex that swallows and imprisons you in an infinite fall through a mise en abyme: it’s a pure enclosure inside the image world, it’s the Descent into the Maelstrom....

Weaving blistering performance footage from Europe, Japan, and the U.S. with a sublimely restrained, intimate glimpse into a world-renowned jazz percussionist’s singular voice and complex cosmology....

What will happen if the world of 12th-grade students who prepare for University admission is changed to the way they never expected? This is the director's first experimental short film....