Eye For Film >> Festivals >> London >> 2008 >> Experimenta

London Film Festival 2008

Cutting edge cinema, artists’ films and video and the avant-garde.

View other London Film Festival Films by strand: Cinema Europa, Film On The Square, French Revolutions, Galas And Special Screenings, New British Cinema, Short Cuts And Animation, Treasures from the Archives, World Cinema

Yah Chayka! Yah Chayka!
Yah Chayka! and 21 Alleys
21 Alleys (Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Robert Todd)
Study of gentrification in Boston.
Ah Liberty! (Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)
Study of tearaways on a remote farm.
Amazons (Country: Russia; Year: 2003; Director: Alina Rudnitskaya)
Portrait of girls who keep horses in St Petersburg.
Anywhere, U.S.A. (Year: 2007; Director: Anthony Haney-Jardine; Stars: Perla Haney-Jardine)
Told in three segments, ranging from satirical to tragic, the film is a wildly original look at American manners, prejudices, and family dynamics.
Astika (Country: UK, Denmark ; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)
Documentary about a Danish recluse.
Besame Mucho (Country: Russia; Year: 2006; Director: Alina Rudnitskaya)
Documenting locals who find escape - along with plenty of attendant bickering - in a choir.
Bitch Academy (Country: Russia; Year: 2008; Director: Alina Rudnitskaya)
Documentary about classes which aim to teach women to seduce men.
Deep Six (Country: Finland ; Year: 2007; Director: Sami van Ingen)
The film image of a loaded truck, careening free of its position in the frame, speeds along a mountain road towards an inevitable fate.
De Tijd (Country: Netherlands ; Year: 2008; Director: Bart Vegter)
Computer animated abstraction in three dimensions. Slowly evolving geometric forms suggest sculptural figures and waning shadows.
Easter Morning (Country: USA ; Year: 2008; Director: Bruce Conner)
Conner's freewheeling camera chases morning light in a hypnotic blur of colour and multiple exposures. This final work by the artist and filmmaker rejuvenates his rarely seen 8mm film Easter Morning Raga (1966). With music by Terry Riley.
The Feature (Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Michel Auder, Andrew Neel; Stars: Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Alice Neel)
An autobiographical journey through life in the New York art world, featuring Cindy Sherman, Larry Rivers and Andy Warhol.
Four Toronto Films (Country: UK; Year: 2007; Director: Nicky Hamlyn)
A suite of films exploring aspects of the city.
Le Genou d'Artémide (Country: Italy, France; Year: 2007; Director: Jean-Marie Straub; Writer: Cesare Pavese; Stars: Andrea Bacci, Dario Marconcini)
Horizontal Boundaries (Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Pat O'Neill)
O'Neill's dizzying deployment of the 35mm frame-line is intensified by Carl Stone's electronic score. A hard and rhythmic work, thick with superimposition, contrary motion and volatile contrasts, reminiscent of his pioneering abstract work of prior decades.
How To Conduct A Love Affair (Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: David Gatten)
An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter and an extravagant gift.
In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni (Country: France; Year: 1978; Director: Guy Debord; Writer: Guy Debord)
Debord's final film is "a denunciation of cinema and society at large, an unremitting diatribe against consumption".
In The Kingdom Of Shadows (Country: Canada; Year: 2005; Director: Francisca Duran)
Set in metal type, a passage from Maxim Gorky's review of the Lumières melts into a pool of molten lead.
Itinéraire De Jean Bricard (Country: France; Year: 2008; Director: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub; Writer: Jean Bricard, Jean-Yves Petiteau, Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub; Stars: Jean Bricard)
The Loire in long moving takes of the river in silvery black-and-white.
Last Days In A Lonely Place (Country: US; Director: Phil Solomon)
An elegy for a departed friend.
The Miracle of Don Cristobal (Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Lawrence Jordan)
Nineteenth-century engravings are coupled with Puccini and conjoured into life.
New Surprise Film (Country: UK, Denmark; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)
Apparently: "A little anticipation never did anyone any harm; you'll have to be there to find out what it is."
Origin Of The Species (Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Ben Rivers)
Documentary about a 70-year-old Scot who has been trying to divine the essence of Darwin.
The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly (Country: USA ; Year: 2008; Director: Charlotte Pryce)
A saturated cine-miniature inspired by Dutch 17th-century painting.
Recordando El Ayer (Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Ben Rivers)
In the shadow of an elevated subway line in Queens, New York, the residents, streets and stores of a Latino community evoke a sense of transience and displacement.
RR (Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: James Benning )
Celebration of the US railroad, its impact and influence.
Sarabande (Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Nathaniel Dorsky)
"Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the sarabande," says the director, which leaves us curious, if nothing else.
Singing Biscuits (Country: US; Year: 2007; Director: Luther Price)
In a description that is hopefully a lot more impenetrable than the film it describes, the organisers say: "A gospel cry rings out across the decades, disrupted in space and time, fading but resilient."
Small Miracles (Year: 2006; Director: Julia Hechtman)
Sci-fi hallucinations seem commonplace as Hechtman invokes mysterious natural phenomena: an extreme case of mind over matter.
Sur Le Passage De Quelques Personnes à Travers Une Assez Courte Unité De Temps (Country: France; Year: 1959; Director: Guy Debord; Writer: Guy Debord)
Anti-documentary about the Bohemian underground in Paris.
Triste (Country: US; Year: 1978; Director: Nathaniel Dorsky)
"The 'sadness' referred to in the title is more the struggle of the film itself to become a film as such, rather than some pervasive mood," says the director. We're confused, but powerless to argue.
Winter (Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Nathaniel Dorsky)
Exploration of a San Francisco winter.
Yah Chayka! (Country: Japan; Year: 2008; Director: Shuntaro Tanikawa, Wakako Kaku; Writer: Shuntaro Tanikawa, Wakako Kaku; Stars: Teruyuki Kagawa, Machiko Ono)
Poet and musician combine forces in an experimental film comprised of stills and music.
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