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In this volume, Brother and Sister Bear learn about all the exciting things school has to offer.

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76 min NR EN

Overview

A muscular movement from a Sergei Prokofiev symphony commands our attention even against the blackness of a blank screen. The darkness eventually gives way to a roasted-pumpkin orange title card and images of a lovely nude running through the woods. Scratches in the film (celluloid!) correspond to scratches on the soundtrack (vinyl!), but AUTUMNAL DIPTYCH is not an elegy to decay and death, its title notwithstanding. Every frame conveys joy at being alive (and at making movies). - Michael Fox

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5 min NO EN

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Rock Ross' ironically titled, time-lapse record of a 1980s Gay Pride parade in San Francisco is hardly the celebration of a celebration one would expect. By stationing his camera at a jog in the route so that the floats and people head right at us and then veer off at the last minute (and speeding up their movements in the process) he transforms the pageant's erratic asphalt ambling into an anxiety-ridden urban expedition. - Michael Fox

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3 min NO EN

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"Moments chosen for nuclear annihilation... where are you going to run to?" Working in his beloved 16mm (with an acoustic blues song on the soundtrack), the filmmaker answers his own apocalyptic question with seductive snippets of a relative rocking on the porch; horses bounding in free-spirited pleasure; a shirtless, smoking hunk eyeing the camera; a young woman working out a tune on the piano; a Sunday family meal. Nothing particularly profound, mind you, unless it all vanished in a flash of heat and hydrogen. - Michael Fox

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5 min NO EN

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BAGLIGHT, as the title implies, was inspired by Stan Brakhage's legendary MOTHLIGHT. Only this version, as the filmmaker aptly describes, is "cruelty free" (and it has a score).

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3 min NO EN

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Held every October in the city of Matsuyama, the Dogo Autumn Festival is one of the most violent religious festivals in Japan. Eight teams of men carry massive wooden shrines weighing up to a ton, making them collide in a holy battle that leaves many injured and exhausted.

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28 min NO JA Documentary

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Rock Ross described this atypical collaboration as "a celebration of abandon in the parallel nation" and he wasn't being completely tongue-in-cheek. VESPUCCILAND is an exuberant and witty dance for the camera, shot in vivid, defiant color, records half a dozen spitfires (including Ross and fellow San Francisco experimental filmmaker Michael Rudnick) frolicking on a summer morn. Garbed in white costumes and ersatz hoods, the dancers embody the spirits of rebellion, solidarity, anarchy and free expression. Guaranteed to provoke a smile or three, and to evoke nostalgia for the trampled idealism of the 1970s. - Michael Fox

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2 min NO EN

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Possibly inspired by Bruce Weber's photography and, if so, perhaps anticipating Weber's beautiful black-and-white films, Rock Ross created this luxuriantly monochromatic ode to surfing and surfers. SOSUEME is an unabashed homage to the athletes' graceful, curved movements and the seamless interaction of body and board. Set to a Giacomo Puccini opera enhanced with a spoken-word track by Malcolm McLaren, the film provides unceasing pleasure as a hypnotic escape or an aesthetic tour de force. The joke in the title is explained at the outset by an onscreen confession: "The filmmaker acknowledges the completely unauthorized and illegal use of sound and image in this film." - Michael Fox

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6 min NO EN

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Mexican singer Alejandro Fernandez's 1995 international hit "Como quien pierde una estrella" overlays posterized images of a teeming city and of a couple looking upward as an airplane moves like a fly across the sky with blank frames that translate the lamentations of the broken-hearted singer into English. The film's title suggests filmmaker Rock Ross has his tongue firmly in his cheek regarding the melodramatic feelings of the singer. But he couldn't very well call it THE SORROW AND THE PITY now could he? - Marilyn Ferdinand

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3 min NO EN

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On May 17, 1968 nine Vietnam War protesters led by Daniel and Philip Berrigan, walked into a Catonsville, Maryland draft board office, grabbed hundreds of selective service records and burned them with homemade napalm. INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate, experimental documentary portrait of the Catonsville Nine, this disparate band of resisters who chose to break the law in a defiant, poetic act of civil disobedience. How did the photos, trial publicity and news of the two year prison sentences help to galvanize a disillusioned American public? INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME explores this politically and religiously motivated performance of the 1960′s in the context of extremely different times, times in which critics of Middle East peace agreements, abortion and technology resort to violence of the most random and sanguine kind in order to access the public imagination.

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44 min NO US EN 2 votes

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My daughter's name is Maya. I've been told that the word maya means illusion in Hindu philosophy. As I watch her growing up, spinning like a top around me, I realize that her childhood is not something I can grasp but rather (like the wind) something I feel tenderly brushing across my cheek. Eleven years later, I pull out my 16mm Bolex camera once again and she allows me to film her, different but somehow the same. - Lynne Sachs

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4 min NO GB EN

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Through images of kudzu-covered forms, photographed in black and white, hand-processed 35mm CinemaScope and radiating with the luminance of early cinema, this ode to the climbing, trailing, and coiling species Pueraria lobata evokes the agricultural history and mythic textures of the South, while paying tribute to the human capacity for improvisation.

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19 min NO EN

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Rock Ross' goddess film. Whimsy. Remarkable whimsy of hyperactive proportions.

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1 min NO EN

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Frenetic and impressionistic, this nocturnal foray through San Francisco's streets (heightened by a stop at a nightclub) delivers a thrill-hit of ebullient adrenaline. The rush of excitement, of anonymity, of adventure, of being alive, of potentially meeting someone new is palpable. Somewhere in the middle of this burst of gorgeous black-and-white, the neon takes on a life of its own, squiggling into infinity. "This is about living fast and dying peacefully," the filmmaker said at the time, which adds another layer of poignancy. - Michael Fox

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3 min NO EN

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One of Rock Ross' most overtly experimental films, PSYCHO PORPOISE is a playful, static-filled glimpse at the interior life of horizontal lines. Electronic waves morph into hand-drawn, hand-scratched patterns and then full-fledged animation as an alarming red background gradually gives way to a more inviting green. - Michael Fox

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2 min NO EN