椰林月 (MOON OVER MALAYA) (Singapore, 1957, Chun Kim 秦剑 & Chor Yuen 楚原)

椰林月 (MOON OVER MALAYA) (Singapore, 1957, Chun Kim 秦剑 & Chor Yuen 楚原)

In his final film SOLEIL, Pierre Clémenti amalgamates the stylistic elements of his previous film (and sole feature), À L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU, with influences from his poetry and earlier work as a filmmaker. Via dramatic reenactment, Clémenti reflects on his unlawful arrest in 1972 for drug possession, whereupon he was imprisoned, without trial, for 17 months. The film also features extensive footage of Clémenti’s family and children, including his wife Margareth and son Balthazar.

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唐山阿嫂 (CHINA WIFE) (Singapore, 1957, Chan Man & Chor Yuen 楚原)

In 唐山阿嫂 (CHINA WIFE), Keung Chung-ping plays Ah-gau, an impoverished man who leaves his wife, So-ching (Nam Hung), and baby in Macau to travel to Southeast Asia and join his cousin (Patrick Tse) in search of better employment. A series of fortunate events propel him into high society, and soon he falls in love with a tycoon’s daughter, Ming-chu (Patsy Kar Ling).

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SOLEIL (France, 1988, Pierre Clémenti)

SOLEIL (France, 1988, Pierre Clémenti)

In his final film SOLEIL, Pierre Clémenti amalgamates the stylistic elements of his previous film (and sole feature), À L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU, with influences from his poetry and earlier work as a filmmaker. Via dramatic reenactment, Clémenti reflects on his unlawful arrest in 1972 for drug possession, whereupon he was imprisoned, without trial, for 17 months. The film also features extensive footage of Clémenti’s family and children, including his wife Margareth and son Balthazar.

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À L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU (France, 1985, Pierre Clémenti)

À L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU (France, 1985, Pierre Clémenti)

À L'OMBRE DE LA CANAILLE BLEU (English translation: IN THE SHADOW OF THE BLUE RASCAL) is set in the underbelly of “Nécrocity,” a city of nightly terrors. In this fictionalized Paris, fueled by heroin and paranoia, an anarchist group (played by Pierre Clémenti’s inner circle) — whose mastermind is a villainous military leader played by Clémenti himself — tries to keep one step ahead of the grip of state power. After 300 kilos of heroin goes missing, a significant wave of crime is catalyzed.

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LA DEUXIÈME FEMME (France, 1978, Pierre Clémenti)

LA DEUXIÈME FEMME (France, 1978, Pierre Clémenti)

Dense with hallucinatory visuals and frenetic montages, LA DEUXIÈME FEMME presents a filmic whirlwind through Pierre Clémenti’s family life, as well as his life on film sets as an actor. The title of the piece refers to the artist’s second wife, Nadine, but it also functions as a filmic love letter to his mother, and to artists and Warhol superstars Nico and Viva.

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SOUVENIRS, SOUVENIRS (France, 1967-78, Pierre Clémenti)

SOUVENIRS, SOUVENIRS (France, 1967-78, Pierre Clémenti)

SOUVENIRS, SOUVENIRS consists of some of the earliest footage that Pierre Clémenti ever shot. It is the closest of his works to a traditional home movie, although its fleeting shots of Catherine Deneuve on set with Michel Deville and Philippe Garrel during the making of LE LIT DE LA VIERGE are accompanied by bursts of color that would become Clémenti’s signature as an avant-garde cineaste.

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POSITANO (France, 1968, Pierre Clémenti)

POSITANO (France, 1968, Pierre Clémenti)

Positano is an island of the Amalfi Coast that Neptune would have, according to legend, created for the love of a nymph. Not unlike Neptune, Pierre Clémenti’s POSITANO embodies a total love in which family and friends are seized in the same poetic field. Perched on the rocks of the island, the house of Frédéric Pardo and Tina Aumont became, in 1968, a meeting place for the French “underground.” Clémenti lived in Pardo and Aumont’s house for some time and, in POSITANO, created images of dazzling sensuality.

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LA RÉVOLUTION N'EST QU'UN DÉBUT. CONTINUONS LE COMBAT (France, 1968, Pierre Clémenti)

LA RÉVOLUTION N'EST QU'UN DÉBUT. CONTINUONS LE COMBAT (France, 1968, Pierre Clémenti)

Half family photo album, half “ciné-tract,” Pierre Clémenti’s LA RÉVOLUTION N'EST QU'UN DÉBUT. CONTINUONS LE COMBAT follows the actor and filmmaker during the making of Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1968 dramatic feature PARTNER in Italy. In the midst of production, Clémenti travels extensively between Rome and Paris — where the May ‘68 protests were taking place — thereby leading a double life as both artist and activist.

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NEW OLD: OU LES CHRONIQUES DU TEMPS PRÉSENT (France, 1979, Pierre Clémenti)

NEW OLD: OU LES CHRONIQUES DU TEMPS PRÉSENT (France, 1979, Pierre Clémenti)

NEW OLD: OU LES CHRONIQUES DU TEMPS PRÉSENT presents footage that Pierre Clémenti captured over the course of a decade, chronicling his wanderings between street scenes, movie sets, and drug subcultures, and offering an accelerated global tour through various facets of the 1960s and ‘70s counterculture.

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THE TUXEDO THEATRE (US, 1968, Warren Sonbert)

THE TUXEDO THEATRE (US, 1968, Warren Sonbert)

Filmed in 1968, Warren Sonbert considered THE TUXEDO THEATRE an early version of — or “dress rehearsal” for — the film he would ultimately regard as his magnum opus, 1973’s CARRIAGE TRADE. As in CARRIAGE TRADE, Sonbert traveled around the world to create a tightly-edited work of polyvalent montage in THE TUXEDO THEATRE. It was his first foray into this style of filmmaking following a series of short films, set to the popular music of the time, that documented his contemporaries (including Andy Warhol’s Factory scene) in mid-1960s New York.

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AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY (US, 2000, Jonas Mekas)

AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY (US, 2000, Jonas Mekas)

AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY sees Jonas Mekas reconstruct his life through various home movies filmed over the course of three decades. Footage includes picnics and birthday parties as well as significant life events, such as Mekas’ children taking their first steps. Throughout, Mekas offers his own commentary via voiceover about what the viewer is seeing.

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WALDEN (US, 1969, Jonas Mekas)

WALDEN (US, 1969, Jonas Mekas)

Filmed from 1964 to 1969, WALDEN is Jonas Mekas’ first completed diary film, composed of moments, people, and events captured with his Bolex 16mm camera. At once intimate and epic in scope, WALDEN vacillates between the New York avant-garde scene of the mid-to-late 1960s (with Mekas’ lens immortalizing such notable friends and colleagues as Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and The Velvet Underground) and quotidian moments from Mekas’ family and day-to-day life.

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THE BRIG (US, 1964, Jonas Mekas)

THE BRIG (US, 1964, Jonas Mekas)

Jonas MekasTHE BRIG is a filmic rendering of the off-Broadway play of the same name, written by Kenneth H. Brown, which chronicles the abuses and indignities suffered by inmates at a Marine Corps prison. Brown wrote the play based on his own experiences as a U.S. Marine who spent 30 days in a brig for being absent without leave while serving with the Third Marines at Camp Fuji, Japan in the 1950s.

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CARRIAGE TRADE (US, 1973, Warren Sonbert)

CARRIAGE TRADE (US, 1973, Warren Sonbert)

Warren Sonbert considered CARRIAGE TRADE (1973) his “magnum opus.” In this film, Sonbert interweaves footage taken from his journeys throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States, together with shots he removed from the camera originals of a number of his earlier films.

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ELEGY IN THE STREETS (US, 1989, Jim Hubbard)

ELEGY IN THE STREETS (US, 1989, Jim Hubbard)

ELEGY IN THE STREETS was shot by filmmaker Jim Hubbard during the height of the Reagan Presidency, when both Reagan and his political administration ignored the deadly disease that afflicted an endless parade of human beings who ultimately died of AIDS. Hubbard’s film is replete with imagery associated with this era, including Gay Pride marches, candlelight vigils, ACT UP demonstrations, T-shirts embossed with bloody hands, cardboard headstones, police arrests, and the American flag hung upside down. As such, this movie can be viewed as a counterculture tract, a political protest film, an experimental documentary, and a diary film about Hubbard’s late partner and fellow filmmaker Roger Jacoby

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AWARD PRESENTATION TO ANDY WARHOL (US, 1964, Jonas Mekas)

AWARD PRESENTATION TO ANDY WARHOL (US, 1964, Jonas Mekas)

When Andy Warhol refused to appear in public to accept the 1964 Film Culture magazines annual Independent Film Award, Jonas Mekas made this mock “documentary” of Warhol and a group of his superstars at the Factory. They are presented a basket of fruit which they then consume in slow motion.

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JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA (US, 1971, Pola Chapelle)

JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA (US, 1971, Pola Chapelle)

During their trip back to Lithuania, Jonas Mekas made REMINISCENES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA, his brother Adolfas Mekas made GOING HOME in collaboration with his wife Pola Chapelle, and Chapelle herself made JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA, which both Jonas and Adolfas said was the best of these three films.

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