Caniba

Somniloquies

Works with sound recordings of Dion McGregor, who became famous for talking in his sleep.

Manakamana

A documentary about a group of pilgrims who travel to Nepal to worship at the legendary Manakamana temple.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

An extraordinary adventure through the interior of the human body; or the discovery of an alien landscape of unprecedented beauty.

Sweetgrass

An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture, revealing a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.

Other People's Children

Rachel loves her life, her students, her friends, her ex, her guitar lessons. When she falls in love with Ali, she grows close to his 4-year-old daughter, Leila. She tucks her in, looks after her, and loves her like a mother... which she isn’t. Not yet. Rachel is 40. The desire for a family of her own is growing stronger, and the clock is ticking. Is it too late?

Leviathan

An experimental portrait of the North American commercial fishing industry through the lens of GoPro cameras placed on a fishing vessel off the coast of New England.

The Last Film

A famous American filmmaker travels to the Yucatán to scout locations for his last movie. The Mayan Apocalypse intercedes.

Foreign Parts

A portrayal of a hidden enclave of auto shops and junkyards fated for demolition in the shadow of a new baseball stadium in Queens. The film observes this vibrant community of immigrants – where wrecks, refuse, and recycling form a thriving commerce – as it struggles for daily survival and contests New York City's development scheme.

Still Life

A short companion to Leviathan, set inside the fishing vessel.

The Eye's Dream

Maya is a photographer. She takes photos related to the eyeball. Kunio is a neurosurgeon and an independent documentary film director. He is interested on making a documentary about Maya. A mysterious eyeball collector watches for Maya's own eyeballs.

Commensal

A two-channel installation utilizing both digital video and 16mm film, Commensal focuses on the controversial figure of Issei Sagawa, who gained notoriety in 1981 when, as a graduate student in Paris, he murdered a fellow student and engaged in acts of cannibalism. After his release from a mental institution, Sagawa returned to Japan, and later appeared in innumerable documentaries and sexploitation films. In contrast to earlier journalistic documentaries on Sagawa, the film suspends moral judgment and explores a realm that eludes classification as either “documentary” or “pure fiction,” to instead chart the ambiguous territory between crime, fantasy, and social realities, between an individual and the economy of his public persona.

Ah Humanity!

“Ah humanity! reflects on the fragility and folly of humanity in the age of the Anthropocene. Taking the 3/11/11 disaster of Fukushima as its point of departure, it evokes an apocalyptic vision of modernity, and our predilection for historical amnesia and futuristic flights of fancy. Shot on a telephone through a handheld telescope, at once close to and far from its subject, the audio composition combines excerpts from Japanese genbaku film soundtracks, audio recordings from scientific seismic laboratories, and location sound.”—Ernst Karel, Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Spirit Stills

Submarine spirits of monsters and demons, soldiers and sailors, pirates andwarriors, slaves and serpents, skulls and skeletons.

Last Judgement

An apocalyptic vision of the vertiginous intermingling of the sea and the sky.

He Maketh a Path to Shine After Him; One Would Think the Deep to Be Hoary

An archaeology of both the ocean and the image, this piece reworks the sequences of Leviathan that were shot in and from the sea. Projected at 1/50 of the speed at which they were recorded, it simultaneously slows movement and animates the still, revealing a liminal universe at the threshold of human vision. In this flux, one beholds a netherworld of aqueous forms that appear in one frame and disappear or transmogrify into something else in the next.

7 Queens

Ephemeral encounters recorded during a walk beneath the elevated tracks of the No. 7 subway line in New York City.

Faces of Death

What question has plagued mankind more than the mystery—and terror—of death? This forbidden pursuit has driven Dr. Frances B. Gröss to the brink of madness, but in his obsession, he has amassed a uniquely comprehensive collection of films that depict life in its final, grueling moments. From the savagery of cold-blooded murder to the perverse realities of war, tragic accidents, and the everyday lives of those who collect, dissect, and bury the dead, this descent into morbidity lays bare a truth that all of us will one day face.