PreloadAn odyssey to blue (making-of)Mohamed Chaoui
& Dennis Janssens
& Tom Tiepermann
An odyssey to blue

An Odyssey to Blue, Dennis, Mohamed and Tom intended to capture the color blue in its most pure form. In the search for this particular hue of blue we ended up in the stratosphere. Here, 31,5 kilometers above the earth, we found the "ultimate" blue. It is not only beautiful, the blue of the stratosphere is also necessary.

2013 / 10:00 / BE

Dreams that money
can buy (fragment)Hans Richter
Dreams that money can buy

Surrealist painter and Dada film-theorist Hans Richter wrote, produced, and directed the experimental exercise Dreams That Money Can Buy, one of the most significant contributions to the 20th-century "avant garde" movement. Combining short scenarios written by such world-renowned artists as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamps, Man Ray, Alexander Calder and Fernand Leger, Richter came up with a full-color, feature-length study in dreamlike "wish fulfillment." The film's only nod to continuity is the presence of a self-styled heavenly psychiatrist, whose patients purportedly visualize the images which play across the screen.

1947 / 20:00 / DE

Don't hug me I'm scaredBecky & Joe
Don't hug me I'm scared

A short film offering a humorous (and rather disturbing) view on the elusive secret of creativity, made in collaboration with the THIS IS IT collective and featuring music, puppets and sets by directors Becky & Joe. The conventions of children's television are taken into new, nightmarish territory, starting out innocently and descending into mind-bending chaos. The film has screened at festivals worldwide including Sundance, Los Angeles Film Festival and SXSW, where it picked up the Midnight Shorts Best Film award in 2012. The film also won the 2012 Aurora Picture Show Audience Choice Award.

2011 / 03:26 / US

Blade Runner - The Aquarelle edition (fragment)Anders Ramsell
The Aquarelle edition

"Blade Runner," the 1982 science-fiction classic from director Ridely Scott, is one the genre's enduring masterpieces. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and Daryl Hannah and based on a Philip K. Dick novel, the film has been often imitated by never quite like this. Artist Anders Ramsell took his love of the film to the next level, producing a 35-minute "paraphrase" (his word) featuring over 12,500 aquarelle paintings, each approximately 1.5-x-3cm in size. The result is like a Monet painting come to dystopian life. Ramsell, who spoke via email to Yahoo News about his creation, said it took him about a year and a half to create all the paintings.

2013 / 03:00 / SE

Louise Bourgeois
peels an orangeLouise Bourgeois -
ZCZ archive
Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois embraces the father of psychoanalysis, but also refers to the ritual paternal jest associated with peeling oranges, i.e. the mortifying representation of Louise deprived of a phallic attribute.

2013 / 05:05 / FR

Eating a hamburger
& a pizzaAndy Warhol & Macaulay Culkin
Andy Warhol

After you're done watching Home Alone this holiday season, we've got another Macaulay Culkin video for you to watch. We'll admit, there's not much to it. Just the 33-year-old eating a slice of pizza. After Culkin diligently opens a brown paper bag, he peppers the pizza (much like Warhol pouring ketchup on his burger) and then begins to eat. When he's all done, he sits there for a good minute before saying, "My name is Macaulay Culkin, and I just finished pizza." (Warhol's line: 'My name is Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger.') Weird or artsy — or both? That's your call.

1981 & 2013 / 04:27 / US

With Gilbert &
George (fragment)Julian Cole
Gilbert & George

Gilbert & George have put their motto ‘Art for All’ into practice by mounting more exhibitions in museums and galleries than any other contemporary artist. With Gilbert & George transports us out of the limelight and into the 18th Century home and studio they created together in 1969 in Spitalfields, East London. We see how their work not only documents their own remarkable and enduring artistic collaboration but also the transformation of their visually rich but financially poor, historic neighbourhood.

2008 / 15:00 / IT & UK

Breaking the
waves (chapters)Per Kirkeby
Per Kirkeby

Breaking the Waves may be seen as traditional melodrama, but the explicit sex and violence, combined with handheld camera, the grainy look of the images, and the violation of the visual continuity, give the film a fresh and raw visual. Only the last image of the bells and the chapter titles made by Danish artist Per Kirkeby are shot with a static camera. The film was generally well-received by critics, but it also set off a lasting public debate about the film in a theological, feminist, and psychological context. Breaking the Waves premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received the Grand Prix du jury in 1996.

1996 / 05:40 / DK

Green pornoIsabella Rossellini
Isabella Rossellini

Green Porno is a series of short films on animal sexual behaviour. The series, which began in 2008 and aired on The Sundance Channel, is conceived, written, and directed by its star, Isabella Rossellini. In the eight films that comprise the first season, Rossellini enacts the mating rituals of various insects and other animals (including the dragonfly, spider, bee, praying mantis, earthworm, snail andhousefly) with cardboard cut-outs and foam-rubber sculptures. Season two is devoted to marine life. Season three deals with ocean life threatened by commercial fishing.

2008 / 02:55 / IT

Muriel and MaddieFrench and Saunders
Muriel and Maddie

French and Saunders are a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring comic duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. It is also the name by which the performers are known on the occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act. Widely popular in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of popular culture, movies, celebrities and art.
Gilbert & George are so iconic that comedians French and Saunders once spoofed them as Muriel & Maddie.

1993 / 03:23 / UK

Cruising ElectricBrumby Boylston
Brumby Boylston

Brumby Boylston is a commercial video artist who applies his skills to an old-fashioned toy ad in “Cruising Electric (1980),” which imagines a world where Friedkin’s movie generated ancillary merchandise. The simple-but-funny joke and uncannily accurate retro look of “Cruising Electric (1980)” are worthy of vintage Saturday Night Live, but that isn’t the main reason why a film that’s barely over a minute long made it into this year’s Sundance Film Festival. This fake commercial works as a sharp piece of film criticism, taking Friedkin’s film to task for trivializing a gay subculture by turning it into the seedy, dangerous backdrop for a policier.

1980 / 01:22 / US