Nowness

Two Asian-American teenagers meet in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant while having dinner with their families.

A moving recording of the late writer and renowned jazz singer Abbey Lincoln is captured in this new film from Brooklyn-born director Rodney Passé, who has previously worked with powerhouse music video director Khalil Joseph. Reading from her own works, Lincoln’s voice sets the tone for a film that explores the African American experience through fathers and their sons.

A frazzled adulteress played by Parisian beauty Zoë Le Ber wakes up in the familiar surroundings of Bar Chateau Marmont, only to find herself trapped in a prank at the hands of her restaurant-owner lover, Fred.

What does it mean to be goth—to be an outsider, to live both on the margins and in the midst of society? Filmmakers Jordan Hemingway and Alban Adam prize open the coffin on a world of darkness and light, exploring its multiplicities and intersections with subcultures and the ever-present experience of queerness.

Two girls find themselves locked in an Oslo public swimming hall and bond over school gossip, boys and dancing to the psychedelic sounds of Lindstrøm.

Artist and filmmaker Quentin Jones joins forces with Miley Cyrus in a kinky collaboration, stripping away the pop phenomenon's cartoonish persona in "Miley Cyrus: Tongue Tied".

Lou, a teenage tomboy in a small Californian town, idolizes her single father. When he has a date over one night and she is cast out of the house, Lou wanders to the outer reaches of town and into a new era of teenage identity.

Two young people discover each other as they explore a labyrinthine derelict Glasgow swimming pool. A high-energy contemporary dance piece shot in the emptied Govanhill Baths in Glasgow.

In the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into males and females. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes” - men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned limbo between the two genders.

There are houses, and then there’s Ricardo Bofill’s house: a brutalist former cement factory of epic proportions on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain. A grandiose monument to industrial architecture in the Catalonian town of Sant Just Desvern, La Fabrica is a poetic and personal space that redefines the notion of the conventional home. “Nowadays we want everyone who comes through our door to feel comfortable, but that's not Bofill’s idea here,” says filmmaker Albert Moya, who directed latest installment of In Residence. “It goes much further, you connect with the space in a more spiritual way.” Rising above lush gardens that mask the grounds’ unglamorous roots, the eight remaining silos that once hosted an endless stream of workmen and heavy machinery now house both Bofill’s private life, and his award-winning architecture and urban design practice.

In the first of a new series of Define Beauty, Berlin-based directer Matt Lambert—known for his often-NSFW work exploring sex and intimacy—gets under the skin of our infatuation with sweat. Read more on NOWNESS

“Sex work. The phrase evokes so much emotion, yet we understand it so poorly,” rising director Yago Hunt-Laudi wrote on an Instagram post celebrating the premiere of his new film, The Chrysalis. In this documentary profile, he paints an intimate portrait of stripper Haley Rolland, a young woman from Missouri who speaks about taking control of her body and the difficulties she encountered during the pandemic.

Face to Face is an online made-to-order project created in response to the current global crisis. After a virtual consultation with Nakazato, a client will ship a simple, white shirt to the designer’s atelier in Tokyo. Based on the client’s backstory, interests and personality, Nakazato will reimagine and redesign the shirt, returning it to them as a completely new garment. This intimate and immersive experience takes fashion back to its purest form, where materials come together to tell a story about the wearer.

Marking the 30th anniversary of Derek Jarman's passing, close friend and collaborator Tilda Swinton leads a poetic tribute to the late artist and filmmaker with a slow, meditative journey into Jarman’s poem "Chroma" during a visit to Beijing.

A young astrophysicist in a war-torn country watches the stars and black holes, holding a dialogue with her unborn daughter about the nature of light and darkness.

A master of sound at work on a fashion film. If you’ve ever wanted to see the chasm between the finished product and the extraordinary lengths taken to produce it, this short is for you.

After recently going blind, a young gay man struggles to navigate his new life in the shadows.

NOWNESS China has released a new series of films focusing on traditional Chinese culture as defined by a new generation of young people. Young Masters: Baji Quan is the first episode and focuses on a 23-year-old man from Hebei province who is a stalwart practitioner of Baji Quan—a traditional Chinese fighting style known for its graceful stillness and sudden moments of targeted and ferocious violence. Director Haonan Shen traveled to the Mengcun Baji Quan International Training Center to profile Wu Hao whose paternal ancestor Wu Zhong (1712–1802) was the first recorded Baji Quan teacher. In this evocative portrait of a young man’s passion for sharing his family’s rich heritage, we get up close and personal with the violent elbow strikes, staff jabs, fierce rising and firm falling stances that characterize the martial art.

Le Labo Fragrances takes us on an intimate journey to the Australian bush to visit the source of its soulful Sandalwood scents in Western Australia, a region renowned for its rugged landscapes, tidal flats and staggering coastlines. The Language of the Trees started life as an elevated documentary on the rhythm and processes of a sustainable sandalwood plantation in Australia, where one can find the source of the sandalwood oil that creates the heady fragrance combinations in Le Labo’s iconic collection of 18 eau de parfums.