Pythagoras Film

From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a miniature version of America. Deborah Stratman’s experimental documentary explores how physical landscapes and human politics can each re-interpret historical events. Eleven parables relay histories of settlement, removal, technological breakthrough, violence, messianism, and resistance. Who gets to write history—physical monuments, official news accounts, or personal spoken-word memories?

Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.

The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.

An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.

A night flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America.

Adil Hoxur, descended from a line of Dawaz tightrope artists, performs nightly with his troupe in China’s Taklamakan desert, among the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people seeking religious and political autonomy. Shot over four months, this experimental documentary takes shape as a travelogue, ethnographic visual poem, and advocacy video for the preservation of a traditional art form. - MoMA

Obscure signs portend a looming, indecipherable slump. An oracular decoding of the landscape.

A single-shot portrait of the Foley process, revealing multiple layers of fabrication and imposition, which is dedicated to Walter Murch and "Ed Snowden."

A re-working of Humphrey Jennings' seminal 36-minute 1943 docudrama "The Silent Village," wherein Welsh coal miners from the village of Cwmgiedd collectively re-enact the Nazi invasion and annihilation of the resisting Czech mining village of Lidice. Focus in this iteration is on sound as a mode of social control and the larger historical implications of repetition. An homage to Jennings’ lucid address of labor solidarity, power and commemoration.

Ray Lowden keeps seventy-two large birds of prey, five deer and some wallabies at his place in Northumberland, England. He has had ten days off in twelve years and loves what he does. The film is a little homage to his variously coy, imperious, curious, stubborn and comic raptor menagerie.