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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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 night flight through hysteria and police surveillance in suburban America.