Oscar Sharp made this beautiful short film in London. It stars Jethro Skinner as Ben, the ‘board guy.’ The performance is endearing and full of intelligent energy. The film was shot in HD by Anthony Gurner. I love the way the people have all these colors in their clothes and then [...]

The British Film Institute has released the first filmed version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.  This British film was made in 1903 by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow.

Polaroid has used the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to announce a new line of classic instant film cameras!  Called the Polaroid PIC-1000, the camera will work with 10-packs of instant film just like the great old Polaroid cameras of the past.  This is a very smart move by a company that looked [...]

This is a clip from a documentary film, Meanwhile, a butterfly flies, about filmmaker Jonas Mekas. He shares a few thoughts about culture, country, poetry and what those things really are.

Jonas Mekas is one of our great independent filmmakers. He spent years writing a film column in the Village Voice. He founded the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. He makes lots of films with small cameras that he can carry almost anywhere he goes. That is, by the way, [...]

Read the following remarks at your own risk.  The post begins one way and finishes in another.
The online film journal Senses of Cinema has an excellent essay by Pedro Blas Gonzalez called Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: An Existential Odyssey.  He examines 2001: A Space Odyssey from an existential viewpoint.  He focuses primarily on astronaut Dave Bowman’s [...]

Stan Brakhage was one the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century. He used many techniques to make his films, one of them being direct painting on the film itself. This is one of his pieces from 2000. It is very beautiful and goes through several distinct movements during its short [...]

Here’s a new film for the film fans who happen to stumble by. It’s a film about memory shifts, searching, losing something, trying to find the old image, trying to regain an old feeling or impression, capturing a season of life or the mind. As if one were thinking, “I can almost remember [...]

This is an odd post and I’m not entirely sure I can pull it off. The film above is called Montparnasse. It was made in 1929 by Eugene Deslaw.  I watched the film and want to write about it cold, without looking up Mr. Deslaw on Google.  I’ll check up on him after [...]

Art Director Tommy Kane went to Lebanon and made a film about his wanderings. He also drew magnificent illustrations of what he saw. Those are in the film too.  The combination of the beautiful street scenes and the cheerfully expressive drawings make me want to get on a plane and go visit [...]

This film was made by Franck Deron.  On his blog he says that he filmed it without a lens, using a pinhole through some aluminum foil.  I’m not exactly sure what that means.  I’d be curious to know more about exactly how he set that up.  But I like the results.  It’s a mysterious and [...]

Ingmar Bergman, the magnificent film director who most assuredly would have detested Woody Allen, lived on a Swedish island called Fårö. Diane Solway wrote an article for W Magazine about the island and she made this short film about her trip there.

The NFB (National Film Board of Canada) has just released a new free iPhone app that lets you watch hundreds of their films.  You can use the app even while you’re away from hotspots by downloading films for viewing during a 24-hour period.  The NFB is one of my favorite places on the web for [...]

Here’s a horror movie about some U.S. soldiers in Iraq who face an ancient evil in a cave.
This is very mature subject matter with extreme violence and mature language. Not for young viewers.

This is not a very good film. That’s why I posted it. The filmmaking interests me because of its complete [...]

In keeping with our horrific new game, Frankenstein – The Creature Must Die!, here’s a 1957 Hammer Film called The Curse of Frankenstein.  It stars Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the monster.
This version of the Frankenstein story caused critical outrage when it was released.  It was ground-breaking in its level of [...]

Here’s an experimental film by Xavier Chassaing that uses 35,000 still photos with some stop motion animation and something called ‘live projection mapping.’ The music is by Fedaden.
I found this via Coilhouse.

My latest little film. It’s actually a cinegram. The subject is trains. Time. Memory. The present doesn’t exist. You can’t find it with measurement. You can’t even define it. The future is not there yet. You cannot see it. The only thing that really exists is [...]

He’s a German film director named Werner Herzog and in 1980 he made a bet with another filmmaker that if that other guy actually finished his first feature film Herzog would sit down in front of cameras and eat his own shoe. The friend did finish his movie, and so Mr. Herzog sat down [...]

Noteboek is one of those films that illustrate what personal filmmaking is. It’s an artist’s hand-made, direct expression. Evelien Lohbeck is the performer and animator in this little gem. There’s something a little Chaplin-like in her clever tricks with drawings and food. I love the part where she’s reflected in the [...]

Takeuchi Jaijin made this film by photographing the action in stop motion then photographing the photos again in his room.  He makes the action seem to take place all along his walls, countertops and floors.  I love the way the boy dives into the filled sink and swims across!  The photo animation technique reminds me [...]