Movies: Essay film

Swimming, Dancing examines audiovisual representations of the Yangtze (1934–present), from silent film to video art to the contemporary vlog. Inspired by the city symphonies of the 1920s, Swimming, Dancing pieces together a “river symphony”, evoking ...

Recalling his childhood and relationship with his mother, a film student tries to understand the origin of his love for cinema and tragedies....

Jim, a slacker college student, decides to procrastinate on an essay worth 25% of his grade. Will he finish in time, or suffer the consequences?...

A girl haunted by traumatic events takes us on a mesmerising journey through 100 years of horror cinema to explore how filmmakers scare us – and why we let them....

Inspired by a tumultuous period in the director's relationship with her mother, the film draws a poignant analogy between the phases of their conflict and the ever-changing states of water along the coast of São Paulo, where the director grew up....

An experiment and a dialogue about recording, the act of filming and the colors available to whoever points the camera somewhere....

The cooking show is as old as television itself. But why do we like watching the making of a meal that most of us will never cook, let alone eat? Dirty Furniture’s jam-packed video essay is a rollercoaster ride through the history of the genre, at on...

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Humankind has always dreamt of the night sky. Of the infinite freedom offered by the black void, and of the strong, shining beacon inviting us to ascend. This is a story, a history of the events that led up to our conquest of space, and the consequen...

Four filmmakers working in the region of Galicia (in the northwest of Spain) follow and portray on the screen Galician artists working in disciplines of different nature. The result is four pieces around the creative process of these artists. Lois Pa...

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Tommy sets out to document walking. He meets a colorful cast of characters, attaches microphones to his feet, and contends with what it means to capture movement on film....

Since its publication 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has influenced vast swathes of popular culture. Adaptations have starred cinema legends from Boris Karloff to Robert De Niro – and even Alvin and the Chipmunks. From tales of science go...

A boy from Vila do Conde records a love letter on a cassette. His voice blends with music, archive images and stories from the past, some lived and others heard....

A story of diaspora. The film criticises the myth of Swiss neutrality, which violently masks structural, systemic, and social passivity....

"A l likeness is a gift... it avoids... or confuses time if your prefer." said John Berger. Following this premise, 81.92 is a structuralist inquiry into the notion of presence and absence as it reveals archival radio broadcasts from former Montreal ...

Chronicles of a male homosexual drug addict in 1980's in voice-over with long take scenes from Rome, television snippets of news of Gulf War and commercials....

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Andrea and the simbionte travel to Toledo; when they arrive, they find a lonely bus station, which slowly turns off the lights for them. In the silence that surrounds them, Andrea watches the moment pass and with it her certainty about her future dre...

"If there is a relationship between production and destruction, between the development of productive and destructive forces, then the atom bomb is the ultimate weapon of the post-industrial age. Greatest tonnage, highest mortality, maximum devastati...