Videoteca

location_onLondon, EnglandpublicGB

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass 2024
A man journeys by rail to a nameless sanatorium where his father has recently died. Once there, time loses its linearity and he finds himself in a world that appears both strange and strangely familiar.

The Doll's Breath 2019
Afraid of losing his wife, Horatio creates a replica he calls Hortensia. But things don't go as planned... Shot on 35mm and propelled by an impressive score by Michèle Bokanowski, the Quay Brothers evoke an intense drama of jealousy, betrayal and murder, revolving around a window dresser's obsession for a life-sized doll.

The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes 2005 star_border 6.1
Dark fairytale about a demonic doctor who abducts a beautiful opera singer with designs on transforming her into a mechanical nightingale.

Songs for Dead Children 2003 star_border 5
Another short, grainy film from the Quay Brothers. This one has funny singing in it.

Radio On Remix 1998
A re-edit of Petit’s Radio On (1980)

Robinson in Space 1997 star_border 6.9
Robinson is commissioned to investigate the unspecified "problem of England." The narrator describes his seven excursions, with the unseen Robinson, around the country. They mainly concentrate on ports, power stations, prisons, and manufacturing plants, but they also bring in various literary connections, as well as a few conventional landscapes.

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity 1995 star_border 6.4
A father and son rescue the sole survivor of a train crash.

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life 1995 star_border 7.7
Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

Duo 1995
One of a series of short films inspired by paintings. In this video, Jacques de Loustal's Le Contemplatif or "Duo".

Wind Water 1995 star_border 5
In Wind Water, Ruiz stages a three-way dialogue between three great cultures: the West, China and Arabia. He imagines what might occur if Shih-T’ao’s six poetic procedures for attaining the primal respiration or cosmic breath in painting were applied to one of the flagships of Western art, Velazquez’s Las Meninas. Ruiz wants the three cultures to interact and test each other like the paper, stone and scissors of the children’s game. The result is an insoluble dispute, a différend. No reconciliation or compromise is possible between these cultural outlooks.

London 1994 star_border 6.5
A psycho-geographic journey through London and its history, as undertaken by an unseen narrator and his companion, Robinson, at the time of the 1992 general election.

Rose Red 1994 star_border 6
Simon Pummell's (Bodysong) visually ravishing sci-fi thriller exploring the future of virtual reality and the desire to transcend human limits. The theft of an experimental drug to suppress the immune system reveals a case of virtual reality addiction and forces a detective to confront his nightmares.

Anamorphosis 1993 star_border 6.5
The Quays' interest in esoteric illusions finds its perfect realization in this fascinating animated lecture on the art of anamorphosis. This artistic technique, often used in the 16th- and 17th centuries, utilizes a method of visual distortion with which paintings, when viewed from different angles, mischievously revealed hidden symbols.

Temptation of Sainthood 1993
The story of a man who believed God was changing him into a woman so he could save the world.

Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married? 1992 star_border 6.1
Stop-motion animated short film with a white ball, a rabbit, and a girl, and a voice singing "Are We Still Married".

The Comb 1991 star_border 6.7
A porcelain doll’s explorations of a dreamer’s imagination.

Meat Love 1989 star_border 6.7
The story takes place entirely on a kitchen counter and sees two slices of raw meat as protagonists. The first slice is courted by the second and together they dance to the notes of a recording from the 1920s broadcast on the radio, after which the two slices find themselves playing and flirting on a plate full of flour, but the passion is abruptly interrupted by two skewers who fork the two slices and fry them in a pan.

Stille Nacht I: Dramolet 1988 star_border 6.3
A magnet moves on a floor. A moth beats against a window. A doll child watches the magnet; threads of metal filings gather around the magnet.

Doodlin': Impressions Of Len Lye 1987
This documentary, made seven years after the death of legendary filmmaker and kinetic artist Len Lye, tells Lye's story: from being a young boy staring at the sun, to travels around the Pacific and life in New York. It includes excerpts from many of his films, and interviews with second wife Ann and biographer Roger Horrocks. Len Lye himself is often heard, outlining his ideas of the ‘old brain’ and how Māori and Aboriginal art influenced his work. The grandeur of his ideas are only matched by their scale, with steel sculptures designed to be "at least 20 foot high".

Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies 1987 star_border 6.6
Stop-motion animated short film in which, among other things, a man made of wire looks malevolent.

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