Happy Life

In this anxious and hectic time, Happy Life explores those unusual outlets that soothe the turmoil of the body and mind. In a meditative journey through these analgesic places, this documentary essay paints a portrait of a society in seek of meaning and relief.

Notes of Resistance and Erasure

This experimental short traces the lifespan of the graffiti and murals present at the occupation of NYC’s City Hall in June and July of 2020. The encampment formed to demand the abolishment of the NYPD and the reallocation of its resources to housing, education, and other social programs.

Entangled as Species

Daily observations and reflections of the second year of living in a pandemic. Our lives are limited to visits to the local Windmill Hill City Farm where animals and humans seem to live in harmony. I came across articles and videos about horseshoe crabs and their amazing survival through centuries and their impact on our survival. The farm shuts down and reopens as the vaccines roll out. The horseshoe crabs are on the verge of being added to the endangered species list. Like the old Farsi rhyme that Jonah tries to learn, we are in a circle tightly entangled.

Cumulonimbus

A 1970 projection of what may come when pollution over powers nature.

The Psychedelic Experience

Experimental movie, where a man comes home and experiences LSD. His kaleidoscopic visions follow, with readings inspired by the Tibethan Book of the Dead.

Animot

The experimental documentary filmed at rescue centres in Prague and Vlašim refuses the anthropocentric perspective and views the world through the eyes of wounded animals. The term Animot was taken over from Jacque Derrida. While the French philosopher and deconstructivist uses the term to refer to everything animalistic and non-human, the film, on the other hand, uses intimate details to point out the proximity between human beings and animals. They are connected by their vulnerability, helplessness and mortality.

Shadows

Hansjürgen Pohland's short documentary is an audiovisual study that captures events and people on the streets on film. The special feature of the work is that the people and objects are portrayed exclusively through their shadows.

Everyday Portabella

Now Eat My Script

"Now Eat My Script is a precipice, a fluid solution in which some spectral noises of the self float adrift. Narration takes the role of a pregnant writer who continuously affirms her hunger and clumsiness towards language and history. Her body is crossed over by both the years to come and the stories that have been buried. As a would-be pirate, she navigates through the tumult of familiar waters."

The Black Album

The Black Album places scrutiny on the notion of "Black Excellence" in a revisionist take.

Tierra en Trance

These are the dancing bodies in an agitated rapture: prelude to trance, invocation of the gods, consecration of intermittence. Here our point of view sparkles under the spell and trance of things gathered, fallen, yielding, pluvial, Mesoamerican wind, goddess breath, breeze of sticks. percussive woods. Here the audiovisual diagram that guides us, the kinetic breath that inspires us, the serpentine spear that snatches us away, the agitated plumes that trembles at us are the sound and rumbble of Teponaztli, a Mesoamerican percussive instrument: serpentine, dancing, bouncing sticks, trunks, branches and wood. Kinetic and audiovisual serialism from the embers of the Earth. This is the Earth in a Trance.

Cassis

"I was visiting Jerome Hill. Jerome loved France, especially Provence. He spent all his summers in Cassis. My window overlooked the sea. I sat in my little room, reading or writing, and looked at the sea. I decided to place my Bolex exactly at the angle of light as what Signac saw from his studio which was just behind where I was staying, and film the view from morning till after sunset, frame by frame. One day of the Cassis port filmed in one shot." -JM

As Janelas Me Diziam Que Os Carros Cor De Lembrança Ainda Percorriam as Movimentadas Ruas do Esquecimento

Delírio Primaveril

New York Portrait, Chapter II

Chapter Two represents a continuation of daily observations from the environment of Manhattan compiled over a period from 1980-1981. This is the second part of an extended life's portrait of New York.

Notes II

A sci-fi filmed in Mount Shasta, CA, Morro Bay, CA and Cape Romain, SC.