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Belgian filmmaker Samy Szlingerbaum directed the short film Le 15/8 in 1973 together with Chantal Akerman. He then made two short films of his own, including this nocturnal Insomnies, which rhythmically and associatively depicts the neon lights of the Belgian capital—like a dream. A mostly formal experiment of barely nine minutes. 

We can never get enough of Buster Keaton, The Great Stone Face of the 1920s. One Week is the first independent film he released himself, full of new stunts in and around houses and on ladders.

Arnold Schwarzenegger won his first Mr. Universe title at the age of 20. He was also named Mr. Olympia seven times. During one of those many bodybuilder competitions, Dutch filmmaker Babeth Mondini-Vanloo filmed him up close.

Chantal Akerman is omnipresent in Brussels this spring with a retrospective at Bozar and her entire oeuvre on display at CINEMATEK. The short film is an intimate portrait of a young woman who, during her day-to-day routines, reflects on her family, sex life, and body.

De binnenplaatsen van Łódź, een alomtegenwoordig architectonisch element van de stad, zijn de kinderspeelplaatsen van de omliggende flatgebouwen. Podwórka is zowel een studie van een specifieke plaats als een evocatie van de vindingrijkheid van de kindertijd.

With her films, pioneering journalist Jocelyne Saab gives exiled warriors and displaced people a voice. Her work is poetic but also has a strong awareness of her subjective role as a documentary filmmaker.

A group of children meets at the Sirkhane Darkroom Workshop for analogue photography. Asli Baykal delicately records their apparently carefree days while learning about the mysteries of the art form.

Now Pretend is an experimental investigation into using race as an arbitrary signifier. Drawing on language, personal memories, and the 1959 text “Black Like Me”, it deals with Lacan’s mirror stage, and the movement from object to subject. 

In Wild Plants of Palestine, artist and researcher Alaa Abu Asad questions the territorial extension of what is meant by “Palestinian”, while documenting the flora and topographical features of the (postcolonial) landscape in the West Bank.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who passed away in 2015, has gained worldwide fame. Nothing is quiet about her first short film, Blow Up My Town (1968). Her character is abrupt, energetic, and explosive. Something is teetering. This short film is a visionary prelude to the filmmaker’s oeuvre and life.

In his work, Georgian Mikheil Kobakhidze often opposed Soviet ideology. At first glance, Umbrella seems feathery light: a railway worker lives happily with his lover until an umbrella comes flying and gives the realistic a surreal touch.

Su Friedrich, a pioneer in American avant-garde cinema, writes, directs, and edits all her films. These are often a mix of the personal and political, ranging from home movies to video interviews and more classic narratives.    

Barbara Hammer is a pioneer in lesbian cinema. In her over fifty-year career, she has made both classic and more experimental films in which gender roles and female relationships are central.

During his heyday, Buster Keaton was known as The Great Stone Face: the American comedian is best known for silent films focusing on physical comedy and his dry facial expressions.

American underground artist George Kuchar is known for his low-fi aesthetic. He has directed over two hundred films and videos. Hold Me While I'm Naked reached 52nd place in The Village Voice’s Critic's Poll in 2000.

Fool’s Mate, seen by some historians as one of the first films of the French New Wave movement, is perhaps Rivette's best-known short film—and with good reason: its tight camera work captures a mysterious romance.

In A Kind of Testament, a young woman bumps into online animations that are clearly made from her private selfies. Vuillemin’s razor-sharp animated film scrutinises social media and digital personas and asks important questions about privacy and voyeurism.

In the short silent film Return to Reason, American dadaist Man Ray filmed barely recognisable night scenes in Paris. The almost total abstractions, such as enigmatic photograms and conglomerations of spiraling or spinning objects, seem devoid of meaning or purpose.

Set in the deindustrialised mining city of Genk, Terril depicts the masculine dynamics within a working-class family. It patiently moves between these social codes and the landscape in which they manifest themselves.

The footage in this rare film by legendary filmmaker Mustafa Abu Ali was shot by a French news team, after which Abu Ali edited it into one of the earliest films about the occupied territory in Gaza.

In deze surrealistische film van Henri Storck koopt een jongeman een glazen oog dat hij via de post verstuurt. Op een bijzondere manier komen erotiek en maatschappijkritiek erin samen.

In Hus, Inger-Lise Hansen attempts to reveal the private layers of our lives through stop-motion and time-lapse photography. Each shot of the film opens on a hidden part of a house and exposes it to the passing light.

The Octopus is a cinematic masterpiece that was restored in 2020. As a historical document, it not only depicts an utterly fascinating creature in all its splendour and mystery but also displays the infinite possibilities of the medium of film.

Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid took inspiration from surrealist films like Un chien andalou and L'Age d'Or by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel for their own avant-garde short film—even though they repeatedly denied it themselves. Following a similar dream logic, Meshes of the Afternoon tells a circular story about a dreaming woman.

Scorpio Rising is perhaps Kenneth Anger's best-known work. Set to the beats of 1960s pop music, the film follows a group of bikers and explores the occult, homosexuality, and Nazism. It also idolises rebellious public figures such as James Dean and Marlon Brando.

In 45th Parallel, a monologue is performed in a building on a borderline. Lawrence Abu Hamdan intelligently exposes the absurdity of borders and the often hypocritical legislation around them.

Irani Bag is a split-screen video essay that questions the alleged innocence of handbags in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. In doing so, Maryam Tafakory provides a robust political analysis of censorship and intimacy. 

This French short film is highly regarded in many film history books. Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel wrote his first feat together with Salvador Dalí, based on their dreams.

On May 27th, 2019, Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh, half of the Belgian-Congolese film collective Collectif Faire-Part, landed at Luanda airport in Angola. Despite a scheduled connecting flight, the duo will only take off again two days later to continue their journey to Frankfurt.

Hungarian Flóra Anna Buda won no less than three major film awards (in Cannes, Annecy, and Sarajevo) with her dreamy short animation film 27. It is a story about a young woman exploring her sexuality to her heart's content: lurking in the background is a socio-political message about the soured housing market in France.

Dream of Silk was banned from screening in Iran. In the film, Nahid Rezaei returns to the high school she attended as a young woman twenty years ago, to talk to the young students. She asks them about their hopes for the future and their vision of an ideal life.

Parviz Kimiavi is one of the most prominent figures of 20th-century Persian cinema. In his documentaries, he highlights various subjects in an often poetic and impressionistic way. In P Like Pelican, an old hermit in a slum wants to teach the alphabet to the street children who often come to play in his neighbourhood.

Brussels-based filmmakers Elie Maissin and Mieriën Coppens often collaborate with the collective La Voix des Sans Papiers. In doing so, the duo gives a voice to those without documents. Their understated film language evokes diverse ways of communicating: in different spoken languages, with the silent language of the body, with an environment.

American filmmaker Robert Breer first experimented with rotoscoping in Gulls and Buoys, although by 1972, the technique was already considered outdated. The film is reminiscent of an abstract holiday video on the beach.

The mystery of the filmmaking process is a crucial element in Robert Beavers' artistic signature. Winged Dialogue is characteristic of many of his films: at once lyrical and rigorous, sensual and complex. Mediterranean cities, landscapes, and cultural traditions unveil deeper personal and aesthetic themes. The sexuality of the body and the purity of the soul come together glowingly.

Nocturnal Butterflies is the only film entirely made in Servaisgraphy, a technique that fuses live-action and animation. The late Raoul Servais, a key figure in the history of Belgian animation, already experimented with this style in his film Harpya.

Using a typical American family car, avant-garde queer filmmaker Su Friedrich tells the story of a love affair and its demise. Here, the old, beige station wagon with faux wood panelling is the vehicle of an atypical lesbian couple. When their relationship ends, the vehicle becomes the property of one of them and curses the existence of the other.

Harry Kramer dances his way through an industrial landscape to the rhythm of groovy jazz music. Filmed and edited in a clever but alienating way, slowly but surely, the urban setting and the impact of a dizzying and all-consuming metropolis take over.

In a mix of documentary and fiction, Emotional Architecture 1959 explores several Madrid neighbourhoods in the wake of Sebas and Andrea, two literature and philosophy students who fall in love during the 1958-59 academic year. Their love affair is marked by differences in social class and in outlook on life.

Like fellow filmmakers Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard, French director Bruno Muel belonged to the militant Medvedkine, a group of socially engaged filmmakers active between 1967 and 1974. In Septembre Chilien, a documentary about the 1973 coup, he mixes official footage with clandestine shots of the rising opposition.

A documentary film about AIDS and one unconventional woman’s efforts to educate her small, Southern community. DiAna DiAna is a local hairdresser who transformed her beauty parlor into a center for AIDS and safe sex information.

Following a premonition, a young woman tries to persuade her fiancé not to go out to sea in his fishing boat, but the boy ignores her and sets out. Soon, a storm occurs, and the girl frantically tries to find out his fate.

A dreamlike meditation on art and politics in the final years of the Cold War.

A child's voice recites Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky while various objects, such as toys and dolls, fall apart and depict some of the scenes.

Two teenage girls from Brussels flee to Paris and try to survive there.

A man finds himself haunted by a mysterious black tower in London that appears to follow him wherever he goes.

In a world where everything is forbidden except what is obligatory, a man recalls for what reasons he came to work in a very strange fast food restaurant.

A psychedelic meditation on the filmmaker's life and his detention in a prison in Italy in 1972.

A detailed account of a failed bank robbery. A single take where over ninety people perform a meticulous choreography for the camera. The film recreates an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006.

Fifty-nine-year-old factory worker Beryl is totally obsessed with drawing, and her fixation dominates the entire household. Apart from her husband, her model and muse, every member of the family is addicted to something.

Time travel, still images, a past, present and future and the aftermath of World War III. The tale of a man, a slave, sent back and forth, in and out of time, to find a solution to the world’s fate.

African migrants in Paris talk about everyday life and racism on the labour and housing markets.

As a young Chinese filmmaker returns to his hometown in search for himself, a long due conversation with his mother dives the two of them into a quest for acceptance and love.

A portrait of a leper colony in the north of Iran, where 'ugliness' is juxtaposed with religion and gratitude.

A magical fairytale about a cat in a long trenchcoat.

A classic from the oeuvre of one of the comic pioneers of silent cinema.

Filmmaker Nikita Diakur's AI avatar teaches itself how to do a backflip.

Every day, a father and son parachute jump down from their cold cliff-side house to a remote village in the valley to sell the ice cream they make.

Children dance to music under the watchful eye of their teacher. A young girl witnesses the scene and disrupts their ritual.

A father and son take part in a folk race. To win, the boy turns himself into a car tyre. Loosely inspired by the director’s childhood.

Eén maal per jaar mogen de voormalige inwoners van Ma’loul terug keren naar hun door Israël bezette dorp. Tijdens de traditionele picknick documenteert de Palestijns-Belgische filmmaker Michel Khleifi hoe de geschiedenis van deze plek in de herinneringen van de oude generaties en in de verbeelding van hun kinderen verder leeft.

A devastating portrait of the artist's niece, haunted by the abuse she suffered as a child and the passivity of the family members who allowed it to continue.

A Hollywood villa on a sultry summer night. The escort does what he was hired to do and gives his client the illusion he has paid for. “I’ll make you a star”, the customer says, before the tide turns abruptly and the power dynamics are unsettled.

A sensory insight into the life of an Iranian refugee. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, numerous Iranian intellectuals and artists had to flee their beloved country. Many of them settled in Paris and tried to build a new life, often without success.

Udo Kier dies his way through film history. He screams, falls, is dismembered, shot or commits suicide. Again and again his empty gaze, again and again his rigid body.

An adaptation of a play by Aimé Césaire, in which a revolutionary contemplates his life just before dying in a great collective disaster.

A young man approaches some sailors, who eventually turn on him, strip him naked and beat him to death. Subsequently, fireworks explode.

Large parts of Goma were covered with lava after the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano in January 2002. Today kids live in the ruins on the lava. They sell paper hankies to grown-ups in the city, and lava rocks to construction builders.

A trip to the Côte d'Azur, with its blue skies, beaches and endless sunbathing people.

A collage about mortality by Stan Brakhage, one of the most prominent figures of experimental film of the 20th century.

A crane operator discovers a freedom he finds nowhere else, dozens of feet above the ground.

La briglia sul collo (1974) is a wonderful example of Cecilia Mangini's talent for pointed observation combined with humor and social criticism.

Surrounded by the sound of nocturnal animals, a girl falls into a deep sleep. Gradually we slip into her dream that takes us on a cosmic journey through the meadows of Erpe-Mere.

A sleeping man dreams of a city at dusk. Or is the city dreaming of him?

Jean Vigo's very first film. The silent documentary shows Nice residents in their daily routines, and the prevailing social inequalities.

In Dominique Loreau's very first (short) film, a woman wanders the streets of Brussels, waiting to leave for the tropics with a man she happened to meet in a pub.

A group of people who don't know each other are stuck in a traffic jam on a foggy highway. The fog just won't clear up, creating a lot of uncertainty.

A conceptual experiment about what it means to start a film with a black image grows into a subtle personal essay about the filmmaker.

A recently retired father invites his son to help him with the cherry picking in the garden. The father is in no hurry to finish the cherry job though, as he tries to catch up with his son. The cherries remain in the background.