Short Films and Mid-Lengths

Short Films and Mid-Lengths

For the cinephile on a time budget.

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Short Films and Mid-Lengths
  • Influenza

    Directed by Bong Joon-ho | 28 mins | 2004
    Completed by South Korean director Bong between "Memories of Murder" (2003) and "The Host" (2006) but never before released, Influenza captures the downward spiral of an unemployed 31-year-old man through Seoul's omnipresent CCTVs and observation cameras.

  • The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

    Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty | 45 mins | 1999
    Djibril Diop Mambéty, a towering figure in world cinema, is best known for his two features, Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992, re-released in a new restoration by Metrograph Pictures in 2019). Yet these two extraordinary films tell only part of...

  • The Inconsolable One

    Directed by Jean-Marie Straub | 15 mins | 2011
    Orpheus, returned from the underworld, explains to Bacchante that the gaze he cast upon wife Eurydice, condemning her to Hades, was an act of free will, not fate, in Straub’s agonized declamatory study of bereavement, based on a dialogue by Cesare Pa...

  • Amnesia

    Directed by Beth B | 1 min | 1992
    Originally aired on MTV, Amnesia is a one-minute direct assault on the languages of hate and intolerance. We hear spoken, “They spread disease. They smell bad. They take our jobs.” A timely reminder of the collective hysteria that can recur in the language and in...

  • The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight

    Directed by Beth B | 3 mins | 1983
    A gang of leather-clad, powerful women take over a traditionally male domain, and hairspray, eyeliner, and bare flesh are on full display in Beth B’s music video for the Arthur Baker–produced club hit from synthpop band Dominatrix. Banned at the time of release,...

  • High Heel Nights

    Directed by Beth B | 11 mins | 1994
    Intimate portraits of gay artists and drag performers talking about gender, identity, and all the fine lines around them. Beth B’s short film is a stirring reminder that drag-queen performances may be accepted in the mainstream today, but there was a time when ...

  • Jackals and Arabs

    Directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniéle Huillet | 11 mins | 2011
    Kafka’s 1917 short story of the same name, written on the eve of the British Government’s Balfour Declaration, which announced support for the creation of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, is the source of Stra...

  • Thanatopsis

    Directed by Beth B | 11 mins | 1991
    In collaboration with the legendary Downtown performance artist/musician Lydia Lunch, Beth B creates a chilling yet poetic vision of despairing nihilism—a hypnotic narrative, as a beautiful young woman negotiates the banalities of life, as Lunch delivers a warn...

  • Belladonna

    Directed by Beth B | 11 mins | 1989
    Co-directed with artist Ida Applebroog, Belladonna is a disturbing depiction of violence in our society, featuring several talking heads frankly describing their most personal and perverse attitudes on sex, violence, and actors reciting texts drawn from stateme...

  • Window

    Directed by Ken Jacobs | 12 mins | 1964
    Jacobs, always interested in experiments in perception, uses his camera to contemplate the frame of a window and the exterior beyond, as he does conducting a scintillating experiment involving lenses and screens. Screening as part of a selection of five exp...

  • Little Stabs at Happiness

    Directed by Ken Jacobs | 15 m ins | 1963
    A collection of smaller silent segments made between 1956 and ’63. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one of the most wildly creative and influential film artists and teachers in the history of the m...

  • The Day Before the End

    Directed by Lav Diaz | 17 mins | 2016
    Known for the titanic runtimes of his films, Diaz is also a master of the short form, as proven by The Day Before the End, a work of speculative, dystopian fiction set in the year 2050, as the people of the Philippines brace for an apocalyptic storm to thrash...

  • Caterina

    Directed by Dan Sallitt | 17 mins | 2019
    A sensitive, intimate, episodic character study in miniature, as perfect as a cameo brooch, of the title’s Caterina, played by Agustina Muñoz: an Argentinian quietly observing the rush of life in her adoptive home of New York, her gradual decision to cut t...

  • Black Box

    Directed by Beth B | 20 mins | 1978
    A terrifying allegory of societal repression, which follows the plight of an innocent youth abducted and tortured without any culpability. The film stars Bob Mason, Kiki Smith, and a 19-year-old Lydia Lunch.

  • The Whirled

    Directed by Ken Jacobs | 19 mins | 2007
    A collection of smaller silent segments by Brooklyn-born experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, made between 1956 and ’63. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one of the most wildly creative and influentia...

  • An Heir

    Directed by Jean-Marie Straub | 21 mins | 2011
    Drawing again on a 1903 work by right-wing nationalist author Maurice Barrès—and on his own memories of growing up in the contested city of Metz—Straub’s discourse-based film concerns a French Alsatian country doctor whose soul is torn between French...

  • The Witches, Women Among Themselves

  • The Poet and the Singer

    Directed by Bi Gan | 22 mins | 2012
    Before bounding to international prominence with his sui generis debut feature Kaili Blues, Bi Gan announced himself as a figure to watch with this lyric non-linear short, which tells the story of a small-town murder, and utilizes meticulous and utterly immersi...

  • Corneille-Brecht

    Directed by Jean-Marie Straub | 27 mins | 2009
    Verses from Pierre Corneille’s Horace and Othon and from Bertholt Brecht’s 1939 radio play The Trial of Lucullus are given melodic recitation by Cornelia Geiser in Straub’s film, creating a network of connections between the despots of ancient Rome, ...

  • Orchard Street

    Directed by Ken Jacobs | 27 mins | 1955
    Ken Jacobs documents the tradition of eager haggling and bargain hunting that once took place on the Lower East Side commercial thoroughfare of the title. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one of the...

  • Blonde Cobra

    Directed by Ken Jacobs | 34 mins | 1963
    In Blonde Cobra, dubbed “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema” by Jonas Mekas, Jacobs turns his camera on fellow underground icon Jack Smith. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one of the most wildl...

  • Le Franc

    Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty | 45 mins | 1994
    Djibril Diop Mambéty, a towering figure in world cinema, is best known for his two features, Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992, re-released in a new restoration by Metrograph Pictures in 2019). Yet these two extraordinary films tell only part of...

  • A Day On The Grand Canal With The Emperor of China

    Directed by Philip Haas and David Hockney | 46 mins | 1988
    David Hockney leads the viewer on a charming and illuminating guided tour through 17th-century China as depicted in the 72-foot scroll The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour (1691-1698), the work of painter Wang Hui and his assista...