Right Below the Everest

Working completely outside the mainstream, the wildly prolific, visionary Stan Brakhage made more than 350 films over a half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” he has turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy. Many of his most famous works pursue the nature of vision itself and transcend the act of filming. Some, including the legendary Mothlight, were made without using a camera at all, as he pioneered the art of making images directly on film, by drawing, painting, and scratching.

Bolivian artist and filmmaker Luciana Decker Orozco delves into ancient and essential acts: eating, masticating and digesting. Her suggestive celluloid slips through mouths, intestines and entrails, as well as experiments in the catacombs of the human being and the Earth. Inspired by the avant-gardist and indigenist Peruvian writer Gamaliel Chumata, the surface and the underground, the real and the extraordinary, mysteriously merge together.

The short film follows Endika, a director who, in the midst of a clash with his reality, transforms a documentary about paternal absence into a personal quest for reconciliation with his own father.

An Editor recounts the diaries of a failed film production as they attempt to construct a new narrative from the remaining footage.

Three basketball players step onto the court, each with a rhythm of their own. As their movements are studied and reimagined, their game is then recontextualized into jazz, revealing the artistry within sport and the music hidden in motion.

In 7 episodes, a subject traverses through various phases of existence. He fully explores different facets of the human condition— a calm birth, a stifled growth, an outrage against injustice, a cumulation of scars, and the return to innocence.

Graduation is approaching, marking the close of a chapter. I took my camera to Green Island, recording video letters day by day. But the camera became unruly, backup batteries went missing, and the trip began to go downhill. Typhoons arrived, and the video letters ceased... Finally, facing the sea beneath the sun, my camera non-responsive, I took a Dramamine, then boated back home.