Alain Resnais

Toute la mémoire du monde (1956)

"With its long tracking shots through cavernous library hallways and its skeptical corresponding text (courtesy of writer Rémo Forlani), Alain Resnais' short essay film Toute la Mémoire du Monde imagines the Bibliothèque Nationale as a forbiddingly inhuman landscape in which man attempts to imprison "knowledge" in an effort to counter the limits of his own memory. Only in the act of individual selection - a single patron choosing a specific text - is there hope that this undifferentiated mass of knowledge can be redeemed, as the reader makes discriminating use of the collective national memory for the fulfillment of a constructive individual purpose." Andrew Schenker

Henry Hills

SSS (1988)

Henry Hills filmed several performers on the streets of New York's East Village, editing the footage with music improvised by Tom Cora, Christian Marclay, and Zeena Parkins.

Jean-Claude Risset/Lillian Schwartz

Mutations (1969)

French composer Jean-Claude Risset helped to pioneer computer music at Bell Labs in the early 1960s. Made in collaboration with computer pioneer Lillian Schwartz, this film sets animations by Ken Knowlton and others to Risset's titular composition for solo tape, which features a seemingly infinite glissando among its effects. Click here for part 1 of a 1976 documentary on Schwartz's work with computers.

Forough Farrokhzad

The House is Black (1963)



The only film directed by Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, who died tragically just four years later at the age of 32, The House is Black is a documentary on a leprosy colony in Tebriz, Iran, with Farrokhzad's narration of Koranic verses and excerpts from her own poetry.

Elaine Summers

Windows in the Kitchen (1976)



The opening sequence of Elaine Summers' Windows in the Kitchen, part of the pioneering "intermedia" artist's collaboration with the Judson Dance Theater.

Robert Filliou

And So on, End So Soon: Done 3 Times (1977)



According to Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, art was born on January 17th, somewhere around 1,000,000 years ago, when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water.

Val Del Omar

Fuego en Castilla (1960)

José Val del Omar's (Granada 1904-Madrid 1982) extraordinary film, centered around a series of Alonso de Berruguete and Juan de Juni sculptures.

Part I


Part II


Part III