Alain Resnais’ epochal and enigmatic 1961 film, Last Year at Marienbad, is a dream-like study of non-linear time and memory. In the film, a man pursues a woman through the endless corridors of a luxury hotel while another man, who may or may not be her husband, looks on. Through ambiguous flashbacks and disorienting shifts of time and location, the film explores the relationships among the characters. Conversations and events are repeated in several places in this finely woven dance of memory.

Resnais is a contemporary of Chris Marker’s, whose film, La Jetée, inspired The Eternal Return series. The two directors, both part of the Left Bank Group, collaborated to make Le statues meurent aussi (Statues also Die, 1953) and Loin du Vietnam (Far from Vietnam, 1967).

Frequently cited by contemporary film scholars and critics alike as one of the most important films of all time, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller received little critical attention when it was first released. Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo is based on Boileau-Narcejac’s 1954 novel The Living and the Dead, which tells the story of a retired San Francisco detective with a crippling fear of heights who tracks the activities of a woman possessed by a spirit from another time. An influential work for the generation of filmmakers following Hitchcock, Vertigo had a deep impact on the work of Chris Marker, whose film, La Jetée, inspired the

The acknowledged master of the thriller genre, Alfred Hitchcock was also a brilliant technician who deftly blended suspense and humor. Born in England, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1920, writing scenarios and assistant directing. In 1939, he went to Hollywood, where his first film, Rebecca, won an Academy Award for best picture. During the next three decades, he made a film a year, including the classics Rear Window and Psycho. He received the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1979 and died in 1980. He made over 60 films, nearly all commercial and critical successes.

Set it a 1915 Los Angeles hospital, The Fall is a visually stunning fantasy film about a bedridden stunt man who entertains a curious little girl by telling her a fantastical story of exotic heroes and far off places that reflect his psyche. The reality of the hospital and the imaginary epic narrative become increasingly interdependent as the film progresses, until the demarcations of reality and fiction can no longer be discerned. The film takes place during the period of Hollywood’s formation, and reflects on the fantastical and illusory nature of cinema.

Shadow Play is a series of films that tread nimbly between reality and illusion, acknowledging the artificial nature of cinema. Referencing the tradition of shadow puppetry, the origins of cinema in phantasmagoria, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” each film draws on the metaphors of light as reality and shadow as artifice. In Plato’s The Republic, the allegory of the cave illustrates the difference between truth and illusion. Many writers have noted that Allegory of the Cave (written c. 360 BCE), bears great resemblance to the contemporary movie theater.

Based on Stanislaw Lem’s science fiction novel of the same name, Andrei Tarkovsky’s iconic film Solaris is set aboard a space station orbiting a planet where a crew of scientists is studying its ecosystem. A scientist is sent to the space station to account for strange events that have been taking place onboard. Solaris charts a psychological territory haunted by phantoms, in which the real and the imagined are inextricably mixed, presenting a critique of faith in pure reason. As Tarkovsky writes in Sculpting in Time: “Solaris had been about people lost in the cosmos and obliged, whether they liked it or not, to take one more step up the ladder of knowledge. Man’s unending quest for knowledge, given him gratuitously, is a source of great tension, for it brings with it constant anxiety, hardship, grief, and disappointment, as the final truth can never be known.” Frequently compared to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tarkovsky’s directing style is marked by long takes with slow, careful framing, allowing the film’s themes of memory and love to take root.

Shadow Play is a series of films that tread nimbly between reality and illusion, acknowledging the artificial nature of cinema. Referencing the tradition of shadow puppetry, the origins of cinema in phantasmagoria, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, each film draws on the metaphors of light as reality and shadow as artifice. In Plato’s The Republic, the allegory of the cave illustrates the difference between truth and illusion. Many writers have noted that Allegory of the Cave (written c. 360 BCE), bears great resemblance to the contemporary movie theater.

Curated and compiled by onedotzero, this double feature presents programs that look to the future, with exuberant renderings of the next generation of urban landscapes, and to the past, with a retrospective of key works produced through the Processing programming language.

code warriors: a decade of processing — Celebrating 10 years of the open source programming language, Processing, which encompasses a development environment and an online community promoting software literacy within visual arts. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

future cities — An eclectic selection of short films, animations, and motion graphics presenting evocative visions of future cities and urban destinies. Juxtaposing utopian fantasies with nightmarish dystopias, Future Cities highlights the possible metropolis of tomorrow with sci-fi architectural visions, near future worlds, and the warped frontier of space.

Austrian artist Kurt Hentschläger was in residence developing his audiovisual work CLUSTER, an evolutionary step in his artistic practice. A work in progress that began in 2004 combining seven complete, independent works, a full-length stereoscopic version of CLUSTER premiered in 2012. Focused on group behavior and the various stages of swarm motion, the 3D characters engage in a weightless slow-motion choreography, with human figures appearing as clouds of blurred matter intermingling with light. 

Chicago-based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschläger creates audiovisual performances and installations. Between 1992 and 2003 he worked collaboratively as one half of Granular Synthesis, whose performances and installations confronted viewers on both a physical and emotional level, overwhelming them with sensory stimulation. 

Alfred Hitchcock’s only Oscar-winning film, Rebecca, stars Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel of the same name. Located between a ghost story and film noir, Rebecca is a gothic thriller about a love triangle between English aristocrat Maxim de Winter, his young wife, and the shadow of his deceased wife, Rebecca. This film classic contains a haunting score by Franz Waxman and brooding cinematography by George Barnes.

Shadow Play is a series of films that tread nimbly between reality and illusion, acknowledging the artificial nature of cinema. Referencing the tradition of shadow puppetry, the origins of cinema in phantasmagoria, and Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” each film draws on the metaphors of light as reality and shadow as artifice. In Plato’s The Republic, the allegory of the cave illustrates the difference between truth and illusion. Many writers have noted that Allegory of the Cave (written c. 360 BCE), bears great resemblance to the contemporary movie theater.

In this talk, Dutch artist Melvin Moti considered the nuances of visual perception and the paradoxical status of the eye, which acts as both a camera and a lens. 

As an artist, Moti primarily works with film, but also uses a range of media including photography, drawing, text, and installation. His pieces are often the outcome of extensive research into overlooked historical events that have a prophetic quality when reconsidered from a contemporary perspective. In response to our oversaturated visual culture, Moti explores conditions characterized by a reduction in sensory perception. Positioning the viewer as a witness, his non-narrative films open up a political space for imagination and creativity through the disjunctive clash between the moving image and its corresponding voiceover. In addition to producing films, Moti has exhibited artist books, objects, and drawings.

Observer Effects offered a dialogue between the fields of art and science. The title was derived from the principle in physics that the act of observation transforms the observed, an idea that has been influential in philosophy, aesthetics, psychology, and politics.

Brent Green’s new installation, To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, presents a 12-minute animated film that tells the story of the woman who sewed the spacesuit for Laika, the dog launched into space in 1957 by the Soviets to test whether a living creature could survive space flight. The installation consists of a welded metal frame that holds wooden phonograph horns, multiple planes of polarized glass, and brightly glowing LCD screens. The animation is characterized by familiar elements from this self-taught artist, filmmaker, and performer—hand-drawn, “rickety” animation; wry, off-kilter storytelling; original music played by his band; and rustic sculptural elements—but also shows an evolution in subject matter and technique. Green’s poetic narration ultimately becomes a lament for the disenfranchisement of working people then and now: a theme that connects to his past protagonists—commonplace people who face toil and hardship, and sometimes, redemption and wonder.

Brent Green lives and works in the Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania. His films, live performances, and object-based art have been shown around the world. Most recently, he has had solo exhibitions of his films, along with sculptural and kinetic pieces, at the ASU Art Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum, and SITE Santa Fe. Green often performs his films with live musicians, improvised soundtracks, and live narration in venues ranging from rooftops to art institutions such as the Getty Center, the Walker Art Center, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), the Hammer Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts, The Kitchen, and MoMA. His films are often screened at film festivals, as well, including Sundance, Film Festival Rotterdam, and Rooftop Films, among many others. Green is currently embarking on his second feature, Anatomical Maps With Battle Plans, a film that will mold his family history through his unique visionary folk-punk style of storytelling and image.

Sam Green, a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker, worked at EMPAC on post-production of a 30-minute experimental documentary about fog in San Francisco. Seemingly an unlikely topic for a movie, fog can be a profoundly interesting visual phenomenon, and it is often breath-takingly beautiful. Green sought to create a portrait that is as varied and rich as the feelings stirred by the fog itself: from the sublime to the quirky to the deeply existential. At the same time, the goal was to make people more aware of the complex systems of wind, air, and water that surround us. His residency at EMPAC allowed the filmmaker to edit his film while viewing it on a large cinema screen with a 30,000-lumens projector rather than on a computer monitor—a rarity for independent filmmakers—enabling him to make informed choices about the tempo and sequencing of the film, as it would be experienced by audiences. Produced in conjunction with San Francisco’s Exploratorium Museum, Fog City premiered there with live narration by the filmmaker and music composed for the film played live by the New York City-based band The Quavers.