Mirror Animations uses cutouts, found material, collage, and Thelonious Monk’s “Misterioso” to orbit around planets, fish, and rays of light on the path to enlightenment.

Restored by Anthology Film Archives.

Colours, objects and their treatments go beyond the discourse of scientific research that the filmmaker usually tends to maintain. We cannot ignore the high sensuality of the scenes and their choices. Rose Lowder favours scenes of nature, even though some of the sites filmed are located in the city. Through their filmic transformation, they no longer appear to be urban manifestations but natural landscapes. In this way, Rose Lowder continues an impressionist tradition; working in nature rather than in the studio; like Cezanne, working on site is the sine qua non condition in order to reveal the “little sensation” and represent it.—Yann Beauvais

COP26FILM was shot in Fowler’s home city of Glasgow during the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021. Denied entry to the main “blue zone” the artist instead made daily walks around the periphery of the site recording the temporary infrastructure of the conference: security systems, cordons, and the omnipresence of police helicopters. Fowler offsets these displays of state power with a patchwork of alternative interventions that took place: mass protests, temporary squats, and the significance of the Minga Indígena, a collective of over 100 Indigenous leaders who travelled to Glasgow to claim representation and space at the conference.—Galerie Gisela Capitain

How can one go against the system when one is a part of it?

Endangered animals on an endangered medium. A heartbeat 4/4 slow cinema, with a sex scene.

4 Fingers, 5 Toes captures images of the Eastern spotted newt and California golden newt in their natural habitats. Halpern shows the amphibians walking, swimming, and even mating, their staccato movements redolent of stop-motion animation.—Film Comment

The green leader of the 16mm film is still running, yet the rattling sound is already committed to forward movement. And indeed, it moves forward, but also back again, past hills, fir trees, and apple trees—and at some point, the gaze zooms into the seemingly passing landscape; but will also be forward again. This generates a simultaneously connecting and disturbing stroboscope effect, which generates after-images and allows the landscape to appear continuous despite obvious breaks; at the same time, the interim garish green “flash” offers glaring evidence that here we are dealing with a cinematically constructed journey rather than a “natural” one. Like the soundtrack, which is based on a staccato-style playback of ocean sounds split into stereo channels rather than a linear sound recording, the images are the cinematic synthesis of several camera pans across one and the same landscape, and not the result of a journey from A to B.—Christa Benzer

In this third part of Larose’s scènes de ménage, the work with movement and in-camera overlays intensifies. Figures move towards and away from the camera, with a swiping hand or a turning head taking on a gentle, volatile quality. Larose articulates a story with different sequences in which domestic interiors alternate with exterior vegetation, in a film that seems to emerge from the depths of photochemical emulsion.—Elena Duque

earthearthearth crystallizes into a multifaceted gem, shimmering with each light-encrusted frame. Like a constantly metamorphosing series of paintings, the film astonishes with its shifts of pigment, texture, and composition.—Ara Osterweil

It is as if we are watching a movie shot by some primeval witness to the beginning of the world.—Tony Pipolo

Watching earthearthearth, I understand why early 20th century painters had despaired when film was first invented. Once you feel colour breathe like this, a canvas never looks the same. In earthearthearth, colour is the real protagonist, nature its pale shadow. To put it plainly, there is only film.—Ela Bittencourt