A cultural history of ventriloquism disguised as a sci-fi TV series, integrating live actors with vintage and artist-made puppets. The Case of the Vanishing Gods is a fiction-doc hybrid that traces the phenomenon of ‘throwing voices’ from the oracles of ancient Greece to the spectacle of the modern horror film, and pushes the essay film into exciting new territory.
From Ross Lipman's "personal ethnographies" series, an informal visit with legendary filmmaker Bruce Baillie at his home on Camano Island in Washington State.
Two women meet at a crossroads... A chance encounter between two women struggling to stay afloat, in an era of the downsizing of dreams. Ross Lipman's one fiction film to date comes from a genre even more rare in the US than experimental work-adult drama. Printed in muted tones that conjure silent film hand-painting, and merging theater-based naturalism with an elliptical psychological encounter, "The Interview" at once utilizes and destroys mainstream narrative expectations.
Casa Loma was the unfinished dream mansion of Canadian industrial magnate Henry Pellatt. A self-made millionaire, Pellatt was derided by fellow aristocrats for nouveau-riche pretentions: the house and its décor considered by many an ornate fake. Its original contents were sold at Pellatt’s bankruptcy auction in 1924. Today the building is a museum. The movie has three sections—the first in a cellar tunnel, the next in a first-story workroom near the stables, the third in the tower’s summit.
Filmed in a decaying housing estate in east London, "Rhythm 06" renders the outer trappings of internal collapse, a choreography of layers of the real. This new reworking of "Rhythm 93" transposes Michael Whitmore's ethereal score for 10-string guitar and overtones on Carolyn Roy's original riveting hypernaturalist performance.
