Moby Dick

Jan 1, 2000

0h 13m

★ 0.0

Overview

Guy Ben-Ner, one of Israel's foremost video artists, gained international recognition with a series of low-tech films, starring his family in absurdist settings carved out of their intimate spaces and their everyday surroundings. Many of his videos are inspired by screenplays for films, folktales and novels. Analyzing these literary and cinematographic passages allows him to exploit the conventions of film narrative: how to tell a story, captivate an audience through a tale, sustain a degree of tension and entertainment, and so on. At the same time, he corrupts the magic of fiction by openly showing us the entrails of everything he records, without worrying about revealing the tricks of the trade. A large part of his filmic oeuvre features a conglomeration of cinematic and literary references which the artist quotes, adapts or interprets. Ben-Ner self-referentially links the great themes and their literary, cinematic and artistic realization.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Sommer Contemporary Art

Moby Dick Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Himself

Guy Ben Ner

This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."

0.0

To Teach a Bird to Fly

Jan 28, 2020

This experimental nature documentary by Minna Rainio and Mark Roberts depicts climate change and the wave of extinction from the point of view of our near future. Actually, it depicts the age we live in now, or rather its fateful consequences.

0.0

The Island

Mar 17, 2017

The Island is a short film shot entirely on Pulau Bidong, an island off the coast of Malaysia that became the largest and longest-operating refugee camp after the Vietnam War. The artist and his family were some of the 250,000 people who inhabited the tiny island between 1978 and 1991; it was once one of the most densely populated places in the world. After the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shuttered the camp in 1991, Pulau Bidong became overgrown by jungle, filled with crumbling monuments and relics. The film takes place in a dystopian future in which the last man on earth - having escaped forced repatriation to Vietnam - finds a United Nations scientists who has washed ashore after teh world’s last nuclear battle. By weaving together footage from Bidong’s past with a narrative set in its future, Nguyen questions the individual’s relationship to history, trauma, nationhood, and displacement.

0.0

Labirint

Sep 27, 2017

Two halves split by the perseverance of a scorpion. Come on, feet.

9.0

Baa Baa Land

Sep 27, 2017

An eight-hour contemplative epic, entirely starring sheep.

5.0

Vineyard IV

Jan 2, 1967

Glen Denny observed: "This film is not ocean, it is panther stalking jungle." Camera flows because it is free to move through space.

5.0

Swimming Stone

Jan 1, 1969

Fluidity of stone. Subatomic motion asserting a surface. Mind loop wandering. Visitation of sound matrix. Liquid solid. Nature transforms a planetary cycle. Relations of a timeless void.

10.0

Rodez

Nov 1, 2017

An exploration of Rodez Cathedral and its stained glass windows: praying figures and scientific imagery. A study on color, repetition and flickering consisting of 292 photographs.

0.0

Chance, History, Art...

Aug 25, 1980

Anne Bean, John McKeon, Stuart Brisley, Rita Donagh, Jamie Reid and Jimmy Boyle are interviewed about their artistic practice and the legacy of Surrealism on their work.

10.0

Countdown to Eternity

Jan 1, 1999

Bible expert Bill Gallatin explores biblical prophecies from the Book of Revelation that have transpired, with a discussion of whether these events signify that we are now living in the End Times preceding the return of Jesus Christ. Gallatin touches on events such as the increasingly acute difficulties in the Middle East, numerous environmental catastrophes, earthquakes and more, explaining how they connect to scriptural writings.

0.0

Transitions

May 2, 1986

A look at the various modes of transportation made for the Expo '86 World Fair in Vancouver, Canada.

2.3

The Vasulka Effect

Oct 1, 2020

The opening of The Vasulka Effect couldn’t be more apt: Steina Vasulka addresses her husband Woody through various TV screens. He does the same and replies. A perfect image of the relationship between the free-spirited, groundbreaking pioneers of video art. After meeting in Prague in the early 1960s, they relocated from Czechoslovakia to New York, where they later founded The Kitchen, their legendary art and performance gallery.

0.0

The Eichmann Trial

Oct 22, 2025

In 1961, history was on trial... in a trial that made history. Just 15 years after the end of WWII, the Holocaust had been largely forgotten. That changed with the capture of Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi officer hiding in Argentina. Through rarely-seen archival footage, The Eichmann Trial documents one of the most shocking trials ever recorded, and the birth of Holocaust awareness and education.

5.2

December Hide-and-Go-Seek

Jul 29, 1993

"Ryuta is 5 years old. Even though he is my son, I sometimes wonder what this small person is to me. Even though I see his joys and sadnesses and know the feel of his warmth on my skin when I hold him, there are moments when my feelings for him become vague and blank." - Takashi Ito

0.0

Shoshana

Mar 15, 2024

No overview available.

0.0

Untied

Nov 13, 2001

A small portrait of the volatility of intimacy and of breaking free from abusive cycles: made in response to a year of collapsing relationships and violent accidents that left me broken, dislocated and stuck in my apartment.

6.0

Urth

Oct 4, 2016

The last woman on Earth: Filmed inside Biosphere 2 in Arizona, Urth forms a cinematic meditation on ambitious experiments, constructed environments and visions of the future. The film considers what an endeavor such as Biosphere 2 might mean today and in the near future, in terms of humankind’s relationship with the natural world.

7.5

Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority

Mar 25, 2006

A thought-provoking documentary on the current and historical causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. political involvement.

0.0

City Streaming

Jan 1, 1990

This is a film made in Toronto, in memoriam, so to speak - a memory piece, a "piecing-together" of the experience of living there. The consciousness of the maker comes to sharply focused visual music - not to arrive at snapshots, as such, but rather to "sing" the city as remembered from daily living...complementary, then, to an earlier film, "Unconscious London Strata." Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

0.0

Flight

Jan 1, 1974

Pun on "light" intended - that short preceding expulsion of breath perhaps the "subject matter" of this film which centers in consideration of death. It is the third tone poem film and did much surprise me by thus completing a trilogy of the "4 classical Elements." (SB)

Moby Dick

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Moby Dick Trailers