Shorts seen

Through an unconventional use of concise narrative, a conceptual collage of sounds and images, and a rapid-fire montage, Arthur Lipsett's first film vividly portrays the urban estrangement in the times of social erosion and materialism.

Abstract images drawn directly onto the film are accompanied by three pieces of jazz performed by the Oscar Peterson trio.

From Arthur Lipsett, another incisive short film that looks at human might, majesty and mayhem. Compiled from some peculiar newsreel items of the last 50 years, the filmmaker calls this a time capsule, yet his arrangement of pictures makes it almost explosive. There are hundreds of items, once front-page stuff, but all wryly grotesque when seen in this reshuffle of the past.

Country rube thinks what he sees on the movie screen is real. He jumps out of his seat to try to stop a kissing scene.

This film documents a motion study of a man running as hard and as long as he can in a full suit of High Middle Age armor.

Experimental film, white specks and shapes gyrating over a black background, a light-striped torso, a gyrating eggcrate. One of the first Dadaist films.

The protagonist finds out that Glumov's diary has been stolen. He immediately runs out of the theater and climbs along the building's facade up to the roof where he was picked by an airplane. After a short flight, he jumps out of the airplane to fall into a car, carrying on his search for the diary.

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording of "Daybreak Expresa" this is a five-minute short on the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated train line in Manhattan, New York City.

A humourous and thought-provoking view of what animals in zoos might be thinking about their captivity and surroundings.

A fireman rushes into a carriage to rescue a woman from a house fire. He breaks the windowpanes and carries the woman to safety; after dangerous and uncertain moments he also saves the woman's son.

Drawing surprising connections between market methods and CIA torture techniques developed in the 1950s, the film explores how well-known events of the recent past have been theaters for the shock doctrine, from Pinochet's coup in Chile, to the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to the war in Iraq today.

A gang of thieves lure a man out of his home so that they can rob it and threaten his wife and children. The family barricade themselves in an interior room, but the criminals are well-equipped for breaking in. When the father finds out what is happening, he must race against time to get back home.

When protocol and routine fail to resolve a malfunction during an electric chair execution, responsibility falls into the hands of the Warden.

A surreal story of two neighbours' destructive feud over a flower.

Katherine Leggett's home movies and webcam conversations with her gay parents, who live in a small Midwestern town.

An offering is passed repeatedly between a Japanese monk and a young novice as their relationship evolves from their initial encounter through their final parting.

The first animated movie in the Soviet Union. A bloated caricature of a Capitalist devouring a massive heap of food and drink.

A group of astronomers go on an expedition to the Moon.

Michelangelo Eye to Eye is a meditation on mortality which observes the director Michelangelo Antonioni contemplating Michelangelo's statues in St Peter's.

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí present 16 minutes of bizarre, surreal imagery.

A long series of unrelated images, revolving, often distorted: lights, flowers, nails. A lightboard appears from time to time carrying the news of the day. Then, an eye. A woman in a car drives along country roads. Farm animals. She descends from the car, again and again. Images: dancing legs, seashore, swimming fish, geometric shapes, cut glass. A man removes his starched collar. It rotates. A girl has garishly painted eyes. No, she's only fooling. Those were her eyelids.

Semu Fatutoa drives a taxi in Honolulu, Hawaii, slowly forgetting his old life as a tribal Chief in Samoa. Little does he know, his old life is looking for him.

A love story about two gay wrestlers living in rural Iceland who must keep their relationship a secret from the inner world of Iceland's national and very macho sport.