Dir: Godfrey Reggio
US 1982 86mins 35mm
Life out of balance is the direct translation of the title and the prescient warning of this astonishing cinematic essay. Shot over several years and expertly utilising extensive time lapse and slow motion photography, montage and music in an experimental narrative, it transcends traditional filmmaking conventions to create a new cinema language, resonating on both cerebral and primal planes of human comprehension. Hypnotic score composed by Phillip Glass.

Listed in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die 

Dir: Ron Fricke
US 1992 96mins 35mm
An assault on the senses, with an environmentally-charged thesis postulated not through scripting, but with a remarkable lucidity achieved through stunning cinematography and dramatic montage. The result is a self-aware film, with its own stream of consciousness, in essence a story of humanity that portrays how we came to be and where we may be heading. Directed by the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi.

Dir. Douglas Gordon & Philippe Parreno
France/Iceland 2006 90mins 35mm
Turner Prize-winning artist and filmmaker Douglas Gordon teams up with French artist Philippe Parreno to create a multi-sensory work glorious in its simplicity. The film was made by training 17 cameras solely on beloved football superstar Zinédine Zidane over the course of a single match between Real Madrid and Villareal. Accompanied by a mesmerizing score from Scottish post-rock outfit Mogwai, this is at once one of the finest studies of the human body in motion, an ode to the loneliness of the athlete and a document of a moment of time on earth.

Curator’s special recommendation.