WELCOME TO MUBI

To the scratch of a nib and the squelch of paint, Rivette’s sonorous and newly restored drama immerses us in the artistic process, as a battle of wills unfolds between Michel Piccoli’s aging painter and Emmanuelle Béart’s reluctant muse. Roll up your sleeves because things are getting messy.

Set to the percussive sound of a John Cage composition, Daniel Warth’s transfixing film focuses on an artist at work on an intricate figurine. Giving gorgeous (and comic!) form to ideas of masquerade, this spellbinding short gestures to whole worlds of feminist thought in just eighteen minutes.

Crackling with ideas like feedback on a video monitor, Nam June Paik was dubbed the “Nostradamus of the digital age” for his piercing insight into the modern media landscape. Voiced by Steven Yeun, Amanda Kim’s eclectic portrait paints a vivid picture of Paik’s outlandish, boundary-pushing vision.

Chaos reigns in the riotously funny debut feature from visual artist Martine Syms. With a breakthrough performance from Diamond Stingily, this hallucinatory day-in-the-life of a Black artist is a rollicking satire of art-world pretensions and a rowdy portrayal of sex and drugs in the Internet age.

Playful and otherworldly, Peter Tscherkassky’s visual record of an avant-garde experiment put on by a group of Berlin artists erase the undue emphasis on individuality. Instead, the collective are highlighted, as scratched, manipulated Super 8 images transform human figures into enigmatic shadows.

Suzan Pitt’s landmark work of surrealist animation found cult fame when it was coupled in midnight screenings with David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Pulling back the red curtain on the mysterious depths of our subconscious, it matches the weirdness of the Lynchian imaginary, spermatozoal squiggles and all.

A moveable feast of fantastic colors and geometric motifs, Suzan Pitt’s cyclonic animated short playfully resists the tyranny of storytelling. Imbued with the avant-garde spirit of 20th-century abstract art, this shape-shifting wonder beckons us to let our eyes—and our minds—roam wild and free.