Film

The Last Angel of History

A 45-minute essay-film that traces a revelation: Black futurism didn't arrive with hip-hop or the internet, but was always there in the margins of funk, Afrofuturism, and speculative thought. George Clinton, Derrick May, and DJ Spooky guide you through how techno emerged from Detroit's Black communities and how sci-fi has always been a tool of liberation. Strange, urgent, brilliant.

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Motherless Brooklyn2019

Edward Norton directs and stars in this love letter to detective noir and Jewish New York, where the mystery matters less than the melancholic precision of the storytelling and the extraordinary supporting cast.

But It's deliberately mannered and overstuffed; the plot can feel secondary to the film's obvious love of its own construction.

Motherless Brooklyn poster

HyperNormalisation2016

Adam Curtis's essay-film argues that we've stopped believing change is possible and retreated into our own realities. Dizzying collage of archival footage, theory, and music that rewires how you see the present.

But It's deliberately disorienting and makes no effort to offer conclusions; some find it exhausting rather than enlightening.

HyperNormalisation poster

Scratch2001

A documentary about DJ culture as art form, craft, and lineage. Beautifully shot, funny, and genuinely reverent about the skill involved in scratching and beat-making.

But Long stretches assume you already understand turntable technique; casual viewers might find themselves lost in the weeds.

Scratch poster

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Something you would not have found on your own.

Synecdoche, New York2008

Both films operate as portable cosmologies—maps of consciousness disguised as documentaries. They don't explain the world; they show you the architecture of how one mind sees it.

Charlie Kaufman's fever dream about a theatre director building a miniature replica of New York inside a warehouse collapses reality, art, and obsession into each other. Formally audacious and emotionally catastrophic.

But It's wilfully confusing and sometimes pretentious; watching it requires surrendering to bewilderment rather than seeking resolution.

Synecdoche, New York poster
More like this (4)

Stories We Tell2012

Michael Birks examines his own family's fractured history through film, deconstruction, and lies. A meditation on how we narrate ourselves that's tender without being sentimental.

But The formal experimentation can feel mannered, and the personal stakes might not land if you're watching for plot momentum.

Stories We Tell poster

Passing Through1977

William Greaves's semi-autobiographical film about a Black artist in 1960s New York grapples with identity, desire, and the cost of survival. Radical formally and emotionally urgent.

But It's oblique and sometimes didactic; the experimental structure means clarity is often sacrificed for resonance.

Passing Through poster

Westworld1973

Michael Crichton's sci-fi thriller imagines a Western theme park where android gunfighters malfunction. Prescient about technology, violence, and desire; holds up brilliantly as both thriller and parable.

But The pacing feels slow by modern standards and some of the dialogue is clunky; it's more idea-driven than action-driven.

Westworld poster

Possession1981

Both films treat ideas—about technology, identity, liberation, dissolution—as bodily experiences. They don't theorize; they feel.

Andrzej Żuławski's mutant drama about a marriage collapsing in Cold War Berlin erupts into Lovecraftian horror and metaphysical anguish. Unhinged, sensual, and genuinely disturbing.

But It's baroque to the point of incoherence; the horror is conceptual and emotional rather than visceral, and some viewers find it melodramatic nonsense.

Possession poster

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