Films Ross
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Just Another Girl
With the single-minded attention to detail of a teenager preparing for the prom (or an actress preparing for an award) but augmented by the boisterous camaraderie of friends, a group of San Francisco men pluck, primp and transform themselves into women for a performance (or...Watch Movie
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Autumnal Diptych
A muscular movement from a Sergei Prokofiev symphony commands our attention even against the blackness of a blank screen. The darkness eventually gives way to a roasted-pumpkin orange title card and images of a lovely nude running through the woods. Scratches in the film...Watch Movie
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Paradise of the Damned
Rock Ross' ironically titled, time-lapse record of a 1980s Gay Pride parade in San Francisco is hardly the celebration of a celebration one would expect. By stationing his camera at a jog in the route so that the floats and people head right at us and then veer off at the last...Watch Movie
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Sosueme
Possibly inspired by Bruce Weber's photography and, if so, perhaps anticipating Weber's beautiful black-and-white films, Rock Ross created this luxuriantly monochromatic ode to surfing and surfers. SOSUEME is an unabashed homage to the athletes' graceful, curved movements and the seamless...Watch Movie
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Psycho Porpoise
One of Rock Ross' most overtly experimental films, PSYCHO PORPOISE is a playful, static-filled glimpse at the interior life of horizontal lines. Electronic waves morph into hand-drawn, hand-scratched patterns and then full-fledged animation as an alarming red background gradually gives way to a...Watch Movie
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Vespucciland: The Great and the Free
Rock Ross described this atypical collaboration as "a celebration of abandon in the parallel nation" and he wasn't being completely tongue-in-cheek. VESPUCCILAND is an exuberant and witty dance for the camera, shot in vivid, defiant color, records half a dozen spitfires...Watch Movie
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Reternity
"Moments chosen for nuclear annihilation... where are you going to run to?" Working in his beloved 16mm (with an acoustic blues song on the soundtrack), the filmmaker answers his own apocalyptic question with seductive snippets of a relative rocking on the porch; horses bounding in free-spirited...Watch Movie
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Till My Head Caves In
A polite graduation ceremony in the San Francisco Art Institute courtyard warps into a tongue-in-cheek horror film and then a parody of television action shows. Employing irony with genuine affection, Rock Ross brings a welcome irreverence to experimental film and capital-A...Watch Movie
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Stupor Mundi
This delightful silent short parodies feature films that flash the names of the big stars ("Liberty," "Justice" and "Death") before the title card, STUPOR MUNDI, appears. In something of a cross between a Keystone Kops comedy and an Edwin S. Porter melodrama, Lady Liberty, Justice (with her...Watch Movie
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Babuba
Rock Ross described this breezy, frenetic work as "an original mambo-rap creation myth of chaos of vacation." Indeed, the film begins with the bold, declarative text, "In the beginning there was only Chaos." Nocturnal grown-up party scenes alternate with children posing, play-acting and...Watch Movie
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Go Like This
Frenetic and impressionistic, this nocturnal foray through San Francisco's streets (heightened by a stop at a nightclub) delivers a thrill-hit of ebullient adrenaline. The rush of excitement, of anonymity, of adventure, of being alive, of potentially meeting someone new is palpable. Somewhere in...Watch Movie
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The Merciful and Compassionate?
Mexican singer Alejandro Fernandez's 1995 international hit "Como quien pierde una estrella" overlays posterized images of a teeming city and of a couple looking upward as an airplane moves like a fly across the sky with blank frames that translate the lamentations of the...Watch Movie
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Dr. Hawaii
DR. HAWAII is a film project made by Rock Ross and Michael Rudnick in the early 1970s while both were students at the San Francisco Art Institute. It is a unique sampler of all the various cameras, lenses, film equipment, techniques, filmstocks, editing, lighting, A/B/C/D roll FX, tricks and...Watch Movie
