Vivian Ostrovsky

Anna Bella Geiger (2023)

Son chant (2021)

"Going through my mini DVs shot over the past decade, I rediscovered a forgotten night sequence of Chantal Akerman and Sonia Wieder-Atherton leaving a brasserie where we had dined together in Montparnasse. The excerpt stayed with me for a while. This prom ...

Unsound (2019)

A Russian can say, "I hear the smell…" A maestro has a vision of what a symphony should sound like. In a silent film how can one make the spectator see the sound? A vivid and noisy assemblage of archival and contemporary imagery meditating on the past ...

Hiatus (2018)

A fragmented tribute to Ukranian-Brazilian novelist and fashion journalist Clarice Lispector that interrogates the idea of "in-betweenness," the intermission, a hiatus. ...

DizzyMess (2017)

Statues of dictators fall in the wind of history, a very pissed off Silvana Mangano is surrounded by scenes involving Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, who are themselves in conversation with Truffaut's 400 Blows and Medvedkine's Happiness. ...

But Elsewhere Is Always Better (2016)

A new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky remembering Chantal Akerman, beginning with their first meeting in the early 1970s. Using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, the filmmaker remembers a few moments that illustrate Chantal's personality. Forty years of f ...

Losing the Thread (2015)

"Super 8 reels of Paris catwalks I shot in 1979/1980 were supposed to become an experimental short meditation on couture culture. Its authority has unraveled some since and Deleuze's definition of style: 'creating a foreign language in one's own language,' ...

CORrespondência e REcorDAÇÕES (2013)

Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro. Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, a ...

A Skitsch (2012)

"A sketch on skis - in memory of my father, an urban snowman [... ...

Wherever Was Never There (2011)

An intimate film made on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Vivian Ostrovsky's father, Rehor Ostrovsky's death. The film is pasted together using artifacts from and footage of places and situations that form a part of the everyday nature of traveling ...

Tatitude (2009)

A delightful update of Jacques Tati's classic Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holidays). Seagulls squawk, waves crash and swimmers cavort in endless summer days spent on the beach. TATITUDE suggests that sand, water and sun are the basic elements in ...

The Title Was Shot (2009)

The Title Was Shot was commissioned for a conference of film theoreticians in Berlin in 2009 entitled: The Cinematic Configurations of 'I' and 'We.' Composed of fragments from over 25 films dating from the 1920s to the 90s, this mischievous short features ...

P.W. – Paintbrushes and Panels (2008)

This video was made for an exhibition in Rio on Paulo Werneck, one of Oscar Niemeyer's collaborators. Werneck was the first to introduce mosaics in Brazilian Modernist architecture. P.W. shows the context of the artist's work in Rio and Belo Horizonte in t ...

Telepattes (2007)

A felinosophy of life. ...

Ice/Sea (2005)

Funny collage of sea, sun and ice. A show from the beach with skiers, tigers, mermaids and much more. ...

Nikita Kino (2003)

"The film is a travelogue of sorts. In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn't seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn't leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for abou ...

Work and Progress (1999)

A trip to Russia by two filmmakers in 1990, forms the bulk of this twin-screen projection, finished some 9 years later; Their super-8 footage mixed in with archival material (and a sprinkling of the classics such as Vertov and Eisenstein). ...

American International Pictures (1997)

Absorb these images, "breathing slowly, quietly, and very calmly. Sinking softly, silently…" Drift into a relaxing reverie. ...

Public Domain (1996)

Brooklyn boxers and boucing balls.Catalan dancers and Provençals dogs. The Douro, the Danube, Biarritz, Brazil. In super 8 colours and black and white sounds. ...

Uta Makura (Pillow Poems) (1995)

In 10th. Century Japan, Sei Shonagon, lady-in-waiting to the Empress, wrote of the goings-on at the Japanese court. Fearing vengeance, she hid these secret notes in her pillow. UTA MAKURA is also a collection of humorous observations on modern-day Japan ra ...

M.M. in Motion (1992)

M.M. IN MOTION was four years in the making and draws upon Ostrovsky's filming of six Monnier choreographies (from 1988 to 1991) in rehearsals and performances. M.M. attempts to translate Monnier's essence, style and humor into cinematic terms using fragme ...

Eat (1988)

An observation of humans' and animals' table manners as they gulp down breakfasts, lunches, cocktails and dinners in a variety of situations. ...

U.S.S.A. (1985)

USA + USSR = USSA. My film is about blurred boundaries, probably due to my own personal history. I was born in New York, to Russian and Czech parents, raised in Brazil and educated in France. As a result, the film is a cultural cocktail shot on super 8 in ...

Allers-Venues (1984)

A month in the country. In summer, a group of friends rent a house in southern France. People come and go, making their way through chickens, dogs and cats. Playful sounds and a wacky collage of music make up the soundtrack. ...

Copacabana Beach (1983)

A humorous glimpse of what happens every morning on the wavy sidewalks of Copacabana Beach. Physical fitness, Brazilian style, with a dash of soccer and hints of Carmen Miranda. ...

Movie (1982)

With a super 8 camera from Paris to Berlin, from Amsterdam to Rio, from Jerusalem to New York shooting only at night. Hungarian crooners, Indian tribal chants, opera arias, and an occasional samba make up the sound track of this "hand-held" diary. ...

Carolyn II (1980)

Portrait. She dances in the center of her area. Obscure to the look. She abandons us to her limit. Turn. Count the chips. Conjugate. Turn on yourself, in a blind echo. Cross the already deserted space. ...

Son chant (2021)

"Going through my mini DVs shot over the past decade, I rediscovered a forgotten night sequence of Chantal Akerman and Sonia Wieder-Atherton leaving a brasserie where we had dined together in Montparnasse. The excerpt stayed with me for a while. This prom ...

Hiatus (2018)

A fragmented tribute to Ukranian-Brazilian novelist and fashion journalist Clarice Lispector that interrogates the idea of "in-betweenness," the intermission, a hiatus. ...

But Elsewhere Is Always Better (2016)

A new short film by Vivian Ostrovsky remembering Chantal Akerman, beginning with their first meeting in the early 1970s. Using her own footage of Chantal Akerman, the filmmaker remembers a few moments that illustrate Chantal's personality. Forty years of f ...

CORrespondência e REcorDAÇÕES (2013)

Based on a correspondence between Brazilian artist Ione Saldanha and the filmmaker, this portrait was made for an exhibition at the MAM (Museum of Modern Art) in Rio de Janeiro. Ione Saldanha (1919-2001) was a contemporary of Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, a ...

Nikita Kino (2003)

"The film is a travelogue of sorts. In 1960 my family lived in Brazil when my father discovered his sister and brother in Moscow, who he hadn't seen for 40 years, were still alive. Since they couldn't leave the USSR we went to visit them regularly for abou ...

Cinexpérimentaux #3: Vivian Ostrovsky (2001)

Vivian Ostrovsky is a nomad film-maker, born in New York. Student in Brazil then in Paris, which takes its camera of continent in continent since 1980. Her work, in the border of the documentary and the experimental, touches the filmed journals and is inte ...

Passages (1998)

Originally a text in fragments, more or less biographical, of different characters. Crossed stories, mixed times, memories and inventions. Coming from the voices encountered. They look like text like sisters. They are the voices of memory, the shadows cas ...

Kleist (1993)

Readings. Heinrich von Kleist / Robert Walser. Contiguous. They talk about imagination. Walser imagines Kleist, Kleist nobody, but Penthesilea. In the new desert islands that are the enclaves of flowers of the city. Roses of sidewalks. Wild spaces with an ...

Été (1991)

The voices say a story. forget it. Of what time. And who speaks. Both of them. One or the other. later. Others may be. Of chance. Which would cross in this narrative. When. The times have intermingled. The winds meet. History. Pictures. The summer. ...

Mansfield K. (1988)

"Readings. A place. Purity of lines. Fine angles. Dominance of whites and blues. Fragility of tapered glasses." A visual evocation of the writing of Katherine Mansfield. ...

Laure (1984)

An unknown writer written under the pseudonym of Laure at the beginning of the century. Readings. Geography. The places of a writing. The forces that create, traverse and lose it. The two image strips will be contiguous on the same screen. Their continuous ...

Portraits / Mirrors (1984)

A single-screen version of the Portraits / Mirrors multi-projection. Featuring portraits of: Aloual, Gaël Badaud, Raphaël Bassan, Yann Beauvais, Jean-Michel Bouhours, Gérard Courant, Berndt Deprez, Bertrand Gadenne, Mythia Kolésar, Christian Lebrat, S ...