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William Brown

Directing

Biography

William Brown is a Cinema Studies scholar and professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He has published numerous essays in journals and edited collections, and is also the author of The Squid Cinema from Hell: Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia (with David H. Fleming). Furthermore, he is also a maker of zero- to low-budget films, all produced under the umbrella of Beg Steal Borrow.

Known For

CINEMA-19
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A collection of 190-second short films created in response to COVID-19, commissioned by filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler.

CINEMA-19

2020
The Benefit of Doubt
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A retelling of the myth of Ariadne and a reworking of Jean Vigo’s classic A propos de Nice as a young woman rediscovers her identity while travelling alone in the south of France.

The Benefit of Doubt

2019
The New Hope
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A wilfully anti-cinematic and Jedi-themed adaptation of the first part of Don Quixote.

The New Hope

2015
Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux
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Six characters in search of a zombie apocalypse in France’s Périgord region; a searing insight into the decadent lifestyles of the British upper middle class, Ur follows Will, Dennis, Laura and Rosie, who have come to visit Alex and Edward in Bergerac, France. Edward loves Rosie. Alex seduces Rosie. Alex also seduces Laura. Will is having a nervous breakdown. Dennis is trying to put his life back together. Will then gets bitten when out running - and turns into a zombie. Do the others kill him or keep him?

Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux

2015
Cake and Death
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Movie scenes featuring cake are arranged into a collage that comments on consumption, capitalism and slavery. What begins as a visually splendid tour-de-force of editing swerves into chaos, corruption and excess. A brilliant juxtaposition of the whimsical and the political.

Cake and Death

2024
Waiting for Godard
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Loners Alex and Annie, who set out to find Godard, suddenly have a double homicide and a ménage à trois on their conscience. 'En attendant Godard' is a funny tribute to one of the biggest geniuses of film history. 'All you need is a girl and a gun', Godard famously said about making films. With his impressive zero budget debut William Brown both pays tribute to and corrects his master - and subtly underlines what we perhaps already knew from the beginning, that all we really need is a girl and Godard.

Waiting for Godard

2010
Clem
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A short experimental essay-film about William Brown’s childhood cat, Clem, as well as a contemplation of blindness, ruins, the self-portrait and Jacques Derrida.

Clem

2018
Afterimages
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Dennis, an introverted baker one day discovers a mobile phone containing nothing but a video of a girl seemingly being raped by a gang of youths. When Dennis discovers that the kids are disaffected teenagers staging street crimes and the like to entertain themselves, he is drawn into a world that is far from the quiet existence he normally leads.

Afterimages

2010
#randomaccessmemory
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An essay-film about what it means to be in love.

#randomaccessmemory

2017
Circle/Line
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A documentary that asks people at stops on the Circle Line of the London Underground whether they are happy.

Circle/Line

2016
St Mary Magdalen's Home Movies
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Drawing on over a dozen films, St Mary Magdalen's Home Movies demonstrates the way in which Magdalen College, Oxford, has repeatedly been used by filmmakers in a strikingly patterned way. St Mary Magdalen's Home Movies demonstrates a new way of looking at how particular locations are treated in cinema – while at the same time using the essay film form itself as a means of providing a ‘queer’ (back) entry both into film studies and, in this particular instance, into a space that is otherwise accessed only by a privileged few.

St Mary Magdalen's Home Movies

2017
App 666
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Inspired by Wim Wenders' Room 666, this collaborative project asks 17 filmmakers about the current state of cinema. Selfie style confessionals explore divides in the contemporary media landscape, and ask whether there is still a place for independent filmmaking.

App 666

2024
Selfie
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An essay-film that tries to understand the phenomenon of the selfie from within – that is, by taking moving image selfies every day for most of 2014.

Selfie

2014
La Belle Noise
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An experimental film about actors and acting shot primarily at the Fest Film Festival in Espinho, Portugal, in 2018.

La Belle Noise

2019
Sculptures of London
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What is the story that is told us by the sculptures of London? An essay-film that asks what story it is that the sculptures of London tell us when they are put side by side in order to show the ideas and values that these monuments embody, and how they give us a sense of London as a city.

Sculptures of London

2017
Letters to Ariadne
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A series of video-letters from William to his then-two-year old niece, Ariadne, offering her advice for and thoughts upon the world in which she is rapidly growing up.

Letters to Ariadne

2016
The New Hope 2
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A wilfully anti-cinematic and Jedi-themed adaptation of the second part of Don Quixote.

The New Hope 2

2020
China: A User's Manual (Films)
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In 2006, filmmakers Christian Bouche-Villeneuve and Sandor Krasna allegedly sent the footage taken in this movie to Sir Hamlet Auberjena, who recently sent it on to William Brown, knowing that he is a film lover. Although no one by the name of Christian Bouche-Villeneuve or Sandor Krasna has - to the best of Brown's knowledge - claimed to know anything about the film, Brown will present the film to interested parties. Although the film is presumably unfinished, Brown has decided to follow what appear to be the original filmmakers' intentions and to call the project China: A User's Manual (Films).

China: A User's Manual (Films)

2012
Vladimir and William
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A series of epistolary films exchanged over the course of 2017 and 2018 between Macedonian experimental filmmaker Vladimir Najdovski and William Brown.

Vladimir and William

2018
Golden Gate
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A video-essay about the Golden Gate Bridge and its role in film history.

Golden Gate

2019