The Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual nonfiction showcase, founded on the most expansive possible view of documentary film, returns with new work from around the world and in a variety of genres. This year’s festival includes a retrospective of a titan of the avant-garde film world, Bruce Baillie; New York premieres of new films by Roberto Minervini, Ben Rivers, José Luis Guerín, and Thom Andersen; as well as the usual eclectic, globe-spanning host of discoveries by artists who are reenvisioning the relationship between cinema and reality. With many filmmakers appearing in-person with their work, Art of the Real continues to be one of the essential showcases for boundary-pushing nonfiction film.

The 2016 Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival programme has launched! Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival is Scotland’s international festival of experimental film and artists’ moving image. Taking place from 14th to 17th April, the 4-day festival is held in the ex-industrial mill town of Hawick in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland. Alchemy is one of the UK’s only festivals dedicated to experimental and artists’ film, and draws an international crowd of filmmakers and fans of the genre.

This year’s theme is the ‘Altered State’ including notions of transcendence, political transition and material change, mental or spiritual transformation, and excavations of contemporary counterculture. Peruse http://www.alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk/2016/2016-programme/ for the full details on this year’s leading features, installations, short films and everything else in-between.

 The 54th edition of the Ann Arbor Film festival (March 15-20) starts tomorrow featuring over 200 films, videos an live performances in its programme.

Drugs have been used to access the spiritual dimensions of existence in many cultures since the dawn of civilization.  Artists have likewise sought to escape the confines of the rational mind through the use of substances that expand the senses, alter perception, and suspend the repression of the conscious mind. And others, eager to subvert the conventions of a prevailing culture, have hoped to achieve liberation and even Enlightenment by modifying how they thought.  In Vino Veritas: Secrets of the Intoxicated Life will explore the heights and depths of consciousness to reveal truths inaccessible to the sober.