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An Unfashionable Tragedy

In 1974, when famine hit the country, Pilger returned to Bangladesh to make An Unfashionable Tragedy. It contains harrowing scenes of starving children but also puts the horrors into a geopolitical context. This is Pilger’s first documentary to highlight his theme of expendability, whereby countries with no oil, strategic value or military power are considered unimportant to the superpowers. Bangladesh, he points out, is not one of the United States’s “client states” on a priority list to receive its surplus food.

An Unfashionable Tragedy

NR 1975
To Be Young, and What Else?

High up north, in the Stralsund People’s Dockyard, Gitta Nickel encounters a youth brigade whose members speak frankly: “I’m 27 now. Judging from my own example I can say: it’s been nothing but work, really nothing. I can really say that about me, stark and stiff.” Stralsund as the focal point of socialist conditions of value creation: A ship may be completed every two weeks, but housing, let alone leisure facilities aren’t. The diagnosis: The quality-of-life to performance ratio is less than ideal. The brigade’s team spirit, though, is still strong, even if, as some think, there are some shortcomings on the “ideological side”.

To Be Young, and What Else?

NR 1977
… Pela Razão Que Têm!

Shortly after the fall of the Salazar dictatorship, in the early days of PREC, one of the first land occupations in the liberated country took place in the village of Quebradas (near Rio Maior). It was the first Basista occupation of that period. Soon after recovering the "land that was ours and was stolen from us", the workers elected a committee and formed a co-operative. There's a sense that the class struggle has reached its peak. …PELA RAZÃO QUE TÊM! is a rare case of a re-enactment documentary, in which the peasants themselves reenact the remarkable events of this claim, just after 25 November, when many of these operations were being reversed.

… Pela Razão Que Têm!

9.0 1976
Berlin 1972 - Hauptstadt der DDR

"I'm walking through my city...", sings a cheerful pop singer. She fervently praises the new metropolis of East Berlin. As an emphatically lively, often anthemically condensed revue, the film tells of the "growth and development of our new capital". Accompanied by cheerful music, the camera indulges in high-altitude views, showing squares whose fountains, benches and green spaces are designed to make you forget that you are in a big city, as well as visitors from all over the world in top hotels. An emphatically cheerful, yet meaningful insight into the brave new GDR world.

Berlin 1972 - Hauptstadt der DDR

NR 1973
Big Tip/Back Up/Shout Out

Lynda Benglis was a visiting artist at CalArts in 1973 when she encouraged then-student Susan Mogul to explore video as a medium. "Big Tip/Back Up/Shout Out" is a direct monologue to the camera about the economic impossibilities of being an artist, especially as a woman. “Her extroversion is so extreme that her story leaps from the vacuum around her, over the camera and off the screen entirely.” —Artforum, from a review after the premiere of this video at Anthology Film Archives in 1976, as part of a program curated by Shigeko Kubota.

Big Tip/Back Up/Shout Out

NR 1976
Die Selbstzerstörung des Walter Matthias Diggelmann

Walter Matthias Diggelmann (1927-1979) was one of Switzerland's most famous and also most controversial writers. Although his novelistic work is strongly auto-biographical, he always engaged in Swiss politics. In this movie, he says: "Although I am writer, my existence is that of a human, a contemporary, a witness, a believer, a doubter, a desperate, an accepter, a refuser, one who loves and wants to be loved, a hater, a creative, an ambitious, a good and a bad mensch". Filmmakers Walter Marti and Reni Mertens offered Diggelmann one hour of time in order to explain and to defend himself, to accuse, to apologize, to reconsider his judgments.

Die Selbstzerstörung des Walter Matthias Diggelmann

10.0 1973
Chicano Moratorium: A Question of Freedom

On August 29, 1970 in East Los Angeles, a peaceful march of over 20,000 Chicanas/os, united in protest against the Vietnam War as part of the National Chicano Moratorium movement, was violently interrupted by an extreme, unjustifiable response by law enforcement. The tragic events of that day left four dead. Chicano Moratorium: A Question of Freedom is a harrowing, eyewitness documentary of the events of August 29, 1970 and their immediate aftermath, including the murder of Chicano journalist, Ruben Salazar. In contrast to biased TV news reports of the period, this student-made short offers an impassioned, unvarnished community account of the unrest and violence unleashed by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department in response to the otherwise peaceful march in protest of disproportionate Chicano casualties in the Vietnam War.

Chicano Moratorium: A Question of Freedom

NR 1971
Five in Millions

Captures the work of the British Rail Parcel Service, illustrating the story of five different consignments over a twenty-four hour period. These are: a schoolboy in Cheshire being sent a new bicycle; a housewife in Rhondda Valley awaiting the arrival of a new vacuum cleaner; a man in Lincoln expecting an insurance cheque; a tourist in Cornwall waiting for his daily newspaper to arrive at his hotel; and a research scientist who urgently needs some equipment in Manchester.

Five in Millions

NR 1978
The Unemployment Test

The Unemployment Test is presented as a quiz to judge the audience’s knowledge about the welfare system, albeit one backed by a funky disco synth soundtrack. The viewers of the film take the test alongside people in a classroom who are evenly split between those who have benefited from unemployment insurance and others who have not. Short dramatized scenes with non-professional actors play out in two phases. Each skit ends with a question by the narrator. The audience’s an- swers are scored at the end of each phase.

The Unemployment Test

NR 1978