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Luciano Pavarotti’s sang some of opera’s most demanding roles – Manrico in Il trovatore, Rodolfo in La bohème and Cavaradossi in Tosca – winning him the highest critical acclaim. He was acknowledged a true successor to two of the greatest opera singers to have ever lived, Enrico Caruso and Beniamino Gigli. In this fascinating introspective, filmed in Modena, Pesaro and Verona, Pavarotti talks about his life and performs arias by Verdi, Puccini and Leoncavallo, accompanied by the Orchestra Stabile Romagna, conducted by Leone Magiera.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., discusses his development as a writer, including references to some of his major novels, his themes and their meaning, his relationship to other writers, problems in sustaining his special vision of American life, and his future. Accompanied by photographs that chronicle the author’s life and selections from home movies taken during his youth.

Gerald Scarfe's animated interpretation of Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine". Produced in 1977 and projected behind the band on their "In The Flesh" tour, later released as a promotional video.

A cascading tapestry of sight and sound, rejecting nothing, clinging to nothing, saturating and ultimately defeating the discriminating mind, until unstructured primary space begins to unfold within the viewer.

Dada came out of the craziness of World War One. "The birth of Dada was not the beginning of art but of disgust." Surrealism tried to systematize Dada's anarchy into an artistic blend of Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist provocation. In the interests of conquering the irrational, Salvador Dali opened exhibitions dressed in a diving suit, Marcel Duchamp turned himself into woman, Benjamin Peret assaulted priests, and Yves Tanguy ate spiders. Andre Breton, nicknamed "the Pope of Surrealism", led an inspired gang of artists, lunatics and writers. By the 1950s they were denouncing each other for betraying the movement, but their ideas had infected Hollywood, advertising agencies and were turning up as TV humor and album covers.

In Atmosphere the camera pans back and forth over a body of water at a varying tempo and most people assume that a camera operator is in charge. The final image of the film carries a great deal of significance. It opens up a gap between the film’s appearance and its reality; what it appears to be – what it imitates – is not an object or scene from everyday life, but a film. Atmosphere is not just an imitation, but an imitation of an imitation, a metafilm that plays with the viewers’ expectations about cinematic form. —R. Bruce Elder, Image and Identity

The most critically celebrated Rue essay of 1979 was the two-part Petit Manuel d'Histoire de France, directed by the exiled Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz, who brought to this commission some of the stylistic fabulism for which he was becoming known in avant-garde cinema.

Not wanting to pay the professional, Charlie decides to fix the hot water tank himself. However, he ended up making the tank worse.

Two Space systematically explores symmetries used by Islamic artists to create abstract temple decorations. The two dimensional patterns, like the tile patterns of Islamic temples, are generated by performing a set of symmetry operations (translations, rotations, and reflections) upon a basic figure or tile. Two Space consists of twelve such patterns produced using each of nine different animating figures (12 x 9 = 108 total). Rendered in stark black and white, the patterns produce optical illusions of figure-ground reversal and afterimages of color. Gamelan music from the classical tradition of Java adds to the mesmerizing effect.

Unseen satanic forces terrorize a young married couple in their new home.

A documentary exploring the existence of UFOs and examining the possibility that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth in the past.

A re-creation of some of the confrontations and sketches in the remarkable background of the Windscale Enquiry. The dialogue is taken from the Official Verbatim Transcript of Proceedings. It was filmed on location in the Lake District and at Whitehaven Civic Hall where the Enquiry took place.

Short film by Hollis Frampton

Emmylou Harris and The Hot Band smoke the stage at the Beat Club, Radio Bremen on March 26th, 1977.

The Pink Panther uses a big magnet to find a lost coin that fell down a grate.

Franco decides to kill his girlfriend’s pimp, and from there things go bad and he gets beaten up by the henchmen of Gordon Mitchell, who also kidnaps and murders his girlfriend. So Franco buys two Magnum .38’s from a guy called “The Gypsy” and . . . it’s time for revenge.

The world is divided into factions, on opposite sides of issues; each side is, of course, right. And so the gap between the people grows, until someone challenges the absolutist view of what's "right."

Features pregnant mothers Marsha Baker, Shaheera Bieber and pregnant couple Claire Prieto and Roger McTair. Also included in the footage are interviews with Dr. J.E. Milligan of the Toronto Women College Hospital and a fitness classes for pregnant women at the Toronto Women's Club.

Traces the life and artistic development of the Aboriginal painter, the late Albert Namatjira. His environment, his introduction to painting, his subsequent success with beautifully original landscapes and his influence on fellow Aborigines are recorded.

Contemporaneous to his best-known video works, these Super-8mm films represent Baldessari's conceptual engagement with motion picture film, pointing to the technical strengths and weaknesses of the celluloid medium relative to video, such as the superior reproduction of color, on one hand, and the difficulty of adding synchronized sound on the other. Conceived on an intimate scale (only the artist's hands are visible as he manipulates a range of objects), Baldessari's Super-8 films replace text and speech with a cunning visual language, in which he wordlessly describes physical changes in his environment: a bright light flashes on a mirrored surface, red liquid rises in a thermometer, and powdered pigment makes an indelible mess. Here Baldessari employs a method of communication that is based on spectacle rather than performance.

This film reveals through flashbacks how a 13-year-old boy and his family attempt to deal with the child's fatal affliction with leukemia. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

A disgruntled Uncle Sam complains that nobody listens to him anymore, and what's more, he doesn't even know what's going on up there. "I thought we were living on the top floor," he mutters. He expedites the ubiquitous Marshall Efron on a fact-finding mission north of the border. Part satire, part serious, this film sets out to package Canada for American consumption, with some of the clichés thrown in. Contrasting with the decidedly lighter side of the film are interviews with well-known Canadians such as Marshall McLuhan, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood, John Kenneth Galbraith, Raoul Duguay, and Pierre Bourgault.

A short documentary about Arthur Penn.

Kidnapped, blindfolded, transported in the trunk of a car, this is a true story of a Christian woman who experienced the peace and grace through her abduction that only Christ can give.

Through oral histories, archival footage, photographs, and songs associated with the movement, "The Wobblies" tells the story of the Industrial Workers of the World, the radical union founded in Chicago in 1905 to organize workers across trades. Featuring interviews with aging Wobbly members alongside historical materials from early twentieth-century labor struggles, the film explores the union’s role in strikes, worker activism, and the broader fight for labor rights in the United States.

Documentary focusing on the two most successful football clubs in Scotland; Celtic and Rangers. This film outlines the origins of the clubs, their accomplishments and the socio-economic importance of the clubs to their home city; Glasgow, Scotland.

Shigeko Kubota and Maxi Cohen discuss Anthology Film Archive’s Video Art programming.

On a cold winter morning Tav wakes his son Samuel at 4 A.M. to help with chores on the family farm. He sternly comments on Sam's work, such as napping while milking, or spilling a little milk, causing Sam to tell his mother how hard it is to please his father. She explains that Tav is just teaching him traits he will need as a man, and although his father loves him very much he finds it hard to express this in words. Sam admits to having the same problem. She says that there are unspoken ways to communicate love, and Sam volunteers, "Like Christmas presents ?" She agrees, but will not tell him how to select a special gift for his father. On Christmas morning Sam goes out to the barn alone (except for the cows, pigs, and chickens) to deliver his special gift in a setting very similar to where the very first Christmas gifts were bestowed.

A lady flees her failing relationship

This important tribute to the issei (first generation Japanese Americans) integrates the stories of three people who describe a collective history through their personal memories.

Shady poetry, all crimson and women’s legs as Pierre Molinier loved it – this poetry died with him a few days ago. This picture was finished. Sexual obsession is a strength just as any other, more pure and more violent than most. Nothing else but what goes against our own nature should be hated.

A short film by John Baldessari

1: SUN 2: not cap: GOLD - used in alchemy 3: the sun-god of the ancient Romans; but then also, as I understand it, a French word for earth, wherefrom we get our "sail"; and then (puns always intended, as I hear them): soul .... This also, then, a tone poem film.

Toro wants to lose weight to try to impress his girlfriend, so he (with Pancho's help) decides to work out.

An adaptation of the short story of the same title by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, in which four men who have survived a catastrophic war share memories of their past lives and a civilization which no longer exists. Here, a vintage recording of Debussy's Nocturne played by Walter Gieseking becomes the vehicle by which four lovers of the humanities hover together in a cold post-apocalyptic shack of sandbags to mourn weekly over lost art and loves gone by. Barnes, who must be considered among the greatest filmmakers ever to work in the educational world, forcibly illustrates, through flashback sequences and close-up shots, how the humanities --- music, painting, literature, and theatre --- are perhaps the most enriching of all human endeavors. Their ultimate and devastating loss may have never before or since been shown with such terrifying passion.

A documentary profile of three Scottish screenwriters: Edward Boyd, Gordon Williams and Alan Sharp.

Three young Texans try to adjust to small-town life after experiencing the emotional toll of combat in the jungles of Vietnam.

A couple row at the breakfast table about the wife's apparent infidelity.

The classic opera is brought to life by Beverly Sills.

Modern kite maker Tom Joe seeks to preserve the craft of kite making as well as the traditional Asian folklore behind it. Alan Takemoto illustrates Tom Joe’s tales of the Polynesian fish kite made from leaves and branches to fool fish; the Chinese general whose trapped army fashioned a fighting kite; and Shirone, the “kite crazy town” in Japan where 20-foot fighting kites duel in magnificent matches. Children will be inspired to try making these kites.

An ex-con who tries to go straight finds he can't make a living.

An inside look at China working towards the goal of becoming a superpower by the year 2000 via education as the key to modernization. Filmed in Peking, on a rural commune in central China, and in the industrial northeast region, Jack Reynolds interviews Vice Premier Fang Yi and the president of Peking University, as well as students, workers, and peasants.

First the Beaulieu documentation of the shoot, then the Arri footage, the porn loop, and the reprise. VT was shown from 1979–1981, with Jim Fulkerson performing on amplified trombone before the screen. Juan Carlos Kase discussed VT in “Alternative Projections.” Part of his essay, read by the author, is included. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

Boldt's road movie, a blow-up of 8 mm to 35 mm Cinemascope, underlaid with the music of the Rolling Stones

“A ‘baroque’ summary of film’s historic internal conflicts, chiefly those between narrative and metric/plastic montage; and between illusionist and graphic space.” – HF

Four films verging on portraiture, converging to make a drama for all seasons, starring: Jane Brakhage as The Dreamer; Bob Benson as The Magnificent Stranger; Omar Beagle as The Snow Plow Man; and Jimmy Ryan Morris as The Poet and as Doc Holliday.

2D sketches fill, rearrange, and texture themselves, with a score by Barry Schrader. One of Jules Engel's works on the Visual Music 1946-1986 DVD from the Center for Visual Music.

United States 1972, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 7 min

A reported monster is terrorizing a local community, but the police have no leads. A man who is fed up with the killings calls a handful of his friends and forms a posse to look for the creature. They head to Bronson Canyon to see if they can uncover who's behind all of these deaths.

Hong Kong film

This is a documentary about the situation of an indigenous Bribri family living near Salitre in Buenos Aires, Puntarenas. The film tells how this Bribri family has been losing the land that was theirs since time immemorial; it denounces the abuse suffered by the few indigenous people who still survive in Costa Rica.

All over North America young people are rejecting orthodoxy of all kinds and embracing new cults, new forms of self-discovery, from Krishna to bio-feedback. Group dynamics, encounter groups, transcendental meditation, Eastern philosophy, communal living, return-to-nature, re-energized evangelism--all are roads to salvation according to the individual's belief. This film takes a discerning look at them all, from Canada to California.

Face-Off is an ironic collusion of private and public, of exposure and masking, a tense ritual wherein Acconci divulges and then censors his self-revelations. Acconci turns on a reel-to-reel audiotape recorder and bends down to the speaker to listen to it, his face barely visible in the frame. The audio is a recording of his own voice addressing himself and the viewer, recounting intimate details about his life. However, whenever the material becomes too personal, he tries to drown out his voice and prevent the viewer from hearing, yelling: "No, no, no, don't tell this, don't reveal this...." Reacting to his recorded voice, he becomes increasingly agitated as the tape proceeds.

"...Frampton travels to the purported birthplace of the Eisensteinian model of cinema, the fairground, with its 'montage of attractions'...ambulating wide-angled portrait of the fair, its throng of participants, its array of attractions (Belgian Waffles, Walk Away Sundaes, Flying Bobs, the Toboggan, a Hall of Health). Interpolated within this walking tour are nine optically reversed textual passages which are briefly flashed on-screen, framed by a repeated image of a ride appropriately known as 'The Scrambler.'"–Bruce Jenkins

A young couple and their neighbors celebrate Christmas in 1874 on the Dakota prairie. Despite tragedy and an ongoing battle with the railway company, Christmas is a homespun and overly sentimental affair.

Parody western about a poofy gunslinger and his brothers.

The elaborate copying work was carried out in Hamburg in 1975/76. The SCHENEC-TADY films are dedicated to Great Birnam Wood.

1979 documentary film written by Brit Hume. The film portrays environmental and human health effects of toxic waste dump-sites in Niagara, New York and other locations.

"Preacherman" Amos T. Huxley meets his match in five-time widow Alzena Suggs.