Cinematic Era: 1969 Vintage

Nam June Paik’s Electronic Opera no. 1 first aired in 1969 as part of The Medium is the Medium, a special “artist transmission” commissioned by WGBH-Boston featuring experimental segments by Paik and artists Allan Kaprow, Otto Piene, James Seawright, Thomas Tadlock, and Aldo Tambellini. Set to classical music and featuring “hippies,” a dancing model, and national political figures, Paik’s five-minute contribution is a form of what he called “participation television.” Here, he instructs you — his audience — to open or close your eyes while the hallucinatory images swirl and twist into frame. The original premiere marked Paik’s first foray into television broadcast and remains an early and ironic example of his ambition to turn inherently passive viewers into active and integral participants.

This film documents a play given at the March 28th, 1969 abortion rally by some very angry women. A beauty contestant is primed by her mother, her teacher, her boyfriend, an ad man, and a capitalist for the roles she must fulfill to be a successful winner.

Tomasa, an ageing organ grinder, has always looked for someone to call her own but everything was taken from her. Now on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Madonna at Tongay, crossing the merciless Chilean desert, her whole loving nature is concentrated on a little dog. When he dies, she tries to avenge herself on God. An Indian rescues her, but Tomasa is committed to her lonely way.

In 1967, Nino Benvenuti wins the boxing world championship, becoming a myth among young Italian men from the working class. They start seeing sport as a chance to break free from a life of poverty, hunger and heavy industrial jobs. The first episode of a series Mangini made about the struggles of young men looking for a better future.

Long-haired activists fight each other with rubber swords in the desert and peacefully build a geodesic dome. Meanwhile, the soundtrack advertises a visit from the local recruiting officer.

A cheerful and optimistic guy, Pericles Lianos, takes the train from Xerokhori and heads for Athens, carrying a suitcase containing six hundred thousand drachmas. With this money, he plans to buy a house with a vegetable garden, open a grocery store, and settle permanently in the capital. Being a good-natured man, he tells everyone about his plans, and it doesn't take him long to realize that there are many who want to get their hands on his money...

This short cartoon film is for the Family Planning campaign, comparing a large family with a small happy family.

An upside-down close-up of the artist’s mouth, Nauman repeats the words “lip sync” as the audio track shifts in and out of sync with the video. The disjunction between what is seen and heard keeps the viewer on edge, struggling to attach the sound of the words with the off-kilter movements of Nauman’s mouth.

The first film made in black-and-white. Made using my own printing technique. Beforehand: This film, which is basically romantic or, even more, a fairy tale film, with carriages, horses, handmade glass lanterns, as solemn as a merry wedding, with an old Rolls Royce standing at a slant completely drunk and whose magnificent big headlights sit crooked on its fenders. An atmosphere of dancing around and returning and light, lamps and life. A film that even takes its audience to Paris, past the Louvre and into the nights of the boulevards; again and again, light, lamps and life. The film is light-hearted: the sonorous tone indicates a change, difficult to under-stand, a threat or do I hear right? Again and again, the streets, the domes of the churches, the palace wings of the Louvre, the National Library and the small opening in the wall at the Palace Mazarin which leads to the small park with its Picasso statue. What happens in Paris?

Short movie based on Picnic at Hanging Rock

This multi-award winning film uses psychodrama to help bridge the communication gap between a group of the so-called "hard-core unemployed" - largely Black and "underclass" - and the men who hire, train and supervise them - mostly white and middle class.

"A film featuring my work as shown in my 1969 diploma exhibit at Chelsea College of Art. It explores my Mummy Case, then the series of works that are based on a model’s image reflected in a series of mirrors. It shows the game I created where the pieces are glass and mirror geometric forms, moved in relation to each other on three layers. Finally the film passes through some of the Headbox sculptures and Face prints I made, using lifecasts and photographs of my face." - Penny Slinger

An avant-garde theater troupe based in one of the provinces of Emilia is attempting to involve the residents of the small town of Fabrico in a production of Sophocles’ "Electra". However, it soon becomes clear just how difficult this task is, given the group’s persistent collective desire to "question everything."

This film explores the conflicts within Rhodesian society in 1969.

AUTREFOIS illustrates, disillustrates and counter-illustrates a monologue by Charles Crosby - narrated by Gilles Mayoux with a jazz background of Bertrand Bishop and Claude Santelli - in which all modes of existence are identified with the harms of progress.

“Le Départ d’Eurydice” (1969) is a metaphor of the time, a sort of "documentary allegory" on the 60 s and on its “underground bohemia“. In spite of its impressionist and fragmentary aspect, in a poetic and musical structure, the film includes some narrative elements. A young writer hesitates between the love for his girlfriend and the obedience to the command of the “guru” of an artistic group which requires of him, like pledge of fidelity, to kill his love partner. He executes the Death ritual in front of the sea…but in vain.

Although they start out fighting over a game of checkers, Paula and her brother Woody painstakingly reflect on what it means to be a good sport. Another entry in Coronet's Beginning Responsibility series.

Short experimental film by (and starring) Skip Norman dealing with racism, black/white relations, the blues.

Upward shot from the ground perspective of a silo.

East Coast, West Coast, Holt and Smithson's first collaborative experiment with video, takes the form of a humorous bi-coastal art dialogue. Joined by their friends Joan Jonas and Peter Campus, Holt and Smithson improvise a conversation based on opposing - and stereotypical - positions of East Coast and West Coast art of the late 1960s. Holt assumes the role of an intellectual conceptual artist from New York, while Smithson plays the laid back Californian driven by feelings and instinct. Their deadpan exchange ironically lays bare the limitations and contradictions of both sides in the debate.

A short film

Characterized as a "fictionalized documentary" by the producer, this bizarre experimental drama is the story of three days in the life of a highly charged and successful Long Island insurance salesman who takes a filmmaker to Las Vegas. Though the protagonists really are a salesman and a director, the line between reality and fiction is hopelessly blurred as the story unfolds. . . The brash, loud and supremely confidant salesman shmoozes his clients in a way that is a game for him. He uses his powers of persuasion to acquire more and more sales. He and his cronies drink and feast over their success before embarking on the Las Vegas convention. The company even goes so far as to provide women for the married men, rewarding their career successes with amoral excesses in this film that concludes with a dream sequence on a beach.

BBC documentary exploring the changing lifestyles of the long-entrenched British traveller as society grows more industrialised and wary of those without a fixed abode.

Saul Levine began Lost Note as a love poem to his wife but before he finished the film everything had changed. This film is all that was left – 68/69 was a period of violent transition for many. The film was formally challenging, editing footage with in-camera superimpositions and cutting b&w with color.

Directed by B.S. Johnson.

Various kinds of tops are shown spinning.

This is the much-bootlegged Royal Albert Hall show from London, filmed on Feb. 24, 1969. The show has never been released commercially but has always been popular on the underground circuit.

SONG 29: A portrait of the artist's mother (the Songs are a cycle of silent color 8mm films by the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage produced from 1964 to 1969).

David Lamelas' first film analyses the architectural, social, climatic, or sociological data that make up the exhibition's spatial environment, that of the institution and its geographical location. Beginning with the empty exhibition hall, the description is neutral and analytical. It progresses in ever larger circles, placing emphasis on all the important functional elements, from the electronic devices in the exhibition space, to the city's traffic regulation to the communication and information media and finally, to the climatic conditions of the London environment. The film concludes with six interviews regarding the big news item of the day: the future "landing" of the first men on the moon.

Though created to commemorate the centenary of Lenin, the documentary is far from celebrating Soviet ideology. In the film people who are one hundred years old talk about their lives. Their remembrances illuminate traditions and past of Lithuania.

Yamaguchi writes, "In April 1969, Image Modulator was shown at the Sony Building exhibition Electromagica '69, using three Trinitron color TV monitors behind a glass that created an optical effect. The glass acted as a literal filter, adding a mosaic effect to the video images."

Luciano is forced to enter a religious boarding school after his parents' split-up. He faces hard time in the new environment under strict Catholic education.

This documental film is about ural stonecutters Anatolyi and Faina Ovchinnikovy, Arkadyi Shadrin and Valerian Vlasov. Kungur is proud of it's stonecutting industry.Following artistic traditions masters create original author pieces from alabaster, anhydrite, soapstone and calcite. One of the most mysterious stones is selenite

The film tells about the beliefs of African tribes, about where the waters of the Nile come, from the moon or from the fountains of the sun. The film is a historical document, as it is the only documentary film that depicted the recent flood of the Nile before the construction of the High Dam from its sources to its estuary in the context of an epic story from the date of the building of the pyramids and the Temple of Abu Simbel until the construction of the dam.

This extraordinary film documents the first days of rehearsal for the performance Ceremony of Us, created in response to the Watts riots and staged at the Mark Taper Theatre in Los Angeles in 1969. No final performance film exists, but this film goes far in capturing its spirit. After working separately for months with all-white dancers in San Francisco and all-black dancers in Watts, Anna Halprin brought the two groups together in the politically groundbreaking performance. This film captures how Anna guided the two groups of dancers into experiences that both elicited and challenged racial stereotypes, creating a space where political and personal anger and despair could be expressed, and where reconciliation could be envisioned.

The wealthy Mr. Rich likes to cruise the seedier areas of Manhattan in his limousine, finding those who are willing to do whatever he wants them to do for a price--as long as he is able to watch.

Film starring Tarun Bose, Aruna Irani and Prithviraj Kapoor

A mirror reveals a glimpse into past crime, but the criminal doesn't take kindly to been observed.

The mental crisis of an architect whose reflections on his commission to build a prison lead to the realization that the modern Western world is a single prison.

The projectionist Vasily, arriving in the village to his grandmother, meets Zina. He had liked her once.

During the winter of 1969, the New York Transit Authority increased the public transportation fee fare from 20 cents to 30 cents--a 50% increase. Infuriated riders scrambled under turnstiles and through exit doors, refusing to pay the fare. In THE WRECK OF THE NEW YORK SUBWAYS riders and subway workers denounce the terrible conditions and constant fare increases. The film analyzes the vicious cycle of bonding the Transit Authority, which profits the banks at the expense of the taxpayers.

A young fisherman lives a quiet life with his wife until a group of cameramen go to his village.

A young girl and boy meet in one of the northern coastal cities of Iran and soon fall in love with each other. Due to the opposition of those around them, they are separated. Later, the boy finds the girl in one of the southern cities, who has started a new life with another man. He, who is a broken man, goes to his death.

The story follows a group of prison escapees who form a gang and engage in a power struggle among themselves.

Six films in one reel: The Reticule of Love; The Recurring Dream; Aristotle; Malevitch at the Guggenheim; Silently, Bearing Totem of a Bird; Ives House: Woodstock.

A devout priest is thrown into public conflict against his atheist brother.

Film by Ernst Schmidt Jr.

Chicken Gock and the clever mice want to make music, but they get into an argument over a note.

The daily activities of young Cubans—their work, recreation, and education—as they participate in converting the Isle of Pines from a prison colony to an experiment to create a new society.