Cinematic Era: 1969 Vintage

A historical epic that chronicles the Guineans’ long struggle against French colonialism and for their country’s independence.

Film of a folk festival in Colombia, featuring indigenous music, dance, crafts, and other cultural activities.

This video registration of a performance in his studio shows Bruce Nauman walking the perimeter of different shapes: circles, spirals and figure eights. Nauman recorded the performance on video because, unlike film, video was a medium that allowed him to make longer recordings. This videotape was recorded in a single take lasting almost one hour, which was the maximum capacity of video tape at that time. This aspect also serves to underline the time-based quality of the performance. By inverting the camera, the artist appears to be walking on the ceiling, an effect that Nauman amplified by holding his hands above his head – a physically demanding task in itself. In the video, Nauman’s arms seem to dangle at his sides. -- Stedelijk

Naive virginal American hippie chick Roxanne Miller visits Paris, France and has various bawdy sexual misadventures in the city of love.

A documentary poetic composition about the hopes of farmers for a better life.

A documentary film about the writer Antanas Vienuolis.

The mayor of the animal village, Mr. Goat, has a big news. He says that a train will run through the animal village and the roads will be widened. Everyone is happy that the village will become more lively, but one after another, traffic accidents occur, and rules are made.

a Possible Possum Cartoon

Claude Léveillée expresses the frustrations of a taxi driver steering his vehicle through the obstacle course of downtown traffic. Accelerated camera action heightens the fury and the frenzy.

Shot in 1969, this film documents the building anger of draftees in the U.S.military, and the growth of the anti-war movement within the military. Soldiers are interviewed and seen as they face brutalizing treatment and indoctrination in bootcamp, military training that made the war atrocities of the Vietnamese War all too possible as "just following orders". The film blasts the U.S. presence and forsees its future in Vietnam, while comparing the South and North Vietnamese armies and their reasons for fighting.

As a senior at Yale College in 1968, Doob was invited to participate in the Scholars of the House Program, a senior honors program that required students to create, in lieu of regular classes, “a finished essay or project which must justify by its scope and quality the freedom which has been granted.” Rather than pursue a more traditional written work, Doob initially chose to make a film, an unorthodox approach that had not been previously attempted. In the end, Doob chose to make two films to fulfill the requirement, beginning with COSTUMED DANCER. The film is a progression of images of a dancer, shot and printed on high contrast stock, and stacked in the printer in a number of layers so as to create multiple images of the dancer, moving from single image to multiple image in a kind of phasing. It is cut to music composed by Doob’s friend David Sewall, who was the subject of one of Doob’s later films, LONDON SONGS (1972). (Yale Film Archive)

An attempt to use Slavko Vorkapich's kinesthetic aesthetic theory of film. –B. H.

Fred Hampton talks eloquently and passionately about the Free Breakfast for Children Program and Free Health Clinic set up by the Black Panthers to feed and tend to the poor and hungry. In response to a specific question about events in Chicago and the conspiracy trial, he talks about how those running the city are "crazy with power," about racism, fascism and imperialism, and the need to educate, organise and lead by example.

Some persons bring chickens and fishes as presents to some actors who are playing, while the Warrior tries the mirror's suicide, but fails in seeing the Death. Outside, chewing-gums are distributed away and the Spring passes by, turning into a little girl. –G. L.

A film about a hunter and his loyal sausage dog who are always ready to help any living being who needs it. The hunter's gun shoots carrots, pine cones, or mushrooms - whatever's needed for a given rescue operation.

The multi-award winning animation film in which abstract and representational figures constantly metamorphose into each other, accompanied by electronically manipulated and electronic sounds. Two artists spent over a year of full time to execute the more than 6000 drawings used, many of which were created while under the influence of hallucinogens.

"Location: a ballet company, Mrs. Cordua training alone, training together with another person, head exercises, body exercises, leg and arm exercises, supporting herself, working in the ballet room, taking off her makeup in the dressing room, undressing, washing herself carefully, treating all of the sweaty places of her body (armpits, anus, genitalia), getting dressed, opera house corridors, canteen, driving through the city, typical buildings, shops, factory complexes on the way; apartment—opera house and back, her husband reading the newspaper, sitting, lying down, working, smoking, cooking potatoes, eating potatoes, opening the mail, drinking coffee, filming, caring for feat, mouth, while saying something amusing, hand movement (beheading gesture meaning it is finished), a TV film, dancer relaxing in private, smoking, discussing, disparaging, a TV film, drinking tea, the end: that certain shine in Mrs. Cordua's eyes!" (HHK)

A housewife takes on many lovers...

In “Körperanalyse” (Body Analysis) in 1968, the artist (Günter Brus) urinated in front of an audience, cut his skin with a razor blade, and masturbated to the accompaniment of the Austrian national anthem.

David and Carolyn Brooks and friends. Walking in woods, at picnic, in VW bus, etc. "Was going to tape Carolyn and my first conversation in about 5 months of no contact. Show true love (whatever that is). Couldn't do it. Chickened out. Didn't want to get something between us. (Carolyn, what's come between us?). Film sequence, love: single frame printing, break colors into basic three (in the order of red, green, blue) and A/B roll to create 'well-known symetry' and to lighten frame (AB brightens, bi-pack darkens) / Binarius is the devil / ah, love / one flesh / let no man put asunder." - David Brooks

"Late one night in the Time/Life Building in 1969, the television speaks." - Wheeler Winston Dixon

In three episodes, the Freiburg University professors Schramm, Hassenstein and Dr. Bresch and their lectures are portrayed. What is the basis for becoming a university teacher? Is it possible to redesign the classic lecture? Can the illegal, the conflict, be legalized? What do reforms consist of? What about study committees with equal representation?

According to the Baden Württemberg Higher Education Act of 1968, the University of Freiburg forms a Basic Regulations Assembly: 22 full professors, 10 lecturers, assistants and academic councillors, 10 students. Three commissions draft paragraphs. The students are defeated in votes. Under threat of withdrawal, they force further negotiations to be made public. Professor Jeschek, Criminal Law, Councillor of the Higher Regional Court, criticizes the public nature of the negotiations. This is a people's assembly, not a consultation, which could serve as a model for self-government matters. A student named Berger replies.

A lesbian actress in a Broadway play sets her sights for her two beautiful co-stars.

A Southern Californian gas station is observed over time from fixed and moving perspectives, exploring the distinction between the human experience of space and the ‘objective’ perspective of the camera.

GROUP II: WATER (1969, 4 min, 16mm, silent) Two images of a lapping water level, used at the beginning and end of the film, counterpointing the middle section consisting of flying through clouds and mist. CONTEMPLATING (1969, 12 min, 16mm, silent) The body fluids reacting in unison with the ocean waters.

This rare foray into filmmaking by the iconic California visual artist opens with Mason Williams, the composer of "Classical Gas" solemnly making himself a drink on a hillside patio at dusk as if performing an incantation. Heavy reverb on the soundtrack amplifies every sound until he sits down to read through a stack of Ruscha's photography books, Twentysix Gas Stations, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, etc. In an over-the-shoulder shot, we see each page of each book as Mason flips through them, briefly contemplating what he sees and reading any available text as a kind distanced recitation. Mason punctuates this seeming solemnity with moments of irreverence, manhandling, at times, these limited edition art objects as if they were toss away shopping catalogs as he presses on with his appointed task

By stripping the sound from a pre-existing instructional film, Frampton conjures, with an economy of means, the everyday movements then being explored by the Judson Dance Theater. "I bought this film in a Canal Street junk shop for $1.00 and found myself in complete agreement with it. The ostensible pretext is the humane and practical discipline of making a vegetable garden (hence the title, borrowed from Hesiod). The gardeners are masters of their art, so that their work blossoms into overarching metaphor." —HF.

John Stehura's spectacular film Cibernetik 5.3 combines computer graphics with organic live-action photography to create a new reality, a Third World Reality, that is both haunting and extraordinarily beautiful. Cibernetik makes use of realist imagery for its nonobjective qualities and thus impinges directly upon the emotions more successfully than any computer film discussed in this book. -Gene Youngblood

Oscar nominated short cartoon from 1969. A shepherd, who wants to be left alone to pursue his career, finally faces the reality that there are no jobs for shepherds. He sends his sheep to the country and takes a correspondence course to train for a new career.

Two convicts escape from prison in the Wild West and disguise themselves as a horse. Sugarfoot sees the "horse" and falls in love. Later, Woody and Sugarfoot learn about the phony pony, and they try to send the convicts back to jail.

Story about a man whose environment doesn't let him live his simple life.

Fall of a young aristocratic military man from 19th century Mexico to knowledge of the indigenous world of Mexico.

Pompel and Pilt are the two main characters in the surrealistic puppet theater series Reparatørene kommer! (The Repairmen Are Coming!).

Impressions during a visit to Bruce Baillie’s farm in Fort Bragg.

hong kong film

First work of Iranian director, Sohrab Shahid Saless.

Newsreel edition with stories about archery competition and marathons in running, cycling and car sports, using the form of personal narrative behind the scenes.

The film focuses on the struggle to stop the transportation of U.S. military fuel tanks and follows the young workers who are fighting together under the banner of anti-Vietnam war, anti-reorganization struggles, and stopping the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty.

This documentary includes an interview with Byars during his stay in Antwerp in 1969 in which the artist reflects on the objectives of some of his performances and the means employed in them. It also includes recordings of various performances like "Two in a Hat", "75 in a Hat", and "The Pink Silk Airplane".

In Time as Activity - Düsseldorf (1969), David Lamelas visually reveals how the same moment can be experienced in different ways. The video is built on four sequences; in each one a fixed camera portrays the city of Düsseldorf from different locations during a lapse of four minutes. At the start of each sequence, a small cardboard sign appears to indicate the precise time when the four minutes were recorded; the frame remains still and encompasses a wide angle, in which objects or actions are out of focus. The activities that unfold before the camera and the way they pass are an account of the infinite ways in which the same four minutes may be experienced simultaneously.

video report of the 2nd Asian international trade fair ran from 5 to 24 October 1969 in Tehran-Iran.

A classic Australian adventure film that shows Aboriginal tribal life in Arnhem Land and an incredible journey through the Gulf of Carpentaria and up Cape York.

A couple rooms at one of those kitschy lovers' getaway hotels.

The film portrays the political environment between the end of the '60s and the beginning of the '70s in Italy. Images of a wandering young girl are alternated with those of a man's corpse in front of an industrial landscape. The man's corpse is a metaphor of the worker forced to work dehumanizing hours. The girl, on the other hand, is the symbol of innocence. This is Luginbühl's accusation directed at a passive and powerless society. However, hope is represented in the final sequences, where Luginbühl's child, Cecilia, is shown as the embodiment of future generations.

A young man finds his brother being "kept" by homosexuals, and soon follows suit.

Electronic music, with tribal rhythms, accompanies the images with overlapping colors. A finger engraves oil colors on a board, creating geometric grooves. Close-ups by the painter Sandro Uboldi, alternating with plays of light.