Cinematic Era: 1969 Vintage

A veiled Indian lady talks to the camera (silent). Her story is told in images.

This introspective "contrived diary" film features vignettes from the relationship of a real-life couple–in this case, the director and his girlfriend.

Film in three parts. A man and a woman, Trix Zwartjes and Lodewijk de Boer (Zwartjes’s regular actors) circle around each other in a house and outside at the water side. They attract and reject each other.

Discusses the symptoms and cure of the venereal disease gonorrhea. Explains how it is contracted and what harm it can do to the body.

In 1969, the painter-sculptor Daniel Pommereulle made his third film, this one financed by Sylvina Boissonnas. Although only a short, Vite was one of the most costly of all the Zanzibar productions. It features, for instance, shots of the moon taken by a state-of-the-art telescope, the Questar, that Pommereulle first saw while visiting Marlon Brando in southern California in 1968. In Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Pommereulle and his friend Adrien philosophize on how best to achieve le vide (emptiness) during their summer holidays. Three years later, Pommereulle would transform the word “vide” to “vite” (quickly), signifying his profound disenchantment with the aftermath of the revolution of May ’68. —Harvard Film Archive

A man talks about heroin abuse and withdrawal.

Documentary addressing the difficulties that arose in the city of Nuevitas (Camagüey) between 1964 and 1967, due to the industrial development promoted in the territory, which led to an unexpected population growth in just a few months.

Young Qin Chong fled his home, and was later adopted by the Zhu family, who own an oil shop, but his stepmother frames him and casts him out, forcing him to sell oil on the streets. A chance encounter with courtesan Yao Qin sparks instant attraction. When the Zhu family faces hardship, Qin Chong returns, vowing to achieve success in the imperial examinations, while Wu Ba kidnaps Yao Qin but meets his death in his own mansion, leaving her holding the murder weapon.This adaptation broke from tradition, replacing the usual gongs and drums with a Chinese orchestra for its score, adopting a folk-song style.

New law targets discrimination in housing and employment.

This year, the annual bike race will pass the highrise where little Max and Tüte live. It is a very hot day and the two boys try to come up with an idea to refresh the bikers. They finagle a huge water sprayer and all their neighbors get involved. But right at the crucial moment, a cat causes a huge accident and the would-be winner in the yellow jersey gets the worst of it.

While still a student at UCLA, Norman Yonemoto arrived in Berkeley with a 16mm camera and discovered People’s Park in turmoil. His compelling short has remarkable interviews with bystanders and an especially poignant moment when a young folksinger serenades the gathered National Guard.

"In this experimental film from 1969 the seeds are seen of my exploration of the mouth motif, which reached its full expression in the ‘Opening’ exhibit of 1973. I blow on and kiss a mirror, I apply lipstick, I transform into a white statue and paint blood red lips… then I become a mask in a distorted mirror, a face with many lips…In the last sequence I circle my face with a light and transform into the mask." - Penny Slinger

Henry Van Dyke’s classic tale of Artaban, the fictional “fourth” wise man. Artaban is a Persian believer who sold all he possessed and bought three jewels to present to the Christ-child. He misses the appointed time to meet up with the Three Wise Men and spends 33 years seeking the Christ child only to finally reach him at the time of the Crucifixion.

A bear wants to destroy a little bird's nest but all other birds come to help. A war bursts out between birds and animals.

Short film about queer left-wing people in West Berlin.

Music composed, modified and assembled by Vladimir Ussachevsky at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Laboratory. The complete, extended composition is synchronized with a film by Lloyd Michael Williams, expressly created for the occasion. During the final stages of composition all sound materials were further modified and assembled at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Studio.

“..in his seminal film VERTICAL, Hall manipulates.. perceptual assumptions by translating geometric shapes of three dimensional sculpture on landscape photographed from striking perspectives. Careful attention to laws of perspective and manipulation of framing and composition enable Hall to contradict initial visual information and to violate expectation….” – Deke Dusinberre

A wish-granting fish has the fisherman's wife wishing for more and more - until she ends up with less.

To me, to go to the window and look outside is like watching a film. Filming is a way to draw out the condition of spectator and alienate it. I made this film very instinctively, naturally. Now I am beginning to learn to watch it. The very idea of something that moves, like a bird in flight… movement. The sensation of an object in space, like the light on a screen… space. The speed of the sun… time… the opposite of an image or perhaps its absence/essence. Some advice: go see a good Hollywood film: a melodramatic, sentimental story. (P. Bargellini)

Constant disagreements between a husband and wife lead their young daughter to run away from home.

NASA documentary from 1969 about the Mariner 6 and 7 missions to Mars. Reception of the first detailed images of the Martian surface is shown, along with scientists' reactions and early scientific results.

"This film portrays basketball star Bill Bradley in his school days as a Rhodes Scholar, and later as a member of the New York Knickerbockers and a volunteer worker in the Harlem ghetto. The film also shows Bradley as he sees himself and sorts out his thoughts concerning his past and future" (US National Archives).

Freely inspired by the passage from 'Du côté de chez Swann' where Marcel Proust evokes Albertine’s Sapphism.

A film of repeated movements toward the camera, away from the camera, and across the camera's field, punctuated by a 360-degree rotational movement of the camera itself. Aside from being a reference to the repetition characteristic of home movies, the film is an exploration of a specific space. By repeatedly traversing it, the two figures reinforce their sense of depth, beginning as distant blobs in the long shot and ending with the face of one of them filling the frame. Repetition has become an important strategy in many of our recent films, which often involve reshoots or reprints. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

British Public Information Film encouraging young women to broaden their scope when looking for employment.

A Super-8 film in color with sound on magnetic stripe.

"Each film is composed of a single loop which undergoes multiple transformations. They can be shown independently or in any order."–MJ

The film is about King Solomon and his Jewish mother.

A film by Gianfranco Baruchello

Criminal caught in the act.

A documentary film about Antanas Sutkus.

This « comic strip » of alienation takes place within the walls of a bourgeois house, in a valley created by the toxic red-violet waste of a large chemical industry. In the background, popular songs from the '60s.

a Terrytoons Cartoon

A revelation of the distant universe, accomplishing through film animation what even the most far-seeing telescope cannot do. The film explores the fourth state of matter, the plasma that fills the infinite void between stars and galaxies. Single atoms in space, or planets as large as the sun, are each seen to have their own magnetic fields, attracting to themselves streams of invisible particles just as iron filings are drawn to a magnet. This has the same awe-inspiring quality as the earlier Universe, with colour adding to its wonder and dimension.

Made in 1969. 1min. 16mm. Black and White

Based on an actual trial, in which youths opposing The Vietnam War were being accused of provoking people to commit an arsony.

Two young militants in love try to link their ideals to their everyday life together. A reflection on the attempt to combine love, intimacy and revolution.

Five criminals captured by Detective Lincoln Monteiro escape from the penitentiary, seeking revenge on enemies and traitors. Niquelzinho and Paulo Cabeleira kill bookmakers, while Maurilão, Chico Preto, and Mico Sujo commit several robberies. Lincoln, always refusing to adopt his colleague Morelli's doctrine of violence, receives other police missions: to solve the murder of two tourists, the marijuana spill at a school, and the capture of criminal Carlinhos Capeta.

"The fun-and the only fun-is John Hawkins' FLOWERPOT, a simple, frisky romp involving a cavorting couple and fresh colorations." –Howard Thompson, The New York Times, 2/18/1972

Short documentary by Hungarian filmmaker Vince Lakatos.

"It's a perfect movie. Apart from the beautiful in the purely plastic, there is an inspired poetic creation in each of the planes and in their intelligent conjunction. And it has mystery. and continually play with the surprise factor. You never know what will come after. As if it were a suspense movie." Rafael Alberti

A short starring Georgecat with music composed and performed by his brother, Mamacat.

A performance by Karel Kryl was recorded in 1969 and released from the archives of the public television and radio company NRK almost fifty years later. The recording, which is more than 22 minutes long, was made in Oslo, Norway, at the end of June and beginning of July during Kryl's three-week stay in Scandinavia, where he was invited by the Norwegian Student Union at the instigation of Czechoslovak exiles. Karel Kryl then returned to Czechoslovakia, but at the time of the Norwegian premiere of the program on October 28, 1969, the anniversary of the founding of Czechoslovakia, he was already living in exile in Munich. The then 25-year-old singer and exceptional poet accompanied his five songs, Salome, Jeřabiny, Bratříčku, zavírej vrátka, Marat ve vaně and Rakovina, with illustrations he drew with chalk on a blackboard in the studio.

Sad-is-fiction, Fredi M. Murer’s third artist film, takes as its subject the Zurich-based painter and poet Alex Sadkowsky. “Modern man leans neither to the right nor to the left; he just keeps walking” runs the start of the programmatic introduction – and, for the rest of the film, Sadkowsky does just that. He wanders through aeroplanes and through London, and leaps across rocky landscapes. Whenever he feels lonely, he carries with him an “animal metaphysicum”, which originated in his paintings. Sad-is-fiction portrays Sadkowsky as a visionary dreamer who – although he is in fact a father, artist, lover and, above all, a man with, to put it mildly, a gift of the gab – resists being pigeonholed in any way. In Sad-is-fiction,Murer works for the first time with direct sound and, for the first time, employs a colleague in the shape of cameraman Fritz E. Maeder.

A personal documentary that chronicles the making of a pot of chicken soup from live chicken to dinner itself. The elderly couple making the soup speak in both English and Yiddish; there is no general narration. –Peter De Domenico

Rome, Saint Peter's square. Elio Petri interviews Daniel Cohn-Bendit. The choice of the place is not without consequence: almost immediately, the two men are interrupted by the police and forced to move away from the place. A few meters further, via de la Conciliazione, Petri and Cohn-Bendit resume their speech on the political situation in France, on the relationship between the revolutionary movement and the political parties of the historic left as well as on the role of cinema in such a context. While the dialogue continues, the curious camera films passersby who stop to listen.

An unconventional portrait of Lopes Graça - the composer discusses the overview of Portuguese music in the late 60s as well as the evolution of his own work.

The view from a window overlooking a busy city street overlays varying geometric shapes moving against a brightly coloured background. Silence is punctuated only by street sounds. Camera original destroyed by Beavers.

Life of the ordinary man.

Sequence digitally photographed and animated by Pamela Turner in 2009 from Beckett's original drawings; these untitled images may have been intended for use in Life in the Atom. Also included, Every Other, is a unique version of an animated "exquisite corpse" and is a delightful study of the two artists' drawings. Beckett and Kathy Rose took turns contributing segments to a sequence, each animating 24 frames, passing their final image to the other to continue. These 336 were discovered amongst Beckett's many drawings and were digitally recorded by his biographer, Pamela Turner, in 2010. - Pamela Turner

Pixinguinha, one of the pioneers of Brazilian music, composer of some incredibly sophisticated melodies, talks about his music and life.

A rare surviving record of 1960s drag performance at Camden’s Black Cap pub. Drag queens Shane and Laurie Lee perform and discuss their craft in this home-made documentary by US-born filmmaker Richard Benner.

A minimalist homage to a now-defunct local eatery.