Cinematic Era: 1970 Vintage

The story of how a Rooster married a deaf-mute Chicken and, with the help of surgery, restored her speech.

Jobs For Early School Leavers

Arthur, a 21 year old American male has been drafted into the army. It is the time of the Viet Nam War. Slowly we are introduced to three sets of characters whose decisions ultimately determine the course of Arthur's resolution to his dilemma, and thus his life. First comes a group of non-Americans. Then a second group consisting of actual friends, family and acquaintances of Arthur the actor. Finally, the third group, a cross-section of Americans: teenie boppers, suburbanites, Green Berets, an artist and a Spanish American War vet. The final solution is brought about by bringing the non-Americans together in an auditorium, showing them all the previously shot footage and asking them to vote on what they think Arthur should do.

Documentary exploring why Puerto Rican men enlist in the U.S. Army

The film combines the actors' acting and hand-drawn animation. The story in the film is told in the first person: an elderly man tells his life story to the children sitting in the hall. In a collision with himself when he was a young horseman, and with the direct reaction of children to his story, the main theme of the cartoon is revealed — love for his native land.

Short documentary by Skip Norman.

A computer-animated 16mm film depicting a square decreasing from 1.000000 to 0,990000 in 10,000 frames.

"Reportage". Images from Berlin with special consideration to the division of the city by the Berlin Wall.

An excerpt from the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which Charles delivered at Harvard University in 1970-71. Includes an evocative discussion of what Charles called “The New Covetables” (knowledge not things), illustrated with a rich array of photographs.

Free sexuality is an ethical, moral undertaking. The artist clears away taboos. What really shocks is being confronted with the facts.

Among the Yoruba of Western Nigeria and Dahomey the Gelede cult honours the earth spirits, the ancestors and especially the Great Mother. The festival filmed here emphasises the status of women and placated their potentially dangerous mystic powers. The commentary emphasises that the annual Gelede festival serves a cathartic role by paying respect to women in a patriarchal society. During the course of the festival social tensions are brought out into the open and ridiculed; antagonism between the sexes is thus controlled and given a legitimate outlet. The film shows the preparation of masks and the climax of the festival in which the Great Mask appears at midnight. On the following day the lesser masks entertain, satirising the movements of women.

"A disk of wax soaked with lighter fluid is placed on one end of the balanced plywood. I run toward and Jump on the other end, catapulting the wax over my head in hopes of striking a strip of toilet paper, lighting and burning it. (the strips of toilet paper are strung in rows across the parking lot) The performance / film ends when all of the strips have caught fire." - David Askevold

A BAFTA award nominated documentary illustrating the responsibilities and advantages of being a police officer.

The journey of initiation of a man and his lifeless child, from the anonymous crowds of Paris to the banks of the Oise, reinvented in the style of the Styx.

Following his use of art, painting and sculpture, in his work of the previous decades, Hurwitz took on a project for the American Foundation of the Arts aimed on deepening and enriching, for art students, the way in which we see. Working with his second wife, the editor Peggy Lawson, he made four short films comprising The Art of Seeing Series. The films, made without words, are beautiful poems to the pleasure of sight. This is the second part of his series.

Building a new harbour at Port Talbot - it’s a man’s world in which the only females are a dredger and two seafaring vessels.

Visually oriented films presented as moving light paintings enabled me to leave the structures and expectations of dramatic and documentary motion pictures aside.

This documentary is set against the scenic backdrop of Mount Errigal in County Donegal. The mountains of Donegal are depicted like fairytale characters, where the hero Mount Errigal competes with neighbouring villain Mount Muckish. A fantastical narrative explains that the landscape is ‘a battleground where the weapons are the elements themselves’. Dramatic footage of storms and lightning blends with a superb score by Irish composer Brian Boydell.

Children are instructed in (edible) crafts.

In this experimental film we see people in varying combinations walking and crawling through sand and grass and along the waterfront in a very quick assembly.

The story of a love triangle, in which a romanian and a hungarian love the same woman. Happening during WWII, the two hate each other. The movie was banned shortly after the release.

Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending is the eighth album by the Incredible String Band, featuring Mike Heron, Robin Williamson, Licorice McKechnie and Rose Simpson. It is the soundtrack for a film of the same name, and was released on Island Records in March 1971, failing to chart in either the UK or US. It would be the first album from the band on the Island label and the last to feature Joe Boyd as the producer.

The laugh-out-loud adventures of a drug dealer and his customers struggling with a joint, filmed in the hippy commune of Terrasini, near Palermo.

A short animated film by Tadanaro Okamoto.

Directed by Geoffrey Jones.

Another CCR compilation with exactly the same matherial - just released under a different label and name.. This however is clearly the BEST quality video-tranfers I've seen of these tracks..! Yes - you CAN see it's from video (a bit 'blurred') - but no tape-drops and really worth a look.!

The film which was shelved for many years focuses on men and women visiting the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Shiite Imam, in the city of Mashhad in the North East of Iran.

One of the most shocking documentary films ever made. A young anti-war American, to avoid the draft, calmly aims a rifle at his foot and shoots. For several endless minutes, he thrases about the floor in unbearable pain, in his own blood. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Hand drawn experimental animation.

This film represents the only work created by the NCM (New Militant Cinema). Conceived and directed by Giancarlo Buonfino. The film was shown on a 16mm projector in universities, factories and meetings. Although it was a self-produced film, its quality was professional for its time, G. Buonfino worked for over a year to make it, learning to use stop-motion animation on a large 35mm "vertical" film made available to him by Giulio Cingoli's ORTIFILMSTUDIO.

A documentary about an archeological discovery of birch bark letters found in Russia.

Al Hughes stars as himself in this two minute test animation set to Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles." This short was a test animation to help pitch the 1971 animated film "The Point" and is available as a bonus feature on the film's Blu-ray release.

A Mighty Heroes cartoon.

Short film about a soccer referee.

Elda Cerrato was an artist that set out to conquer materials. Her prior biology studies, her research with geometry and pictorial scales materialized in experiences with papers and pigments over wood, fabric or rice paper, giving shape to a body of work dominated by abstraction and symbolic narrative. “Energy transforms until it forms an image,” she would say, and that statement becomes palpable in her series La epopeya del ser beta, inspired by Aldo Pellegrini’s poetry. With the conviction of exploring other formats, drawings and paintings from this cosmological period are animated in celluloid. Shot on 16mm film and produced in collaboration with artist Ramiro Larraín, Algunos segmentos is a plastic unit of abstract motives and color planes to the rhythm of the music by the Improvisation Group of La Plata (GILP).

A couple of good friends find a bottle containing a little devil. The devil manages to trick the naive friends to release him. As a result, several accidents occur in the small town before the devil can be re-captured.

The styles of Henri Matisse's works range from impressionism to fauvism to an almost abstract technique. He, along with Picasso, are regarded as two of the giants of 20th century art. This installment of the Museum of Modern Art series depicts the works of Matisse, and is the only film record of the landmark exhibition in Paris in 1970. All of his works, including the seldom-seen paintings from the Russian collections are shown here. Rare footage of the master painter at work is also offered. Matisse scholar Pierre Schnieder narrates.

film by Luca Ferro

The story is based on the Pashto folk story Yousuf Khan and Sher Bano. The tale has also been referred to as the Pashto version of Romeo and Juliet.

Michio Okabe's only 8mm film, which was miraculously discovered in 2021 at the back of a closet in his room, after being unaccounted for and thought lost for a long time. He tied an 8mm camera around the neck of his dog Shiro and recorded the world as seen from the dog's point of view. Okabe's anarchy, in which he abandoned-looking through the viewfinder himself and let the dog shoot the film, is the quintessence of Okabe's work.

A portrait of Eric de Kuyper.

A reportage about a summer camp for art students, in which carefree youth in red ties break into song at solemn flag ceremonies and meetings. Commissioned by the Socialist Youth Association Board and a surprise for Wiszniewski fans, particularly those who are convicted about the director's aversion to contemporary political system, since it appears blantantly propagandist.

In 1970 Graves made the first of five films. Each one was preceded by travel and research, and though the images are "representational", the films are fundamentally abstract in their exploration of color, light, form, and surface. She considered 200 Stills at 60 Frames and Goulimine, her earliest films about the camel, as study projects.

The film is dedicated to the beauty and majesty of its homeland, the traditions of the Kyrgyz people, and the everyday life and work of its people. The story is narrated by an old man who has lived a long life. As if looking back with a thoughtful gaze, he remembers all the cherished moments and beauty he will soon have to leave behind. Yet despite the looming tragedy, there is no sense of pessimism — every memory, every frame shines with a hopeful warmth, like life itself. The old shepherd’s character and spirit, reflected in his eyes, will live on in his grandchildren, preserving both the beauty of the land and the deep love he felt for it.

A documentary concerning the harrowing effects of drugs misuse. An undramatised documentary which shows, without script or actors, the harrowing effects of drugs misuse. Young addicts tell of their experiences and sequences show them injecting drugs. "Talking heads" and "fixing" shots are linked by glimpses of the post-mortem examination conducted on the body of a young female addict. These point the question posed by the title of the film. The film ends on a note of optimism which is conveyed in vision and sound by two young people who have been cured of their addiction. The film endeavours to show the indignity and degradation which drug abuse causes. It does so starkly and honestly. There is no commentary.

"A few acres of Maine, a small lake in the woods, wild flowers, clouds, mosses, and mushrooms after the rain. The visual richness is fantastic, the objective eye is absorbing. Burckhardt often cuts by glimpses, the second time you see the film you see twice as much, and each time the power and depth of feeling are new." – Edwin Denby

Inspired freely by some passages from Kafka's "The Process", it is an attempt to reconstruct the obsessive atmosphere of the work of the Prague author. It is set in Rome's bleak courthouse.

A young Indian inherits a tribal artifact from his grandfather and decides whether to keep it or trade it for a new TV.

He ended the period of creating works exclusively using the body as a medium with the “Zerreissprobe” (Breaking Test) in 1970. His 43rd Aktion was the last and at the same time the most radical of his analyses of self-painting and self-mutilation. In it, Günter Brus actually carried out the injury that had previously often only been intimated by cutting along the back of his head with the razor blade in front of the public. Physical pain was thus not only suggested or acted out by the artist but actually experienced.

An electronic synthetic color video, based on a memory of Larry Gottheim’s film “Blues”. Natural and electronic real time events, new American electronic cinema. B&W video camera, Paik-Abe colorizer, 1/2” vtr, blue berries, bowl and milk. The filmmakers stopped talking to me. Viva Video.

Part of BFI's "National Coal Board Collection".

Children create arts and crafts with various types of grasses.

Face going out of focus by layering sheets of plastic between camera and subject.