Cinematic Era: 1970 Vintage

Bollywood 1970

A singular cinematic figure, San Francisco’s Mike Henderson became one of the first independent African-American artists to make inroads into experimental filmmaking in the 1960s. Henderson’s work throughout the 1970s and 1980s, from which this program of 16mm films is culled, thrums with a sociopolitical, humorous sensibility that lends his small-scale, often musically kissed portraits (which he later dubbed “blues cinema”) a personal, artisanal quality. - Film Society of Lincoln Center. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

A documentary propaganda essay about the Kyiv Suvorov Military School—a Soviet secondary educational institution for the military training of young men.

A sweeping documentary survey of Indian civilization, tracing 5,000 years of history from the Indus Valley to the era of Indira Gandhi. Written, directed, and narrated by S. Krishnaswamy, the film explores the cultural, religious, and social traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent and continue to influence contemporary life.

Cha and her friend Trip Callaghan are in an empty classroom carrying out a Conceptual art exercise. Addressing the camera, Cha points to each word of a handwritten prompt pinned to the wall.

Two men and a bathtub walk around the city and we see what they experience on their journey.

Short film by Japanese filmmaker Jun’ichi Okuyama.

"En un mundo feliz" is an experimental short film that explores the universe of dreams and their interpretations

A film by Freude

My only student film by virtue both of my having been an (extremely short lived ) graduate student, but more because I made it explicitly to learn something about perceived screen time by watching it myself over and over again to see what continued exposure would do to the sense of subjective length. –Dan Barnett

Filmed in two cities in Tanzania in the autumn of 1969. The film tells about two of the literacy projects that are ongoing in Tanzania, how the work is carried out in the cities, what difficulties one has to fight against. One town is an ujamaa town - a so-called socialist city - north of Viktoriasjön, the second city a masaj city near Kilimanjaro, where a solitary teacher carries out pioneer work among his own people.

A short educational health propaganda movie.

Documentary about Trøndelag Teater in Norway. The film shows clips from the performances, and during production of the plays.

Calcutta is one of India’s largest cities. Paul Cox’s camera explores the lives of the poorest of its inhabitants. Filled with the vibrant sounds of Indian music, the culture of the people of Calcutta is rich and vital despite the harsh conditions in which they live.

A staged document of iconic "male actress" Charles Pierce's stage show.

A young girl is so tortured by her realization that she's a lesbian that she commits suicide. Her enraged father sets out to take his revenge on all the lesbians that he believes drove his daughter to her death.

Seven to twelve-year-old filmmakers are the stars in this film record of the activities of a film club. Narration is entirely by children who comment on the pleasures and problems of filmmaking. They experiment with drawing directly on clear film and they use paper cutout puppets to animate a story.

Using fabrics to transform your living space.

"...first shot on 8mm, then refined on 16mm. Loop variations of a man shoveling snow. Good use of film grain. In this film (as in Gehr's REVERBARATION) The film image qualities merge almost unrecognizably with the video image qualities. SHOVELING is good to look at." Jonas Mekas

Commissioned by the Ministry of Oil and filmed in the summer of 1970, in Argeș and Ilfov counties, southern Romania, this film was meant to prevent a dangerous practice particularly widespread among people living in rural areas: the transfer of methane gas into homemade containers as a way of stockpiling ‘emergency’ supplies. The film shows a number of accidents of varying levels of gravity, identified after sixteen days of research in the two counties. Via several sync-sound interviews recorded in villages around the region, this stark educational film reveals the vulnerability of a rural world where, as a result of ignorance and lack of education – and also due to limited availability of regulation gas canisters, an issue which remains unmentioned in the film – people ignored basic safety rules on a daily basis and suffered fatal accidents as a consequence.

A group of art historians has been sent from the spy center in London to the USSR to photograph icons for the publication of an album, but in fact they are engaged in subversive work, building bridges, internal decomposition of the Soviet people, bringing the fall of communism closer.

A young military man gets a girl pregnant. He gets advice from multiple figures in his life on what to do next.

Tells the story of an official that misappropriates public funds to seduce a courtesan.

John Baldessari is today known as one of the leading conceptual artists of his generation, using found or appropriated images and exploring the associative power of language. Like many experimental artists Baldessari began his career in the more traditional realm of painting. Rather than merely moving on from these early works, Baldessari decided in 1970 to have them destroyed. In the summer of 1970 all paintings in the artist’s possession dating from the thirteen years 1953–66 were incinerated at a local crematorium. This is the film of that cremation. [Overview Courtesy of Tate Modern]

This short is the incomplete version of a full 30 minute short that Walt Kelly and his wife created after his dissatisfaction with Chuck Jones animated special from the year before..

Bolivia after Chen begins in medias res, with a long shot filmed atop a truck traveling up the Bolivian mountains to transport tin miners. It is a place where union organizing is prohibited, and where women and men, sometimes even children, can work up to 24 hours a day. This was the situation in the mines until the fall of 1969, when a socialist military coup shook the country. The question of whether the situation would really change is what Lindqvist explores in his film.

Standing alone among beach dunes, Acconci begins to kick at the sand below him. Over the course of the film's ten minutes, this repeated action displaces sand at a steady rate: as the artist sinks lower into the hole he creates, the mound of sand before him grows in correspondence.

A still long shot of a place of death.

The mole meets the hedgehog.

An animated film on safety, featuring 'Charlie', a cartoon railwayman.

Hilariously terrifying satire of an interrogation session by the thought police.

Directed by Vasant Painter. With Barchi Bahdur, Bhalchandra Kulkarni, Manikaraj, Rajshekhar.

Director - Baba Mazgaonkar. Stars - Mohan Agashe, Jalal Agha, Datta Bhatt

Physical features such as gulf, peninsula, island, etc, are defined and basic principles of using colors to show elevation are illustrated with models.

Scientific documentary film made by Reinold Thiel. Its the second part of the “Bundesdeutsche Filmpolitik” Trilogie made for german television.

After his trust is abused, a young peasant decides to learn to read and write to be better able to defend his interests. He advises his brothers in the village to follow his example.

A film by Christian Zarifian.

In his so-called one-minute films, he raises the most important questions of today's human life in a caricature-like manner, but with deep humanity.

In his so-called one-minute films, he raises the most important questions of today's human life in a caricature-like manner, but with deep humanity.

A portrait of Serbian folk singer Pavle Stefanović (1928-2009).

A poetic metaphor about man's eternal pursuit of beauty.

Tells the story of the earliest period in Swedish cinema.

The film begins in Egypt, in a ritual in which Phobus (Ivaldo Selva), in front of a stone altar decorated with diabolical statues and surrounded by dozens of men and women who hold torches and wear black hoods, sacrifices a young dancer, sticking a knife in her chest. Then, “jump” to the 1960s, when young Tânia, newly married to Alexandre runs over Flávio (Ivaldo Selva again) in front of a newsstand.

A few months after the beginning of the Popular Unity, the construction of social cabins in popular seaside resorts offers a dignified opportunity for working families to rest, as opposed to the privileges of the wealthy classes and the privatization of public space.

Experimental film by Jean Dupuy.

The third film in Vlatko Gilić’s Sisyphean trilogy. Where the machine could not go through ... Collision between stone and man on the section of the Belgrade-Bar railway.

Optical printing experiments of a 16mm pornographic film.

In this video of an ad-hoc performance, Skip Blumberg shouts the word “money” at passersby on Prince Street in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood. As the crew attempts to mollify concerned police officers, the video becomes an early document of the establishment’s response to video cameras in public space.

A programme dedicated to the Icelandic artist Ríkarður Jónsson.

A film about the island of Flatey in Breiðafjord,

An exceptional portrayal of the world's creation, from a barren landscape to the emergence of the Woman and the Serpent, ending with Society as we know it. The film is technically unsurpassed in plasticine animation.

The patriarch of a family dies, leaving his seven sons to fight for the inheritance.

A short film by Rosa Foschi

In 1970, writer/reporter Ingrid Dahlberg and photographer Lars Hjelm from the Swedish National Television visited North Vietnam as the very first foreign team in the disbanded areas at the 17th latitude, the central parts of North Vietnam.

a Terrytoons cartoon