Cinematic Era: 1973 Vintage

A Luno the White Stallion short.

An artist's hand tries to draw a drummer with various tools and techniques, but he cannot do it for some reason. Finally he pinches his index finger and draws the drummer with his red blood. The drummer starts hitting the drum and the artist tries to erase it with no success. At the end the artist's hand remains white and motionless while the blood-drawn drummer keeps drumming.

Jasper Johns’s Decoy is rooted inside the notions of reproduction, transformation and memory. Believing that an image gains new meaning each time it is presented, Johns boldly confronts his own past work, most notably Ale Cans (1964), and uses Decoy as a method of metamorphosis. The repetition of certain motifs allows both Johns and his spectators to confront the change an image goes through when approached from a different angle or placed in a new artistic context. As noted in the film, “each time a motif is used and reused additional memories accrue, new layers of meaning, and the image itself begins to acquire its own history.” (Jasper Johns) It is through Johns’s reimagining that the items he features in his work take on new life and grow from object to art, thus redirecting society’s interpretation.

The protagonist of the film is Wanda Bart-Gebethner (1917-1980), an actress who quit her profession and took a job at Śródmiejska Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa (Central Housing Cooperative). She currently runs the "Za Żelazną Bramą" café and feels more needed in the Cooperative than in the cinema and theater.

The short film Asyl explores the living conditions in a poverty stricken area in Graz, the notorious Barackenlager Nord (Barrack Camp North).

A little man Parasolka again came up with a task that promises him a series of adventures. Now he is going to fish, and prepared a worm especially for that. When Parasolka noticed a beautiful golden fish, he wittily drove all the other catchers and then recklessly got on his own slyness. But the vending fry was not so helpless...

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A young seminarian's path to becoming a minister.

In rural France, an undernourished and unloved young boy attempts suicide.

Exploration of the possibilities of light – ephemeral, dazzling, ravishing. Its flames and explosions, its swirls and glimmer, its interactions with matter and celluloid.

Documentary about the struggle between the Hungarian avant-garde and official cultural policy, including portraits of Miklós Erdély and Péter Halász.

The hero is afraid of someone whose footsteps are swaying outside. The hero builds a huge tower around himself to protect himself. The footsteps roll outside again, but he laughs at them. When, however, he wants to get out, it turns out that this is not possible.

A story about a rural liar boy who constantly deceived his comrades and was punished for it.

The film shows the traffic behavior of children between the ages of three and six. With the help of their parents, they are systematically prepared for the demands of urban traffic in different age groups. In most cases, their independence in the trained situations is then tested.

Short film by Brazilian artist Antonio Manuel.

Documentary of conceptual artist Le Ann Bartok Wilchusky's "Skyworks, The Red Mile," dropped from 7,500 ft. altitude with skydivers, kinetically danced over the Pennsylvania countryside. This "Dropped Object" unrolled in free fall creating a line one mile long which altered the sky space dramatically. Shorter red pieces, held by the skydivers in free fall, spiral in and out as the skydiver as performer is held in G force. A visual symphony of falling lines. – L.A.B.

The life of Anchieta, the missionary sent to Brazil during the second General Government, his participation in history and his work with the indigenous people in an intense catechizing effort, as well as his support for the Tamoio people during the French invasion.

A Marathi drama.

This documentary filmed in 1973 was lost for years until the collector Carlos Müller found it by chance in 2014. It shows Norma, 37 years old and mother of 17 children, dreaming of a prosperous future after the election of Cámpora.

"A long narrow corridor, leading to the camera—at one side, a window—sun streams in, splotches of light and dark, the corridor shimmers. I'm at the far end—walking back and forth, humming, biding my time. Then I talk to the viewer—rather, to a specific viewer: 'So you're finally there—I've waited for you—you had to be there first.' I walk around the camera, still humming, talking now and then, but waiting till I'm close before I come down hard. I'm close up—only my lips on screen—too close, blurred: 'You want to hear about her—her hair is blonde, your hair could never be like hers—she has her own life, I'm interested in what she's thinking, we could never have had a relationship like this.' I back off, leave 'you' hanging, go back to the other end—but I come back, I don't leave 'you' alone." - Vito Acconci

A collection of performance works enacted for the camera. The performances focus on interventions on the human body, using feathers, hair and garment-like sculptures worn by a performer, and are set against a neutral background or an otherwise deserted outdoor location.

It was difficult to find labs where I could make copies of my first tape; however, I found a place near LaGuardia Airport called Video Flight. They agreed to copy my tape. And while they were doing this I saw test patterns and other electronic images on the monitors that excited me. I spoke with the young engineers and decided to collaborate with them, returning to make a second tape of the electronic images. This manipulation of the test patterns became my second tape. The sound heard on the tape was from an oscilloscope, which I controlled, and through the sound I manipulated the images; later in the tape there is the sound of my own voice improvising as I reacted to the images. In 1973, Public Television in New York City, Channel 13, opened a new television lab and gave some artists access to it. The 55-minute black and white tape from 1966 described above was reprocessed in 1973 at Channel 13 using the Paik-Abe Video Synthesizer; thus the title 6673.

David Crosswaite references Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera, but rather than treating the camera as a metaphor for the eye looking out into the world and making sense of it, for this film the focus is on the camera itself and the filmmaking process. Through the use of mirrors, manipulations of focus, aperture and composition, film camera and filmmaker are progressively revealed, and the construction of illusion in film is broken down.

"The tape is one of the seminal works in video. In three short exercises, Campus uses basic techniques of video technology and his own image to create succinct, almost philosophical metaphors for the psychology of the self. In these concise performances, he employs video's inherent properties as a metaphorical vehicle for articulating transformations of internal and external selves, illusion and reality."

London in 1973.

The protagonists of the film are residents of a nursing home run by nuns. One of the nuns, Maria, wants to introduce discipline, but it is not easy. The elderly residents decide to fight for their independence. Their plans are thwarted by the departure of the leader of the rebellion. But the men will not give up so easily.

“The narrow passage or dangerous passage is a common motif in both funerary and initiation mythologies. I step inside and move through a corridor of electrically charged wires, constantly experiencing painful shocks and sinking to the floor. But I accept the challenge and, in a somewhat pathological increase in willpower, I press my head against the wires again and again. Society is a closed, structured space, which regulates all human energy through painful barriers. Only through an effort of will to overcome the pain (which is at the core of society) is one able to achieve a state of free expression.” – VALIE EXPORT

Pink film directed by Kinya Ogawa.

A restless instructional film, teaching his audience about impromptu sound synchronization, the use of cutaway shots and the total destruction of the clapper board.

An analysis of the comportement of the French Communist Party during the Algerian War

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"I'm walking through my city...", sings a cheerful pop singer. She fervently praises the new metropolis of East Berlin. As an emphatically lively, often anthemically condensed revue, the film tells of the "growth and development of our new capital". Accompanied by cheerful music, the camera indulges in high-altitude views, showing squares whose fountains, benches and green spaces are designed to make you forget that you are in a big city, as well as visitors from all over the world in top hotels. An emphatically cheerful, yet meaningful insight into the brave new GDR world.

It's about the forms of physical and moral torture applied for political reasons in Argentina during the dictatorship that ruled from 1966 to 1973.

From Spinoza's Ethica 82 sentences were selected without a strict coherence and re-assembled in seven components. Each component was filmed four times at least, in a different setting with different actors. Spinoza's sentences are taken as dialogues 'tout court', and not as a collection of opinions. Spinoza's style of philosophical thinking is presented as an activity in the first place, which is then revealed by each individual actor in his own way.

Raban layers recordings of successive film performances in which he stands before a projection, states the date and time, and says "A camera is filming the audience watching yesterday's audience watching the blank screen. Sounds of the projection and the audience's responses are being recorded."

Made with the help of Richard Landry, the camera scans in extreme closeup, the face of Bob Israel, which at no time is seen in its entirety.

A filming of and around a Chat Noir show revue from 1972.

A film made by Marjorie Keller that document a successful struggle against welfare cuts by welfare clients, workers, and their allies.

A rural community in the mountains. A story about death.

A profound and powerful experimental, personal film of one woman's despair, rage and exhibitionism; a baroque fugue of identity chanting growing from women's pain to a holistic, self-healing naming ritual.

Pink film by Wataru Nakagawa.

“It seems funny to say it, but long before there was an ‘art world,’ there was art in the world.” So begins the artist and writer Russell Connor’s meditative tour of public art in New York City.

The Lacey watch British astronauts landing on the moon

This film shows the general aspects of the school garden program carried out by the Ministry of Public Education in the country's schools. In its development, the film shows how schoolchildren prepare the land, plant vegetables and legumes, take care of their crops and collect the harvest to, finally, consume these products in the school cafeteria. As a result of all this, the school garden becomes the “classroom” where the student learns the basic techniques of cultivating the land and the importance of good and healthy nutrition. At the same time, interest, affection and respect for farm work is awakened in the student.

Bill Etra's "Abstractions on a Bedsheet" was made with the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer under PDP11-10 computer control. Bill said that the climax took as long as the rest of the piece to compose and program.

A 16mm experimental short.

Mathematical functions are the basis for a science film on contour plots and an art film. Both are shown simultaneously at a two screen production for an IEEE conference in NYC. Beauty in Science & Art.