Cinematic Era: 1974 Vintage

Movie by Claudio Cintoli.

A boy from the countryside is looking for love in the city. After an emotional disappointment, he returns to a country girl.

Colonel of the Citizens' Militia Stefko, after thirty years of absence, arrives in the town which was his place of work right after World War II.

The 'climates' of this film allude to the relationships of a couple. Atmosphere and moods are induced by watercolour designs, mostly washes, suggesting landscapes through which faces and figures appear. The effect is dreamlike, an ebb and flow of colour, form and line, to the accompaniment of music. The animation is largely of textures rather than of design, washes of colour that come and go to the bidding of the music or the whim of the artist.

A BAFTA award nominated documentary illustrating how several seemingly harmless actions can culminate in an accident and injury.

Two early experiments from Ernest Gusella.

A man with a camera wades through a swamp in harmony with the birds and animals, shooting pictures - until he spots something unusual. An experimental short film.

In this work, the television monitor is turned into a mirror-like screen which reflects the activities that occur in the actual space in which it is placed. Braun Tube was recorded at a studio and salesroom operated by Toshiba, one of the largest companies that produce electronic consumer goods in Japan. Imai dims down the scale of brightness of one of the television monitors on display to the point that it begins to reflect the viewers standing in front of the TV. Imai, seated on a chair, chats with the Toshiba salesmen in suits and tie, and their reflection on the monitor is superimposed with the moving images broadcast from live television.

From the film cycle "Exposing the Text"

A Film by Keiji Uematsu.

A woman goes through different emotions in her daily life.

Animated short film

Created with an optical printer, frozen moments of budding in nature evoke the beginning of spring.

shows visual and metaphorical representation using rope as a motif through various rope images and meanings.

Brain Field is an abstract minimal film with an emphasis on the temporal interaction of pure color. All movement in this film has been eliminated or neutralized in order to intensify the impact of changing color systems. The evolutionary process of these color systems is created with the basic cinematic technique of fading-in and fading-out. The geometry of Brain Field, as a result, is static and consists of color-activated nonrelational forms. Varying envelopes of space are created throughout Brain Field by orchestrating the attack and decay of color sensations. By using this minimal approach to film, it was my aim to create temporal color activity that is real, self-evident, and devoid of subject matter or secondary associations.

In the 16th Century, Teresa of Avila, a Spanish nun, had visions of Christ and Satan. Christ gave her strength and comfort. Satan engaged her in mortal combat which left her in a constant state of physical pain. She saw God as the source of light in her "interior castle".

Joëlle de la Casinière herself, barefoot against an abandoned and ravaged metropolitan background, promotes her book ’Absolument nécessaire’ (‘An Emergency Book’) during an interview/happening with a broadcast delay. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”. In the end the books are covered in graffiti like subway carriages.

“Using footage shot during the first Aboriginal Land Rights demonstrations in Sydney, and when the police tore down the ‘Aboriginal Embassy’ in front of Parliament House in Canberra, Dark juxtaposes this violent struggle with images (taken from a tourist slide) of an old Aboriginal warrior imprisoned, in his mind, in his own country. As an immigrant to Australia I’d understood what it feels like to be a stranger, and had experienced hurtful comments and prejudice (…‘bloody German’). So I thought, this is funny, these people have been here for donkey’s years, and they to go out in the streets to fight for their own land. I used various mechanisms to let this injustice, this anger out…in particular, zooming through a comb onto the image of the old warrior…letting his emotion stream out through the bars.” (Paul Winkler)

Fisher organized and performed in Emigré, a two-part happening at the Cat’s Paw Palace (September 28, 1974) and offsite at Aquatic Park in San Francisco (September 29). In reaction to the political upheaval of Watergate and the economic precarity of living here as an artist, Emigré was announced as an open call to artists and friends to “emigrate” from the Bay Area. The first evening’s event, “Leavin’ Blues,” described as “dance/theatre/music/restaurant theatre,” prepared performers for the following day with a celebration of the natural migration of living things and natural phenomena. Approximately twenty participants arrived at Aquatic Park with baskets, bundles, cages, and old suitcases. The quarter-mile walk from the western to the eastern end of the park proceeded with everyone taking one step every thirty seconds. The Super-8 film condensed four hours of walking into three minutes reflecting the distorted sense of time and relationship between the ’emigrants’ and passers-by.

A woman is followed as she walks through a building and up sets of stairs.

A hunter brings a feathered bird as an offering to the goddess of his ancestors. Tapiola is a film-poem in defense of nature and humanity. It is also a documentary that tells the story of modern man's loss of contact with the environment and its transformation into a commodity.

16mm fim transfered to digital video disc

A man tries to fall asleep, but is beset by increasingly elaborate nightmares.

Describes the curriculum of a mobile science laboratory traveling from high school to high school in Washington, DC. Shows how the program demonstrates that science is relevant to urban living.

13 August 1973: Despite the arduous piecework they perform, women migrant workers at Neuss-based carburettor manufacturer Pierburg are in the lowest wage group 2 (DM 4.70 per hour): so, the women start a five-day »wildcat strike«. Out of all 3,800 employees, 70 percent are guest workers, the majority of them women. The women migrant workers demonstrate against the difference in pay between men and women, demanding »one more Mark«, and call for better general living and working conditions. The compilation film documents the strike. In consultation with the strikers, film-makers Edith Schmidt-Marcello and David H. Wittenberg assembled the material, filmed by various people who experienced the strike first-hand, and supplemented it with their own film footage. The film was shown at numerous solidarity events and was the public relations vehicle for the workers and the works council. It was never shown on television and was initially forgotten.

Riding a bike is fun, but it is important to learn some safety rules, including hand signals, observance of traffic and riding defensively.

This is the remarkable story of Reinhard Gehlen, former Head of the German Secret Service, who helped to found the CIA, the American Central Intelligence Agency.

Paolo Benvenuti's film recounts the fifteen long years of siege inflicted on a group of citizens of Pisa during the war that pitted the cities of Florence and Pisa against each other from 1494 to 1509.

Produced in January 1974, just after the death of her husband Giovanni Pirelli, the last film by Marinella Pirelli, austere and moving, appeared as an attempt to exorcise this event and the elaboration of grief. In the double role of actress and director, the artist records herself in movement without controlling the image. - Érik Bullot 16mm, digital transfer, colour, sound

Mexican feature film

"SHADOWS FROM THE WESTERN WALL involves footage from Rome, the Eternal City, and from the woodlands of rural Maine. There is a bit of spoken English. A voice says, 'Just a man' A second voice says 'An ancient race. Only at the point of dying'. And the first voice replies 'I know'. The film reflects my vision of the Western Empire at the time. I also thought of Shelley’s 'Ozymandias'. The sculptured heads seen in the film are mostly anonymous relics from the past – powerful images that arise from the historical graveyard and live on to teach us some important lessons. Shadows FROM, not ON, the Western Wall. [...] Much of the imagery in Rome is qualified by insertions of Maine’s water, trees, and sky – realities that came before and will remain in some form after the 'Eternal City' is long gone." –Abbott Meader

Electric Blues, Chicago Blues

A film by Toney W. Merritt.

"'Window Wind Chimes' explores in semi-documentary manner the interrelationship between Vincent Grenier and his wife Ann Knutson in the environment of their San Francisco apartment. Conversations between them consist of fragments of arguments, apologies, affections and distillations of the personal rituals that take place between man and wife.

A typical San Francisco day interrupted. Filmed in the Mission District and Potrero Hill by one of the founders of the non-profit arts space Galería de la Raza, Los Desarraigados imagines a raid on an Anglo-run, Mexican-American-staffed factory by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Acconci imitates the sounds of war, gunfire and explosion; he thrusts his face, stomach or penis onto the screen. His childlike battle sounds are interrupted with monologues in which he defines himself as an American, with ironic references to cultural cliches and stereotypes. "Yeah, I'm an American. I can't help it... I'm not trying to parody America now. I'm not trying to parody myself. I really do like Coca Cola. I'm not acting, this is really the truth. I really do like it..." He asserts his cultural identity only to reject it: "No, I have an Italian name, my father's Italian. I'm not really American at all, I have a tradition, I have a culture." Vulgar and outrageous, Acconci plays out the nightmare of the American Dream. He waves his penis at the camera, raging, "The savage American is here! I'm everyone's clown, I'm everyone's fool."

Ligne continue is a gliding of lines, which stand out and gently overlap, the one giving way to the others - in the exchange or eventually when the film yields to a visual habit, the line stands out as speed perspective relayed by the recognition of road signs, or the strip of asphalt. A play of lines, play of references, play of the eye maintained by a continuous sonority that adheres or pulls away from the picture.

Noodle Spinner takes some basic documentary footage of a Chinese noodle spinner and then loops, split, reduces and staggers it to present a series of multiple-image collages in motion: in an inventive way the film's form thus resembles the process it was seeking to represent.

This introductory program Kenneth Clark outlines the historical background of the Romantic movement and illustrates the principles of Romantic and Classic art through the work of individual artists. Kenneth Clark's analysis brings insight into the character of the art of this period as well as into the personalities of its leading exponents.

Young people take a look at death and give observations and personal insights from their experiences with death in their families, school, and neighborhood.

The film develops 5 questions about documentary film against the background of the media-political situation of the early 1970s in West Germany. The following topics are developed: (1) the personal approach of filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn to his profession; (2) the technical and technical approach of cameraman Rudolf Körösi; (3) the development of documentary film based on John Grierson's British School of Documentary Film; (4) the working conditions and political framework for the production of documentary films at WDR and NDR; (5) the constitutive characteristics of socially relevant documentary film.

Statements from 60 to 80 year old lace-makers on looms from the Basle area about their profession.

Jimmy learns to listen

Comedy that deals with the strife between a young girl and a young runner who violates her piece of land along the river.

Shot from the inside of a house and through a window's curtains, one can sometimes distinguish the colorful flowers in the yard outside. But, as in much of her other film work, JoAnn Elam is apparently more interested in filming textures, light, and colors. Panning over the curtains at various speed, the camera captures their rhythm and the effect of the light on their fabric at close range, until it becomes difficult to identify the object turned pure light and movement.

Elijah Pierce was born the youngest son of a former slave on a Mississippi farm on March 5, 1892. He began carving at an early age when his father gave him his first pocketknife. As time passed, Pierce found work as a barber and began to carve wood seriously. Through his carvings Pierce told his own life story and chronicled the African-American experience.

The documentary focuses on a children's home in East Berlin. In 1953, the largest children's home in the GDR was established in Königsheide. Initially built to house war orphans, the educational institution quickly became the GDR's model home and was given the name "Kinderkombinat A.S. Makarenko." From the mid-1960s onwards, "state children" were to be raised here according to the slogan "Ideal home in an ideal state."

A tampon collector shows us his collection.

What does it mean to feel alone?

United States / Mexico 1974, Super 8 transferred to digital, colour, silent, 4 min