Cinematic Era: 1975 Vintage

Begins with landscape/sunset thru mist, ends with window sill.

A poetic tribute to the establishment of the maple farm in Monterey, MA, owned and operated by JoAnn Elam's friend Bonner McAllester and her husband Joe Baker. Elam and McAllester were close friends since their time at Antioch College together, and Elam would return to the farm and make films many times through the 1980s. Using double exposure and occasional rapid editing, this film follows McAllester, Baker, and a group of friends as they live in the teepee first built on the property, dig the foundation for a more permanent structure, harvest and prepare their crops, and build a new wooden structure on top of the dug-out foundation. Elam films the workers with a focus on their bodies and hands, emphasizing the tactility of their labor, but at other times also foregrounds the ethereal quality of their natural surroundings.

Short film about a weekend

The film records several images demonstrating the attitudes and behaviors of various people who happen to be sitting on a park bench.

Soundtrack: GRANDJANY RHAPSODIE, by Gabriel Pierne.

Masterpiece is a futuristic existential short film directed by one of the founding members of Nova Scotia's Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative.

Haxton staples down the center line between two sheets of white paper that are rolled on the floor vertically so that the entire frame is white. He takes a roll of red masking tape and, beginning at the bottom, makes three lines from the center of the frame to the right, one behind the other. Haxton pulls a roll of black paper down over the right half of the frame, over the red lines. There is a cut to negative. He rolls white paper down the right side, and puts red tape in the same configuration as before.

Recovered Zulueta short.

The sequence of images compiled in this work represents the transformation of the boys throughout their lives in the face of the visual stimuli they are faced with.

Adie, a young Black woman, reflects on a fleeting romance with a married man. The film oscillates between the past of the affair and Adie's recollections in the present as she hopes to gain insight for an emotionally fulfilling future.

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

The lively atmosphere of Sydney’s famous landmark, Paddy’s Market in Haymarket, documented on film before the market moved to a new location. A Film Australia crew gets up early to shoot the stall holders selling fruit, vegetables and all things second hand. Shot in vibrant colour Out They Go captures the earthy dignity and vitality of the workers at the market as they go about their business, right in the heart of the city.

The story of a wheat farmer, a mother of four children, with a soundtrack of Kazakh music performed on dombra.

War from the Air

After several close calls with death squads, Mario Handler fled Uruguay in 1973 and eventually settled in Venezuela where he lived and continued to make films before returning to Uruguay in recent years. The first film he completed in exile, Dos puertos y un cerro is an essay film about the imbalances of trade. A narrator dispassionately recounts in voice-over a brief summation of Venezuela's situation as a hub port in the establishment of the colonial system in the sixteenth-century.

A short animated film pursuing a metaphoric, “cosmic romanticism”.

I dedicated Phenix to my father Franjo Zdravič, reconstructive surgeon, because he opened a new world of beauty and meaning for me. For some two weeks he led my way through rooms of very special climate - Ljubljana Medical Centre Burns Department - where threads of sighs, of nightmarish dreams, of misery, of compassion, of joy, are woven with hands of calm determination: to inflict wounds to a living being in order to give him/her a new form and function. - AZ

A documentary assembled upon visual records of cultural, political and economic events from 20th century Brazilian life.

‘Small metamorphoses’ is the name of an old game: different body parts are drawn on cardboard to form various characters including a couple and a child. The couple refuses this child in order to forget the failure of their love. Changes take place in the relationships, the clothes, the gestures, as time reveals the truth.

This stunning, verité portrait of a Black transgender sex-worker living as a housewife in Ohio is a remarkable time capsule and a testament to a life of perseverance. The namesake protagonist speaks candidly about her dual life and addresses the prison industrial complex through which she is perpetually churned, as a queer person of color in the Midwest of the 1970s, a sex worker and a transgender woman, during a period when “cross-dressing” was still illegal and punishable with prison time.

A film evolving out of the artist's experiments with dual screen projection and concerned with conjunctive and disjunctive coupling suggested by the qualities of light and sounds at the Village Carwash in Los Angeles. The sound and picture exist as complete and separate entities coinciding only for four seconds.

“After three very hectic films, I needed something to soothe my nerves. I came across these Coptic crosses in a Greek souvenir shop. and at the time I also heard some Gregorian chants. I thought these cheap plastic crosses looked really beautiful...and I shot them against black velvet so that they appeared to float, emanating something, in a deep space...kind of heavenly images. Nothing much happens...it's really a meditation. Funnily enough I found that the Hare Krishna Movement (which was flourishing at the time) rented the film out a lot to use at their camps. Another time Albie [Thoms] used some of the footage on GTK [ABC TV's youth/pop program], where it looked very odd indeed. I believe that Gregorian chants were in the hit parade only recently. This sort of spirituality touches all kinds of people...” (Paul Winkler)

Two devout Muslim sisters, Zulaikha and Shama, are separated during childhood after their mother's death. One goes to live with the father while the other lives with their aunt.

Mexican feature film

A humanoid form strikes its body while making primal guttural sounds. At times the form is “stopped” and “started” using the pause of a reel-to-reel video player—a frozen line of noise (an asynchronous frame) cuts through the image reinforcing the sense of physicality. The sounding form is eventually set in an electronically generated landscape with temple-like forms of undulating feedback. Further processing of the voice and additional rhythmic electronic sounds are suggestive of ritual.

Analyzes several American communes, including the Twin Oaks community in Virginia, based on B.F. Skinner's theories of behaviorism; an anarchists' community in Maryland; a network of loosely connected communities in California; and the Lama Foundation, a community based on various religious disciplines. Discusses such topics as economy, division of work, sex roles, the individual relating to the collective, and the upbringing of children.

A César nominated short animation about the impact on a small-town clerk by the arrival of a female hitch-hiker.

This film is a continuous take outside a tigers cage in Regents Park Zoo. During the first five minutes the camera moves independently of the tiger between two fixed points. The points were determined by the length of the tigers walk. For the last five minutes the camera follows the tiger.

"A hippie takes a musical journey through hallucinogen animation." ----------------------------------Summary from Boxoffice [Issue from 4/14/1975, p.6] This Real Live productions film consists of a kaleidoscope of images and colors, flashes of real-life scenes and animated art work, all set to music. There is no plot. The thread that holds this full-length feature together is an animated hippie character who sits in his living room listening to a Los Angeles radio station while smoking marijuana. His “high” allows him to dream up all the images on-screen. Although the film is overly long and, for that reason, seems disconnected, the photography and art work (by Patrick) are quite enjoyable. The picture seems meant to be viewed by young people and might find appeal in selective showcasing. Anton Noel produced, directed and wrote the film, done in four-channel Quadrophonic sound. Soundtrack is available from Storybook Records.

Racy monster movie parody.

Children's animation short by Ryszard Antoniszczak.

In The Knife (1975) red light falls onto a knife against a dark background, coating the silvery blade inch by inch until it is fully illuminated. The experiment is then repeated in green, then in light red, next blue, and finally pale yellow. It’s a very Hitchcockian approach to creating meaning, as if all the elements - object, colour, space and time - had been isolated from the suspense, only to be reconstructed anew, creating silent, artificial drama. And, as with Hitchcock, the motifs are fetishistically charged: knife, dog, door, bird, lion: ‘...they are all Freudian in some sense’, observed Goldstein.

The classic expedition documentary of the 1975 British Expedition led by Chris Bonington up the South West Face of Everest. The summit was reached by Doug Scott and Dougal Haston followed by an epic bivouac just below the summit. Sadly mountaineer and cameraman Mick Burke died near the summit a day later. Peter Boardman and Pertemba summitted a few days later and made a harrowing descent, finding the top of the fixed ropes only by chance. In many ways, this films records both the end of an era the of big British national expeditions and is the harbinger of a the new alpine style in the Himalaya.

One of Jeff Keen's diary films. Keen made many diary films with his daughter, wife and friends in the late 60s and 70s. These were edited in camera and used multiple exposures. They would then be projected in various combinations though usually as a four-screen.

Footage of a crane responded to with images of worn residential spaces in Wellington's Thorndon.

Hans-Jürgen is seventeen. He has cracked cars and machines to impress his girlfriend. That has him a youth penalty of several months registered.

An abstract animation. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with the iotaCenter, in 2007.

Short film about General Eduardo Cano, who after the military coup became director of the Chilean central bank in the Pinochet dictatorship. Cano withdraws money from the circulation, which were described by opposition parties with resistance piles. From the Chile cycle by Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann.

A child plays on the beach; we are in home-movie territory. For years I thought I had made a film-poem, without knowing how to explain it, until Gilles Deleuze created the concept of "perception-image": A character acts on the screen and it is assumed to see the world in a certain way. But simultaneously the camera sees him, and sees his world from another point of view which thinks, reflects, and transforms the viewpoint of the character [...]. In short, perception-image finds its status, as free indirect subjective, from the moment that it reflects its content in a camera-consiousness which has become autonomous ('cinema of poetry'). (Gilles Deleuze, Cinema I: The Movement-Image).

One of Curtis Levy’s finest documentaries, Sons of Namatjira, follows Keith and his wife, Isabel, and other relatives, in their interactions with the wider world including art galleries in town and bus-loads of middle-aged tourists from the big cities. The film highlights communication difficulties between black and white, and in Levy’s terms, becomes “a parable of black-white relations in Australia”.

electro / opto / mechanical / environment

In this animated short, simple geometric forms as thin and flat as playing cards constantly form and re-form to the sound of the koto, a 13-stringed Japanese instrument.

Documentary from British Transport Films

A look into the lives of the Amish and how they live simply while forgoing many modern conveniences.

City-hero Minsk. It has been reborn from the ashes by the hands of Belarusian builders. This new home is being built five thousand kilometers away from Minsk by Belarusian guys. The village of Shemanovsky is now known throughout the country. Ten Minsk residents, members of the all-union shock brigade named after the 17th Congress of the Komsomol, are constructing a residential complex. Foreman Alexander Nikitenko and his team know that the industrial foundation of the BAM is being laid here.

Kabayan proposed to Iteung. He was initially rejected but eventually tied the know. After the wedding, Kabayan's laziness was eventually revealed causing Iteung to leave to the city because of embarassment. Issues such as kidnapping and blackmailing involving Iteung came up as Kabayan was looking for her.

When peace seems impossible, any means are justified to defend a political cause. Hence, on the border separating the Palestinian territories that refuse to recognize the State of Israel, the idea of suicide commandos emerges. Jocelyne Saab films teenagers, aged twelve to twenty, who tirelessly train in a secret underground base to become suicide commandos.

In order to arrange for funds to save his dying mother, Mohan commits a petty theft. Soon, Mohan transforms into the criminal mastermind Mounto and is later hired by the CBI to work for the country.

Born with the gift from nature, polished by years of painstaking work, Pinchas Zukerman was between the ages of 7 and 17 the best teaching that could possibly be found. His well-spent youth established him with an international career before he was 21. The close friendship between the artist and the director, Christopher Nupen, provides not only an interesting documentary but also a touching immersion in the intimacy of one of the greatest violinists the world has ever known.

Expert fishers for their entire lives, Líl̓wat Elders Cora and Daniel Wells share their deep knowledge of salmon fishing, cleaning and smoking.

A demonstration by the Military Vehicles Engineering Establishment, showing the use of a remote controlled Ford Escort van enveloping with foam a 'suspect' car in a built up area. Both vehicles end up buried in foam, which covers the width of the street.

A cartoon about a young artist, a brave and fearless boy who painted wonderful paintings for toddlers. Kids made kites out of painted boats, birds, and small animals and had fun launching them into the sky.…

One of a number of documentary shorts the director, with the assistance of Cinematheque director Henri Langlois, made from the fifties they the eighties on artists in their historic context, using studio archival material.

Pink film by Kan Mukai.