Cinematic Era: 1977 Vintage

A wordless comedy about the tribulations of a novice sailor.

"STREET FILM PART IV is an odyssey. In its search for the greater meaning of things, the camera portrays (rather than reports) essential human handiwork. Corn is pressed from the cob by worn thumbs, practiced hands spin twine. Doors open. Cattle are branded. A small sparkling plane takes us through the clouds and into the mountains. Everything and nothing is within our grasp. Simple acts are either full of meaning or devoid of meaning. The longest scene in this rarefied look at simple pastimes is of a native woman patting and baking tortillas." - Barbara Kossy

A journey through history

After twenty-five years in prison, Sarallah tries to avoid evil and theft, but in practice he cannot and steals again. One night, while fleeing (from the police pursuit), he enters the house of a cleric. The cleric's words captivate him and he leads an honorable life. Meeting a woman named Badri makes him determined to start a family and get married, but at this time, Badri's ex-wife arrives. Having a long-standing grudge against Badri, she accuses Badri of a serious crime and sends him to prison. Nasrallah is responsible for raising Badri's daughter, Maryam. Twenty years later, Badri sees his daughter Maryam again. At this time, Nasrallah is a staunch and honorable old man.

With limited means to feed their families, the women of wartime Dalmatia turn to what they do have: the sea. After extracting salt by boiling sea water, they travel with their product, far inland over inhospitable terrain, to barter for food.

Hans Michael Westerfeld, a self-styled Johnny West, wants to become an American-style rock star. To this end, he works as a roadie, one of the crew that takes care of the equipment during the German tour of the black American singing group called the Manhattans.

Following the 1975 West German Embassy siege in Stockholm, the German Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist Norbert Kröcher allegedly planned to kidnap Anna-Greta Leijon. The goal was to exchange Leijon for 8 of his comrades held in German prisons. The plan, known as Operation Leo, was intercepted by the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) and Kröcher and other team members was arrested on 31 March in Stockholm.

John and his mother painting in the countryside, in summer. His mother has always painted and still does so at ninety years of age. When John and his sisters were small, she used to take them to paint in the countryside, and this was another one of those occasions, though it had been quite unusual since John’s pre-teen years before. The background scenery to the film is also the theme the painters are dealing with: a farmer’s brown field being ploughed by a red and white tractor; a grey silo, green trees and a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. As we reach the end, we get a glimpse of John’s finished painting; another unusual occurrence.

The potential dangers of nuclear weapons and the planned new breed of plutonium-fuelled reactors are the subject of An Unjustifiable Risk, made in 1977. John Pilger begins by explaining that just a speck of plutonium, the main component of an atomic bomb, can cause cancer, but there is no absolutely safe way of storing, protecting or transporting it. Although the government is planning to build the first commercial nuclear power station fuelled by plutonium – a so-called fast-breeder reactor intended to solve the country’s energy problems – an independent royal commission has declared the process dangerous.

A man has sex with a woman that he shouldn't. Her lover is a crime boss and owner of a white slave ring, and he is going to retaliate.

Through mordant social commentary and symbolic irony, Amiralay focuses this film on the chicken farming industry in the rural Syrian village of Sadad. He documents the burdened livelihoods of farmers and the economic policies of the government that encouraged industrial egg productions rather than artisanal trades, a switch that ultimately led to the plight of the Sadad's rural peasant class.

In Miraflores, Cuba, the growing romance between Mario, a factory worker, and Yolanda, a schoolteacher, throws into relief the differences in their perspectives and values in Revolutionary Cuba.

Eric Sykes stars in his own adaptation of the world famous stage play Charley's Aunt. When Donna Lucia is unable to chaperone Amy and Kitty to lunch, Charley and Jack must find somebody to act as Donna Lucia if the girls they love are to attend their tea party. Anybody will do, which means the farce has only just begun...

This work is based on an image-sound relationship of an emotional type that is not justified by any rational motivation. An electronically produced music and a particularly emotional image are put in relation to each other: the result is a very ambiguous image-sound relationship that manages to communicate all the tension that the video wants to express.

Documentary on Alicia Alonso, considered by many critics to be the prima ballerina among all the great contemporary ballerinas. Alicia discusses her history in ballet, we glimpse her early life and see her dancing in "Giselle", "The Black Swan", the "Grand Pas de Quatre", and "Carmen". We experience her triumph over blindness, the acclaim she has received from audiences worldwide and, above all, her continuing artistry and exhilarating verve.

Documentary exploring the influence of rock music on religious beliefs.

A pseudo-documentary which centers on the search for the hero from the title. Everyone has a different opinion about Filip, starting from his father to the woman he loved. The search shows that everyone has as many characters as there are people who know him.

A portrait of power as natural gas was vented and burned from an oil field in the jungle of eastern Ecuador.

Fulton combines cultures and impressions in both black and white and colour. An intriguing sound track with sounds of nature, improvised jazz and Fulton improvising on his saxophone, highlights and deepens impressions of juxtapositions of intense images in Chicago, Haiti, and the Southwestern United States. The aerial film of patterns of light and darkness often through the cockpit windows of his Cessna 180 aircraft are an early precursor to his intense focus on his acclaimed aerial cinematography.

This is the powerful drama of Sadhu Sundar Singh, missionary to India. Being raised a Sikh and miraculously meeting Jesus, then facing death by his own family, this man lived a life that can influence anyone.

Two IDF soldiers patronize Palestinians in the West Bank. The movie was shelved by Tel-Aviv University for political reasons, and was kept in the University's legal counsel in a safe for seven years.

The experienced collective farm chairman, Berest, is replaced by a young specialist, economist Bocharova, who strives to reorganize the farm's operations.

This award-winning documentary offers a rare opportunity to view one of America's finest artists, Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 - January 19, 1975), working on the final mural he ever painted, "The Sources of Country Music." Just hours after completing the work he died in his studio with his brush still in his hand.

In 'Expansion in Space' (1977, Dokumenta 6, Kassel), Ulay and Abramovic do not collide with each other, as they did in Relation in Space (1976), but with two free-standing pillars twice their individual body weight. Their goal is to make the pillars move by means of their naked bodies, and in this way to expand the space of action

Mexican feature film

In the first 58 minute Performance, Relation in Space, which took place in July 1976 at the Biennale in Venice, Abramovic/Ulay, both naked, walk towards each other from opposite ends of a room, touching as they pass each other, and then they repeat the movement while their bodies collide and one of them (Marina) falls over under the impact, until they are both exhausted. A statically mounted video camera simultaneously filmed the touching of the bodies in the middle of the room.

A man observes the movement of pawns in a game. Under the board, people work hard at the big mechanism that drives the pawns. The film shows a blind and destructive force that causes and fuels war.

Documentary about Etna volcano based on Haroun Tazieff volcanology investigations done in 1975.

About the amazing adventures of schoolchildren Misha and Lida, her little brother Zhenya, and the pensioner Sergey Vasilyevich, caused by the mini-crocodile Dragon, the favorite of the writer-traveler Mamontov.

The events take place between Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Chases and searches occur between the police and smugglers, where a group of villains stole the head of King Santrouk II, who held a significant position in history.

A compilation of the Wagner Brothers' first experiments in animation. Seven short films are brought together: "A casa da colina", "Bum!", "Boa-noite", "O halterofilista", "O espaço", "Garoto levado" and "O último bloco".

LA DOLCE FESTA (1977, 28 minutes) is a documentary on the traditions, preparation and rituals of the San Gennaro Festival in New York City's Little Italy. For fifty years, one of New York's oldest immigrant communities has re-created this Neapolitan religious festival commemorating an early Christian martyr.

Denmark is in deep crisis: the country is hit by general strike, during the holding of a NATO summit in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, a minister is kidnapped by extremists, and state power cracks down against politically-active leftists.

A political player is presumed dead in a traffic accident; his relatives all try to cash in on his estate while he goes into hiding with schemes of his own.

Alexander Kluge reflects on the medieval Staufer dynasty and draws a line from Emperor Barbarossa to Operation Barbarossa.

The plot is told in flashback – so that we start off with a number of gunshots (resulting in two corpses) and a female figure fleeing the scene of the crime; later on, it’s established that another murder had occurred some time before which is directly linked to this incident. Eventually, it transpires that infidelity, blackmail, impersonation, jealousy, frame-up and revenge all play a part in the ‘game’ centering around three different families from the same remote town. As ever with this type of film, then, we get shady characters aplenty, a handful of good-looking women and a dash of violence (though, understandably, little action per se) – thus making for a fairly compelling and entertaining ride; interestingly, one of the deaths is actually left hanging as the cop on the case can only offer suppositions as to the identity of the true killer.

This programme tells the story of the private steam railway company the Strathspey Railway, which was engineered and run by a group of rail enthusiasts in Scotland.Through the use of restored locomotives the company was started purely to preserve steam passenger trains, as their fading presence across British rail networks, due to the introduction of diesel engines, was keenly felt among steam enthusiasts.

Short film.

The origins and activities of the Academy, culminating in the election of the first female academic: Rachel de Queiroz.

A woman on horseback discovers several books out in a field that transform into the people they represent from a myriad of time periods and cultures. As the people interact their need to communicate creates both friction and the changing of perceptions.

DEMON, subtitled „The Translation of Stéphane Mallarmé´s THE DEMON OF ANALOGY“, includes the Mallarmé text, spoken by various performers in its original French version, and in English and German as well. Most of the shots in the film are one word long. In the first scene, three women sit on chairs placed in the foreground of a room and a corps of men stands behind them, spread out over the rest of the space. The woman who is seated in the middle of the three speaks the first word of the Mallarmé text in her particular language with the men arranged behind her; there is a cut, another woman sits in the middle, speaking the first word of the text in her, different language with the men in a new arrangement behind her, cut, another in her language, then back to the first for the next word of the text. From this point on although the poem progresses forward in all three languages the order of shots - French word, English word, German word, doesn´t remain fixed.

Four boys are born with strange features, one has very big ears, one has a tail, one has very big hands, one has a big nose. Becoming friends, they spend most of their time playing and sleeping. Becoming adults, their fathers banish them from the village as they are doing nothing to help the community. Just as they leave, a local mafia gang threatens the villagers to get help to cultivate opium and to provide food for their members. Meanwhile one lady wants to marry one of the boys but wishes that he can remove his tail. He refuses. At night time, while he is sleeping, she cuts his tail. He flees away but looses a lot of blood. A crazy scientific professor finds and decides to save him by using technology. He then gathers his three other friends to free the villagers from the mafia gang. A sci-fi take on a classic Thai fairy tale.

A representative of the Volgograd Section of the German-Soviet Friendship Society recalls German “comrades who fought against Hitler here […] and at other front sectors.” Equalisation with the people in the Soviet Union is completed at the Mamayev Kurgan memorial: The (German) visitors merge with the survivors who mourn their fallen.

After a murder is committed in their mansion, eight women suspect each other of the crime.

Mocked throughout the jungles of India due to his small size, the smallest elephant in the world--no bigger than a house cat--has decided enough is enough. After all, if he's no bigger than a house cat, then a house must be where he belongs! After a long journey in the hold of a ship, this smallest elephant in the world finds himself a home with a nice little boy inside. But he must disguise himself as a cat to satisfy the boy's mother, and disaster strikes when he is confronted with his first mouse... Little does he know that the perfect home is waiting for him, in a circus where differences are celebrated, not scorned.

Lips, gun, murderous intent, darkness, loneliness, and a woman...

The granddaughter Masha unexpectedly arrives at the home of Professor Okaemov. It is not easy for her to understand the complex, reserved nature of her grandfather. However, life, which entered the house with the arrival of the girl, cannot leave the old man indifferent. He finds joy and fulfillment in the newfound sense of responsibility for his granddaughter's fate.

Aniruth is married and has two children, but he is a womanizer. Centers on the rivalry between a legitimate wife and her husband's mistresses, set against a backdrop of rising middle-class prosperity and social ambition.

Ogawa Production Staff, who moved to Makinomura in Yamagata Prefecture, looks at sericulture, sericulture labor, agriculture ... Let's listen to people's words and stare for the sake of staring ...