Cinematic Era: 1980 Vintage

Stavros Tornes' last film in Italy bears a title that fits the director like a glove, especially when it comes to his ability to start out from a non-fiction perspective and descend into full-blown fantasy. A boat going up the river, a fire in the heart of the city and a man wondering around the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, are some of the elements that comprise "Eksopragmatiko", a mournful movie (according to the director), which requires viewers to keep an open mind and an open heart.

In claymation, the Ontario Censor Board meets to consider an animated short, which begins simply enough, but soon scandalizes the Board with the sexual activities of its two characters: a man and woman meet on a street corner, go to a bedroom, and soon are swinging on a chandelier. A dog joins them somehow, although by now, we see only the Board and its shocked response. The film finished, they must determine their rating: out come darts and a dart board. What rating will the film receive? Will the morals of the people of Ontario be protected?

A history of life on Earth compressed into three minutes.

Set among the Turkana pastoralists of northwestern Kenya, the film chronicles the marriage negotiations between Lorang’s daughter Akai and Kongu, a friend and age-mate of her father. Much of the film focuses on extended discussions over the bridewealth—goats and camels to be given to the bride’s family—which draw in relatives from both sides and grow increasingly tense. Filmed in an observational style without narration, the documentary records the negotiations and social dynamics that shape the marriage arrangement.

“Selected Treecuts” is a formal examination of the distinction between camera-generated and digital images, and a layered juxtaposition of contrasting representations of reality. The methodology of the tape is simple: a zoom lens moves slowly in and out on a group of trees, alternating between digitized and camera-generated, “real” images. The movement in the tape is produced by the automated zoom lens and rotating prism; the images switch rhythmically between camera images and digital images held briefly in computer memory. The contrast between the “real” camera images of trees and the frozen, digital computer images forms an essay in motion and stillness, the organic and the synthetic, tracing a trajectory from the photographic to the electronic.

An irrigator in northern Peru transforms sugarcane into sweet cane, inspired by the poetic narration 'Hay Sí, Santiago Paisi' by César Calvo

In this award-winning blockbuster film Olangthagee Wangmadasoo (meaning " Even Beyond the Summer Horizon" in Manipuri) by Aribam Syam Sharma, a singer Bijoy and a medical student Thadoi fall in love and decide to marry each other. But differences between their respective families bring a sequence of twists to the tale including attack on Bijoy, his grandfather's death, a pilgrimage and a kidnapping. Will their love be able to defy all these?

A team of divers assemble a big bubble in the Arctic Ocean.

Experimental short.

Famed Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken documents the natural world as well as the local people in and around his hometown of Edam, the Netherlands.

This true classic from 1980 features the incredible surfing performances of Australia's Simon Anderson, Chris Byrne, Terry Fitzgerald, Wayne Lynch, Mark Warren, Col Smith and Mark Richards. Plus heavyweight Hawaii talent Dane Kealoha, Bobby Owens, Larry Bertlemann, Mark Liddell, Mark Foo, Buzzy Kerbox, Rory Russell, Reno Abellira and South Africa's Shaun Tomson. Fantasea opens with a powerful animated sequence that dissolves into one of Greenough's tube shots filmed from a camera mounted on his back and sets the mood for a full-on surfing epic covering Australia, South Africa and Hawaii.

Visually evocative and not only because of the Tahitian setting, this engaging story by femme director Dominique Arnaud starts off with a man looking through the bars of his prison cell out at the landscape beyond. His reverie ends when he suddenly subdues the guard who has come to bring him his meal and in a flash, he is out and free. Various adventures await him within the town and with its people but in the end, he heads off into the jungle. He spends some time building a house and seems content to prefer the company of his radio and the animals around him to the townspeople. Then one day his sharp ears pick up a sound that could threaten his new-found life.

Official entry to the first Metro Manila Film Festival in 1980 directed by Augusto Buenaventura and starred Christopher De Leon, Bembol Roco, Chanda Romero, Cherie Gil, Suzette Ranillo, and Michael de Mesa.

A squad of young Cuban armed forces recruits are tasked with defending a strategic key north of Cuba. The fraught relationships between the young soldiers and the sergeant who leads them transform as they discover his human qualities during training and learn discipline in the harsh conditions of their post.

A silent, Super 8 film by Joseph Morder.

Ann Turner delves into the atmosphere of the works and reveals, besides Degas the gifted draughtsman and painter, also an experimental graphic artist, sculptor, photographer and poet.

An enumeration of various ways by which the public might react to a film projection.

A Hilarious and insightful look at LDS Children by T.C. Christensen, whose credits include The Work and the Glory and Praise to the Man Digitally Remastered The new DVD, Mouths of Babes, is hilarious, charming, and honest! This classic LDS comedy is back and better than ever! When young children are asked thought-provoking questions, their spontaneous answers are unpredictable and often surprisingly wise! Digitally remastered, the DVD Mouths of Babes will surely be a family favorite!

In a provincial town, a band practices in an apartment on the same floor as Jean-Pierre, who works night shifts every three weeks. Thierry, the band’s singer, quits his job due to morning fatigue and turns to drugs, while Jean-Pierre contemplates leaving his factory job and the city, questioning the point of moving to another factory.

What is America to her? Idemitsu, who lived in America for eight years, looks introspectively at herself and her strange connection with America.

About the funny adventures of Mishka, Shavkat, and Ulubek from the 6th "A" class of the Tashkent School.

Documentary by Gordon Carr on the so-called 'Persons Unknown' case in December 1979 in which members of the Anarchist Black Cross were tried at the Old Bailey on a charge of 'conspiring with persons unknown, at places unknown to cause explosions'. A concise look at the 'Persons Unknown' trial. A fascinating snapshot of history in the making, The Persons Unknown pieces together an intricate web of radicals at a thriller’s pace. Carr crisply relates the correspondences of a Black Cross secretary and imprisoned Irish republican and reaches all the way back to the Paris Commune to discuss the secretive, internationalist elements of radical leftist politics. Where mainstream media tends to become hysterical where anarchism is concerned, The Persons Unknown remains keenly factual throughout. Among those featured in the film are Stuart Christie, publisher of the "Black Flag" newsletter and former would-be Generalisimo Francisco Franco assassin, and the anarcho-punk group Crass.

The life and work of Cayita Araújo, teacher of revolutionaries, who has devoted her intelligence and courage to the struggle for the cause of the Cuban people.

Bernd Upnmoor's Dom the title refers to the famous funfair at Hamburg - varies an increasingly meaningless shot of a few minutes on a carousel by exploring all the possibilities of colour film techniques and succeeds (in Upnmoor's words) in "making the viewers' senses tremble and flutter."

A parody of American domestic and political life. Marge Jones, a B-movie actress, is plagued by creditors and blackmail. She returns to her hometown, Zanesville, Ohio, to raise her two children and save herself.

Dreary office routine turns into a group performance.

The young drummer of the pioneer band is expelled because of his short height. His trek through the fields led to the City of Golden Cockerels, where drummer children used to live under the guidance of an obviously infantile king. But the king died, the prince was too young, and an evil minister with evil minions took power.

UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Computer animation of flashing shapes and patterns.

The recording of the Heathen Earth album. This video cassette was made at the recording of the album Heathen Earth, between 8.10 and 9.00 pm on Saturday 16 February 1980 in front of an invited audience at the studios of Industrial Records Ltd. In addition to the single camera recording of the performance, certain visual information from our files has been included. The soundtrack of the tape was taken independent of the 8-track audio master recording and it remains "live" and unremixed - it consequently differs from the album in some places. Like the TG sound itself, the quality and content of this recording cannot and should not be compared with conventional commercial recordings.

Follows the complex of hydraulic power plants in North Osetiya.

A short film by Myron Ort.

Looks at the variety of kites and kite-flyers seen in a historical and cultural perspective.

Back to the pollution caused by oil tankers. After the Torrey Canyon in 1967, the Olympic Bravery in 1976, the Böhlen in 1976, the Amoco Cadiz in 1978, the Gino in 1979, it was the Tanio which ran aground in 1980 off the coast of Brittany, eight dead and spilling 15,000 tonnes of oil. The director makes the sad observation of the impotence of the public authorities in the face of the situation and expresses his desolation and his anger.

The famous sunken city should reappear, but we must wait for the day when all warfare will have ceased for a hundred years.

The moon in the night sky chases us wherever we go. The moon is in fact moving, but it is too far away and its movement is too slow for the human eye to see its movement. It is almost the same as saying that it is not moving in our consciousness.

The last part of the triptych is dedicated to the struggle of the peasant communities of northeastern Brazil; on the banks of the São Francisco River, the indigenous residents of the village of Caiçara fight to keep their Island of São Pedro, enclosed in a farm; all that remains is an abandoned chapel to which they go in procession. Tyrannized by their powerful neighbors, they talk about their lawsuits and sing about their two-century struggle, filmed in the village, during a procession to San Pedro and an expedition to the court where a delegation will file a complaint.

A test work for SPACY. I had a mad interest in the kind of sensation of visual movement gained from subsequent rushings into the mise-en-abyme space created in the space between two mirrors facing each other, and was totally absorbed in this when I made the film. These images of hurtling entrances born at last out of repeated failure excited even myself. (Takashi Ito)

A 360° shot from Schönhauser Allee reveals Stargarder Straße 3A’s neglected courtyard, where tenants, spurred by community leader Michalski, restore its greenery. Built in 1900 as a social-democratic workers’ cooperative, “the red block” once housed activists, ran its own kindergarten and summer fêtes. Wartime saw Nazi block wards, Post-’45 resident Bruno return, and ’50s festivals fade. By the ’60s, tenant turnover and mixed generations reshaped its life. Now, the film crew’s presence reunites residents for the first courtyard celebration since 1952, closing past and present.

The Flower reflects the director's experience of living in a totalitarian communist state and pays homage to Trnka’s film Ruka, The Hand, made 3 years before the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.

A fiddler's hand creates its own choreography is music is performed. This film is an attempt to share the dance. In the tradition and spirit of a Norman McLaren short, a light attached to a fiddle bow traces a dancing dot of light in darkness. The music was composed and is performed by Gordon Stobbe on fiddle and accompanied by Bill Doucette on guitar.

This documentary presents video footages from President Samora Machel's discourses and from his interactions with Mozambican people; includes narration in Portuguese that discuss Mozambique social conditions and developments after independence from Portuguese colonial administration was obtained.

In the 1970s and early 1980s Detroit was the setting for an unusual development in U.S. urban politics, as voters elected two socialists to citywide office. TAKING BACK DETROIT examines these people and their organization against the backdrop of a city in extreme economic crisis.

Kids work to restore an old School bus

My high school life is the worst, but I wanted to express that feeling while I'm the worst," says the director, and his feelings are conveyed through direct images. In his room, the protagonist looks at an album while wearing an eye patch for some reason. The sound of sniffling throughout the film. A classroom scene is repeated like a formula. In contrast to the quiet flow of the first half of the film, the second half is filled with the power of visual sadism and a throbbing urge for violence, such as the constant beating of a boy on a motorbike.

Four short films featuring rare footage of Brixton during the 1960s to 1980s by Clovis Salmon, aka ‘Sam The Wheels’. A self-taught filmmaker, Salmon began filming his neighbourhood in Brixton in 1959. His unique archive of Super 8 celluloid films includes church and community events, activism, local struggles and the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton Riots. Clovis Salmon was born in Jamaica in 1930, and was among the first generation of migrants from the West Indies to settle in the United Kingdom, arriving in London in November 1954. Having run his own bike shop in Jamaica, he joined Holdsworth Cycle Co. as a bicycle repair man, and soon became known as ‘Sam the Wheels’.

From the film cycle "Exposing the Text"

A short film by Ahmed Zir

Short film made by Geneton Moraes Neto in Super 8, in 1980 in Recife

Two women – childhood friends from Lebanon – meet accidentally in a Paris cafe. Eva, a Jew, and Samia, a Muslim, try to reconstruct their friendship from ten years ago only to find that history and politics constantly interfere with their relationship.

DEADLY FORCE documents the groundbreaking investigations into the Burkholder killing including the Coroner's Inquest. The Police Commission's enacting a new gun policy. Interviews include, human rights activist and former Black Panther Michael Zinzun describes the urgent need for true accountability Police commissioner James Fisk explains why there is “a margin for error” when judging police misconduct. KABC news reporter Wayne Satz challenges the police department’s wall of silence. Former LAPD officer John Mitchell recalls one officer who used to “choke out the arrested person … on the way to the station” to give him a little extra justice. Five years after the shooting a Los Angeles jury awarded $600,000. to the family of Ron Burkholder in a wrongful death case against the City of Los Angeles. The judge over-ruled the jury and ordered the lawyers to face re-trial or accept a lower amount. A compromise was reached.

Animated short about a detective cracking a case

Documentary short that explores the meaning of the locals’ African identity through the Carnival festivities.

Road traffic was intense at this location. Sometimes the roar of the engines declined in the distance, but never for very long and the passage of the new line of cars and coaches was accompanied by large air displacements, which hit the eardrums hard.