Cinematic Era: 1981 Vintage

A video by Max Almy

That day, Charlerine goes out, driven by a sudden urge to kill, kill, kill... The four films (Printemps, Ete, Automne and Hiver/Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter) have the same plot but are told in different ways: each season has its own rhythm.

WMEN evokes 1965, as indicated by the music cues. So, in the period before the Stonewall demonstrations by queer activists, including drag and trans activists, against the oppression of police raids. WMEN feels very much in conversation with Godard’s Breathless, with the collage of cutout magazine figures, its tongue-in-cheek nature, its sexiness, the fashion, and the playfulness.

Unfinished David Wojnarowicz film that was salvaged by Marion Scemama from Fales Library.

"A city, its crowds; crowds processed on film then transferred to video. I used a technique particular to video to manipulate a vertical section of the image sideways, changing both its shape and color density. Each operation was repeated a number of times, in a series of consecutive incrustations. The final image was achieved in a few hours, entirely by hand (or, more precisely, by hands), like an impromptu musical improvisation. The rhythm, the flux of the city confronted with video's scanning composition and compression." (Christian Lebrat)

1981 film

One of a trilogy of animated shorts based on Moravian folk ballads.

Bardha works in an agricultural cooperative while Gjika works as an engineer in a mine. Due to their work, they get promoted to work in the ministry departments.

"...Berliner's film which talks about nature, culture, and technology impresses through its outstanding classical editing technique...Berliner finds precise and original transitions..."

Overdoses, breakdown, and rage at system in a stylized mental hospital isolation room.

A day in the life of a tower block of flats, where the two main vertical channels of communication are the lift and the drain.

Film starring Ravindra Mahajani, Ranjana and Ashok Saraf

In many ways the plot is a primary ingredient in this Shanghai film about the tragedy of a life misspent in hiding the truth due to noble, if misguided, intentions. The story begins with two married Chinese medical students who are studying abroad in the 1950s, only to have their relationship torn apart when the wife is deported to Mongolia for some unwise political views she expressed. She leaves, and rather than tell her husband that she has discovered she is pregnant, she gets a divorce and gives birth to a baby girl. Two decades later, the mother is rehabilitated, and the daughter is grown up and has become a professional dancer. Her mother comes to one of her performances, at which the daughter falls and injures her foot - an injury that adds to the mother's personal tragedy when the daughter is treated by a doctor who is actually her father.

Via New Day Films: "Nearly one half of the estimated ten million alcoholics in the country are women, yet their special problems are totally ignored. Concealed by families, protected by friends and physicians, these women are kept invisible. They themselves are often The Last to Know. This extraordinary film speaks directly to these women by sensitively focusing on four intimate stories and shows how the medical community, the media and the values of society at large actually perpetuate alcoholism and prescription drug abuse in women."

Young people meet in the local pub and pretend a lot more than they are. Mostly their swanky conduct is touching and affecting. There is a lot of attention for the clothes, hair-dress, music and cars of the sixties. Some of the amateur-actors became later well-known Dutch actors and directors.

Gallagher's mad as hell but he never shows it, because he's cool as well. He's back in this 1981 special and telling jokes... to prevent his anger from building up.

Ichihara, a university student, meets a young woman on a train while returning to Tokyo from his hometown. Discovering that they share a similar background both having left the countryside to pursue their lives in the city he finds himself drawn to her.

A documentary presenting the natural beauties of Lake Prespa and Lake Ohrid and the opportunities offered by organized tourism for stays in coastal resorts and hotels.

In the early 1970s, Briel recorded conversations on tape with the opera and concert singer Adelheid Pickert, then nearly 90 years old, in a garden house in Wilmersdorf. She recalls her greatest successes between 1915 and 1930. In 1981, Briel revisits his meeting with this artist and juxtaposes the old lady's account with his own memories of her. Format: Hörspiel (radio play)

A Royal Navy travelogue looking at Hong Kong.

Through examination of specific situations in India, Brazil and Ecuador, the problems of hunger and poverty in third world countries and about some efforts that have failed even though more food was produced. Proposes that solutions which will work on a grass roots level are simple and appropriate to the culture, but often labor intensive.

A portrait of the scientist Pedro Paulet, from the memory of his daughter

Short film.

Dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Adyghe Autonomous Region, this film explores the beauty of the natural landscape, the national customs and traditions, and the culture and economy of the republic.

Based on V. Belov's short story "River Bends".

Last chance saloon. In the high security prison of Moundsville, West Virginia, some convicted felons are tasked with getting a group of young delinquents back on the right track. A disturbing social experiment – fearlessly brought to the screen.

Short film about the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum during the GDR.

Super-8 short film by Carlos Zerpa.

The movie starts as a "film inside a film", that shows the clash between a father and his two sons. While the older one, Hong-jun, tries to understand and get closer to his dad, because of a past mistake, the younger one, Man-ho, wanders aimlessly, incapable of accepting or comprehending his actions. As time passes, Hong-jun notices that the story he is filming mirrors his brother's reality.

TV film about kids herding ducks.

Facelifts 1981. ETC experimental Tv Center wobbulator David Jones colorizer

Of all the English tug-of-war teams, none have been more successful than Bosley Wood Treatment who, for over 20 years, have sallied forth from their Cheshire valley to take on the might of the tug-of-war world - and beat them.

The king goes out onto the streets of his kingdom to find out how his people feel about him.

A description of bird watching with the renowned authority and author of many guides on the subject.

The Inauguration of a Mechanical Bird in 2895, in New York City. The 4-minute burlesque motion picture with silent picture-style intertitles mocks the naively utopian world of the Victorian age. The film was inspired by the bitter satires of the elderly Jules Verne, in which a distorting mirror is held up to American civilization

The GDR is delivering pre-assembled port crane systems to Morocco by water.

Meat evokes happiness hormones, but behind the gentle words “pork belly” or “neck” lies a meat factory where meat is divided, quartered, and cut up. With sharp candour, this critical morality play draws attention to the ecological, economic, and ethical implications of factory pig farming, and the striking contrast between the Czech culture of overeating, and starvation in Africa.

Super-8 film by Gianni Dal Maso.

Profiles nine artisans and performing artists who are recognized by law as "holders of important intangible cultural properties" and are charged with publicly exhibiting their works and teaching their artistry to apprentices. Pays visits to a potter, a doll sculptor, a puppeteer, a papermaker, a koto musician, a swordmaker, a textile weaver and a dyer, a kabuki theater actor, and a bellmaker.

Live at Sartory-Saal Cologne, Germany on Rockpalast 1981

This film is not exactly a documentary; it is a person reading the book while visiting the places where she lived, taking pictures of it in the early eighties. The letters to her daughter, whom she gave away to foster parents in Virginia after Wild Bill had been shot in the back in a saloon in Deadwood, show her in another light: as a woman who clearly understood social taboos of our society and, on one hand, she rejected what society dictated and, on the other, she longed for the bourgeois lifestyle. Many people argued that those were not real, since it was considered to be illiterate. The truth is, she was, and she tried to learn later in life just enough as to write a bare few words, and at times she also employed others in writing things for her.

Cut-out animation.

A black and white scenery is coloured in one after another by several crayons in a short animation, all explained by a female voiceover.

Documentary directed by Dietrich Schubert.

A breaking news update.

The film focuses on a woman who reflects reality in her dreams, whereby the dimension of dreams is understood as part of reality. This goes back to some ancient cultures, where the word for dream can be derived from the verb "to awaken." The individual scenes are to be understood as metaphors for states of being, such as grief, powerlessness, fear, or a form of lightness. They are assembled as a collage, with individual scenes and images being repeated throughout.

A nostalgic tour through the great Harlem jazz clubs of the 1930s and '40s, led by Harlem born personality Cab Calloway. Using rare clips and "soundies" Calloway fondly realls the famous clubs -- Yeah Man, Tillis Chicken Shack, Cotton Club -- and the legendary stars that played them, including Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Calloway himself.

West German collective work about self-organization and the "new Palestinian" of the revolution.