Cinematic Era: 1981 Vintage

After the Unveiling is a film about change. It is a personal documentary done in diary format of my mother's life immediately following my father's death. It begins with cultural rites proceeding death, that of sitting "shiva," and goes on to record the many daily acts my mother once shared with her husband and now must face alone. Delineated, is the integral place that my mother's religion and culture holds for her, the inevitable influence it has on me, and the resulting conflict that is created for my mother and myself by me selecting a mate from a different religious background.

Based on impressions of young people's encounters with pop music, the film takes up sociological and medical aspects of listening habits and encourages viewers to deal with questions of addiction to music, consumer manipulation and psychosomatic impairments.

A Peruvian-German documentary about the gold fever in the Peruvian jungle and the life of the gold diggers.

In 1981, two Massachusetts College of Art students, Sean J. Eunson and Greg McCleary, were given access to a pile of discarded 16mm film footage from an out of production international documentary series. Inspired by their film teacher Dan Barnett’s film White Heart, what began as a classroom exercise in editing, became a three-year exploration in non-narrative filmmaking.

While we don't really know the origins of the song games, it is possible they came to the North in the 15th or 16th century. Over time, they have changed characters, and some of the games have taken the form of "wall-playing". In the film, the games as we know them today are being compared with the games we had in the old times, through reconstructions.

Based on the yonkoma manga by Ueda Masashi.

Film portrait of twice Hero of Socialist Labor, foreman of the Baltic Shipyard V.A.Smirnov.

Color Sound Featuring Wall of Voodoo.

Katja Raganelli’s sole excursion into the realm of avant-garde cinema was this focus on Austrian experimental film axiom Valie Export. This portrayal of the filmmaker is quite special as it presents Export at a very particular moment in her career, during the shooting of a fiction feature, Menschenfrauen (1980), with which she was able to break into the avant-garde mainstream, shedding the skin of her path-breaking, often performance-based early works.

Experimental video by Carlos Castillo.

This experimental short film plays on genre conventions and expectations. Loosely connected elements from the Nouvelle Vague, thrillers and silent film raise questions: What do the three young men in the car have to do with the woman in the café? Who is she waiting for? Electronic sounds from the artist padeluun, reminiscent of radio noises, link the scenes and give the impression that aliens are the observers of these mysterious events.

Poet Peter Blackman left Barbados in the 1930s to complete his training as an Anglican priest in the UK, but was so appalled by the colonial, parochial Britain he encountered that he joined the Communist Party instead.

A little female character called Koko represents the muse of music and dances and clowns her way through a breathless, animated short-history of western music.

"Apartment Wife" erotic drama distributed by Nikkatsu for home video.

A dramatized portrait of Susy James, a teenage runaway living in her boyfriend’s car. Original score by Jill Kroesen. In the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the National Gallery of Canada.

A silent, Super 8 film in color by Joseph Morder.

Short film about a Bosnian miner.

UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A short video work shot on blue screen, featuring a surfer riding through Los Angeles streets.

Jamaican Reggae group Black Uhuru perform in Essen, Germany for the TV show Rockpalast.

A follow-up to the groundbreaking Visual Communications documentary OMAI FA'ATASI: SAMOA MO SAMOA, this fictionalized account of Vaitafe Futu, a gifted Samoan youth who travels from Pago Pago to pursue an education in Los Angeles offers a wholistic portrait of a newer Asian Pacific American community.

Several children from the Sofia district play in the street. Suddenly, one of them, little Vasco, disappears. The "consequence" that children accept begins as a game, but gradually captures their entire imagination. They go through stressful and dramatic situations, go through difficulties, until they find their friend.

Play based on Lev Kassil's story "Conduit and Shvambrania".

First-grader Valera Ovechkin, who has a strict mother and a strict teacher, is in love with a ninth-grader Olenka. Mom once, when Valerik was in kindergarten, having learned that he had kissed a girl, threatened the amorous Ovechkin with a colony if he kissed anyone else. Valera believes in the possibility of punishment, but, having fallen in love with Olenka, she breaks the taboos.

Hardworking ants re-educate the lazy cockchafer.

It shows the importance of Buddhist abbots in Thai society. A young man, without parents and who has always lived in temples ("DEK WAT" - the Temple Boy), is in love with a young woman. Her parents don't want a poor groom. Hopefully the abbot might help?

A man and a woman awake in the middle of the night. The woman is upset by her dreams and what she perceives as the untouchable nature of her mind, unlike the physical nature of her body. The man recounts the story of his youth – when he was not allowed to go out to play, his mind would go outside instead. An elliptical series of scenes unfold as though in the mind of the man – an encounter with an epileptic, a prostitute, and a demented therapist - all somehow address the mind/body schism. A school film written and completed in two weeks, incorporating preliminary image manipulation techniques via the use of contact printing and Mettler’s first use of sound montage in a musical sense.

Short film by Josephine Massarella

May B heralded the international breakthrough of Maguy Marin and has been performed worldwide since 1981. It is based on the writings of Samuel Beckett, who unexpectedly gave the then young and unknown French choreographer his blessing to adapt his work. Echoing the existential forlornness of Becketian characters, Marin's 10 dancers roam the stage like lost vagrants; grunting, sighing, comic, pathetic, awkward and tenderly ridiculous at once, they seem to have stumbled with their strange clay streaked faces out of nowhere into the world. Accompanied by music by Franz Schubert and Gavin Bryars and one single line from Beckett's play Endgame: “Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished”

A short film by Chicago playwright David Hauptschein.

In 1930, workers and their children founded a club on Helmholtzplatz in Berlin. A store was rented and converted, giving the children a home where they could hang out during the day and pursue their interests. As young pioneers, they also made posters and banners there to support their fathers' strike.

Kotobuki-cho is a section of Yokohama whose residents consist of about 4500 single men, 300 women and 180 children. The day laborers living there have no secure social standing, but they do have one thing: pride in their daily work routine.

"Melvin Goes Disco" is writer/director Mark Esposito's homage to MGM's popular "Pete Smith Specialties" of the 1940's. Famed character actor Irving Metzman is Melvin, a full time accountant and part time deodorant salesman, in this spoof of the "disco" craze.

This is Volume 6 of Target Video's compilation video series Underground Forces. Here is a list of the videos and performances on Volume 6: 01 Iggy Pop-Some Wierd Sin, TV Eye (Live) 02 Flipper-Nothing (Live) 03 Killing Joke-Who Told You How, Exit (Film) 04 Appliances-Miami (Live) 05 Avengers-American In Me (Live) 06 Rank And File-The Wreck, Sundown (Live) 07 Ill Ya Volkswagon-Kill Myself 08 Dead Kennedys-Trust Your Mechanic, Life Sentence (Live) 09 Cramps-Tear It Up (Live) 10 Iggy Pop-Pumping For Jill (Live)

Consisting of four parts: Between the Frames; Seeing Nothing; The Privilege to See; I Am A Viewer / You Are A Viewer. The film demonstrates and discusses the structure of film viewing as an institution: playing/talking myself in the double role of the viewer and the maker at the same time sitting in front of an empty screen and a camera which shoots at my back. It is also a provocative essay on the role of film audience. (Takahiko Iimura)

Ganesha Mahime is a 1981 Kannada drama film starring Ashok, Aarathi, Sundar Krishna Urs, Musuri Krishnamurthy.

A community of men lives in the game around a ladder. a game that seems immutable as governed by an ancestral instinct.

Sarah, a timid babysitter, must find a way to cross the river with her infant charge while avoiding a motorcycle gang.

Thai horror film.

The documentary deals with the subject of "big city noise" in a humorous and satirical, but also serious way, using the example of East Berlin, whereby the main focus is on noise that disturbs peace and quiet, i.e. noise that can be avoided, such as recklessly listening to loud music and watching television, clearly audible inner-family communication, dogs barking, nocturnal DIY work, rapid braking and honking of vehicle horns, etc. With the help of animations/animated scenes, the film vividly demonstrates the widespread interpersonal bad habits.

These were the first vivisection videos taken by an organization who wants to stop animal experiments. In 1981 Lifeforce Founder Peter Hamilton and camera person Chas Leckie travelled to numerous research laboratories throughout Canada. The goal was to expose the secretive experiments on animals. The public taxpayers and donors have a right to know.

An evening in Tallinn's variety shows.

The workers of the central pharmacy of Tunisia cut the throat of a calf to celebrate the dismissal obtained at the cost of numerous strikes. But the new director, however chosen by them, praises the old director and tells them that after all this anarchy, order will once again reign. Film made live by an employee of the central pharmacy.

Conversations in Rhyme unfolds in five short parts that celebrate children's first games – finger plays, hand games, even lullabies. This film was shot in the streets and neighborhoods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the McFeely–Rogers Foundation.

Informed by conventions of Hollywood film and television commercials, Judith Barry’s Casual Shopper (1980-81) presents a female protagonist wandering through a seemingly endless array of product displays. The woman both follows and is followed by a male figure, who appears to exist somewhere between reality and fantasy, within a carefully structured and intoxicating elevator-music-filled department store. The piece conflates romantic desire with consumer desire, as both figures perpetually search.

A comedic short using existing footage of a building demolition. A voice over is used to make it seem as if a film director is shouting instructions to actors and technicians, finally giving the order to destroy the building.

Fragmented images of the female body, recalling sensuous landscapes, suggest the objectification of women in a culture that renders them silent.

This loving crafted short documentary follows the work of Tommy Orr of Killinchy, Co. Down, who has carried on the family tradition as a blacksmith for over 40 years. From the ringing of the anvil to the smoke billowing from the roadside forge, this film focuses on his work as a farrier and shows not only the unique skill that’s required but his genuine love and pride in his work.

Little Nina, oldest daughter of a plantation guard, is rescued by Daniel, a novice priest, from a tiger. As a result, Nina later aspires to be a nun. Meanwhile, the sickly Adri, who is the son of a wealthy businessman, is very much in love with Nina. Nina has to forget her dream when her family becomes poor after her father is accused of corruption, and becomes a drunkard.

Pringgo, a wealthy businessman, catches his fiancée making out with another man. In a frustrated state, Pringgo has a car accident. According to the doctors who treat him, Pringgo has to undergo surgery to cure his paralysis. But he doesn’t have the courage and loses the hope to live. While he is treated in a sanatorium, Pringgo gets acquainted with Astuti, a frustrated girl. They finally get married, although in the beginning the relationship is based on pity rather than love. Mrs. Heru, Pringgo’s sister, and Mrs. Brasti, head of Pringgo’s household, oppose this marriage. Mrs. Brasti manages to harm Astuti, which is found out by Pringgo. Then Mrs. Brasti is fired. Gradually he realises how much Astuti really loves him and not for the money he has. Thus Pringgo finds his life spirit back, and has the courage to undergo surgery.

Taiwanese horror movie from 1981.