Cinematic Era: 1981 Vintage

Short film by Marshall Weber

"A free wheeling quasi-documentary on the glory of Christmas in New York City. 'Only 27 more shopping days till...' New Yorkers frolic in that commercial turnover between Macy's Thanksgiving extravaganza and the ritual of New York's at Times Square. Is this a religious experience?" – James Livingston

Elam records several men moving boxes and furniture as they track across her backyard.

Short film by Jochen Gerz.

In TeleTapes, d'Agostino continues his critique and analysis of television's influence on everyday life and culture by exploring the content and time structure of broadcast TV. Composed of three parts — TeleTricks - TV Environments; TeleGames - And Now, The News; and TelePuzzles - TV Movies — this collage uses tricks, games, puzzles and a veritable dictionary of TV effects as analogies and metaphors for the visual and aural language of the television viewing experience. Alternating news and commercial footage with his own staged events, d'Agostino examines the viewer's perception of reality versus TV reality, the pervasive cultural influence of TV advertising, and the way that television manipulates and mythifies events.

Resisting the binary essentialism of contemporary second-wave feminism, Bean's work points to a more complex celebration of being. Here, she draws on the ecstatic yet troubling inter relationship of a small beetle and its ant hosts, where the beetles secrete a substance that is greedily licked up by the ants to suppress their usual aggression, meaning they can be torn apart by the beetle whilst still submitting themselves to it.

16mm experimental short film.

16mm experimental short film.

A thin outline of a slowly moving figure enters the frame, moving forward in a highly exaggerated and expressive manner. Disjointed and atonal electronic music fades in as a heavily distorted repeat of the figure replays.

Short educational film by Vladimir Kobrin.

Slide projections, film clips and film extracts form this showcase of the capital, its monuments, its history, its celebrities and its curiosities.

After finishing serving in the military, Tadeusz starts working in a tailor shop. The man does not stop dreaming about gliding.

Rhys Chatham: A Four Year Retrospective documents a series of performances by Chatham and his ensemble at The Kitchen in 1981. Performing with musicians that include Jules Baptiste and Ned Sublette, Chatham presents a series of compositions for guitars, electric bass and drums. This hour-long video document captures the propulsive energy and conceptual sophistication of Chatham's pioneering compositions.

Walden combines delicate and brilliant images filmed on location around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts with readings by poet, John D. Ogden, bringing to life the heart and soul of Thoreau's writings. Stunningly filmed by Rick Cardin at the height of New England's fall foliage season, Walden is one of the first films to capture the magical sense of place that inspired Thoreau. Through the selection of quotes, images and a soulful score by legendary musicians this film gem suggests the major themes of Thoreau's work: the reflection of the universal in the tiniest leaf or pebble, the connectedness of all things, the quest for eternal truths and the search for a way of living in harmony in the world.

An animated story about a farm girl whose father will not allow her to keep a stray puppy until an event occurs that makes him reverse his decision.

“[...] a film on raw duration, which refers to the first works of the artist, close to performance. This is very simply the real time of a metro journey, between Bir-Hakeim and Passy stations. The filmmaker's objective being, among other things, to restore the equivalent of what an ordinary journey is perceived as it generally is: the fixed and somewhat empty gaze." Laurent Danet

San Frediano, protector of petty thieves, descends to earth to convince boys to do a good deed.

This film portrays my friend Philip Whalen, a Zen Buddhist monk and poet, reading from his book The Art of Literature. There is a play of spotlight and shadow in this work which emphasizes the elusiveness of truth in poetry.

Computer generated. "With all the grace and flair of an elegant proof." - Carol Mickett. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

About Māris Grīva, the coach of Dainis Kūla, the Olympic champion in javelin throwing, who trains young javelin throwers in Ventspils.

Disco-Film 39: The film, which is based on the song "Drachenflug" by the group Kleeblatt, tells of interpersonal relationships.

In this work performed in 1976 (edited to a video work in 1981), Imai flashes a strobe light directly at the audience seated inside the auditorium in the KBS Laseirum Center in Kyoto and photographs their reaction with his camera. The audience who had expected to see a moving image projected on the surface of a dome-shaped screen on the ceiling is submerged in the dark for the first few minutes. They are left to listen to the recorded sound of a heartbeat and the metronome set to the rhythm of 6/8 time. The sudden eruption of the strobe light as Imai presses the shutter of his camera synchronized to the ringing sound of the metronome brings out diverse reaction from the audience: some cover their eyes with their hands or the pamphlet, while others directly look at the camera and strike some funny poses.

A mini film from Hatoma showing a 76-year-old woman weaving a basket for the fishing. During the task, which takes from morning till late afternoon, she talks about herself and her life. -Ronin Films

A 1981 staged production of Harry Partch's hitch-hiker piece, Barstow.

A color and sound film

"... plays alongside Toney Merritt's arch and elliptical humor, (CONQUEST PIECE & ASIAM, moving from enigma to impishness to silent farce)." - Calvin Ahlgren, San Francisco Examiner

OBSCENITY seeks to find a common history among men. This examination uses animation derived from men's magazines, 'documentary' footage of working men, and personal commentary. The aggression that men in this culture are conditioned to act out, in all its gaudy and ultimately lethal manifestations, is considered with a unique syntax of filmic expression. –D. L.

A woman questions men. She tries to make them talk about themselves, some answer, others don't. In counterpoint: hunting, dancing, motorcycle riding. "I have always wanted to know more about men, to hear about their country, about "what it's like to be a man". Curiosity of a little girl, no doubt. But also a woman's desire, a desire to get closer and closer, until the impossible fusion. Juliette du côté des hommes is the film of this curiosity, of this desire. Men who please me tell me their story, tell me about their desires. And I, who listen to them and watch them, tell with these words and these images, my desire for them. Between a marathon and bikers, a hunting party and a card game, a waltz that sails and a tango that sways, there is masculinity that passes. There is - for me - the Other." (Claudine Bories)

The brittleness of sensuality is caught in silk cloths and walls of tin-foil. Erotic visions guide the spectator along moments of love and orgasm up to the dramatic climax of birthgiving.

Part 1 of "3 Miniatures after Melanie Klein" (for Laurence Rickels)

This 1981 short film was a collaboration between Factrix and SF filmmaker Marc Huestis. Starring Erich Brogger.

In the 1970s, the wave of modernisation hit the Orchid Island (Lanyu). Warship Rock, Double Lion Rock, Lover’s Cave, the wisely and artistically designed tatala (traditional fishing boat), along with the Tao people’s amazing fishing skills were well-known by the public through the growing tourism, yet the small island of Lanyu and Tao people’s indigenous ways of life still remained a ‘spectacle’. When the documentary film crew arrived with curiosity and good intentions, what stories would they tell together?

Three films interwoven into one. The first is a poem, displayed as a handwritten landscape observed from a train window. A matrix of phrases track three suns behind silhouettes of trees, allowing the eye to compose random fragments from the mass of shifting material. The second abstracts the surface the surface of a mountain stream through a series graphic, symmetrical camera traces. The final sequence is a breakneck volley of zooms down sunlit plantation avenues. ‘Lightning’ strikes, bird cries spread the alarm, as the image flashes and disintegrates into darkness.

Forever the mirror stage.

Gay women from different generations discuss their experiences in this revealing TV documentary.

An overprotective mother frets over her son's desire to learn to swim.

Sequences from the filmmakers' 16mm, Super 8 and Stand 8 mm work, dating from 1960 onwards, are contact-printed onto 35mm film, then reduced to 16mm for projection. The relationship of the frame sizes of the smaller gauges to that of the 35mm causes a fluttering on the screen which relates to the ephemerality of the memory and the effect on it of the passing of times. Floterian is an old English word meaning fluttering.

Watch folks beat the bejesus out of mechanical moles. Will you be as frustrated as they are?

The film explores the Ghana bird sanctuary, the Ranthambhor game sanctuary and the desert regions of Bikaner and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan where a variety of birds from various parts of the world and India come. The lordly Siberian cranes fly in from Siberia after breaking their journey at Kabul. Out of the around two thousand surviving members of the species, one section spends the winter in China while another camp with their young ones for five long months at Bharatpur. Other birds in these areas include the Black Necked Stork, the Pintail, the Adjutant Stork, the Old World Spoonbill, the Egret, the White Ibis, the Darter, the Little Dabchik, the Cormorant and the Pheasant.

"these foolish truly chosen to confound the wise." D.S.

A serial killer’s sequence of events of high aesthetic understanding, in a black-humor-filled tale resulting from Mauro Mingardi’s outlandish talent.

Deftly riding the membrane between bathos and transcendence, a beautiful video feedback and computer animation film by Ron Hays with an instant classic synth score by Ragnar Grippe.

Annette meets Iván who invites her to his apartment. There an erotic game begins between the two, which is interrupted by the arrival of some friends: El Lacra, El Virolo and Fabián. The calm ends when Annette finds in the bathroom a sack that apparently contains the corpse. They decide to take it out and transport it in a cart to a vacant lot. Iván murders El Lacra when he discovers that there was no corpse.

On the 29th of April 1978, a quick clay landslide devastated large areas of the rural district of Rissa. One person died whilst 13 farms; 2 homes; a cabin and a community centre were taken by the clay masses. The Rissa landslide was caught on 8 mm cinefilm by two film amateurs. This is still used actively in avalanche preventative and educational work.

Shows how to recognize three types of bleeding, including arterial, venous and capillary, and discusses how to treat each type. Uses art work and animation to explain the human circulatory system. Points out the 23 pressure points in the body.