Cinematic Era: 1984 Vintage

"A fence to contend with winter storms. Auld Lang Syne. Memories of green. 'Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate'. The organ at Fenway park on Yaz' last day. Saturn, bringer of old age, and a meditation on that long, unrelenting road and enduring the weight of the journey." —Abbott Meader

Live At The Hammersmith Odeon, London 1983

A lyrical fusion of hypnotic images, original music and spoken narrative text, The Water Catalogue is a meditation on the power and poetry of water. In this impressionistic "video album," Seaman explores the mythic and everyday connotations of water, establishing its erotic kinship with the human body and representing it as a symbol for emotional, psychological and physical states. Shot in Super-8 film and video, Seaman's processed, slowed and otherwise altered visuals take on metaphorical life. Through his fluid, sensual manipulation of sound and visuals, Seaman distills water to its most elemental form.

Pedro Costa first foray into filmmaking was a short-film co-produced for RTP within a series named “Cartas a Júlia.”

In this new film loop from Robinson’s 1984 film Royal Fellowship, reflections on memorialising and narrativising war and on the possibility of resistance, seep through into the contemporary world… along with the women’s voices: shaking the fence, undercutting the military presence as they took on the might of the biggest military-industrial complex in the world.

Windsurfing's high performance skills are filmed in this display of action camera techniques, from underwater and mast-tops, with cameras mounted on helmets, etc. The first 360 degree somersaults, the largest waves ever windsurfed, and the world's leading windsurfers are featured.

"In 1984, I returned to Brazil, deciding to travel the coast, closest to the ocean, from Salvador, Bahia, to as far north as I could get in the time I had. That turned out to be Natal, 1000km away. I was the sole film crew, carrying the camera bag and tripod, loading the film, reading the light and occasionally applying sun screen. The film from that trip is the material on this DVD. And it was beautiful to see that country and those people.” ⁠—Phill Niblock

Easy Living never is in Chip Lord’s horrifically serene look at suburbia, using miniature toys to create a landscape of false tranquility

Nisei Soldier focuses on the heroism of American men of Japanese ancestry who fought bravely during World War II, despite the intense moral dilemmas they faced. Leaving their families imprisoned in "relocation centers", many young Nisei (second generation American-born Japanese) proved their loyalty in WWII by enlisting in the all-Japanese American 442nd Infantry Regiment which fought in Europe. Because of the Regiment's incredible bravery in battle, liberation of French towns, and high casualty rate, it became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. The film asks: What sustained these young men forced to battle on two fronts at once -- against fascism abroad and intense prejudice at home? More than a war story, Nisei Soldier is a tale about personal honor, family loyalty and love of country -- and what it means to be an American.

Diamante is a Mexican short film from 1984. It premiered on May 17, 1986 at the National Cineteca of Mexico. The plot tells the story of Diamond, a hostile criminal who dies at the hands of a child.

Work with the most banal image possible, such as the images of the Post Office calendars.

"In cinema one extracts the thought from the image; in literature the image from the thought" (Levinson). This reflection was the catalyst for the photographic and narrative strategies of "On Land Over Water." "On Land Over Water..." was born out of an image-notion of a skid mark on a highway, photographed in close-up, revealing texture and form. The image would be positioned with a voice-over narration, telling the story of a young boy witnessing a fatal auto accident and its ensuing aftermath. Over the following winter months I meditated on the cinematic potentials of that notion, "On Land Over Water..." is the product of working out variations of that meditation. In story discourse, "On Land..."experiments with the possibilities of adopting the characteristics of the short story to the forms of cinema. (RK)

A short queer film.

ODILON ODILON is a portrait of an adolescent boy coming to know himself and his place within his family and society. It uses historic sound: Edward R. Murrow's Christmas Eve broadcast during World War II to the parents of the young children of London's families, urging them to send their youngest to the country to save their lives as a protection against the nightly bombing raids. The "Yanks in December" recording is ironically echoed in the baseball motif in the film. Odilon's love of baseball, eating and cooking and his growing awareness of adulthood's responsibility, ambition and judgement create a brooding tension. Playfulness and intellectual rigor struggle to remain part and parcel of his daily life against the larger backdrops of Alcatraz and World War II.

In this intimate film portrait, artist Paul Cadmus, makes a nude drawing of his long time companion, demonstrates his mastery of egg tempera painting and recounts his past as a prominent American scene painter and controversial social satirist.

Recent Sorrows begins with the simultaneous shattering of two men’s love affairs — one straight, the other gay. Tim has walked out on Katherine after finding her in bed with a younger man. Victor, possessive and longing for commitment, has been thrown out by his older lover, Neal. Both Tim and Vic seek solace in a café, where Vic overhears Tim confiding in a friend about his breakup with Katherine. When Tim leaves, desperate and a little drunk, Vic follows him home. Though they are strangers, he manages to talk his way into Tim’s apartment. Once inside, Vic claims to be a recruiter for the devil, willing to return Katherine in exchange for Tim’s soul. Angered, Tim suspects this is just a tasteless prank and demands that he leave. But what appears to be a “prank” leads to murder.

This short film is both an attempt to recreate Kuleshov's famous experiment, a crucial point in all theories about cinema, and a nod to film buffs haunted by the ghosts of lost films.

The ideal marriage as defined in the 1950s is presented and then reveals how the failure of that ideal affected some of the baby boom generation through various types of abuse in BEYOND THE TIMES FORESEEN

"Reverse Television" was created in the mid-1980's by video artist Bill Viola. The 30-second portraits were about portraiture and the idea of a person staring at the viewer (as the viewer stares at the TV screen). Conceived of as a "micro-series," the work features 42 30-second portraits of television viewers in their living rooms. The portraits appear very formally composed, with attention paid to composition, lighting, and color. The viewers sit quietly, only occasionally making a slight shift in position. No external sound score has been added, so that the only sounds heard are sync sounds that have been heightened. These sounds include viewers' clothing when they move, swallowing, and background noises, such as traffic outside the viewer's home or a dog barking in the distance.

A Night at the Xclusiv Nightclub: Batley, West Yorkshire UK.

The days between the end of the military dictatorship and the beginning of the constitutional period from 1983: political debates in the streets and the meetings of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who were waiting for the role that each political party would play to claim for the disappeared. Osvaldo Bayer in first person.

"Abstract Video feedback provides a readily available experimental system to study complex spatial and temporal dynamics." Physics professor Jim Crutchfield talks about, and demonstrates video feedback.

In 1983, the solar oven at Odeillo, in Ariége, has just come to a complete standstill in a mysterious way. However, this oven secretly masks the world's largest laboratory dedicated to the study of light.

Ehreshoven Castle - half an hour from Cologne - is home to 16 countesses, baronesses and baronesses aged between 76 and 88. The moated castle with its old park was bequeathed as a foundation by the last heiress in 1920. Impecunious, unmarried, noble ladies of the Catholic faith are given the opportunity to spend a quiet, dignified retirement there, provided their families are listed in the Gotha.

Eberhard Kunstmann, a shipbuilder at the Neptune Wharf in Rostock, counsels collegues who are struggling with alchohol addiction.

Anne travels west with her camera to visit family. (Liz Coffey)

This very early horror short fan film by Wim Vink, shot on 8mm on a very low budget, has lots of fog, some zombies and bloody mayhem to offer, as most of his works do. It uses prominent music by Goblin, from other composers too and it´s his only one that was made in original Dutch language. The idea of plot wafts around a book that may have the power to call up the flesh loving undead, inspired by "Evil Dead" and the work by George Romero.

Documentary film.

Videotable is a conceptual piece centring on a table, which is a recurring theme and motif in YUNG’s theatre works. A series of dialectical questions asking where ‘the centre’ is, whether it should turn left or right, whether you are faithful to art….loosely points towards power structures both in the political world and the art world.

In this dated, existential drama, Eva is a young and bored woman whose life never varies from day to day as she moves from home to work and back, against a constant backdrop of media commercials and ads for the 1981 presidential campaign. The continual barrage of repetitive propaganda makes her already banal existence that much worse. Although the film is competent and Eva well-interpreted, the telling of this tale needs a bit more inventiveness to sustain interest in a life that is supposed to be boring.

Boys buy an aeroplane and fly to the United States.

A tongue-in-cheek tribute to Yma Sumac.

Belém, northern Brazil; a tourist and a beggar meet in Ver-O-Peso market, a culturally rich site in Amazon.

It is known that Muybridge was at the same time a great photographer and a killer, executioner of his wife’s lover and that into his own station physiologique (to use Marey’s term for his own working laboratory), it seems, not a single black man ever entered. Female servants, the unemployed, artists’ models supplied by the State, musclemen, the infirm and prostitutes were all undressed there. They all ran, people as well as animals under the sun of Palo Alto. In this P. T. Barnum style atmosphere, a melancholy Noah’s Ark, Muybridge himself would appear as a laborer nude.

16mm / color / sound

July 1972 in Iran. Mohammed is arrested for illegal spreading of flyers. He is put in jail and tortured. After one year he is released and flees to Sweden. He arrives at a refugee camp where he is taught Swedish. He is surrounded by people without hope.

A surrealistic interpretation that remains true to the spirit and plot of​ ​Lewis Carroll’s original version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

A gay short crime, in which the pleasure is located in its details. Arranged as an opera, but with with simple arrangements, after seven short films Hans-J. was successful in creating his first theatrical movie highlight.

Realized on the occasion of one of my photographic exhibitions of the same title dedicated to the Etruscans of Volterra. I intended to bring alive the funerary faces on sarcophagi, that, curiously, in shape resembled tv sets. I shot faces in color of living acquaintances in order to superimpose them on marble faces of dead people unknown to me, trying to give them an identity like those of the living. Using a battery of devices composed of a Super-8 projector, a 16mm projector and another one for slides, I rephotographed everything with a video camera directly on a unique screen effervescing with three cones of images in color, in black and white and at various speeds. The dissolves, both manual and non-manual, are manual in the proper sense of done by hand, mine and those of others; they were added simultaneously, to create variable human shutters.

"Fragments of TV mesh to construct the possible romance of Thatcher/Reagan – a vision of Britain as a police state and Reagan as a global terrorist." - LUX

A portrait of Picasso young and old, sung by the wind.

Décollage, décalage et (re)collage de l'émulsion sur des fragments d'un film publicitaire trouvé.

The filmmakers find the Abruzzo National Park to be the most suitable place in Europe to film the wild fox, one of the most elusive and fearful animals in the forest, with its proverbial cunning that allows it to escape all the traps set by man. For five months, the documentary filmmaker and his assistants live in these forests, observing the landscape and its inhabitants: deer, bears, wolves, wild boars, and roe deer. They manage to gain the trust of a female fox, accompanying her, waiting for her, losing her, and finding her again.

A man greedily eating chicken, whose image is repeated in a loop and appears crumpled. This crumpling accompanies the movement of his jaws.

Documentary exploring the life and work of the noted Puerto Rican bibliophile and historian, Arturo Shomburg, who devoted much of his life to collecting and documenting the African heritage and diaspora.

Animated short by Marv Newland

Bagdadi visits the southernmost town of Nabatiyeh to capture the beating pulse of the Ashoura celebrations as the faithful commemorate a chapter of their collective memory. He retraces the details of a story through those that identify with it year after year, analyzing history to understand its present-day influences.

Short by Karmakar.

Set the World Afire (Early version called "Burnt Offerings"), Chosen Ones, Skull Beneath the Skin, The Conjuring (Early version called "Conjure Me"), Looking Down the Cross, Last Rites/Loved to Deth, My Last Words (Early version called "Next Victim"), Into the Lungs of Hell (Early version called "Quicksand"), Bad Omen, Devil's Island, Mechanix, Rattlehead, Good Mourning/Black Friday

This animated short tells the story of a young boy who finds an injured snow goose and nurses it back to health. Constant companions through the sun-filled days of summer, the two sadly separate in the fall when the bird obeys the call to join its flock for the annual flight south. Will the friendship endure?

These six essays on film/image history reconstruct cinema history by 're-imagining' its origins, and its poetries, and use historical films themselves (as 'text') to provide the meanings of their creations. Together, these film essays comprise a critical/structural investigation of silent cinema ending with Segei Eisenstein's works (for Stalin) - from Lumiere and Melies through surrealism and horros, to montage and propaganda, we 're-invent' epochs in cinema that became its language and culture.