Cinematic Era: 1985 Vintage

North American portrayals of Japan perpetuate the myths of Americanized culture, distorting and misrepresenting traditional values.

A woman moves through the water, accompanied by cello tones.

In 1937, on behalf of Hitler, a competition was announced among the most important architects in Germany. The task was the redesign of the Hamburg Elbe bank. The face of the city was to be moved from the Alster to the Elbe. In addition to Berlin, Linz, Nuremberg and Munich, the Hanseatic city was thus declared a "Führerstadt". Representation and administrative buildings for the party and the private economy were to be created. The architects involved in the project are interviewed. They reflect their activity and function at that time.

A Spanish SOV slasher about a man who works at a slaughterhouse and has a strange obsession with meat.

In a project sponsored by the Public Art Fund, Muntadas installed the fifty-second message This is not an Advertisement on the electronic Spectacolor lightboard that then dominated New York's Times Square. Every twenty minutes, between commercial advertisements, the sign broadcast the text: "This is not an advertisement... subliminal... speed... fragmentation," alluding to the surrounding media environment of marketing and billboards. With each successive signal, the message became more distorted and abstract, until it was rendered virtually illegible.

In her work, Monika Funke Stern operates at the intersection between experimental film and video art. She relies both on a variety of filmic techniques and effects and a powerful dramaturgy of filmic devices. She develops her own visual signature and a great interest in her subjects, which often play with elements of science fiction to develop a critical take on reality. In her comical Zum Glück gibt’s kein Patent she portrays Norma DIN working at the patent office, played by Hella von Sinnen. Norma’s ordinary life and workaday world is shaped by the endless meaninglessness of the neutral abstraction of inventions. The story reaches a climax when Norma is presented with a robot that is intended to replace employees like herself one day. Norma can apply a whole series of bureaucratic policy provisions and classify the robot as not worthy of a patent.

Harald T. is overlooked—for life. And even in the pathology department, where the supposedly dead man is finally carted off to, the medical students who have gathered to perform the autopsy cannot find him.

A man must choose his fate.

Documentary about author Joe J. Heydecker.

Documentary about how indigenous culture and the achievements of modern tourism intertwine.

The animation sort of sums up indigenous Western and Indian terrorism from the 80s, from the Italian Red Brigades and the murder of John Lennon to sikh terrirism and the muder of Indira Gandhi and everything in between, all reasons for the “his master’s voice" dog to bark at the moon.

MYTHING : our eyes always have a great number of bodies to look at. They allow themselves to be caught by them. The more the clothes are beautiful and the more they play hide-and-seek with the bodies, the more the eye is caught. Our eyes indulge in that game of picturing, beyond or through an elusive body, what is most powerful in it : its nakedness. VIDEO STRIP doesn’t tell a story. It is simply about a body that separates from its clothes – or is it the reverse ? – and disappears as mysteriously as it had appeared. The clothes are the only thing left at the end, as if they were substitutes for the body. Their crumpling is the evidence that somebody wore them. They are the signs of a moulting, of the transmutation of a female body into nothing.

Two boys find a kernel of corn.

Erotic drama distributed by Nikkatsu for home video.

A video to encourage people to work for the Prague metro.

A fire safety anime where two boys who work at a barbershop are accused of starting a house fire (when it was the barber's son).

A young man receives a letter from Jesus.

Documentary on the political topic of economic reform.

A story about the awakening of an artist after spending the night in bed with a mysterious woman. Dreams, hopes and memories are mixed in this modern opera with music by Klaus Nomi, Art of Noise or Goblin.

"You wish to recapture that state of consciousness."

A study in animation of Japanese ceremonial fans, accompanied by the music of Jason Hwang.

After the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979 that liberated Nicaragua from dictatorship, different sectors of the population considered how to build the new society. As a consequence, the Adult Education project was created in which members of the marginalized sectors became popular teachers who helped people of their own social class to discover their intelligence and the pleasure of knowledge

In Rhubarb and Sugar, Pürrer plays with rhubarb stalks, which in her hands and mouth are transformed into antennae, ears, and a tail. Monstera leaves are made to shake and tremble, as is Pürrer’s head, and pure sugar is eaten. The film is dedicated to Chantal Akerman.

Documentary film about a research project that is promising at its time, with which the prerequisites for the production of a new generation of computer modules should be created. Especially in the case of common user computers, the introduction of the "X -ray lithograph" in the semiconductor technology can lead to an even unmistakable upheaval. The film describes the research work and reflects on the importance of such a development insertion. An unusual documentation about a work that has little external in itself. - from 16.

Commander in Chief reveals the true message behind the manufactured mediation of news and politics.

Documents the struggles between the Canadian Union of Traffic Employees (C.U.T.E.) and the Canadian government during a strike of crossing guards in Toronto.

“Larger Than Life” is a digital animation that incorporated early motion-capture techniques and other innovative computer graphics techniques. Using the university's molecular biology supercomputer, this was a project by then UCLA engineering/design student Dave Curlender and UCLA medical research doctoral candidate David S. Goodsell. This finished project premiered to the public at the collaborative event On the Threshold (see “On the Threshold” promotional video) and was one of a number of early computer graphic works screened at EZTV, first as a work in progress and then numerous times over the years. Most recently, this 1985 piece was used as part of the finale for the opening of the Getty Museum's Pacific Standard Time.

Shot secretly in 1982, this film documents the story of young members of the African National Congress, sentenced to death or to life imprisonment in South Africa for their activities to end apartheid. Interviews the parents they left behind when they fled the country to join the liberation movement after the Soweto uprising, talks to student leaders and trade unionists, and addresses the question of armed struggle in South Africa.

The film starred the ensemble "Mziuri" of the Tbilisi Palace of Pioneers.

"I don't think that the chairman of the Bedul collective farm, if we had trusted his direct interview, would have told us something particularly interesting. His life had taught him well not to say too much, and if he did, it was without going beyond what was accepted in his circle. And when we were next to him day after day, when he didn't know whether we were filming him or not, he couldn't help but become not the way he would like to present himself for the screen, but the way he was in life." Marina Goldovskaya

An avant-garde film made in the technique of spatial animation, in which the idea of the vertical of power and the struggle with dogmas is played out. According to the newspaper "Literatūra un Māksla", it is the best animated film with an impeccable plot in the 1986 Latvian SSR amateur film screening.

If, one evening, a village drinker abuses of schnapps to the point of risking a heart attack, the traditional remedy is to bury him up to his neck in manure and leave him there until morning. The organic heat causes an intense elimination of sweat, and the ammonia brings the patient back to consciousness. The "where am I" that follows and the short-circuiting, in the ethylic haze, of the dazzle of the first sun on the snow and the disgust of finding oneself in manure: this is the crucial moment of the borderline experience portrayed in the film. Death and resurrection, steeped not in mystery but in elementary chemistry, which, through its excess, opens the mind to the terrible presence of reality. A tribute to the strong primal character of the Alsatian in his stubborn resistance to all worldly things, and his fierce anchoring to the world.

Of all the stories in the world, perhaps the most memorable are those that tell of the celebration of Christmas and of the simple morals of giving and sharing inspired by the spirit of the season. In this program Captain Kangaroo shares with children an eclectic selection of classic tales of the Christmas season, among them the French legend "The Gift of the Little Juggler", Hans Christian Andersen's immortal "The Fir Tree", and Clement Moore's beloved poem "A Christmas Carol." Alternately depicted in live dramatization and colorful animation, and narrated by the Captain, the stories are a reinforcement of the meaning of the season that children and adults alike will enjoy and cherish.

A short film commissioned and produced by Anna and Piotr Dmochowski for the first exhibition, that lends the film its title, of the Works of Polish artist, Zdzisław Beksiński, in the Galerie Valmay in Paris.

In showing the friendship of the people of Mongolia and Russia, it was strengthened even more during the difficult times of the homeland war, and it is told that the ordinary Mongolian herdsman made a proposal to go to the front to fight in person, and by giving gifts to the front, he made his goal.

A respectable man tries to charm a girl, but she sees that he is smoking and draws her own conclusions. This animation was commissioned by the Ministry of Health of the USSR.

Short film from the project “With Music Inside” in 13 chapters, of the musical ingenuity of the inhabitants of Mexico City: traveling troubadours, rockers, bohemian romantics, danzoneros, mariachis.

A film starring Gordon Kurtti, Jack Waters, Peter Cramer, Samoa, and others with original soundtrack by Barry Frier on percussion and Samoa on vocals. Inspired by Japanese Noe theater and specifically Sankai Juku, films from Hollywood’s silent era and 1920s German Expressionist theatre and film.