All Films

Lady in the Sea of Blood 5

1997 • 30 min • Japan

Fifth entry in the Lady in the Sea of Blood series.

Orka

1997 • 15 min • United States of America

STEINA: “My background is in music. For me, it is the sound that leads me into the image. Every image has its own sound and in it I attempt to capture something flowing and living. I apply the same principle to art as to playing the violin: with the same attitude of continuous practice, the same concept of composition.

A Exceção e a Regra

1997 • 39 min • Brazil

The film investigates how allegations of racism are handled by the Brazilian justice, reporting the unprecedented story of persistence and dignity of a black man: Vicente do Espírito Santo became an exceptional case for being the first victim of racism to break the siege and arriving victoriously at the Superior Labor Court and at Rede Globo's prime time.

The Forgotten Women

1997 • 53 min • Togo

The film is a documentary about Angola. It tells of the heavy cost of war to women. After ten years of struggle for independence, the war in Angola had continued for another twenty years. The film explores the motives of the combatants, including Cuba and South Africa's apartheid government. In this film, Folly lets women tell their own stories. She shows the women from mid- or close-range, forcing the viewer to focus on their faces rather than their bodies or surroundings, and takes the time to let them say what they have to say, giving a unique women's perspective of the conflict. Folly participates in the film through her voice-over, giving a subjective element. She admits that she is not familiar with Angola, and certainly is not an authority. The film thus becomes a record of Folly's own journey of discovery.

Idea

1997 • 37 min • Uruguay

Idea approaches the figure of Idea Vilariño, considered as one of the greatest Spanish-language female poets. Her literary work, especially her poetry, is acclaimed by critics and public alike, a rare case in the Uruguayan culture scene. With her own testimony, pictures, poems, songs and archive footage, this documentary offers an in-depth look at the essence of Idea Vilariño's poetic universe in a frank adherence to her literary and human posture. Her childhood, her ghosts, her desolate vision of a godless world, the stormy burden of suffering from her relationship with Juan Carlos Onetti and the commitment assumed with the issues of her time define the various facets of this woman.

Rev

1997 • 12 min

Cho continues his examination of identity within an urban environment, envisioning the frenetic dissonance of an urban landscape that is at once alienating and poetic. Cho's aggressive observation of pedestrian traffic is portrayed with a blurred and highly saturated aesthetic. A candle's flame methodically waves back and forth, suggesting the private time within the accelerated urban experience.

Lou Odyssée

1997 • 43 min • France

The Traditional Clothes of Raisinay Village

1997 • 34 min • Taiwan

After restoring their Ceremony of Ancestral Spirits, the Atayal people of the Raisinay Village, Miaoli County, were distressed by the absence of their traditional garments. Yuma Taru, a researcher of Atayal folk costume, decided to trace back their history by conducting interviews with the elders, learning weaving techniques from them. This documentary captures the passing down of the weaving art, and the younger generation’s yearnings for revival of their traditional clothes.

The Kavalan: Past and Present

1997 • 43 min • Taiwan

In the 1920s, a Kavalan family took refuge in Hualien. 70 years later, the filmmaker, a third-generation member of the family, embarked on a self-searching journey to recover his lost identity, producing the first documentary ever made by a Pingpu descendant. Through depiction of traditional Kavalan ceremonies and collective memories, the film asks us to recognise Pingpu peoples’ place in Taiwanese history, as well as their suffering and feelings of inferiority during years of forced migration.

Playback

1997 • 23 min

A trap awaiting the killer Yuki, who longs for the life of an ordinary woman.

Call Waiting

1997 • 13 min

'Call Waiting' (1997) is a superb representation of Simpson's adeptness at playing with race and relationships through cinematic depiction. 'Call Waiting' portrays a series of phone calls between several different people of varying ethnicities, discussing their romantic lives and dilemmas.

Homage to Kurt Kren

1997 • 2 min • Austria

A homage to the Austrian experimental filmmaker Kurt Kren, his two films "1000 Years of Cinema" and "Snapspots" and his way of working; and that with a slight wink.

Tomboy

1997 • 5 min • United States of America

A girl’s determination to follow her own hoop dreams makes her a college basketball star and the publisher of the first ever women-in-sports magazine. Using personal narrative, still photography and stop animation, Donna Carter’s 1997 short film Tomboy is an imaginative autobiographical account of an African American tomboy’s journey to success and self-acceptance.

Englewood Cottonwood

1997 • 4 min

Pseudo-hyper-stereoscopic view of one tree over three years. Shimmering life in flexible time, an antenna alert to whose vibrations?

Suicide Box

1997 • 25 min • Japan

An improvised film study starring Kumiko Watanuki's solo play in an empty room.

Winter Square

1997 • 22 min • Japan

A Hundred Sweethearts

1997 • 28 min • Japan

In A Hundred Sweethearts, these worries spread to include the people and things around the filmmaker, as she presents herself as a slightly spoiled but unconceited youth who is used to having others care for her. It is both the comfort of this emotional security and the realization, as she becomes an adult, that it will not last that prompt Utagawa to record these events, seek out past ones in old home movies, and even re-enact them in the present. More than an affirmation of identity, film becomes for her a celluloid blanket, a warm set of images to which she must sweetly but sadly say goodbye as time marches inevitably on. - Aaron Gerow

Sexual Intercourse Camera #1

1997 • 27 min

Featuring Miyagawa Fumiko.

Movements of the Body - 3rd Movement: The Coloring

1997 • 4 min • Canada

Movements of the Body is an animated trilogy illustrating movements of the mind through movements of the body's parts. 3rd movement: The Coloring uses color to create texture, energy and the illusion of movement.

Bruce

1997 • 3 min

A girl named Fuchyako (Kumagai Fusako) is smoking a cigarette and singing to the background music of a blues song. Waterdrops.

Laws of Nature

1997 • 25 min

An experimental film that looks afresh at landscape by using the medium to explore its time and space in ways other than ‘eye view’. A rich, sensual, densely textured film poem that sets out to challenge perceptual habits without being drawn into the seductive trap of the picturesque.

Red Light Diaries

1997 • 8 min

For his animation cartoon Red Light Diaries, Juan de Graaf interviewed inhabitants and visitors of the Amsterdam Red Light District about their live in the area. The conversations, in which sex rarely plays a role, provided the inspiration for a very individual interpretation of the characters.

Muscle Influenza

1997 • 11 min • Japan

Probably the film in which more people are kidnapped in the shortest amount of time than any other film in cinema history. The antics and light-heartedness that run throughout the film, including the storyline, make it worthy of being called a 'violent film', despite the fact that there are no violent scenes at all. It is also a 'hero film' in that the protagonist has style and sticks to it whether he is hurt or not.

RAT ART: Croatian Independents

1997 • 50 min

Zev Asher's fascinating collage documentary "RAT ART: Croatian Independents" focuses on artists working in Croatia, a nation devastated by the war in the former Yugoslavia. Many of these artists, working in the capital city of Zagreb, were relatively distant from the war zone, while others fought at the front lines, but all were equally aware of the war's effects on their nation.