All Films

Guew Bi: Sabar Dances of Senegal

1997 • 30 min • Senegal

Senegalese often set up a temporary stage at a street corner. It is the Guew Bi, the dancing circle where a cheerful crowd dressed in beautiful attire slowly gathers. The event is called a sabar. Soon drummers start playing and one at a time, women and men get up and enter the Guew Bi to perform the most exuberant, breathtaking dances. This film, which introduces us to an astonishing contemporary art form deeply rooted in African tradition, was shot in the streets of Dakar, with the participation of Master Drummer Doudou Ndiaye Rose.

Strait

1997 • 12 min

A highly charged and smart experimental narrative that explores the relationship between sexuality, gender, and the public sphere. Waiting for a train to an unknown destination are two couples: one lesbian, one straight. As they move through the public and semi-public spaces of the train station - lobbies, stairwells, bathroom stalls - the couples and individuals exchange a series of glances (some overt, some furtive) that implicate one another in a web of desire, power, fear, homophobia, and heterosexism.

Kingdom of the Seahorse

1997 • 56 min

To many of us they are a figure of fancy on par with the unicorn. To scientists, however, the seahorse is a fascinating object of study. Unlike other animals, in seahorses it is the male who get pregnant and gives birth. But to populations around the world, the seahorse is something else again; considered a source of sexual prowess to proponents of traditional Chinese medicine, the magical seahorse is also a crucial source of income to fishermen in the Philippines who harvest and sell them to that burgeoning trade.

Inagina: The Last House of Iron

1997 • 52 min

Swiss archaeologist Eric Huysecom and cameraman Bernard Augustoni work with 13 master smelters to recreate the building of a traditional furnace for smelting iron in Mali. There has not been any traditional iron smelting in Africa since the 1960's, in part due to the importing of cheaper substitutes. The building of the furnaces and the work involved in the actual production is deeply entwined with ritual, symbolism and gender. This film describes in great detail every aspect of the event, from the selection of the site of the reconstruction - which is the oldest remaining furnace site in the region, last active in 1961 - to the final result.

Borders

1997 • 2 min • Sweden

Tosun's short animation is an allegory of imposed boundaries. The film was made with the support of Filmverkstan, which became one of the most important institutions for filmmakers who immigrated to Sweden.

The Hooley Dooleys

1997 • 40 min

Witch City

1997 • 56 min • United States of America

Told from the perspective of a returning native, Witch City is an uncompromising documentary about Salem, Massachusetts, a town that put the phrase "witch hunt" into the American vocabulary and a place where today a Disneyesque version of history serves the purposes of both commercial and religious interests.

Schwarzfilm Mit Lichtton

1997 • 10 min

A conversation between the filmmaker and his mother in the purest form; cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, about the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis in Peru. Calling for a delivery of noodles for lunch, but the delivery service is closed. Starting to cook udon noodles. A telephone dialling, a car ride. The noodles are cooked and people talk about Germany. The sound of the cooking appliances: rattling and sizzling. A pure focus on the conversations.

Fetus Kazoo

1997 • 12 min

A trio of short films by Janice Inskeep. Stories include "Urine Sample", "Potential Christ Cabaret" & "Lethal Injection".

A Tale About the Blue Cloak

1997 • 10 min • Belarus

The daughter of a king, who also is a wizard, helps her beloved to outwit her father.

Sunday at the Preschool

1997 • 20 min • Japan

Mongibello

1997 • 58 min

Mongibello is an episode of Gérard Courant's Filmed Notebooks shot in Châteauroux, Paris, Taormina, Saint-Maurice, in the Vivarais region, in Burzet, Villefranche-sur-Saône, Deauville and Moncton, in New Brunswick, Canada.

Anatomy of a Dewback

1997 • 26 min

See how some of the special effects in Star Wars became even more special two decades later! George Lucas explain and demonstrates how his team transformed the original dewback creatures from immovable rubber puppets (in the original 1977 release) to seemingly living, breathing creatures for the Star Wars 1997 Special Edition update.

Acquiring a Taste for Raffaella

1997 • 14 min

Raffaella's first period comes at the same time as her first crush, on Shaun, a cook's assistant and the brother of her friend Sharon. Raffaella's Italian aunt insists that they make "love biscuits" for Shaun, a recipe from the old country using three drops of menstrual blood. Raffaella sends the cookies to Shaun via Sharon, who announces her own crush on Raffaella. Is it the cookies? What's a girl to do? With the help of her aunt and some ideas of her own, Raffaella finds a solution and learns something about friendship and romance.

Flux

1997 • 1 min • United States of America

Animated plant-like shapes, rooted in a barren desert-like landscape, wave and move in time to music.

Chile on the Road to NAFTA, Accompanied by the National Police Band

1997 • 11 min

A bouncy music-video burlesque shot in and around Santiago, Chile, entwines reminders of U.S. corporate presence and of past political terror, with national and international musical strains. Chile, at the southernmost end of South America, was in 1997 on the fast track to admission into the economic alliance known as the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Chile was enjoying its reputation abroad as a free-market success — a reputation promulgated by those who aided or supported the fascist coup led by General Augusto Pinochet, which had violently overthrown the elected government and led to the deaths of the President, Salvador Allende, and thousands of others, and the exile of tens of thousands of political refugees.

Give Us This Day

1997 • 58 min • Iceland

This one winter's day encapsulates a thousand years fishing and seamanship in Iceland. We gain an insight into an inner and outer world, where manual labour, man's beliefs in nature, Christianity, superstition and even magic are interwoven. We are questioned if we could imagine how this world of the rowing boat crew, wich reflects the ancient class-divided society, really looked like? How did they percive the nature around them, their God in this nature, it's unstable weather conditions, it's harshness when they go to sea to harvest its riches to make it possible for themselves as well as their nation to keep on living on the edge of the habitable world? Here we are face to face with the very foundation of fishing nation's culture.

Siggi Valli on a Motorcycle

1997 • 12 min • Iceland

The Silence Is Baroque

1997 • 12 min • Netherlands

The rough voices of men (from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Accatone ) open the film soundtrack, they banter in Italian about taking flowers to the cemetery. Filmed in Granada and Seville during Holy Week. The soundtrack mixes a cacophony of the music of the marching bands recorded live on location, the ambience of the crowds and the sung laments. The centre piece is The Silence, a totemic hyper realist effigy from the 17th century which processes at midnight in total silence along the streets where the lighting has been turned off. After it passes, we cross over into the light and noise of a new day – where people throng the streets, sit in cafes and enjoy life. Popular devotion is expressed in death intertwined with the applause for life in the energy of the Baroque.

The Disney Boycott: A Just Cause

1997 • 31 min

The entertainment giant has turned its back on traditional values and sold its soul to the dark side. What price will society pay for Disney's dirty profits?

Mambo

1997 • 5 min

A strikingly colourful, surrealistic, animated film, inspired by the work of female Peruvian singer Yma Sumac. A tragicomical story of a little boy who dies and goes to heaven, only to be seduced by an operatic angel who takes him to hell.

Light Valve

1997 • 47 min • Cuba

Alienation and anger in modern society resulting in apocalypse.

Love Creation Mk2 - Urban Love

1997 • 3 min

MS-DOS demoscene short film that showcases computer animation and music.

Drop Frame

1997 • 3 min • Japan

Super 8, 1997.