All Films

The Ten Commandments Number 10: Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbour's Wife

1996 • 10 min

In this short we follow Buck, who falls in love with his dog-loving married neighbor Sally-Ann. In order to be with her he swaps places with the dog…

The Tape-Beatles: The Grand Delusion

1996 • 27 min • United States of America

Produced in 1993, The Grand Delusion is one of our most completely realized works. In addition to taking the usual form of a Tape-beatles release (a CD), The Grand Delusion was also delivered in the form of an ‘expanded cinema’ presentation involving three-screen motion picture projections and sound. The screen space for this production is intended to be three times the width of the normal 3 to 4 "Edison" aspect ratio of 16mm. The presentation only uses the full width intermittently, so transitions from one form to the next has been translated here by means of a video effect. As a live performance presentation, The Grand Delusion has been screened in dozens of venues across North America and Europe.

Gay Cuba

1996 • 57 min

The 1959 revolution which gave Cuba its independence ushered in a new era of equality, blind to race and to gender - but not to sexual orientation. Military necessity and contemporary Stalinist ideology served only to reinforce long-held stereotypes detrimental to the integration of homosexuals into Cuba's perpetually reforming social structure.

A Trace

1996 • 26 min

Marcin Latałło's acclaimed 1996 film about his father, the lead actor in Illumination, Stanislaw Latałło.

Children Only Once

1996 • 50 min • Philippines

The lives of random children from different parts of the Philippines, facing the same predicament of living life of arduous labor to cope with the harsh realities of poverty.

Fax Me/ Homerun 1996

1996 • 5 min

1996 Leo Schatzl video short - a world journey via fax of a self-portrait

History of the Main Complaint

1996 • 6 min • South Africa

History of the Main Complaint is the sixth film [of a] series and is based on twenty-one drawings. It was made shortly after the establishment in South Africa of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was set up to conduct a series of public hearings into abuses of human rights perpetrated during the apartheid era. The hearings, in which individuals told their stories of personal suffering, were held in order to make reparation for abuse and in the hope of creating reconciliation between peoples. The underlying theme of this film is a (self) recognition of white responsibility. This is played out through a 'medical' investigation into the body of Soho Eckstein, the white property-developing magnate and greedy-capitalist protagonist of most of the preceding films, which provides the starting point for a revelation of conscience. (tate.org.uk)

Pretty Vacant

1996 • 33 min

A Tejana punkera from San Antonio, Texas, sets out to investigate and maybe even change punk music history.

White Light

1996 • 22 min • United Kingdom

White Light consists of extreme close-up shots of chrome bath taps and their reflections, including the camera lens, which becomes its own subject, as it closes in on its reflection. This material is mixed with rotoscope animation, created on various surfaces including cel and hand-made paper, where scratched lines are lit from an acute angle to create an image from light and shadow.

A Mexican Fable: Murder and the Feather Boa

1996 • 25 min

La Vanessa was the organiser of the first gay rights march in Chiapas State, Mexico. Four years after her murder in 1992, this study of mexican transvestite culture documents a period of fear marked by 29 brutal murders. It originally aired in '96 as part of Channel 4's Latino Nights line-up ("a season of programmes from and about Latin America"), and--aside from showing up at a few niche trans-festivals here and there--seems to have disappeared altogether after that.

#7

1996 • 32 min • Netherlands

Essentially a slow evolution from black to white, this film is an articulation of the old idea of Aristotle's that colours arise from the clash between light and dark. The colours of #7 are based on the opposition of pigment and light, and are all produced by stamping paint directly onto the negative.

Nature's Fury

1996 • 51 min

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods-these colossal powers of nature have had dramatic consequences for human kind. Now in dramatic scenes of cataclysmic destruction and human courage, you'll journey with National Geographic as we learn how earthquakes create and shape our landscapes, even as they destroy cities like San Francisco and Tokyo. Discover how rotating updrafts can build into the towering tornadoes that sweep the Midwest's "Tornado Alley", or how cloud disturbances can grow in to the awesome hurricanes that ravage coastal areas of Bangladesh and Florida. Witness the devastation of flooding in France and China, and learn, as today's scientists have, that the mightily Mississippi cannot be easily tamed.

SABC TV - 20 Years: The Untold Story

1996 • 52 min • South Africa

A 52 minute documentary on the political history of SABC Television

Steve Earle - To Hell And Back

1996 • 46 min

Steve Earle beat the odds, and he knows it. “I was the ultimate functional heroin addict for a number of years,” he says, introducing himself to a MTV audience that might not be intimately familiar with his life story and ferocious brand of country-rock music. “I got clean because I got locked up. If that hadn’t happened, I would have died. I just made my first album straight this year.” On June 25, 1996, as part of a court order, Steve Earle performed a live concert for prison inmates at Tennessee’s Cold Creek Correctional Facility where Earle was incarcerated in 1994. The concert entitled To Hell and Back aired on MTV on August 17, 1996. Steve reunited with his backing group the Dukes for the concert, and it was an incredible show.

Prelude 18

1996 • 2 min

Singly-printed evolution from a deep blue-blackness of hard-edge twisting and sweeping bars and deep black swirls of dry-cracked and electrically "webbed" blotches, giving way to mixtures of bright blue and deep black sweeps of almost hieroglyphic forms midst swirls of multiple colors played against fleeting blacks evolving into multiple shapes in contrastingly brilliant whites.

Frostbite

1996 • 12 min • Canada

A lonely lighthouse keeper rescues his fantasy: a frostbitten man on the rocks.

Line

1996 • 14 min • United States of America

Writes Donegan: "... The video is the centerpiece of a large project comprised of paintings and video inspired by the Jean-Luc Godard film Le Mépris. This project does not seek to analyze or critique the Godard film, but to use it as a model, as an inspiration, as a 'classical' language through which other stories can be told... I myself 'play' the roles of both Camille (B. Bardot) and Paul (M. Piccoli). In the Godard film, the characters meet over the recreation of Homer's Odyssey as a Hollywood-style film. In Line, my Homer, the representative of the noble, classical past or Father artist, is the American painter Barnett Newman. In the video, the characters struggle over how to recreate one of his classical 'zips.' This abstract expressionist gesture of presence, of affirmation is for them a mark of cancellation, of destruction. Are they wrong?"

Nu'tka'

1996 • 7 min • Canada

Nu•tka• utilizes image bifurcation to explore the history of colonialization on Vancouver Island, where English and Spanish fleets battled over trade routes in the 18th century. Films of the landscape—the only imagery shown—are superimposed on one screen so that the footage appears doubled. This formal effect is echoed by the soundtrack, which includes excerpts from the sea captains’ diaries, which become increasingly paranoid and irrational. At key moments in the narrative all visual and verbal elements meld together in exquisite clarity.

Let's Have Fun! At The Slush Puppie Factory

1996 • 33 min

What is it made of? Who makes it? How and where is it made? Who is he? This sing-along adventure invites young viewers to tag along on a fast-paced factory where the coolest flavors meet big machines...and turn into fun!

Alaska 3D

1996 • 45 min

Take the ultimate Alaska adventure. Combining NEW 3D TECHNOLOGY with fearless cinematography like no other you've ever enjoyed! You'll flightsee MT. MCKINLEY in 3D...from the wing of a bi-plane! See huge GRIZZLY BEARS practically come to life in your livingroom as they crash through rapids in their hunt for salmon! Plus, wade into a herd of reindeer, explore an oil rig on the NORTH SLOPE. Experience up-close the beauty and grace of NATIVE DANCE - all in vivid 3D. Spectacular 3D technology lets you experience the GREATLAND like no on ever has before!

The English Masters: Gainsborough

1996 • 50 min

The English Masters: Gainsborough profiles the life and career of esteemed English painter Thomas Gainsborough, an artist best known for his landscape works. Among other artistic periods, the video details Gainsborough's portrait-making phase, during which, according to critics, he successfully captured the spirit of the Englishman. The Blue Boy is one famous example of Gainsborough's larger portraits, one of several life-size, mural-scale works.

The English Masters: Turner

1996 • 50 min

A Royal Academy exhibitioner at the age of fifteen, J.M.W. Turner, by the end of his life, was the best known artists in England during the Romantic period and one of the forerunners of Impressionism. A life-long lover of landscape and seascape painting, he traveled widely in search of inspiration. No artist had ever painted light and color as Turner did in his astonishing later works. These paintings such as Rain, Steam, Speed and The Fighting Temerair were the conclusion to the long evolution of the art of J. M. W. Turner.

The English Masters: Blake

1996 • 50 min

This video, one of six in the English Masters series, examines the life and career of the English genius William Blake, who was poet, painter, and engraver. Blake found inspiration for his poetry in mystical visions, which he also illustrated in watercolors and engravings, combining his poems and artwork in unique books that his wife helped him print. This program features location footage, as well as expert commentary and analysis by world-renowned art experts.

The English Masters: Constable

1996 • 50 min

John Constable has been eternally associated with just one part of England, Suffolk. As a native of the area, he drew life-long inspiration from his home country in a timeless collection of landscape paintings. One of these, The Hay Wain, may well be the most famous painting ever created by an English artist. However, there were occasions when Constable struggled to gain recognition for his work until the critics in France began to appreciate his genius.