All Films

Crossroads - Strayed

1983 • 23 min • Hong Kong

A young adolescent man (Tony Leung) gets into a scuffle with some local punks and things escalate into a crime. With his single mother ailing from a sickness, the young man contemplates turning himself in at the cost of leaving his mother.

She Said

1983 • 27 min • United Kingdom

She Said explores the theme of women and work, using the formal properties of film to reflect on the overlap between work and free time. The film begins with a series of old and contemporary photographs, cut to a rhythm, which echoes that of monotony. A fragmented dialogue creates a feeling of alienation and lack of control (often identified with the labour process), interrupting further sequences of live action and images. “Feeling strongly that women's work is continuous, I realised that the film work could only be seen after work or in moments of non-work which I hesitate to call leisure. With this in mind I tried to bring this contradiction to the surface within the film itself”' (Susan Stein)

Impetigo

1983 • 5 min

Impetigo is the story of passion and possession in a steamy nocturnal landscape. The title is a reference to the poem A Man All Grown Up Is Supposed To, by Terry Stokes. The characters: Zeke, an inhibited birdlike creature, Flake, a post-industrialist robot and Fish, a fish, live in a barren tract amidst surveillance and entrapment. Their main concerns are lust and what to do on weekends.

Peinture à l'eau

1983 • 21 min • France

Culture of Domination

1983 • 45 min

Ronald Reagan had been elected US president in 1981, and began the long unwinding of post-war progressive economic and social policy awaited by the American ruling class, but which had produced social welfare and full employment for the 50’s and into the 60’s when a combination of the cost of the Vietnam war and the Arab oil shock produced an economic crash. Initiating a program of de-regulation of industry, and of finance capital, and an aggressive anti-union assault, he began the process of offshoring, globalised production and finance, and the beginnings of the financialisation of capital and its oligarchisation that we now face. At the time we were unaware of the extent to which this would polarise and destroy and feudalise the society we were in but we could see the beginnings of the rollback and the destruction.

Pilgrim's Progress

1983 • 9 min • United States of America

A discourse on marketing through images. The "surface" is an abstract potpourri of polyrhythms, "named" items jumping into recognition here and there. I pulled magazine ink off the page with scotch tape and glued the tape strips onto film leader and rephotographed. It is a tale of coming to terms, of suspended disbeliefs.

Peer Pressure: Nobody Tells Me What To Do!

1983 • 23 min

A searing indictment of teenage peer pressure and petty crime in the late seventies.

50°45' N – 7°9' E

1983 • 4 min • Germany

Short film by SCHMELZDAHIN

Tighten the Drums: Self-Decoration Among the Enga

1983 • 46 min

In the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Enga people have developed the art of body decoration as a visual language. Using earth paints, tree oils, bird plumes, human hair, and a variety of plants, the Enga turn the body into a medium for an expressive and dramatic symbolism. This film shows the diverse forms of body art in both daily life and ritual in Enga village society.

Diaph limite 1,2 Posture d'exil

1983 • 9 min • France

shin-SHINPU

1983 • 4 min • Japan

Danki

1983 • 3 min • Japan

Veronica Four Rose

1983 • 48 min

Made with young lesbians aged between 16 and 23 from Newcastle, Liverpool and London, this warm and engaging film explores the ups and downs of being lesbian in a predominately heterosexual and homophobic society geared to wedding bells and boys. The young women interviewed speak openly about their experiences of coming out to friends and parents and how in many cases they were told it was only a ‘phase’ they would grow out of. ‘If you can go out with boys at 14 and that’s OK, why can’t you go out with someone of your own sex without it being a crush’ asks one of the young women.

Grenada: The Future Coming Towards Us

1983 • 54 min • United States of America

Examines the aims and accomplishments of the New Jewel Movement and the reasons for the Fall 1983 U.S. military invasion. The film puts these events in perspective by tracing Grenada's early history, from the annihilation of the indigenous Carib Indians by the European colonial powers which vied for control of the region and then imported African slaves to grow cash crops for European export, to the evolution of modern Grenadian society, including the oppressive regime of Eric Gairy (1974-79).

Canal Cinema

1983 • 9 min • United States of America

"A unique kind of lyricism comes through and hovers over the images on the screen like the light that projects and contains them." –Ernie Gehr on Jim Jennings' films

The Triumph of Man

1983 • 4 min

Experimental short film by Dean Snider.

Just for the Fun of It

1983 • 1 min

Experimental short film by Dean Snider.

Fauvrite

1983 • 9 min

Subatomic Babies

1983 • 8 min

Densely colorized images of a couple making love and a close-up of a child's face dissolve into a nuclear mushroom cloud at the beginning of Subatomic Babies, one of Gorewitz's most highly charged works. Through a dramatic use of image-processing and an ominous, intensified soundtrack, Gorewitz links sex, life and death in an apocalyptic resolution that he calls "ecstasy near the abyss." Human figures — a man shadowboxing, his fists jabbing against the screen — are virtually swallowed up in threatening maelstroms of form and color. Shot in Jamaica and the South Bronx, this work conflates images that resonate with sexual and political meaning, reflecting Gorewitz's concern for the children "born under the atom."

The Popes and Their Art

1983 • 50 min • United Kingdom

A visit of the art collections of the Vatican Museums with British actor James Mason.

Sabangan

1983 • 29 min • Philippines

Recalling how the Pantabangan Dam had disrupted the lives of kinsmen in the southern part of Sierra Madre, the Remontados in Tanay, Rizal, stand their ground in opposition to the proposed Kaliwa-Kanan Dam, a project of the Marcoses funded by the World Bank.

Latah: A Culture-Specific Elaboration of the Startle Reflex

1983 • 38 min

A classic short documentary within medical anthropology.

Shawa Bahmad

1983 • 11 min • Egypt

A day in the life of a rural family.

Headline Today: Guatemala

1983 • 58 min

Headline Today: Guatemala is a war documentary. Two American journalists: Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon explore the internal armed conflict in Guatemala in 1982. After General Efraín Ríos Montt comes to power the few news about Guatemala that appear in the United States' media are apparently positive. The major American media advertises the image of Ríos Montt as a “born again Christian” with a mission to pacify Guatemala. Nothing is further from reality. The Reagan Republican administration hides from Americans the war aid that his administration continues to provide to the Guatemalan army, despite the explicit congressional ban. The international media remains silent about the dimensions of the war in Guatemala while Ríos Montt, with the approval of the local oligarchy, leads for 18 months the largest number of atrocities and human rights violations against the civilian population.