All Films

Selfridges

1983 • 29 min • United Kingdom

Behind the scenes at Selfridges, a department store on Oxford Street, London.

Dream City

1983 • 5 min • United States of America

Ulysses Jenkins composed "Dream City" from documentation of a twenty-four-hour performance he organized in collaboration with David Hammons, Maren Hassinger, and Senga Nengudi. A discordant, absurdist, and poetic montage, the video weaves together jazz and punk shows, recitations by Jenkins, and shots of the Los Angeles skyline and oil wells to comment on power and nation in the early years of Ronald Reagan's presidency.

Spotting a Cow

1983 • 7 min

Directed by Paul Driessen.

Coyoacan

1983 • 60 min • Mexico

Baby Gal

1983 • 51 min • Brazil

Gal Costa performed at the Ibirapuera Gymnasium in São Paulo for four consecutive nights. The "Baby Gal" special aired on Rede Globo on December 16, 1983, and served as the basis for promoting the self-titled LP, which would only be released a week after this year-end special.

Masaccio: A View of Mankind

1983 • 39 min

English artist, writer, curator and teacher Sir Lawrence Gowing narrates a personal exploration of some of the great Florentine painter Masaccio's key works.

Everything for Everyone

1983 • 3 min • Soviet Union

Based on a poem by Julian Tuwim.

Freeze Frame

1983 • 9 min

Freeze Frame is an example of a filmic significator from which the transparency and invisibility has been removed. Material which has been repeatedly re-filmed (a construction site, a rubbish incinerating plant, industrial graveyards, an antenna and line-drawing like frame that continually falls over) are exposed on top of each other. The result is that an unambiguous reading of the picture, to say nothing of their positioning in a fictive room cannot even be attempted. This type of calculated picture removal is carried to the point where the film strip is stopped in the projector (and hence the title) and burns.

Beirut, My City

1983 • 38 min • France, Lebanon

In July 1982, the Israeli army besieged Beirut. Four days earlier, Jocelyne Saab sees her house burn and 150 years of family existence go up in smoke. She then takes refuge in questioning: when did this all begin? How did the Beirut people live the siege? Each place will then become a story and each name a memory.

Here, There Now, Later

1983 • 3 min • United States of America

Two simple and progressive accumulations mingle with the confines of the Moffit Tunnel in the Rockies.

Disney's Wonderful World of Winter

1983 • 9 min • United States of America

Various previously-released Disney cartoons are combined to tell the story of winter and its three major holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Trans

1983 • 22 min • Venezuela

Trans is a 1982 Venezuelan documentary short film that offers an intimate look into the lives of a group of trans women and drag performers in Caracas, exploring their experiences in a society marked by transphobia and homophobia. Through interviews and performances, the documentary highlights the resilience and dignity of these women in the face of widespread discrimination and violence. Premiering at the Venezuelan National Cinematheque in 1982, Trans is considered a pioneering work in the representation of the trans community in Latin American cinema.

UR Lucky

1983 • 7 min

"I placed a medallion on the sidewalk and filmed whoever happened along to pick it up. The film is about not being able to have control over the event, and the acceptance of this fact. This is the first film in my Performance Trilogy, a series of films which also include Snow Search and Making a Scene." (MD)

Snapshot

1983 • 15 min • Soviet Union

A fairy tale-parable on the theme "the artist and the civil war". The photographer and the boy, carried away by one work, the other by posing, are captured. First to the Reds, then to the anarchists.

AZICON Opening Animation

1983 • 10 min • Japan

Opening animation for AZICON.

The Commission

1983 • 45 min • United States of America

This work is Woody's first entry into the narrative sphere, whereby the "story" is continually undermined with the aid of various anti-narrative strategies: In each of the eleven segments of this "electronic opera", different effects are used. Fascinated with the remarkable personality of infamous violinist Niccola Paganini and his complicated relationship to Hector Berlioz (played by artists Ernie Gusella and Robert Ashley, respectively), the author meditates over the intricacies of artistic geniality as connected not only with fame but also with the necessity of painful survival under the pressures of the art market.

Strasek, der Vampir

1983 • 55 min • Switzerland

Serbia, in the year 1910: Milena Strasek has lived with her 12-year-old son Stefan in a small village since the father abandoned the family shortly after Stefan was born. Many years of uncertainty concerning the man’s whereabouts have taken their toll: Milena Strasek falls seriously ill and dies, leaving her son alone in the empty house. The father appears the following night. He has come to take his son, but Stefan refuses to go with him. It is a fateful encounter, changing Stefan for the rest of his life.

Shout for Joy

1983 • 58 min

Rick Irons moves to Hawaii to live in paradise; surf the gigantic waves. At a party, Rick meets Alma who quickly becomes a love interest. While dating Alma, he begins to train for the United States surfing title. As Rick's life is racing to the top on the outside, he personally feels like the bottom is falling out on the inside.

Nail From Home

1983 • 29 min • Soviet Union

There lived a poor peasant with his wife. They had three sons: Mats, Peter and Svend. One day there was a drought, and the family had a hard time. And the sons went to work. Mats took his father's old jacket for himself. Peter - a saucepan to sell. And his younger brother Svend got an old rusty nail...

Our Land, Our Truth

1983 • 54 min • Canada

Made in collaboration with the Inuit Tungavingat Nunamini, this film focuses on those dissident members of the Inuit community who rejected the agreement signed on November 11, 1975, between the Northern Quebec Inuit Association, the Québec and federal governments, the James Bay Energy Corporation, the James Bay Development Corporation, Hydro-Québec and the Grand Council of the Crees, which took away Native rights to a territory of almost one million square kilometres. By their words and actions, the dissident Inuit of Povungnituk, Ivujivik and Sugluk express their strong desire to retain their land and their traditions. The filmmakers go into their homes, on the ice and the sea to record first-hand the lives of these northern people.

An Unusual Ride

1983 • 38 min • Soviet Union

The bus driver notices that the bus has regular passengers, but they don't know each other, they just argue and bicker. The driver deviates from the route, takes the bus into the forest, starts driving, and hides and starts watching from a distance.

Rites of Passage

1983 • 10 min • South Africa

A disillusioned modern man is haunted by memories of a previous life as a primitive caveman who lived in a hostile past world. The caveman walks across a harsh landscape, hunts animals for food, battles savage apes, and scales a deep cliff.

Peace O' Mind

1983 • 9 min

In “Peace O’ Mind” (1983, 8.5 minutes) the characters try to stay safe at home, but become isolated and entrapped there. Images of a domestic space are connected with images of poverty “in the backyard” of this space to suggest knowing of and hiding from this deprivation has entrapped the characters, physically and mentally, in their private, isolated, and disturbed spaces.

Tzubra Tzuma

1983 • 13 min • Brazil

A bird-shaped nave flies over various places with different beliefs and religions.