All Films

Speak Up, Andrew!

1981 • 18 min

Andrew's friends bully him into preparing a speech for Parents' Night at school.

Un homme est un homme

1981 • 45 min • Central African Republic

Documentary about Central African Republic before and during the reign of Jean-Bédel Bokassa. The first film to be made in the country.

Videograms

1981 • 14 min

1980-81, 13:27 min, b&w, sound Videograms is an ongoing series of text/image constructs or syntaxes using the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor, a device that enables Hill to sculpt electronic forms on the screen. Each "videogram" relates literally or conceptually to Hill's accompanying spoken text, which is visually translated into abstract shapes. Hill writes, "The vocabulary and precision of this tool allowed me to expand the notion of an 'electronic linguistic' through textual narrative blocks created specifically for the electronic vocabulary inherent in the Rutt/Etra device."

You Can See

1981 • 2 min

Life of the Artist

1981 • 38 min • Italy

A serial killer’s sequence of events of high aesthetic understanding, in a black-humor-filled tale resulting from Mauro Mingardi’s outlandish talent.

A Field Guide to Western Birds

1981 • 24 min

"these foolish truly chosen to confound the wise." D.S.

Erinnerungen - Zwei Frauen in Leipzig

1981 • 17 min • East Germany, Germany

A GDR documentary from the 1980s. Sachsenplatz in modern Leipzig: Waltraut Kosetzka, 61, and 55-year-old Inge Arnold are among the women who helped to rebuild the destroyed city after the collapse of the Third Reich. The film portrays the two women, documents their biographies, accompanies them in their everyday professional and private lives and visits their old places of work as rubble women. To emphasize the importance of their work, old footage of destroyed buildings is contrasted with new buildings. It is repeatedly emphasized that their work made a decisive contribution to improving housing conditions in Leipzig. To this day, the two working women are committed to maintaining their city.

Dangling by Their Mouths

1981 • 60 min • Canada

A 60 minute tape that tells in flash-form the story of a European critic and her relationship to three people; her lesbian lover who died of cancer, a Canadian / director in theatre, and a young performance artist who adopts her persona in a performance. The issue deals with sexual roles, love relationships and women's views of themselves in social/sexual relationships with women and men.

The Feathered Life of Rajasthan

1981 • 19 min

The film explores the Ghana bird sanctuary, the Ranthambhor game sanctuary and the desert regions of Bikaner and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan where a variety of birds from various parts of the world and India come. The lordly Siberian cranes fly in from Siberia after breaking their journey at Kabul. Out of the around two thousand surviving members of the species, one section spends the winter in China while another camp with their young ones for five long months at Bharatpur. Other birds in these areas include the Black Necked Stork, the Pintail, the Adjutant Stork, the Old World Spoonbill, the Egret, the White Ibis, the Darter, the Little Dabchik, the Cormorant and the Pheasant.

A Sheath-Knife

1981 • 14 min

Kauhava master craftsman Kustaa Lammi makes a traditional Finnish puukko knife.

A Soft Warrior

1981 • 11 min

Nina's first collaboration with her sister Tinka Menkes, the film documents, in a strange and beautiful way, a serious illness suffered by Tinka, and also expresses how art is a transformative response to life.

Lesbians (Gay Life)

1981 • 34 min

Gay women from different generations discuss their experiences in this revealing TV documentary.

Cinématon n°120 : Paul Sharits

1981 • 4 min • France

Salve

1981 • 14 min • United States of America

"There's a paradox at the center of Couzin's work, in that for all of the wariness of form and order her films express, they remain tightly organized, elegant formal studies. ... SALVE is her most paradoxical film and, I think, her richest. A young girl's discovery of 'the relationships between the quantities' – of geometry, volume, time, and numbers – is seen as an ineffably tragic development." – Dave Kehr Awards: Ann Arbor Film Festival; SF Art Institute Film Festival.

It Happened One Day

1981 • 11 min • Egypt

Consequences of the collapse of a new realty.

Psychedelic Furs: LIve on Rockpalast

1981 • 59 min • Germany

Psychedelic Furs performing live in Berlin, April 11, 1981, at the height of their creativity. Songs include: "Into You Like a Train," "Pretty In Pink," "Imitation of Christ" and more.

Panorama de Santiago

1981 • 7 min • Chile

Panorama de Santiago, is a video-performance classified as the first video art made in Chile (1981). In it, the artist runs for several minutes with his camera, making a tour from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes to the stairs of the Biblioteca Nacional. The image oscillates and distorts as if the spectator were the one running frantically, an effect that -in the artist's words- seeks to speak of the Chilean dictatorial context at the beginning of the 1980s.

Rock & Roll Pet Store

1981 • 4 min • United States of America

Animated short about animals that have a rock & roll party after the pet store closes for the night

Mônica Passos

1981 • 23 min • France

Brazilian singer Mônica Passos on stage in Paris. In her small apartment she prepares a meal. In the studio she records the song "Itaipu". She speaks of her rebellion against the power plant, that harms nature. In a park, he sings "Itaipu". His powerful voice reproduces bird sounds. She throws stones into the water, creating a visual analogy with sound waves. With her guitarist husband she walks, playfully, away from the camera.

Paris mis à nu

1981 • 29 min • France

A walk in Paris in 1981 with one of the first thermographic cameras detecting different levels of heat. A whole different perception of the urban environment. In color and b&w.

A New Rout

1981 • 2 min • Soviet Union

Animated satirical sketch on the comfortability of urban public transport during rush hour.

Gridrose

1981 • 2 min

Computer generated. "With all the grace and flair of an elegant proof." - Carol Mickett. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

Wir sind Sintikinder und keine Zigeuner

1981 • 20 min • Germany

The nine-year-old Sinti girl Brigitta shows us her world. She lives with her family in a caravan site on the outskirts of a small Bavarian town. Everybody still speaks Romani and continues to live by the customs handed down. That means that the children take part in adult life and that the very highly respected parents describe how it used to be. In this community, all age groups live together naturally. For these Sinti, `gypsy' is an insult. At school they are taught there are two cultures, two languages and two realities: that of the Sinti and that of the Germans. While German is spoken at school, the only pupils are Sinti children. Brigitta animatedly describes the material deprivations, which are mollified by the life as `one big family'. Brigitta knows all too well where she belongs.

終りなき夜

1981 • 17 min • Japan

An old man who used to be a projectionist, a cassette deck that comforts his solitary life, a nude photo of a woman who used to be a mobo (modern boy) and his girlfriend. These are the reality of Narita's performance. He brutally cuts them out and composes the film based on his own theme. It is the sincerity of the cold, detached, painstaking images of his wrinkled, toothless mouth that make him seem so present, even though he has lost his job. Without using any dialogue, the director Nagasaki poetically condenses what he encounters in the small room, which is interesting because it allows us to discover something that we had not noticed in our daily lives.