All Films

Bedtime Story

1981 • 6 min

A collage film, made as much from splicing tape as it is from celluloid.

Displaced Person

1981 • 9 min

Daniel Eisenberg's film (or "memory essay," as theorist Nora Alter referred to DISPLACED PERSON) is a challenge to a conventional view of history, a provocation using traditional documentary forms: found footage, newsreels, a radio lecture of French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss and Ludwig van Beethoven's "Razumovsky" quartets.

Skyscraper

1981 • 10 min • Yugoslavia

A day in the life of a tower block of flats, where the two main vertical channels of communication are the lift and the drain.

Sara and Maybelle

1981 • 10 min

A rare filmed performance of the two titular members of the Carter Family.

L'arbre qui gémit

1981 • 10 min • France

A young man and an older woman are prepared for a funeral ceremony, theirs.

The Braggart Sparrow

1981 • 9 min • Soviet Union

About a lazy and boastful sparrow who didn't want to take care of a warm home for autumn and winter in the summer, and then regretted it. But the friends from the sparrow flock did not leave the silly in trouble.

Arabic Numeral Series 13

1981 • 5 min

“With some exceptions, the Arabics take the idea of the void as their ground. That is, the light we do see almost always seems to be set against darkness, or occasionally against white, these momentary flickers that materialize tenuously out of emptiness. But the darkness is not ‘night,’ or even simply some more abstract absence of light, but a more profound vacuum: it represents a world stripped of all the coordinates of the known, an unmeasurable absence. […] These lushly sensual, pleasurable-to-view films are also terrifying: their unpredictability, continually enacting new dramas of surprise, alternatively swamps the viewer in light and leaves him adrift in darkness.”

Fairy Tale on Wheels

1981 • 15 min • Soviet Union

Based on a Georgian folk tale. About an evil attic man who was afraid of children's laughter.

Beats of the Heart: The Romany Trail Part One: Gypsy Music into Africa

1981 • 60 min

The Romany Trail Part One takes us on a search for the lost gypsy tribes of Egypt, up the Nile to the ancient town of Luxor in the shadow of the great Pharaoh’s tombs. Along the way, from the markets of Cairo to the temple of Karnak, we meet dancing girls and acrobats, magicians, fortune-tellers and even mystics performing an exorcism. The programme culminates in the rhythms of Flamenco, in the gypsy caves of the Alhambra, where some of Spain’s foremost gypsy families celebrate their history.

Family Marathon

1981 • 9 min • Soviet Union

The husband prepares for the marathon, rests, and meanwhile the wife prepares food, feeds the children and husband, cleans and so on. During the competition, it is she who produces amazing results of speed and ingenuity, accompanying and saving her husband at all stages. It turned out that despite his stocky height, he is a helpless child who cannot run a marathon without help, but as a result, fame and recognition go to him. Volodymyr Dakhno worked on this film with the master of graphic grotesque artist Radna Sakhaltuyev. The social pro-feminist content is wrapped in an ironic, somewhat psychedelic form.

Toroidal Forest

1981 • 4 min

One tree per frame, each from a different place on the surface of a doughnut-shaped parametric space, cooperate to rotate continuously, slowingly from the one- to the two-dimensional. After a pause accelerating counter rotations attain an approximation of a form of infinite dimension.

The Third T(h)est

1981 • 3 min

1981 short film by Paul de Nooijer and Jerry King Musser

Rencontre des nuages et du dragon

1981 • 33 min

Meeting of Clouds and Dragon is a short film directed by Lam Lê.

Blekbala

1981 • 43 min

Blekbala explores the lives and aspirations of Aboriginal people living in the Northern Territory - on small outstations, remote desert locations and in regional town - from Arnhem Land to Central Australia. It looks at a selection of Aboriginal-run businesses and enterprises: cattle stations; children’s education; community projects; sports and music.

Myth in the Electric Age

1981 • 14 min

"...Berliner's film which talks about nature, culture, and technology impresses through its outstanding classical editing technique...Berliner finds precise and original transitions..."

Time Clock Piece (One Year Performance 1980–1981)

1981 • 6 min • United States of America

For one year, Tehching Hsieh punched a worker’s time clock located in his studio, on the hour, every hour. Marking the occasion by taking a self-portrait on a single frame of 16mm film, the resulting reel documents a year in his life at approximately one second per day – a pace that is polar opposite of the enduring length of the original performance. The punch cards, witnessed by a third party for authenticity, and other ephemera, document Hsieh’s life restructured around this highly repetitive task.

William's Doll

1981 • 14 min • United States of America

Why does William want to play with dolls? He already has trucks and trains and dirt and football helmets, but now William wants a doll. Adapted from a novel by Charlotte Zolotow.

Flying Fur

1981 • 7 min

USA, 1981, colour, sound, 7 min.

The Treasure

1981 • 36 min • Albania

The money that people had collected to finance the war were entrusted to Kiço. After the liberation, nobody remembers the treasure, but Kiço reminds everyone, delivering the treasure without taking anything for himself.

Here Come the Puppets!

1981 • 60 min

Here Come the Puppets! is a special that was taped for PBS during the 1980 World Puppetry Festival. Co-hosted by Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson, it featured performances by Burr Tillstrom, Shari Lewis, Bil Baird and the Muppets. Other performers included Sergei Obraztsov, Manteo's Sicillian Marionettes (from NYC), Albrecht Roser, Bruce Schwartz, Martin Stevens, and Frank Ballard's (at the time, Puppet Arts head at University of Connecticut) "Ring of the Nibbelung."

Marasmus

1981 • 24 min • United States of America

“Although the title refers to a condition of acute malnutrition in which a child is unable to assimilate food, the film is a robust and sumptuous offering. This is no rough-edged, craft-resistant effort. Rather it is infused with a seductive glamour.” –Janis Crystal Lipzin, ARTWEEK

Joy Unspeakable

1981 • 59 min • United States of America

Joy Unspeakable is an ethnographic film that examines the question, what does it mean to be Pentecostal, through the documentation of three types of Oneness Pentecostal services in Southern Indiana: a gospel-rock concert, a regular Sunday service, and a camp meeting. Religious behavior, doctrine, and social values are discussed by several Oneness Pentecostal church members and ministers in interviews interspersed with footage of the various services.

The Saga of Osiris and Isis

1981 • 48 min • United States of America

Journey back to ancient Egypt as Uriel’s students relive past lives through psycho-drama. This incredible video program is a psychodrama that is lifting the veil from a reality previously unknown in the pages of history. Isis and Osiris were two highly advanced spiritual beings from another world who came to Earth 12,000 years ago to teach humankind the Science of Life and the reality of spiritual evolution.

I Talk About Me, I Am Africa

1981 • 54 min

On the culture and politics of radical black theatre work in South Africa under apartheid, featuring Ingoapele Madingoane, Matsemela Manaka, Gibson Kente and the women of Crossroads