All Films

Jeux de masques

1981 • 6 min • France

A film by Haydée Caillot.

Performance for Heidelberg

1981 • 4 min • Japan

A Film by Keiji Uematsu.

Metsade taga

1981 • 16 min • Soviet Union

The small town of Iisaku in the middle of the large forests behind Alutaguse has long been known for its lively spirit and cultural-minded sense of life. The people of Iisaku talk about its past and present.

Premature

1981 • 55 min

Filmmaker David Parry records on film for one and one-half years the personal crises in his marriage which began with the premature cesarean birth of his first child, who was given a one percent chance of surviving without physical or mental defects.

Progeny

1981 • 18 min

Progeny is a collaboration with sculptor Bradford Smith. Smith's organic and sensual sculptural forms are transformed by the merging of one of Steina's Machine Vision devices — a rotating, mirrored sphere with pre-programmed camera movements and optical transpositions — with Woody's digital processing.

Fractive Clusters

1981 • 15 min • United States of America

Contemplative images of rivers, snow, waterfall, mountain and bodies.

J'ai droit à la parole

1981 • 30 min • France

In the blocs of low-cost housing in Colombes, the tenants’ association takes part in renovating the buildings.

Mechanics As A Science

1981 • 16 min

Short educational film by Vladimir Kobrin.

A Variegated Butterfly

1981 • 10 min • Soviet Union

A Georgian animation rarity that recounts the transition in the life of a musician who has decided to change his violin for a musical box, where a multicolored butterfly is witness to all the moments in the ephemeral life of this character.

The Interview

1981 • 8 min

Rosemary Wilson leaves home one morning for a very important interview, but finds her car has a flat tyre. Luckily ‘a friend’ of her husband spots her dilemma and offers her a lift. After a series of setbacks they reach the Town Hall, 15 minutes late. Here, Rosemary discovers that the fact that the job has already been appointed isn’t the only shock that awaits her.

Blotcher Film

1981 • 1 min

16mm experimental short film.

Bored Members

1981 • 2 min

16mm experimental short film.

Light Journals

1981 • 35 min

"A series of catalogs of light, "light journals" if you will, dealing with everyday, ordinary realities in such a way that the surrounding light becomes tactile and intimately expressive." -WV

Choto Bakulpurer Jatri

1981 • 46 min • India

Dibakar, a humble factory worker sets out with his wife for his marital home in Choto Bokulpur as his wife was disturbed after hearing the news of unrest and violence there. She wants to assure that her parents are safe amidst the revolution of the peasants which the police and army were trying hard to suppress. As they reach the outskirts of the village they are stopped by few men who start questioning them. They are thoroughly searched and their luggage is thrown open to check if they are revolutionaries. They get no evidence against them in their luggage. But, when Dibakar is searched they find a paan wrapped in a piece of paper bearing an advertisement lauding the brave efforts of the revolutionaries and condemning the tortures of the suppressors. Despite Dibakar’s repeated assurance that he isn’t a revolutionary they kill him mercilessly and thus ends an innocent life.

Snip, Snip

1981 • 30 min

Mary Brown, the head of Ontario's Censor Board, spends an afternoon with the gals cut, cut, cutting.

Tommy Orr, Blacksmith

1981 • 6 min

This loving crafted short documentary follows the work of Tommy Orr of Killinchy, Co. Down, who has carried on the family tradition as a blacksmith for over 40 years. From the ringing of the anvil to the smoke billowing from the roadside forge, this film focuses on his work as a farrier and shows not only the unique skill that’s required but his genuine love and pride in his work.

Little Bear

1981 • 17 min • Soviet Union

A documentary film about a bear's adventures.

Street Scene

1981 • 2 min

A comedic short using existing footage of a building demolition. A voice over is used to make it seem as if a film director is shouting instructions to actors and technicians, finally giving the order to destroy the building.

Anniversary

1981 • 18 min • Poland

The film is the author's message of memories and reflections evoked by the celebrations of the anniversary of Warsaw's uprising. The picture of the cemetery with crowds of people who came to visit the graves of the insurgents presented in a way that aroused emotions because of the power of the memories it refers to, but also because of the fact that the anniversary was private, unorganized - it was an expression of spontaneous, grassroots activity. The Warsaw Uprising lived in the memories and emotions of those who remembered it, who lost loved ones, friends, acquaintances, but also lost their city, because Warsaw is also the subject of this personal anniversary.

XY - Watch Out for the Trap

1981 • 12 min

Blumenschein stages surreal, minimalist tableaux featuring herself and collaborators amid stark black‑and‑white visuals. Part of Infermental 1, a film that gathers short films of many German directors and lasts 4 hours.

Anabasi

1981 • 25 min

In Anabasi there is a fantastic projection of something strictly private, autobiographical: the author's relationship with his wife, which is poetically transfigured and goes through a series of metamorphoses: woman-fruit, woman-earth, praying mantis. (…) The recurring places inhabited or traveled by the Woman are the House and the Garden, a physical and mental place that becomes, from time to time, a primeval Eden and a Labyrinth full of dark presences. The Woman walks through the Garden-Labyrinth in search of a lost symbiosis with nature. Continuously enters and exits the Oedipal Womb-House. The vineyard and the cosmos in formation and perennial metamorphosis spring from his own body. At times they seem to incorporate it within themselves, in a panic relationship of total identification. The Garden, the Vineyard, the Sun allude to solar and telluric symbolism, to the great seasonal myths of fertility.

Echo and the Bunnymen • Shine So Hard

1981 • 33 min

Shine So Hard is an abstract and fragmentary (*) short film made in 1981, As the post-punk band Echo and the Bunnymen had concluded the tour promoting their debut album “Crocodiles”, Bill Drummond, their manager, hatched a plan for a one-off gig on 17th January 1981. It was to be a special event, a mystery show. The venue, at first a secret location was, in fact, the Victorian concert hall at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, a quiet spa town in Derbyshire’s picturesque Peak District. “Shine So Hard” documents the event, what Ian Pye of the Melody Maker described as ‘A Coppola inspired vision of Armageddon’. The film was released on the 13th of August 1981. It was premiered at London’s ICA and screened for two weeks there and elsewhere in the UK. (*) The book drummer Pete de Freitas is reading, is Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”.

Line Up

1981 • 6 min • United States of America

Chase's frenzied line manipulation creates dazzling patterns. With music by Gwen Watson.

Wieviel Fernsehen für Ihr Kind?

1981 • 15 min • Germany

Short educational film about television