All Films

Arabic Numeral Series 6

1981 • 11 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.”

The Pool of Life

1981 • 22 min • United Kingdom

A time-capsule of Liverpool in the early 1980s, made by Photoflex Studios to promote tourism in the city.

Les Chants (I, II, III, IV, V)

1981 • 59 min • France

The first series of a film whose course is in parallel with the life of the author. Unlike a newspaper, however, any realistic, everyday element is excluded. Only one theme will carry through the whole work: the expectation of death, its presence at every moment of life, the inexorable advance of time which, hour after hour, day after day, season after season, marks every face, every body transforms every look, invests every place in its light, its forms, its colors, asserts itself in the face of what man believes eternal: the ebb and flow of the sea, the mass of rocks, their stone works.

Portrait of My Mother in Her Garden

1981 • 10 min • France, Greece

Portrait of the filmmaker’s mother in her garden. Part of the Portrait Series by Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki, the film was initially presented as an interlude during the multi-projection performance of Unheimlich III: Les Mères at Centre Pompidou in 1981.

Lygytimah Depheza

1981 • 8 min • Brazil

The suspense of the film consists of already exposing everything that will happen in the first image ('at the age of sixteen I killed my Logic teacher claiming self-defense') and from there seeks to achieve an illogical atmosphere.

龙牙星

1981 • 20 min • China

O Grito do Rio

1981 • 10 min • Brazil

Two thousand fishermen, living in a 50-kilometer stretch of the coast of Rio de Janeiro, between Macaé and Cabo Frio, are threatened with paralyzing their activities. An anhydrous alcohol production plant, located on the banks of the São João River, is causing water pollution, with the indiscriminate release of "vinhoto", a by-product of sugar cane. It prevents the penetration of sunlight into rivers and compromises their oxygenation. Pollution, carried by the current, is already reaching the sea waters. Fishermen, scientists and technicians denounce the plant's procedure, which puts the health of the region's inhabitants and the traditional fishing economy at risk."

'4'

1981 • 42 min • Canada

’4′ originated as a collaborative performance by Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Annastacia McDonald and Jeanette Reinhardt as the S.S. Girls, following events and activities of the women’s daily lives on Main Street. The performance was produced by Paul Wong and co-sponsored by the Video Inn. ’4′ explores the lives and personalities of four women as described by one another in the style of a feuding dysfunctional family. ’4′ was developed as a multimedia performance, first staged at Western Front in 1980, then followed by a tour across Canada and into the USA. The scripted multimedia presentations were later adapted to a video work.

Line Out

1981 • 3 min • United States of America

Chase fuses undulating lines with undulating an disco sound.

Three People Overpass the Mountain

1981 • 53 min • Yugoslavia

A small village during World War II. Due to deep poverty, some villagers engage in trade of goods, contraband, across the mountain border. A great gap opens between the villagers and those fighting the enemy.

Dolmabahce and Atatürk

1981 • 45 min

The research phase of the documentary "Dolmabahçe and Atatürk," made in 1981 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Atatürk's birth, took a year, and filming was completed in three months. The documentary examines the world-famous palace in detail, both in terms of location and structure, and compares its changing functions from the Ottoman period to the Republican era, influenced by Atatürk's presence.

Cinefuge 4 & 5

1981 • 5 min

The only sound version. It begins with a sync-sound version (#5) shot on the grounds of Little Trinity Church as a TV commercial, with John talking to the viewer about his upcoming show at The Funnel Experimental Film Theatre in Toronto. It ends with version #4 with John's friend, dancer Judith Miller, joining the dance in Bickford Park, and which was shot on silent film, then sound-striped and post-dubbed with out-take sounds from version #5.

In The Quest for Šutej

1981 • 16 min • Yugoslavia

Combining the style of a documentary essay and stop motion animation, and inspired by the short story "Palle Alone in the World", Puhovski shows the fantastic, but also terrifying world of Miroslav Šutej's "mobiles". In that world where there are no people, "mobiles" move independently and have their own life, parallel to the life of people, who, due to the different dimensions they live in compared to "mobiles", simply do not notice them.

Ivanov

1981 • 18 min • Soviet Union

A short movie and university exercise filmed in 1981.

Souvenirs/Bourges

1981 • 14 min • France

Bourges, France, May 1981. Invited to the Experimental Film and Music Festival, Hernández films the city for four days. Without a documentary concern, the film starts at a fair. It seems to be inhabited; there seems to be life there.

David und Goliath

1981 • 6 min • East Germany, Germany

The theme of "David and Goliath" is varied through colors, structures and shades in a kind of workshop film. Collage-like graphic elements, materials and different fabrics are used to allow form, color and structure to be experienced in their correspondence to each other and to movement and music.

Le verre n'est jamais si bleu qu'à sa brisure

1981 • 8 min

A film in blue, with a few red moments. It is an attempt to paint with the camera, to try to approach, through the associations/oppositions of objects, elements, colors, a certain tactility assumed by the visual. The Super-8 camera, often hand-held like a pencil or a brush, produces a sum of sketches that the montage has tried to articulate. (The rhythmic component of this one made me give up any use of sound). —Eric Lanz

Time Zone

1981 • 19 min

TIME ZONE is a tapestry of colliding and interfering sounds, photographs and clips, for the most part recorded on the Alaska and TransCanada Highways between the Rockies and the Pacific. From one time zone to another, it explores the relations and combinative impact of time, space, form and content.

Conduit Pages

1981 • 60 min • Soviet Union

Play based on Lev Kassil's story "Conduit and Shvambrania".

About the Cat, About Vasya and Hunting Catfusion

1981 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Nothing with Me When I Die, Those Who Owe Me I'll Collect in Hell

1981 • 20 min • Brazil

An exercise in gentle voyeurism revealing glimpses of the secret side of Salvador, the capital city of the Brazilian state of Bahia, filming a derelict prostitution zone.

It's the Same World

1981 • 20 min • United States of America

It's the Same World is a 1980 American short documentary film produced by Dick Young. Shot on location in various parts of the world, it depicts children in the Philippines who can neither hear nor speak, a brain-damaged child in India, an Ethiopian cripple learning a trade so that he can support his family with dignity, and a Mexican polio victim, whose mother uses therapy to help her daughter walk. Also featured is Terry Fox, the Canadian youth who lost his right leg to cancer and yet set out to run across Canada. The world of the disabled is not a special world, but the same world in which we all live. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Home on the Rails

1981 • 10 min • Netherlands

A couple lives in a house situated on the railway tracks. They lead a peaceful domestic life, despite the periodic interruptions of the train passing through their living room; but when the husband - a gold prospector - falls down on his luck, the train comes to assume a more ominous significance.

Jacobs' Ladder

1981 • 4 min

All is inevitably one. With the golden mean as seed, the fruit is 10 sided. Not "?'s", but "?s'" in homage to Ken, who almost offhandedly wished for wheels within wheels. Breathtaking, mesmerizing, deeply satisfying.