All Films

The Age of Mammals

1981 • 10 min • United States of America

The film focuses on mammals of the Cenozoic Era. It shows many developments and adaptations achieved as milestones in Cenozoic history, such as the evolution of the horse. The film also covers significant concepts such as geological time, differentiation of species, adaptation, and extinction.

Winter's Wish

1981 • 7 min • Yugoslavia

An animated short film.

Bai he hua

1981 • 52 min • China

In 1946’s autumn, troupe medic Lu Lan escorts a shy young soldier to a village en route to the frontline assault on a county town. Initially cold, Lu Lan warms to his honest simplicity and shared hometown roots, as they cajole a beautifully embroidered quilt from his new bride to kit out their field aid station.

Yolanda

1981 • 19 min • United States of America

A film about a housewife obsessed with the idea of a large hairy creature, 12 feet tall, with big feet. Chronicles her eventual breakdown in no uncertain terms.

Contradições Urbanas

1981 • 40 min • Brazil

Who owns the public space? Urban Contradictions documents the State's poorly planned interventions in public spaces, segregating social strata, the neglect of the problems resulting from this social exclusion. Condomínio Selva de Pedra, Cruzada São Sebastião, both in the upscale neighborhood of Leblon, Rio de Janeiro. And the traditional neighborhood of Catumbi: Solutions, Organizations and Contradictions. Urban Contradictions is the report of an investigation on citizen identity and the use of urban spaces.

Izumi Aki and Megumi Aoi: Latest (Live) Turkish Information Ascension 1

1981 • 30 min • Japan

BDSM erotic-drama distributed by Nikkatsu for home video.

Salme

1981 • 26 min • Soviet Union

Estonian Drama Theater actor Salme Reek about herself and others.

The Hungry Grass

1981 • 5 min • United Kingdom

What will become of the American who crossed the seas to visit his ancestors’ graves? After reading his own name on a tombstone will things take a turn for the worse? Never underestimate the perils of sketching in a graveyard, perhaps that uneasy presence is not just an overactive imagination. Take care next time you walk through the long grass after watching this film it will never feel the same again.

Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey

1981 • 60 min • United States of America

Follows the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980.

Nailed

1981 • 55 min • United Kingdom

In a holding centre in Northern Ireland a member of the RUC attempts to interrogate a suspect.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

1981 • 50 min • United Kingdom

Richard Feynman was a scientific genius with - in his words - a "limited intelligence". This dichotomy is just one of the characteristics that made him a fascinating subject. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out exposes us to many more of these intriguing attributes by featuring an extensive conversation with the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner. During the course of the interview, which was conducted in 1981, Feynman uses the undeniable power of the personal to convey otherwise challenging scientific theories. His colorful and lucid stories make abstract concepts tangible, and his warm presence is sure to inspire interest and awe from even the most reluctant student of science. His insights are profound, but his delivery is anything but dry and ostentatious.

The Brunette and Me

1981 • 51 min • France

A rich business man falls for a young girl and vows to fulfill her dream of becoming a punk rock star.

Son of the Eagle Cave

1981 • 24 min • Soviet Union

Based on Elar Kuus' story Välek Vibulane, this adventurous puppet film with a popular-science twist takes us to the Stone Age, offering insight into the daily life and human relationships of that era.

The Design

1981 • 6 min • Czechoslovakia

Animators and urban planners both create worlds, but Czech stop motion specialist Jiří Barta's ingenious paper cut-out short punctures the stifling architecture of communist housing. Skilled hands blueprint an apartment tower standardized specifications. Envelopes contain the elements of each home. Family dwellings, bachelor pads, scholarly studies and artist studios: different social configurations are permitted but restrained to the same uniform box. A dystopian revision of the REAR WINDOW scenario, THE DESIGN's darkly comic social critique still has teeth.

Fannie's Film

1981 • 15 min • United States of America

A 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes of women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this seemingly simple documentary achieves a quiet revolution: the expressive portrait of a fully realized individual.

America Screams

1981 • 30 min

Vincent Price hosts this history of amusement parks and roller coasters across the United States.

The Shape of Things

1981 • 8 min

A singular cinematic figure, San Francisco’s Mike Henderson became one of the first independent African-American artists to make inroads into experimental filmmaking in the 1960s. Henderson’s work throughout the 1970s and 1980s, from which this program of 16mm films is culled, thrums with a sociopolitical, humorous sensibility that lends his small-scale, often musically kissed portraits (which he later dubbed “blues cinema”) a personal, artisanal quality. - Film Society of Lincoln Center. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.

Night on the Town

1981 • 11 min • United States of America

In a run-down hotel for transients, a man sleeps fitfully in bed. He rises to use the toilet down the hall, and while he's there, a burglar enters his room. He returns to find the burglar leaving through the window; the burglar falls to the street beneath. The man leaves the hotel and walks past the fallen burglar to a seedy bar, where he drinks too much and has a hedonistic vision of sex and death. He awakens on the bar-room floor and drags himself out. Is this the end for him?

Lala...

1981 • 47 min • Japan

Hashiguchi's own high school years from 1979 to 1981 on 8mm.

Manchmal möchte man fliegen

1981 • 60 min • East Germany

Documentary about a youth work brigade working on the construction of a tower block in Berlin-Marzahn

A Road Tale

1981 • 10 min • Soviet Union

A modern fairy tale about funny little cars.

What Do They Want?

1981 • 40 min • Norway

A cabaret show with Odd Børretzen and Alf Cranner filmed in September 1979 at the ABC-Teateret in Oslo, Norway.

The Story of Mr. Nanguo

1981 • 18 min • China

Back in the waring States Period, the King of Qi enjoyed listening to the pipe played by 300 people. Knowing nothing about playing pipe, Mr. Nanguo somehow made his way to the band.

Souvenirs/Florence

1981 • 19 min • France

Téo Hernandez's series of Memories... transcribes perfectly the filmmaker's vertiginous ability to capture a city from a few well-chosen places; the juxtaposition of architecture and people creates a mosaic of sensations, exalted by the syncopation of the zooms and cascading shots, clues to the "manner", the "filmmaker's paw".