All Films

Protest

1981 • 50 min • United Kingdom

A dissident Czechoslovakian playwright awaits trial for his activities against the current political regime.

Cut Flowers

1981 • 4 min • United States of America

Bill works in a flower shop. Brian comes in to buy something special, and wants it to be something exotic.

Night Bombers

1981 • 59 min • United Kingdom

Recorded during World War II, this rare color film traces an RAF Bomber Command night attack on Berlin -- from strategic planning and preparation to the execution of the actual attack with Avro Lancaster bombers. Air Commodore H.I. Cozens filmed the events during a period when the Bomber Command flew into Germany nearly every night for a massive series of raids on key targets.

Beats of the Heart: The Romany Trail Part Two: Gypsy Music into Europe

1981 • 60 min

The Romany Trail Part Two is a penetrating, provocative tour of a fabled people’s existence. It reveals the prejudice they still face daily and which they combat with the lyrics and music they have carried and adapted on their long migrations. Featuring: The music of Django Reinhardt, the ballads of the Holocaust, Hungarian folk musicians and professional restaurant bands, pipers and the greatest names in Gypsy entertainment.

Rr

1981 • 8 min • United States of America

This film is a mix of landscape images seen from train windows and the patterned shapes and shifting tones of moving-visual-thought thus prompted; it was inspired by Robert Breer's FUJI.

Algunos cantantes, algunas canciones

1981 • 28 min • Venezuela

An approach to Latin American protest music.

Couples and Robbers

1981 • 29 min

Couples and Robbers is a 1981 English language comedy/crime film written and directed by Clare Peploe, starring Frances Low, Rik Mayall and Peter Eyre. Two couples -- one with all the riches that dreams are made of, the other with only dreams and schemes -- are brought together by the plotting of the poorer couple. A pair of newlyweds wander through the city streets, bickering about their poverty, until they are distracted by the opulent home of a lawyer. Impulsively, the couple makes off with the lawyer's vehicle for one night of extravagant indulgence. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

Rendez-Vous Video Magazine

1981 • 60 min

This 1981 video magazine “For the Man Who Wants More…” contains Monte Hellman’s short portrait of Francis Ford Coppola discussing business and craft at home and on the set of his Zoetrope Studios, “Inside the Coppola Personality” (aka “Coppola: A Profile”). Also inside is “Modesty”, a self-portrait by Bob Rafelson, shot by Bruno Nuytten; a portrait of a pubic hair dye specialist; a travelogue on Bangkok; a candid camera with a planted hussie at a gas station. a.o.

The Nightingale

1981 • 34 min

A short, stop-frame animation. The film uses puppets to tell Hans Christian Andersen's tale about the song of a nightingale heard by the little kitchen girl at the Emperor of China's palace.

The Cigarette and the Weed

1981 • 2 min • United States of America

The Cigarette and the Weed tells the story of a weed growing on a street corner, and a discarded cigarette butt that rolls up to the weed. The two converse before the cigarette rolls into a puddle and is extinguished.

He Got Caught!

1981 • 10 min • Soviet Union

A team of rodents rescues a hare from a bear den. Vyacheslav Kotyonochkin 's cartoon about indifference.

The Dollar Bottom

1981 • 33 min • United Kingdom

Light-hearted tale about an enterprising Edinburgh boarding school boy who sets up an insurance scheme for fellow pupils in 1953 against getting caned, which quickly earns him a small fortune

Space Visitors

1981 • 32 min • Soviet Union

Several scientists create drama around a mysterious black ball.

We Had Some Happy Hours

1981 • 30 min • United Kingdom

Prestwich Clough, near Bury, is the setting for a disastrous family cricket match and a picnic that does little to assuage rising tempers.

Jizeru Gōda and Rima Aono's Bondage and Sex Trainer

1981 • 30 min • Japan

BDSM erotic-drama distributed by Nikkatsu for home video.

The Sand Island Story

1981 • 28 min • United States of America

This short documentary chronicles a four-month period between 1979 and 1980 when residents of Hawaii's Sand Island "squatter" community attempted to resist eviction from the Honolulu shoreline - resulting in displacement, arrests, and the destruction of a community.

Reflection

1981 • 7 min • Soviet Union

Three parody stories: “The Leaning Tower of Pisa,” “The Tower of Babel,” and “Nike of Samothrace.”

Talking Heads: Rock Pop in Concert

1981 • 50 min • Germany

Adrian Belew augments the band on this 50-minute performance from the Westfalenhalle, in Dortmund, Germany, on December 20th, 1980, for the Rockpop TV show. Set List: Psycho Killer Cities I Zimbra Once In A Lifetime Animals Crosseyed And Painless Life During Wartime The Great Curve

The Jungle Book: A Lesson in Accepting Change

1981 • 9 min • United States of America

How change, in friends and environment, can be faced.

Japan Inc: Lessons for North America?

1981 • 28 min • Canada

Discipline and productivity are more regimented in Japan than in many other parts of the world. For the Japanese, survival means doing things together rather than asserting North-American-style individualism. Japan's industry has automated and computerized at an unparalleled rate. Open-concept offices and collaborative work styles offer a model of the changing style of modern work that could inspire the West to modify their processes as well.

Three Monks

1981 • 20 min • China

Adaptation of the Chinese folk tale that gave rise to the proverb “One monk will shoulder two buckets of water, two monks will share the load, but add a third and no one will want to fetch water”.

Wmen

1981 • 7 min

WMEN evokes 1965, as indicated by the music cues. So, in the period before the Stonewall demonstrations by queer activists, including drag and trans activists, against the oppression of police raids. WMEN feels very much in conversation with Godard’s Breathless, with the collage of cutout magazine figures, its tongue-in-cheek nature, its sexiness, the fashion, and the playfulness.

Morte e Vida Severina

1981 • 60 min • Brazil

The saga of Severino, a poor guy living in the back country of Northeast Brazil, leaving for the big city of Recife, in search of a better life.

Stations of the Elevated

1981 • 45 min • United States of America

Stations of the Elevated exposes viewers to an underground art scene- that is, one found exclusively on the sides of subways and train cars. A moving portrait of late-70's NYC, the film boasts a soundtrack by jazz legends Charles Mingus & Aretha Franklin.