All Films

Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space

1981 • 60 min

Shopping Bag, Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space explores nine Los Angeles based artists reflecting on ritual in their life and art. Artist David Hammons discusses the role of chance and improvisation in his work while working on sculpture on a waste site while N’Senga Nengudi talks about staging her performances in freeway underpasses. Spanning performance to spoken word, environmental sculpture to music each artist talks about how ritual and cultural traditions informs their work. This experimental essay intercuts interviews, documentation and photographs with the music of Don Cherry seeking to adjust the criteria and language used to talk about artists of colour.

Zyzak Is King

1981 • 11 min • United States of America

Gaming group plays a sword-and-sorcery RPG using a computer.

Spacy

1981 • 10 min • Japan

"His films are like a roller-coaster. His way of throwing the act of seeing into utter confusion is an attack on the eyes in their corporeal function, and to attack the eyes is to take on tile body itself as your opponent. The film makes you break out in sweat only by shooting a safe, peaceful gymnasium in the dark." (Koharu Kisaragi)

The Office

1981 • 20 min

Joseph Minion's debut short film.

Flower Music

1981 • 1 min • Soviet Union

A picturesque sketch of flowers.

A Time To Rise

1981 • 40 min • Canada

On April 6, 1980, the Canadian Farmworkers Union came into existence. This film documents the conditions among Chinese and East Indian immigrant workers in British Columbia that provoked the formation of the union, and the response of growers and labor contractors to the threat of unionization. Made over a period of two years, the film is eloquent testimony to the progress of the workers’ movement from the first stirrings of militancy to the energetic canvassing of union members.

No Time To Say Good-Bye

1981 • 10 min • Cameroon

For love, a young woman wants to leave her family and her country, which the other young man who loves her cannot understand.

Stan & Jane Brakhage

1981 • 3 min • United States of America

A poignant portrait of Stan and Jane Brakhage visiting Juarez.

Hatsu Yume (First Dream)

1981 • 56 min • United States of America

With a title referring to Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of a new year are significant, the film - an ardent dream entirely shot in Japan - stands as a spiritual allegory equating light and dark with life and death.

Mitt land (Mi país)

1981 • 7 min • Sweden, Chile

Peter Nestler's short focusses the works of four Chilean artists: two painters [Nicolas de la Cruz and Jorge Kuhn], a graphic designer [Rolando Pérez], and a guitar player [Adrián Miranda]. Together they show, without words, how they see their beautiful country after the coup d'etat - suddenly the colorful pastoral scenes change to the sharp contrasts of black-and-white woodcuts presenting the distorted faces of the military dictators - and what they hope for the future.

Dog

1981 • 32 min • Poland

A young couple's dog becomes a subject of crutiny by the other residents of their apartment complex, setting off a bureacratic nightmare in this satire of Polish society.

Death in the Family

1981 • 51 min • United Kingdom

A family gathering in Greece devolves into deception, incest, and quite a lot of murder.

ditch

1981 • 17 min

An Iranian Movie.

You Are Not I

1981 • 49 min • United States of America

A young woman escapes from a mental hospital during the chaos of a nearby multiple-car accident. She is mistaken for a shock victim and is driven to her sister's house by a rescue volunteer. Then the real story begins...

My Mother Was Never a Kid

1981 • 46 min • United States of America

A trip to the past helps a teenager learn to appreciate her mother

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die

1981 • 60 min • Netherlands

Philo Bregstein tells us this film looks at Pasolini's life and art to explain why he died. The film traces Pasolini's life chronologically - family roots, hiding during World War II, teaching, moving to Rome, being arrested and acquitted many times, publishing poems, getting into film, being provocative, and being murdered. Interviews with Alberto Moravia, Laura Betti, Maria Antonietta Macciocch, and Bernard Bertolucci are inter-cut with readings of Pasolini's poems and with clips from four films - primarily the Gospel According to St. Matthew - to illustrate his changing ideas and points of view. Bregstein makes a case for Pasolini's being lynched.

Mozart in Prague

1981 • 12 min • Czechoslovakia

Mozart's life was turbulent, even in Prague in 1787, when he was pressed for time to compose the overture to »Don Giovanni«.

The Clash On Broadway

1981 • 23 min

Aborted film project begun by Don Letts and The Clash. The intent of the film was to document the events and performances centering around the band's historic seventeen consecutive shows at Bond's International, a club located in Time's Square, NYC, extending from May 28-June 13, 1981. Footage included Topper Headon strolling around NYC at night & being interviewed while riding in a taxi, the group sitting on a rooftop watching a group of young black kids rap and breakdance, the graffitti artist Futura plying his trade, the backstage scene, and stellar perfomances from the Bond's shows.

Talmage Farlow

1981 • 59 min • United States of America

A documentary about the life and career of American jazz guitarist Tal Farlow

Three Blue-Blue Lakes of Crimson Color

1981 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Based on a tall tale, The Liar Hunter by Hovhannes Tumanyan.

The Birth of Solidarity

1981 • 29 min • Poland

A film showing the social mood and tensions in the period between the end of the strikes in August 1980 and the registration of the Solidarity Trade Union in November 1980.

Mary Millington's World Striptease Extravaganza

1981 • 46 min • United Kingdom

As a 'tribute' to the late Mary Millington, a bunch of would-be strippers compete in London to become the 'World's Best'. Blue comedian Bernie Winters punctuates the action with a load of dirty jokes.

Tough Girl

1981 • 60 min • United States of America

Streetwise teenager is sent to live in the suburbs with her father new family.

Iron Maiden: Live At The Rainbow

1981 • 31 min

Live At The Rainbow, 21 December 1980