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What Am I?

What Am I?

1980 • 27 min
Years before the Gender Recognition Act of 2004 enabled transgender people to obtain some basic rights, the practical difficulties faced by those wishing to change the sex assigned to them at birth were explored in this film produced for the ATV current affairs series Format V. Touching and sometimes frank, the film looks at issues around acceptance but there are also moments of humour, such as Steve's bad luck when bumping into his mother on his first night out presenting as male. The short also features an interview with April Ashley.
The Rain of Paris

The Rain of Paris

1980 • 10 min
A street artist draws pictures on the pavement in Paris, begging for money. After a rain all his paintings are erased so he starts all over.
Pastoral

Pastoral

1980 • 10 min • Bulgaria
The people in the village are being ridiculous. The woman pulls water out of the well, but the handle hits her several times. While the barber is sharpening his razor, the client's beard reaches his waist. The farmer stepped on the hoe and it hit him. A blacksmith can't strike iron while it's hot. The dog does not chase the wolf, but bites its owner. A mouse eats a cat. In the finale, it turns out that the only thing the villagers can do normally is to play a folk dance. In their hands, the dancers hold sickles and hammers.
The Drumlin

The Drumlin

1980 • 18 min • Ireland, United Kingdom
Two children playing hide and seek stumble upon a strange visitor on the beach. This sparks a chain of bizarre events inspiring civil disobedience in a Newtownards housing estate.
The Belt of Lielvārde

The Belt of Lielvārde

1980 • 19 min • Soviet Union
The film explores and attempts to decipher the complex ornaments encoded in the traditional folk costume accessory, Lielvārde’s belt, drawing parallels with ancient cultures in Japan, China, Egypt, and elsewhere.
Balloon

Balloon

1980 • 2 min • Switzerland
8mm film by Roman Signer.
Secret Horror

Secret Horror

1980 • 14 min
Another regular evening at Mike's house turns into a comic nightmare. Finding himself a stranger in his own apartment, a "world totally fashioned from the effluvia of TV and pop music," Mike is plagued by a mysterious drop ceiling, his dry cleaning, and a host of ghostly visitors. This postmodern comedy of the banal is told as a suspense drama, in which an unseen "we" whispers imperatives to the hapless Mike, whose life becomes a TV game show in a place "somewhere between initiation and renovation." References to such pop trivia as the Partridge Family and the Kingston Trio suggest a collective cultural unconscious of trashy sitcoms, pop songs and brand names. Smith concludes with the outrageous but oddly affecting spectacle of Mike eating Bridge Mix and dancing to Neil Diamond's Forever in Blue Jeans.
Track

Track

1980 • 2 min • Switzerland
8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.
Besuch aus dem All - Gefahren beim Fahren

Besuch aus dem All - Gefahren beim Fahren

1980 • 9 min
The film is the second part of a three-part series on cycling education. In the form of a game plot from science fiction, this episode presents the basic skills of cycling in public traffic areas: Starting, riding to the right and keeping your distance, passing stopped vehicles, overtaking slow-moving vehicles.
Wet Weather

Wet Weather

1980 • 10 min • United States of America
Composed of images from night performances on the Electric Stonehenge Theater in Brooksville, Florida. Evokes spirits of the animals on a foggy spring night on a hilltop farm.
The Scratchman

The Scratchman

1980 • 3 min
Scratched lines and shapes float around this footage of a military spokesperson
Arme Aufschneiden

Arme Aufschneiden

1980 • 1 min
Shortfilm by Max Müller
Emergency First Aid Series: Accidental Poisoning

Emergency First Aid Series: Accidental Poisoning

1980 • 11 min • United States of America
Discusses the dangers of accidental poisoning, particularly in children, due to household substances like cleaners and medications. It emphasizes the importance of identifying the product involved in the poisoning, recognizing symptoms, and taking immediate action. Key steps include diluting the poison with milk or water, calling for medical assistance, and bringing the poison container to the hospital. The document also highlights the risks of drug misuse and inhalation of toxic fumes, urging quick responses to emergencies.
A Kind Trace

A Kind Trace

1980 • 10 min • Soviet Union
The documentary is about an old man from Yerevan who paints on garages, transforming rusty metal walls into vivid landscapes and leaving a subtle yet unforgettable mark on the city.
A Short and Elegant Hospital Stay

A Short and Elegant Hospital Stay

1980 • 7 min
The scene I shot from my hospital bed when I was hospitalized with a punctured lung (a condition called spontaneous pneumothorax). A snowstorm outside the window. A wristwatch that had stopped working. An apple that looked strangely vivid. Tubes connected to my body. The bodily fluids inside them.
Yorky Billy

Yorky Billy

1980 • 18 min • Australia
YORKY BILLY is set in Ngurgdu (Spring Peak) in the Northern Territory, an area irrevocably disturbed by uranium mining. There, 80-year-old William Alderson (known as "Yorky Billy") reflects on his life in the outback. Yorky's mother was an Aboriginal woman who died when he was three, and his father was an Englishman who spent 45 years in Australia and "tried everything" as a prospector, railwayman, drover and buffalo hunter, often with his young son working with him. After the WWII, Yorky married an Aboriginal woman and worked in various jobs. He and his wife had a large family, and in 1977, Yorky Billy recorded his story and died soon thereafter, and was buried near his father at Ngurgdu. Filmed simply with minimal editing, this is a poignant, elegiac reflection on a disappearing way of life, capturing Yorky's slow and quiet rhythm of speech, his wry humour, and with his weather-beaten face only just emerging from the deep shadows inside his corrugated iron shack.
Boys Will Be Men

Boys Will Be Men

1980 • 30 min
This film takes a candid, inside look at the world of juvenile delinquency. We are shown the tough existence on the streets of Montreal, but it could be any city in North America. Some boys as young as ten years of age talk about their lives of crime, the things that are important to them, and the hopes they hold for the future.
Déjà ? vu

Déjà ? vu

1980 • 11 min • France
On Sacred Ground

On Sacred Ground

1980 • 56 min
On Sacred Ground looks at the story behind the Noonkanbah dispute, the well-publicised Aboriginal struggle to stop mining in the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the late 1970s. Presented by a young spokesman for the Kimberley Land Council, the film gives an Indigenous view of the area's history from the early days of European colonisation. It explores the problems of Aboriginal dispossession and loss of identity and the efforts that have been made towards self-determination, economic self-sufficiency and maintaining language and culture. It helps explain Aboriginal ties to the land, the importance of sacred sites and the reasons for the land rights struggle.
The Great American Hobo

The Great American Hobo

1980 • 30 min • United States of America
The Great American Hobo produced in 1980 features the music of Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home" documenting the men and women who rode freight trains. Shot in 14 states and culminates with the Hobo Convention in Britt Iowa. Premiered the Independent Eye series for PBS in 1980.
Intertidal Zone

Intertidal Zone

1980 • 14 min • El Salvador
La Zona Intertidal was made at a time when terrorist acts from both state and paramilitary were the order of the day in El Salvador and shaped the global perception of the country. Instead of the agitprop montages that characterized the political cinema of Latin America in the 1960s and ‘70s, this film is dominated by a feeling of deceptive calm: a beach, lapping waves, a man reading in a hammock, two men in conversation... The violence that breaks into these scenes is hinted at more than it is depicted. Only a closing text panel dedicating the film to the murdered teachers of El Salvador establishes a clear political context. LA ZONA INTERTIDAL was shown at the Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1982 and awarded one of the main prizes by the International Jury. The festival program listed a “Grupo los Vagos” as the author of the film, a four-member collective that had begun working together in 1969 as the theater collective Taller de Los Vagos and later switched to the medium of film.
Beat the Deva

Beat the Deva

1980 • 49 min
Using film noir, documentary, and animation, focuses on the offbeat artistic and spiritual theories of Russian composer, Alexander Scriabin. Show how a detective/filmmaker, attempting to cash in on the special effects of inner space, becomes obsessed with the idea that he has been chosen to compose Scriabin's "mystery" festival.
Adulto Não Brinca

Adulto Não Brinca

1980 • 8 min • Brazil
The tradition of working out Judas in a suburb. The doll is placed on the street like a corpse and a bunch of children are faced with the consequences of this innovation.
Delusion

Delusion

1980 • 12 min • United States of America
Strange occurrences in the home of a young man who believes he sees the ghost of his dead brother, in this 1980 short, low-budget, "HItchcockian" horror film, written, directed and originally edited by film auteur, Jose Pelaez.