All Films

Applying and Removing

1979 • 18 min

Applying: a nude woman is painted completely black. Attention concentrated on the process of going from white to black. Removing: she washes herself off in the bathtub, and goes from black to grey to white. Seemingly austere, the film is resonant on many levels, and each viewer brings to it his/her own associations.

Counterpane

1979 • 5 min • United States of America

An unnamed city's angular composition is highlighted in this short by Jim Jennings; Inky black and red geometry betrayed by a beautiful blue sky.

Bed and Sofa

1979 • 12 min

A remake of Abram Room's 1927 silent Russian feature, "Bed and Sofa". Heralded as a revolutionary feminist film, Room's version was suppressed for its radical treatment of sexual freedom, women's rights, and abortion. Armatage's version shifts the emphasis to the woman's point of view and stylizes the narrative. A comedy.

Tin Cans Are My Favorite Treat

1979 • 15 min

The Secret Abyss

1979 • 12 min

Evocations of a space in the mind – limitless, soundless. Blackness punctuated by bursting water bubbles ascending and descending into the unknown. The color red evokes feelings of the inner self – a microcosmic viewpoint for an expansion of time and space.

Children Nevertheless

1979 • 22 min • Palestinian Territory

The film depcits the life of the orphans of Tall Azaatar Martyrs in “Bait El- Somoud”, the house which was set for them by the General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW). It recounts the sufferings that Palestinian children endure in diaspora camps and under the Israeli occupation.

Window

1979 • 3 min • Australia

“A woman stands ironing near a window. You never actually see the ironing, but you experience the repetition and the boredom. You see her from a multiplicity of viewpoints. Finally she opens the bloody window for a breath of fresh air.” (Paul Winkler) [Made for Oberhausen Film Festival, which invited a number of filmmakers to make a three-minute film on the theme of a window.]

A Place to Be

1979 • 55 min • United States of America

A documentary about the design/construction of the National Gallery of Art's East Building in Washington, D.C.

Amazeing Maze

1979 • 5 min • Sweden

Amazing Maze is based on the stories of different people's passion for pinball. Cherry, the company that owned the pinball arcade Alexander Lucas, located in Hötorget subway station in Stockholm, lended their machines for the shooting of this film. The stories are taken from Cherry's ads. Olle Hedman reacted to warnings in the media about how damaging pinball could be for children and youth. (Filmform)

The Rabbit in Australia

1979 • 24 min • Australia

This short documentary produced by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO in 1979 traces the introduction of the European rabbit to Australia and subsequent attempts to control its population.

Gay Pride

1979 • 25 min

The homosexual, or gay, movement has become increasingly prominent in Britain and around the world. In June 1979 Gay Pride Week celebrated a decade of the movement, culminating in a rock concert in London's Hyde Park. "World in Action" talked to members of the movement, and to one of the world's best-known gay musicians, Tom Robinson, one of whose hit songs, "Glad to be Gay", became an unofficial anthem of the movement.

Flippers

1979 • 16 min • France

Dominique Belloir and Rainer Werbitz experimenting with the use of the video synthesizer which, by various processing, explores the fascination of an apparently harmless game, pinball-- The artificial quickly becomes pulsating, violent and sexualized in a frenzy.

Semiconductors. Ninth grade. Physics

1979 • 18 min

A short film by Vladimir Kobrin.

Hand Piece

1979 • 7 min • United States of America

"This hand drawn animated film is a tribute to my hands. It was produced between 1977-79 with the assistance of a grant from the Sinking Creek Film Celebration. This animated film honors the legacy of Jules Engel the original head of Cal Arts Animation Program." -D. Pies. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

Untitled

1979 • 10 min

First a painter, Hugo Cleis was also making home movies that she used to show in her workshop. This one, with no title, depicts an exploration of her paintings.

My Child, My Child

1979 • 12 min

The film begins with a woman reflecting about her role as a person and as a mother. Her love and the sacrifices she has made for her children are evident and she has many happy memories of her time spent with them.

Wandawega Waters

1979 • 9 min • United States of America

Solo work by Dan Sandin acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 2021.

Postkarten

1979 • 10 min • Poland

On colorful German postcards and photos, WW I looks like a great adventure for men. It is enough to compare them with documentary photos describing that terrible period to reveal the whole falsity of the iconographic project of the war.

Survival House

1979 • 45 min

This evocative film is a kind of dossier on San Francisco’s Survival House, which served homeless gay and transgendered people during the late 1970s. Located on Haight Street, the halfway house provided survival services and a supportive environment for GLBT people with nowhere else to go. Through interviews with residents and staff and images that capture both the melancholy liminality of its domestic spaces and the comforting intimacy enjoyed by its residents, Pavlow creates a portrait of a unique place that attracted a diverse group of people during the summer of 1977.

Kiiroiyoru

1979 • 10 min • Japan

This is a film with a rich and expansive image based on an incredibly high technical level, with a mostly female crew, and careful attention to the composition and tone of each cut, and a calculated editing process that follows the flow of the images. A symbolic night for all women, in which something important is lost and something important is gained, is written in a poem-like form over the flow of the images.

Bo Peep 5～7

1979 • 14 min • Japan

This film, which begins with the words "Be Peep 5" scratched into the film, is projected at 9 frames per second, twice the speed of the normal 8mm projection, 18 frames per second. By doing so, the object filmed frame by frame is exposed to the viewer's eyes for a longer period of time, creating an effect that is different from that of normal slow motion, where the object filmed at high speed is projected at a normal number of frames. This creates a strange sense of rhythm that strongly stimulates the viewer's sensibilities. 6 shows the overlapping of colors, and 7 shows the development of an image centered on silhouettes as the mind moves.

Face

1979 • 4 min • Japan

By re-shotting several still photographs in 8mm, the film gives movement to the supposedly motionless still images and uses zooming and other effects to lure the viewer into a surreal world where a man's "face" rotates in time and space. While using the usual methods of depicting an unrealistic world, each movement of the subject successfully creates a rhythm in the image that brings this work to a certain level.

No City Fun

1979 • 12 min • United Kingdom

Amplification of article by Liz Naylor in the Manchester fanzine, 'City Fun', entitled 'No City Fun'. Music by Joy Division.

Material Ecstasy

1979 • 10 min • Japan

Using film as a medium, Umebayashi uses a clear style to depict the fragile, crumbling images of light and shadow that threaten to disappear. Because of the silent nature of the film, you can hear the rhythm and melody in the spectacle of light unfolding on the screen. When the director himself shows the film, he freely controls the speed of the projection to create the effect of a live performance.