All Films

A History of Dancing

1976 • 9 min

A History of Dancing visually follows the transmigration of the soul after death, going through several states before reaching a final destination similar to Nirvana. (A similar transmigration occurs in my films, None Saved, and Alaska.) For the film, I created my own “wipes” to use as transitions, following a tradition developed in the silent era. Ultimately, A History of Dancing explores trauma I’d gathered from an insecure childhood growing up in suburban Connecticut—during which two of my siblings had died violently as teenagers. The lesson for me was that one must come to terms with death, for it is always nearby, even among the well-to-do and supposedly sheltered.

Nico – Live at Théâtre Campagne-Première

1976 • 60 min

An evening with harmonium & flute. Nico plays stripped down versions of "The Drama of Exile" tracks and some oldies at the Théâtre Campagne-Première, Paris on March 31st, 1978 backed by French flutist Didier Malherbe.

Emotion Ship

1976 • 33 min • Japan

These are Yamashita Park and Yokohama sightseeing boats in 1976. In the live action section, I expressed the relationship between the landscape and the viewfinder with a moving matte, and in the photographic section, I explored the relationship between the image and the frame by presenting various patterns.

TV Guiding

1976 • 12 min

A television obsessed teenager is pulled into his set and thrown into adventures as he is “channel switched” into various shows and movies. A low budget independent “Sherlock Jr” for the 1970s.

First Americans (Part II): Some Indians of the Southlands

1976 • 15 min

Stapp's pointillist style here has matured since the first of the series, done in 1969. Here, he also makes extensive use of parallel images converging and diverging on the multi-plane camera.

Lask

1976 • 9 min • Soviet Union

A film composed of three satirical short stories that ridicule militarism, colonialism, and war mongers.

Feu, fumée, saucisse

1976 • 22 min • Switzerland

Sausages are smoked in a practically derelict house. For former farm worker Fritz Marti, who likes to meditate expansively on his life in his smokehouse, there is something philosophical about this activity. Lucienne Lanaz has lived in Grandval in the Bernese Jura since 1974. “Feu, fumée, saucisse” was her first documentary film, marking the beginning of an extensive production in which her talent for film portraits clearly stands out. The intimate yet respectful way in which she portrays Fritz Marti is as unique as the man himself.

Madsong

1976 • 5 min

Combines animation and live-action in a young woman’s personal reverie on being female. With a polyphonic voice track, it parallels the flow of her unconscious with the movement of the cycles of nature.

Coming Out

1976 • 33 min

A film on transvestism (cross dressing) and transexualism (sex change), consisting mainly of interviews with transvestites, transsexuals and their families, in which they discuss the problems they and others face in coming to terms with this experience. One transsexual relates her treatment at the hands of neighbours and police, whilst another examines these sexual variations in the context of gay and women's liberation.

The Trail to Koskimo: His First Hunt

1976 • 34 min • United States of America

This film chronicles an artistic and personal quest through an assortment of in-camera and optical printing experiments. Shutter effects and swarming dots fragment the filmic surface so the picture oscillates between abstraction and recognition. The soundtrack quotes excerpts from anthropologist Franz Boas’ 1930 text about a Kwakiutl Indian shaman. The story serves as a metaphor for the struggle of the artist practicing a new visual language. In the Boas text, a man relates his learning the ways of a shaman. Doubting the magic in shamanistic practice, he strives to understand traditional methods in order to discover the truth. Though he learns the secrets of his teachers and finds only tricks, he nonetheless becomes a powerful and famous shaman himself. This film is about the desire to master the magic of the image while following a path of doubt and skepticism.

Chairwoman Malinina

1976 • 21 min • Soviet Union

The film is a portrait of a milkmaid who became chairwoman of a collective farm. Malinina was regularly featured in film magazines, and a lot was written about her. And it is not surprising — she is a great person by Soviet standards: a laureate of the State Prize, twice Hero of Socialist Labor, "innovator of collective farm production." Traditionally, such people were filmed exclusively in production and in the stands, with a cheerful announcer commenting on their outstanding achievements. Obukhovich showed it quite differently. And not "at the machine", but in a completely different environment.

The Tobacco King's Surprise

1976 • 18 min • Soviet Union

The short film was shot by order of the Main Department of Fire Protection of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

Video Feedback, ARP Drone

1976 • 5 min

A primal electronic statement: highly disciplined video feedback with a synthesized drone.

Flute

1976 • 15 min • Soviet Union

The love story of a young flutist for the daughter of a crystal factory worker.

Tlacotalpan

1976 • 19 min • Mexico

On the banks of the Papaloapan, the river of butterflies that shelters the spirit of warriors, rises the city of Tlacotalpan, in the state of Veracruz, the earthly paradise of the Indians, as Father Motolinía called it. A film portrait of the festivities held on February 2nd in honor of the Virgin of Candelaria, with its regattas, processions, and horse races. This short film is part of the collection of the Short Film Production Center (CPC) and is preserved in the IMCINE Collection.

Fire Doors

1976 • 1 min • United Kingdom

Ada the office Tea Lady wiggles herself and her clanking trolley backwards pushing open a fire door with her Behind. A critical smoking office worker supplies a door wedge and mocks the rules about keeping the door closed at all times. Due to carelessness they stubs out a cigar before they leave the office. After the building has burned down rescued sheepish Tea Lady Ada is subsequently seen being handed a cup of tea by a sympathetic fireman.

The Secret Life of Patty Hearst

1976 • 23 min

A quotidian look at the heiress-turned-terrorist's "lost year" in hiding.

Behind the Curtain: Mimis Fotopoulos

1976 • 17 min

Episode from the documentary series Paraskinio, dedicated to Mimis Fotopoulos, who speaks about his life and work in a monologue in front of the camera, likely improvised. We watch footage from his films, and we hear him reading aloud. Among the ruins of an open-air space, mostly used as a film studio, he initially plays the blind man from "The Counterfeit Coin", talks about his films such as "The Counterfeit Coin", "Laterna, Poverty and Dignity", and "The Little Chauffeur", and comments on that period of the golden age of classic Greek cinema. Fotopoulos wanders through the ruined studio and discusses the increased responsibilities of actors in theater and the challenges of filming while performing in plays during the flourishing period of Greek cinema.

Peach and Hammer - Old Man

1976 • 1 min • United Kingdom

Eyes and ears. It's your lookout. An exercise in how to cross the road when there are no marked road crossings.

Island Design

1976 • 6 min

‘Bruce Woods films are among the most sensual of any ‘abstract’ animated work ever made. Projected, they generate a fluid stream of organic images in a carefully controlled post-cubist space comparable to the work of painters like Jackson Pollock. Viewed one frame at a time (which is the way much of the footage is shot), they recall the rich lines and textures of such master etchers as Rembrandt. Wood’s use of camera movement during exposure of each individual frame – like drawing – together with the illusion of movement in projection make his films both beautiful and unique.’ – Bill Judson, Curator of Film, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.

Airless Passage

1976 • 13 min

'My films are abstract visual compositions of calligraphic lines, nebulous forms, and sensuous surfaces. They are successors of abstract expressionist painting, and reveal my concern with painterly 'still' composition. I consider them assemblages, or collages.' -- Bruce Wood

Otkriće zime Ivana Generalića

1976 • 14 min

A short documentary on the Croatian naïve artist Ivan Generalić.

Kites & Other Tales

1976 • 12 min

Tom Joe, a kite maker, recreates the folklore of Asian kites by illustrating magnificent stories from China, Japan and Polynesia.

Autorretrato

1976 • 25 min • Venezuela

Autorretrato is the mirror the filmmaker uses to look at himself, and through it, at his reality, using the cinematic collage.