All Films

Joëlle de la Casinière herself, barefoot against an abandoned and ravaged metropolitan background, promotes her book ’Absolument nécessaire’ (‘An Emergency Book’) during an interview/happening with a broadcast delay. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”. In the end the books are covered in graffiti like subway carriages.

Fisher organized and performed in Emigré, a two-part happening at the Cat’s Paw Palace (September 28, 1974) and offsite at Aquatic Park in San Francisco (September 29). In reaction to the political upheaval of Watergate and the economic precarity of living here as an artist, Emigré was announced as an open call to artists and friends to “emigrate” from the Bay Area. The first evening’s event, “Leavin’ Blues,” described as “dance/theatre/music/restaurant theatre,” prepared performers for the following day with a celebration of the natural migration of living things and natural phenomena. Approximately twenty participants arrived at Aquatic Park with baskets, bundles, cages, and old suitcases. The quarter-mile walk from the western to the eastern end of the park proceeded with everyone taking one step every thirty seconds. The Super-8 film condensed four hours of walking into three minutes reflecting the distorted sense of time and relationship between the ’emigrants’ and passers-by.

Two children prove to be the most courageous circus performers of them all.

Bright sun reflecting off the water’s surface onto the black hull of a cargo ship made a fluid painting with light and steel.

A dance film based on kinetic sculpture and employing the Mary Stanton Dance Ensemble. Through the kinetic sculptures, made specifically for the choreographer, move dancers each appearing in separate monochromatic images of cyan, yellow and magenta. When touched, the sculptures move lightly, taking on the quality of mobiles. Dance and sculpture, kinetic within their own forms, are combined to create new dynamics between people and forms in motion, in bold primary colors.

Explores as black and white abstraction the passage of motion picture film over a static surface comprised of two hundred-odd stills of the lunar surface. Film sequences are structured by camera motion over the field, by reversing the filmed image, by inversion of the static image, by the use of the zoom, the pullback, pan: from top to bottom and reverse, left to right and reverse. Seismic sound was created on an oscillator.–N. G.

B&W, The "female" waiting for her "train", in 19th century and art deco nude poses. Filmed on a single set, with humor, tenderness and yearning.

This work produces complex flicker patterns with positive and negative footage of shimmering reflections on the surface of water. Nakai created a masking film with a calculated pattern of black and white frames into which he inserted positive and negative images and made a print out of two separate rolls of film. The sound consists of the electronically processed noises of insects. “The film depicts the alchemy of light wriggling on the surface of waves, using a negative-positive flicker technique in a structure where darkness can be seen lurking behind the light.” (Tsuneo Nakai)

BRAINWASH tells the story of two men (the establishment) who control the lives and thoughts of a whole town.To their annoyance they discover a happy musician (representing the younger generation/or the hippie movement). He will have to be absorbed into society and brainwashed like the rest.

Documentary concerning Newcastle Upon Tyne.

A 45-minute absurdist musical special built around the works of Dutch writer Gerard Reve and presented by the man himself. Featuring poems, songs, sketches, alcohol, tango and a rather special donkey.

The right to work ... The words and actions of the people fighting' to keep open the steelworks at Shelton Bar, North Staffordshire. Adapted from the theatre production at Stoke-on-Trent's Victoria Theatre, and performed in the studio by members of the original cast

Alfy is 30 and on the dole. So what does he want with a stuffed tern, a shooting stick, a Harris Tweed suit and a shotgun?

During Kupala Night, two angels intervene in the rituals of the town's inhabitants. They take care of a virgin wearing a wreath in order to spoil the devil’s plan. During the night, the devil runs a registry of sinners. However, divine providence has different plans for her. An animated Midsummer fairytale directed by Piotr Szpakowicz, a creator of films for children and adults, specializing in animation and often focuses on the theme of people and nature. The film was realized in a combined technique. Flat figures made of plasticine were put on background boards, in the style of oil painting. Some of the figures were covered with crepe paper, maintaining the depth of the shots.

The trace is similar to the index, but there is a more complex relationship to the original referent because the trace is at once a repetition and an erasure. In his 1974 film The Portrait of Père Tanguy, Goldstein traced a reproduction of the famous Vincent van Gogh painting of the same name. While on the one hand Goldstein's presence is affirmed by the mark which he makes on the paper, on the other, his sense of selfhood or individual identity is called into question by the fact that he is merely tracing an image produced by another individual, an image originally intended to assert van Gogh's individuality and sense of selfhood. The repetition is compounded by the fact that the tracing is, in fact, a tracing of a reproduction so that we are faced with a seemingly endless trail of doubling and disappearance.

This adventure film features Scott McVay, an authority on whales, and filmmaker Bill Mason. The objective was to film the bowhead, a magnificent inhabitant of the cold Arctic seas brought to the edge of extinction by overfishing. With helicopter and Inuit guide, aqualungs and underwater cameras, the expedition searches out and meets the bowhead and beluga.

An animated quickie to get you in the swing. Three animated figures, a man, a woman and a child, dance, arms and legs flying, to the compulsive rhythms of this Bossa Bop. It's a light film in a carnival mood, and who can remain still when the music commands?

A dead tree. A body. Ocean waves.

The 'climates' of this film allude to the relationships of a couple. Atmosphere and moods are induced by watercolour designs, mostly washes, suggesting landscapes through which faces and figures appear. The effect is dreamlike, an ebb and flow of colour, form and line, to the accompaniment of music. The animation is largely of textures rather than of design, washes of colour that come and go to the bidding of the music or the whim of the artist.

A man meets a childhood friend who does not recognize him.

The Central Finger (16mm, silent, 5 1/2 minutes, 1974).

Short movie by Luca Maria Patella.