All Films

Henry Miller: Reflections on Writing

1974 • 48 min • United States of America

Henry Miller discusses his art as a writer, among friends and colleagues such as Lawrence Durell and Anais Nin among others.

Roseblood

1974 • 8 min • United States of America

Images of a woman in dance, in flora, in picture, in eyes, in architecture, in sunshine, in color, in crystal, in space, in confusion, in danger, in disintegration, in her hand, in birth, in the Valley of Sorrow, in the sea, in repetition, in sculpture and in herself.

In-Out (Antropofagia)

1974 • 8 min

Shot originally in Super 8, this poignant short film by the artist Anna Maria Maiolino references Oswald de Andrade’s notion of cultural cannibalism from the 1920s, which was reinterpreted as tropicalismo in the 70s. The film presents a sequence of close-up shots of a male and a female mouth that trade gestures and expressions, creating an ambiguous dialogue, an oblique reference to the hardships of a female artist and the censorship and violence of the Brazilian dictatorship.

Miracle-Frost

1974 • 9 min • Soviet Union

In the harsh northern region it is so cold that even words cannot be spoken. But the people here live in harmony: they do everything together with songs and jokes. Songs freeze in the cold and turn into wondrous lace. A foreigner once saw this and wanted to take such a miracle with him. Based on the northern tales of B. Shergin.

Atal-Matal

1974 • 5 min • Iran

Animated short film

The Dama of Ambara: To Enchant Death

1974 • 60 min • France

Every five years, the mask society of the Dogons of Sanga, Mali, organizes a great Dama, a ceremony to end the period of mourning and drive away "the dangerous thing". The Dama shown here is for seven dignitaries, one of whom was called Ambara Dolo.

Satellites of the Sun

1974 • 12 min

Film animation and a knowledge of outer space bring to the screen this spectacular, awe-inspiring view of our solar system. Staggering distances are eliminated through the art of film: before our eyes is displayed the wonder of the universe. Moon, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Earth and all the other satellites and lesser matter in space are seen in amazing detail and perspective in their eternal orbits around the sun.

Dominion

1974 • 4 min • United States of America

The "Dynamo theories" of Henry Adams portrayed first person/sexual vision: an American businessman as lord of all he surveys.

The People Who Take Up Serpents

1974 • 29 min • United States of America

Members of a branch of the Holiness churches who base their religious beliefs and practices on Bible verses, especially Mark 16:18. The members handle serpents, hold fire to their bodies, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick and cast out devils.

Art Herstory

1974 • 22 min

Wonder where Cindy Sherman got the idea for those "History Portraits" in the '80s? In her brilliant video Art Herstory, [Freed] has restaged art history, putting herself in the model's role in numerous paintings... Time dissolves under her humorous assault—one moment in the painting, then out of the canvas and into that period, then back in the studio. —"In her brilliant video Art Herstory, [Freed] has restaged art history, putting herself in the model's role in numerous paintings. ... Time dissolves under her humorous assault—one moment in the painting, then out of the canvas and into that period, then back in the studio. —Jonathan Price, "Video Art: a Medium Discovering Itself," Art News 76 (January 1977)

Cinécité

1974 • 16 min • Algeria

In the Seventies, Djouhra Abouda developed a cinematographic project in the labs of the Université de Vincennes in Paris with the architect Alain Bonnamy. Together, they produced various experimental films in 16mm “conceived as kaleidoscopic assemblages grounded on a musical paradigm” (Bouhours).

Burial Pyramid

1974 • 3 min • Cuba, Mexico

Mendieta, Ana: Burial Pyramide, Yagul, Mexico.

Présence

1974 • 5 min • France

Sausage City

1974 • 5 min • United States of America

Sausage City illustrates Beckett's additive cycle process. Constantly evolving rectangular shapes provide a foundation for an environment inhabited by mutating blobs - or sausages. Sounds and shapes create a moving space that teeters on the edge between control and chaos. The ending is somewhat mystifying, pulling us out of the surreal environment and revealing its origins. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

I Can Almost See It

1974 • 7 min • United States of America

Shot from the inside of a house and through a window's curtains, one can sometimes distinguish the colorful flowers in the yard outside. But, as in much of her other film work, JoAnn Elam is apparently more interested in filming textures, light, and colors. Panning over the curtains at various speed, the camera captures their rhythm and the effect of the light on their fabric at close range, until it becomes difficult to identify the object turned pure light and movement.

Esplendor do Martírio

1974 • 10 min • Brazil

Experimental trial of urban intervention in Rio de Janeiro, using moments when the country was transported, via satellite, to the World Cup, in Germany.

Life in the Atom

1974 • 9 min • United States of America

Life in the Atom was never completed but the existing version was digitally restored in 2009. The film depicts an ever-changing world inhabited by a man and woman engaged in surreal, erotic contortions. Their bodies are in a constant state of metamorphosis, as if to indicate psychological states or inner reflection as they contemplate their connection; they are being transported, transcending, merging and melting. - Pamela Turner. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with iotaCenter, in 2009.

Interval

1974 • 5 min • United Kingdom

Optical sound by Guy Sherwin

Ghost Town

1974 • 3 min • United States of America

"Ghost Town is a study of wrecked buildings, Varela's camera panning across the strange beauty of the rusted metal, broken glass, and rotting wood of the structures, eventually discovering another symbol of time, a tree that Varela animates by his dynamic exploration." Stephen Broomer

Dance and Human History

1974 • 40 min

Introduces the work of Alan Lomax and his colleagues in developing choreometrics, a cross-cultural method of studying the relationship of dance style to social structure. Shows how the group, including Forrestine Paulay and Irmgard Bartenieff, analyzed dance films from all over the world and established a connection between patterns of movement and patterns of culture.

Fm/trcs

1974 • 12 min • United States of America

The destruction of cinematic imagery and sound, which allows for the release of subliminal thought.

Kantilene

1974 • 17 min

A part of Werner Nekes' lyrical anthology DIWAN.

Shoot

1974 • 10 min

Acconci imitates the sounds of war, gunfire and explosion; he thrusts his face, stomach or penis onto the screen. His childlike battle sounds are interrupted with monologues in which he defines himself as an American, with ironic references to cultural cliches and stereotypes. "Yeah, I'm an American. I can't help it... I'm not trying to parody America now. I'm not trying to parody myself. I really do like Coca Cola. I'm not acting, this is really the truth. I really do like it..." He asserts his cultural identity only to reject it: "No, I have an Italian name, my father's Italian. I'm not really American at all, I have a tradition, I have a culture." Vulgar and outrageous, Acconci plays out the nightmare of the American Dream. He waves his penis at the camera, raging, "The savage American is here! I'm everyone's clown, I'm everyone's fool."

Face of the Earth

1974 • 22 min

In Face of the Earth, Acconci's face becomes a metaphorical theater for a narrative drama of the mythic American landscape. Eyes closed, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, the camera looking up from his chin, he inhabits a dreamlike, intensely theatrical space. Alternately humming and whispering, Acconci begins an oddly poetic, hypnotic monologue, a stream-of-consciousness fantasy of a gunfighter in the American West. "As if I were riding in from over the mountains... Where did I come from?" His fingers run over the landscape of his face in the rhythm of a galloping horse, or caress it as the narrative tension builds. With language as a catalyst, he conducts a riveting examination of his own identity through American cultural mythologies.