All Films

Direttive dall'alto

1997 • 18 min • Italy

Two friends decide to make a short film, so they begin to write the screenplay. Will the characters in the film be able to survive the diabolical directives of their creators?

For a Penny

1997 • 7 min • Poland

In this stop-motion made in the chiaroscuro style of German Expressionism, a poor man sells his face to a pawnshop for a penny, hoping to use it to buy a single lottery ticket.

Noah - He Walked With God

1997 • 24 min • United States of America

Noah was a faithful man who walked with God. But why did Jehovah favor Noah? What was it that made him special? See how Noah’s actions benefited him and his family as well as all of us today.

Fenstersturz

1997 • 9 min

What happens in the background, at the edge, and in the last frames of a banal, everyday filming? I tried to find out by blowing up Super-8 to 35mm. A crosswalk, pedestrians, cars—everything becomes a grainy stain on a thick blanket of snow. In this film, I used a particular printing method so that the grain moves (forward or in depth) without changing the scale of the image, an approach I would like to pursue.

Patriotic Tales

1997 • 25 min • Mexico

The video shows the artist walking in circles around the flagpole (“Madre Patria”) in Zócalo, Mexico City’s monumental central square, which is flanked by government institutions. This work relates to a storied incident that took place during the Mexican government’s brutal oppression of the 1968 student uprising in Mexico City.

Cracks in the Mask

1997 • 57 min • Australia

A century ago the Torres Strait Island were the subjects of the famous Cambridge Anthropological Expedition - the resulting depletion of their cultural artifacts left them with nothing but a history of remembered loss. The only people in the Pacific to make elaborate turtleshell masks have none left - they are all in foreign museums. In a quest to reclaim the past, Ephraim Bani, a wise and knowledgeable Torres Strait Islander, travels with his wife to the great museums of Europe where his heritage lies. The film, an SBS Independent production, shows that the thickest of masks cracks when a descendant of the original owners enters a museum.

Man and Bread

1997 • 7 min • Poland

The film is a praise of human willingness to take on the endless challenges of fate. The loaf of bread a prisoner receives each day is used to patch thousands of holes in the cell walls. They are inhabited by nerve-wracking busy insects that flit constantly from hole to hole. When the work is finished, the prisoner is unexpectedly transferred to another cell. The new loaf of bread held in his hands freezes dramatically halfway to his mouth: the walls of this cell are also strewn with thousands of holes.

Borneo

1997 • 8 min

An unexpected metamorphosis will give back a business man to a more essental nature: The dynoisian " Thong-Man". Just we have to remember the ancient gods, if we need it, and they will ...

Balifilm

1997 • 28 min

Balifilm was originally commissioned as a stage performance, created from diary images and sounds collected in 1990 and 1992 by Peter Mettler on the island of Bali. The soundtrack is a live recording of eight Gamelan musicians playing the bronze and wooden instruments of Indonesia during the projection of the film. balifilm is a personal, lyrical observation and expression of the creative pulse of an extraordinary culture.

Working for the Enemy

1997 • 58 min

Sean McAllister's bleak, extraordinarily intimate film offers an insight into the lives of 35 year old Kevin, who hasn't worked in 18 years, and his 19 year old girlfriend Robbie, who earns 70 pounds a week as a seamstress.

Grass

1997 • 3 min

This film was made for the site specific screening Fleur Power, created by Melinda Stone. She planted a screen of sweet alyssum (also called "carpet of snow") on a mountainside and asked artists to make work for this one-time event. This short film attempts to replace the grass which she pulled up in order to create the screen, while playing with concepts of scale and time.

Naked Muscle Warriors

1997 • 50 min • United States of America

Fighting for the title, NAKED MUSCLE WARRIOR CHAMPION, eight handsome hardbodied studs battle each other in fierce athletic competitions, ending with the losers conceding their uniforms and jocks to the winners. See these sexy hot men flex their muscular bodies as they struggle to top one another in six sweaty grueling events, from tug of war, resistance wrestling, and beam bash finale, each one of these incredibly sexy athletes runs completely naked through a challenging obstacle course of hurdles, water tunnels and rope swings to a flying leap for the finish line. Nothing is left to the imagination as you watch the astonishing strength and beauty of these eight gorgeous men in up close man-to-man athletic action.

The Ultimate Guide: Snakes

1997 • 52 min

Discovery Channel documentary about snakes.

Volcom Stone’s Freedom Wig

1997 • 30 min • United States of America

An artistic masterpiece presenting the Volcom skate team tearing up all mediums of terrain from around the world. Freedom Wig was Volcom’s first skate film and would set the stage for an incredible journey in the years ahead. Shot entirely in film, the movie is a colorful look into the team’s personalities and different styles of riding.

Heritage Minutes: Syrup

1997 • 1 min • Canada

A First Nations family teaches early settlers how to make maple syrup.

The Way the Butterfly Learned to Live

1997 • 9 min • Ukraine

A humorous story of how an Admiral butterfly was born. He tried to learn as much as possible about everything that surrounds him, but the sudden awareness of his fragility pretty spoiled his mood. Is he destined to live only one day or not? After all, it is strange that his newly made friends have just come with gifts for his birthday, and he is already in full command of his own farewell ceremony.

Psycho

1997 • 1 min

Martin Arnold's remake of the shower scene from Psycho. Made as a spot for the Viennale.

She's Real (Worse than Queer)

1997 • 51 min

A document of the Riot Grrrl and Queercore scene in the 1990s, the film has been screened at film festivals around the world, written about in zines and academic books and has been included in the curriculum of a number of university courses.

Nocturnal Butterflies

1997 • 8 min • Belgium

Nocturnal Butterflies is Servais' serene and melancholic homage to Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux (1897-1994), whose architectural paintings serve as the basis for the mise-en-scène for the film, and whose opaquely gazed women represent the enigmatic, silent witnesses who guard the secrets of the eccentric artist's curious world of precisely rendered, hermetic construction.

Sin film III

1997 • 10 min

Short film by Javier Aguirre

Five Year Diary, Reel 83: Untitled (December 24, 1995–March 18, 1997)

1997 • 25 min • United States of America

It’s been 16 years, and finally the Diary ends, an unintended ending that visits familiar territory.

O Pulso

1997 • 21 min • Brazil

In a morgue, the corpse of a young man that suddenly died on the streets probably due to a heart attack will be examined by the coroner Elizabeth (Letícia Spiller). She questions with her colleague the death of a person so young and handsome, but the brain of the dead man somehow is working and he falls in love for her. Meanwhile, a deranged man invades the morgue and threatens Elizabeth with a gun, with the witness of the dead man, who is immobilized (since he is dead) and unable to help her.

Body Double 11

1997 • 2 min

Brice Dellsperger's reprise of Brian de Palma's Obsession

Major's Nose

1997 • 10 min • Russia

A cartoon based on the novella by N. V. Gogol "The Nose" and the works of V. Khlebnikov and D. Kharms.