All Films

Caught in Time

1984 • 57 min

Duke and Steve are caught up in today's world that revolves around peer pressure and the social scene. After a party, a crash occurs and suddenly Duke and Steve are back in time ... to 1st century Palestine!

Dialogue for Two Players

1984 • 19 min • United Kingdom

"The tellingly titled Dialogue for Two Players, also 1984, moves into quasi-dramatic space, in which the seemingly spontaneous relationships, are revealed not just as a construct but also as a complex puzzle. It implicitly comments on and critiques the 'confessional' modes of video and its illusion of real presence. It thus rejects that was at the time a dominant style in artist's video, turning on its head the simpler versions of the slogan that 'the personal is political'. At the same time it is a political work in a different sense, questioning the popular TV format of the in-depth personal interview which it ironizes. As such, and with Partridge himself playing the part of interviewer/director, it is his most overt 'intervention' into documentary drama even as he subverts it." - Al Rees

Shapes and Forms

1984 • 3 min • Bulgaria

A tall man and a short man argue about whether the object in front of them is a square or a circle. During the struggle, they push the object. It turns out to be a cylinder.

The Bird Catcher

1984 • 10 min • Soviet Union

A parable about a lucky bird catcher who is fortunate enough to encounter a fantastic woman, the Firebird. The author conveys the idea that selfishness and vanity are destructive to feelings and can kill love.

A Matter of Form

1984 • 3 min • Canada

In this film, which takes place to the rhythm of Schubert's Military March, the point, this first form, by its multiplication and the chosen orientations, allows us to see how it can be chained to form lines, shapes, surfaces, to form ensembles that ultimately occupy the entire surface of the screen.

Eclipse

1984 • 13 min • Brazil

In the face of images that are transfigured, inside a mushroom of an explosion already begun, the narration of a rude Latin American poem tells occurrences and impressions of the sixties, seventies and eighties in Brazil and Latin America, with some memory failures. The film was made from the technique of direct animation in the film.

The Ship, or the Chronicle of Captain Sanka

1984 • 51 min • Soviet Union

A boy of heightened romanticism from a poor family falls in love with a girl and tries to compete with a rich and sophisticated rival.

Francis Bacon and the Brutality of Fact

1984 • 58 min • United Kingdom

In his London studio, Francis Bacon discusses his work and approach with David Sylvester. His representations of the human figure in portraits and triptychs link him to the distorted realism of Van Gogh and Picasso, who also portrayed the intensity of life that Bacon calls “the brutality of fact.”

The Amazing Mister Blois

1984 • 12 min • Brazil

The art of Oscar Blois, a miniaturist artist - paint on pins, fleas, models on lamps - a character whose personal universe includes contacts with extraterrestrials, from whom he learned mathematical calculation that he applies in domino divination games

Herbie Hancock Trio: Hurricane!

1984 • 57 min

Three masters explore their roots and capture the full spectrum of the art of Jazz...a display of lyrical sensuality and sizzling pyrotechnics. Features Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Billy Cobham performing 7 tracks plus 2 bonus concert performances: "Speak Like a Child" and "Little Waltz." Three masters explore their roots and capture the full spectrum of the art of jazz in this display of lyri

Pandora

1984 • 30 min • Netherlands

This very early horror short fan film by Wim Vink, shot on 8mm on a very low budget, has lots of fog, some zombies and bloody mayhem to offer, as most of his works do. It uses prominent music by Goblin, from other composers too and it´s his only one that was made in original Dutch language. The idea of plot wafts around a book that may have the power to call up the flesh loving undead, inspired by "Evil Dead" and the work by George Romero.

Ruido (Noise)

1984 • 13 min • United States of America

A naked body curls up with a broken TV.

Lus

1984 • 22 min • Denmark

Lisa is 6 1/2 years old and goes to kindergarten. One day she gets lice. The film shows how the peers and the adult environment react.

A Town Under Siege

1984 • 38 min • United Kingdom

Looks at Southall, one of the major Asians centres in Britain, and shows how this community organised to resist fascist attacks from 1976 to 1981. Southall's militancy goes back to the community organisations of the 1950's which were created to help black workers combat racism at the workplace and deal with discrimination in the community. As racism increased, the community has fashioned and forged new weapons of struggle.

The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer: Prague's Alchemist of Film

1984 • 54 min • United Kingdom

The original 54-minute documentary, as broadcast by Channel Four on 20 June 1984, after which the animated links by the Quay Brothers were recompiled as a separate short.

Motion Picture (Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory)

1984 • 3 min • Austria, France

In the darkroom, 50 unexposed film strips were laid across a surface, upon which a frame of "La sortie des ouvrier de l'usine Lumière" was projected. The stringing together of the individual developed sections make up the new film, which reads the original frame like a page from a musical score: within the strips from top to bottom and sequentially from left to right.

Isaak Stern

1984 • 28 min • Israel

A short documentary about the Jerusalem Foundation’s projects. The Jerusalem Foundation funds educational and cultural activities as well as development initiatives in the Israeli capital. This film reviews some of the foundation’s projects, including theater performances for children and adults, summer camps, activities in community centers, the inauguration of urban parks, the development of the Mishkenot Sha’ananim quarter, the planning of the Museum on the Seam, and even a masterclass by violinist Isaac Stern. Harvey Rothenberg, one of the Foundation’s donors, calls on other philanthropists to donate to it at the end of the film.

Carmín

1984 • 7 min • Spain

A man a woman. The secrecy of certain relationships. The subconscious world of the human being.

Mozart: Requiem in D minor, KV626

1984 • 60 min

Live performance of Mozart's immortal Requiem in D minor from the Herkulessaal in Munich, 1984. Soprano Edith Mathis, alto Trudeliese Schmidt, tenor Peter Schreier, and bass Gwynne Howell, with the The Bavarian Radio Symphony and Orchestra, are conducted by Sir Colin Davis.

School With a Bias, or an Opera Lesson for Parents

1984 • 9 min • Soviet Union

As Darkness Sets In

1984 • 18 min • United States of America

Mid '80s slasher with teens being picked off one by one by a masked killer.

Election Tape '84

1984 • 2 min

Steeped in black humor, this concise political critique is Acconci's contribution to artist Jenny Holzer's collaborative Sign on a Truck project, which was presented on a Diamond Vision Screen in New York in response to Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign in 1984. Acconci portrays Reagan as a ventriloquist's dummy, a two-dimensional puppet's head that is a mouthpiece for the ideology of the Right. Smiling like a TV evangelist or the host of a children's TV show, the Reagan puppet intones a litany of "Family Values" that is at once comic and chilling.

Songs and Dances of the Inanimate World: The Subway

1984 • 14 min • Canada

In this animation film without words, filmmaker Pierre Hébert and musicians Robert Lepage and René Lussier worked together, and separately, in their respective media. This cinema/music performance recreates, impressionistically, the dehumanizing environment of the urban subway. Drawings etch the outlines of people hurtling through space in underground tunnels. The sound track, elemental and atonal, gives compelling expression to their alienation.

Murmurando

1984 • 36 min • Poland

Patients of the holiday and treatment center take part in trying to overcome the tobacco addiction by singing.