All Films

Les tournesols colorés

1983 • 3 min • France

Les tournesols colorés is derived from the same footage used in Les tournesols, but with candy colors, giving other modulations to movie movements. The two versions can be shown one after the other, although they were designed to be played separately.

Possibilities, or Bluebeard and Me

1983 • 48 min • Israel

Based on the legend of Blue Beard written by French author Charles Perrault (1628-1703), in this film adaptation however, neither the original blood nor the original murder make an appearance. These elements are replaced by a poetic research on the awareness of the death of the murderer Bluebeard and the dead women are replaced by mannequins, sometimes dragged, pushed or transported; other times, they seem to take on a life of their own.

Jigsaw Feeling / New York Streets

1983 • 11 min

Footage of street life in the Bronx and Manhattan, with a continuous soundtrack of the constant crime statistics, and the recent Reagan invasion of Grenada (to fight the Cuban threat to American students and an airstrip). Interrupted with statistics about wealth inequality, and shoals of tropical fish (for respite). A grim 1983 report from ground zero in the evil empire.

Behave, Bernard!

1983 • 11 min

A bad dog learns to be good.

Sweet Dressing

1983 • 3 min • Germany

Within the soundscape of an anonymous station, only two black spots in motion suggest the bearing of two people. On a white screen gradually appear irregular dark shades which only later can be identified as clothes, dressed on virtually invisible woman and man. The aesthetic effect is conducted by over-exposure of the light tones (white walls and faces), letting only the dark clothes to signify human presence. The intimacy between a man and a woman is not overexposed by the act of undressing. In contrast, it is slightly implied by the gestures of dressing followed by fondly kissing for good bye and parting. Both silhouettes disappear, leaving the frame in different directions. Their closeness diffuses in the sound of of the station hall and strangers' voice…

The Banana Man

1983 • 28 min • United States of America

"This is my only truly solo video project. The tape is an exploration of character and was done in direct reaction to my performance work at the time, which was characterless. Video seemed a good way, by virtue of it not operating in 'real' time, of dealing with character and psychological motivation. 'The Banana Man' was a minor figure on a children's television show I watched in my youth. I, myself, never saw this performer. Everything I know about him was told to me by my friends. The Banana Man is an attempt at constructing the psychology of the character — problematized by the fact that the character is already a fictional one, and by the fact that none of my observations were direct ones."

Snow Movies

1983 • 8 min • United States of America

SNOW MOVIES (1983) was shot in the winter landscape of upstate New York and in snowbound Cambridge, Massachusetts. I have broken down the various purviews and scales to two dimensions with pixilation and framing. Phil S. says it is a capsulized version of the history of Western painting (I paraphrase).

Marias da Castanha

1983 • 30 min • Brazil

In Belem, brazilian Amazon, the brazil nuts women live in the Estrada Nova neighbourhood. They turn the brazilian fruit into a nasty commodity.

Flap

1983 • 3 min • United States of America

FLAP (1983) is a very direct approach to moviemaking. A 3x5 card waved in front of the line of a projector beam, shot from a perpendicular angle to the projector. A good old-fashioned light/shadow play.

The Destructors

1983 • 12 min • United Kingdom

Punk rebellion and anarchy with Peterborough-based punk band The Destructors, six years after their formation. Born in the crucible of punk's genesis in 1977, the band are just beginning to make a name for themselves in the early 1980s.

Ein halbes Leben

1983 • 5 min

"A HALF LIFE stands on the threshold between the genres of documentary and experimental film.The film attempts to distill the experience of many years to five minutes, taking stock of the bedroom of an elderly middle-class couple. As an expression of the relationship of this couple, its way of life becomes the room the symptom and symbol of a generation. Everything's in place, peaceful but largely frozen." (Christine Noll Brinckmann)

Guimauve et baisers bleus

1983 • 7 min • France

From the rushes of a black and white TV show, we can illustrate subjective feelings of the cineast. An obvious aesthetical concern is noticeable from the accuracy of chisellings. The use of acid and colored ink and felt-pen, offer effects of portrait and of stylized writing. Rhythms are punctuated by humoristic references from character’s portraits.

La Lune est mauve

1983 • 14 min • United States of America

Chutes de Feuilles d’été

1983 • 25 min • France

Toxic Shock

1983 • 3 min

A visceral personal response to surviving a near-fatal case of Toxic Shock Syndrome. Toxic Shock combines intimate taboos of needles, blood and tampons with tried and true hands-on self-defense, set to a spare, penetrating and unknown score provided by a cassette tape gifted by a forgotten friend. A call to arms; what will you do in defense of your body? "Penetration up the wazoo, blood, fire, gas, needles, tampons, liquid power and cocktails of the burning sort. My experimental response to sweating out near death with Toxic Shock Syndrome." --Vanessa Renwick

Shadow Stepping

1983 • 14 min • Japan

I filmed the video as if playing with shadows, listening to the birds singing on the top of a small hill and feeling the height of the sky from the sound of airplanes passing overhead. I filmed and edited the video in three parts. I came up with the next video from the first edited video and filmed the second video, and then came up with the third video from the second edited video. It took me a year to complete it, but it felt like a year of struggling to write a haiku. I used natural sounds recorded live on location without editing, but it was strange how they somehow matched the edited footage as if they were calculated.

Taking a Line for a Walk: A Homage to the Work of Paul Klee

1983 • 11 min • United Kingdom

Tribute to the work of Paul Klee, Taking a Line For a Walk is an exploration and expansion of the Swiss painter's ideas on color and movement, funded by Channel Four and the Scottish Arts Council in 1983. An astonishing journey modeled and guided along lines from which cities, vast universes, aquatic worlds and ghostly individuals emerge until the lines become the heartbeat of a dialysis machine, uniform and terminal.

Winter Last July

1983 • 13 min

"I travelled to Australia in 1979 as artist-in-residence to a Brisbane art gallery screening Canadian experimental film. I was handed a bunch of 16mm film and set about recording visual experiences. At the same time I had access to a recording facility and a grand piano. A couple of years later the two experiences merged into a personal travelogue that was part happenstance and part pre-ordained." –RM

The Promise

1983 • 38 min • Sweden

The young Greek filmmaker Menelaos Carayannis made some films for the Film Works before returning to Athens and establishing himself as a documentary filmmaker. The promise is an unassuming but poignant short film about a Greek family in Stockholm and about the double loyalties of the exile situation: Will they return to Greece or stay in the new country?

Red in Blue Letters

1983 • 13 min

Currey's Red in Blue Letters weaves images recorded by the filmmaker from contrasting settings into a delightful and mysterious conundrum of rhyming forms and colors

Lupita D'Alessio; hoy voy a cambiar

1983 • 45 min • Mexico

Mexican feature film

Emmanuel; si ese tiempo pudiera volver

1983 • 46 min • Mexico

Mexican feature film

Los secretos de José José

1983 • 50 min • Mexico

Mexican feature film

If She Grows Up Gay

1983 • 23 min

A blue collar African American mother talks about her pregnancy and raising her daughter with her lesbian lover.