All Films

Reagan's Nightmare

1983 • 6 min

If Frankenstein's Monster is to the dark side of science, King Kong is to the Great Depression, Alien Invaders (like The Blob and The Thing) is to the Communist Threat, Godzilla is to the bomb, and The Milpitas Monster and Hedorah the Smog Monster are to pollution. Now, this robotic dinosaur made of various technological devices from Japan is to Japanese consumerism and possibly globalization!

Alamanya

1983 • 5 min • Germany

A photo film about the living situations of Turkish workers and their families in Germany.

Frankenstein (I Swear on My Mother's Eyes) The True Story

1983 • 57 min • United States of America

A shot-on-video straight-to-television comedy adaptation of the Frankenstein story. Co-written by, and starring Gary Cohen (director of Video Violence).

Family Snapshots

1983 • 7 min • Romania

Time passes by quickly for a young, small family: soon it will no longer be that small, the children grow up, the parents get older, and this reality in constant motion, erased and diffused, sometimes stops itself in front of the camera.

Blood Dreams

1983 • 30 min

People of a small town are having the same nightmares in this SOV short. The morning after, someone is always found dead.

Kaychi

1983 • 18 min • Soviet Union

Kaichi is the name of the storyteller of Altai folk kyuis, which praise the beauty and strength of the inhabitants of Gorny Altai, who carefully preserve their cultural heritage. A poetic story about the beauty of the nature of Gorny Altai and its people.

Dead Relatives

1983 • 5 min

Shot in Nunhead Cemetery, South East London with Heilco Van der Ploeug and Leila McMillan. Designed to run as a super 8 projection for the performances that we were making in and around London as BEING KARNAL. Music BEING KARNAL (Heilco Van der Ploeug and Andrew Kotting)

Gunfight U.S.A

1983 • 60 min

In this documentary, FRONTLINE tries to pierce the debate on the explosive issue of handgun control.

Il cantico dei cantici

1983 • 18 min

Preserved and digitized by the National Film and Business Archive

Adynata

1983 • 29 min • United States of America

A formal 1861 portrait of a Chinese Mandarin and his wife is the starting point for this allegorical investigation of the fantasies spawned in the West about the East, particularly that which associates femininity with the mysterious Orient. ADYNATA presents a series of oppositions-male and female images, past and present sounds-which in and of themselves construct a minimal and fragmentary narrative, an open text of our imaginations, fears and fantasies.

Leopold the Cat's Summer

1983 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Leopold the Cat is going to the country house. The mice are trying to ruin his vacation.

Dance of Death

1983 • 9 min • Australia

An animated satire on television violence, set in a world where the skeletal Don Death runs a popular variety show called “Dance of Death”.

Cement the Land

1983 • 4 min • United Kingdom

Made with a standard 8 Bolex camera and possibly Andrew Kötting’s first film. Shot alongside a wall in Mottingham with Danny Baker whilst they were still students at Ravensbourne College of Art in Elmstead Woods. Music by Being Karnal, Kötting’s music band with Heilco Van der Ploeug.

The Right Way

1983 • 55 min • Switzerland

A bear and a rat explore dark forests, treacherous ravines and snow-swept glaciers. With no real aim in mind, the bear and the rat bungle along in a folk tale of their own devising, wondering what they should do and where they should go, enjoying nature together, foraging for sustenance, getting lost, squabbling, joking and making music along the way.

L'Histoire du cinéma 16

1983 • 53 min

Jean-Jacques Rousseau has just finished his last film, shot in unworthy conditions. He is preparing to show it to the movie critics of a local newspaper. The filmmaker launches the first images but these reveal all the problems that a non-professional filmmaker may encounter.

The Bullfinch

1983 • 10 min • Soviet Union

Once a boy in a pet store saw a red-breasted bullfinch and asked his mother to buy him this bird. But the mother refused to buy, citing the boy's bad behavior and the coat he had ruined. He was very upset, but then, after thinking a little, he decided to correct his behavior and stopped fighting. Mom was pleasantly surprised by such drastic changes in her son's behavior and bought him a bullfinch.

Mózg

1983 • 19 min

The story of a valued professor named Szop. One day, a scientist commissions a routine study. A computer analysis shows that, on the basis of the study that Szop is dead. The professor and his colleague, Swalski, try to explain the unusual result.

Sonia and Stan Paint a Portrait of Ronnie

1983 • 14 min

In Sonia and Stan Paint a Portrait of Ronnie, VanDerBeek and artist Sonia Sheridan assemble a pastiche of images of Ronald Reagan, metamorphosed through digital computer graphics.

The Camelia Boy

1983 • 16 min

An autobiographical film about Eric M. Nilsson's experiences of Swedish health care and the limits of polite society.

Une Soirée Elégante

1983 • 60 min

SOV feature by Bill Bordy, produced in French, and left deliberately untranslated into English as an American homage and pastiche of the "French farce" genre. [This film was completed in 1983 and seemingly shelved until Vinegar Syndrome's blu-ray release in 2024 without English subtitles added to the presentation.]

Daughter of the Moon

1983 • 4 min • Japan

Drawing animation. I visualized the music of the band "Zelda", which I often went to the live show. (Yuko Asano).

Manekiny Tadeusza Kantora

1983 • 25 min • Poland

Tadeusz Kantor’s “Theatre of Death” is based on a singular reversal of traditional values: in this work, which indirectly relates to the world of puppetry, death is seen as a positive counter to the values of a consumer society. Thus, in accordance with this perspective, the actor was to appear to the viewer with the same strangeness and the same distance as though surrounding a corpse.

Norwood

1983 • 25 min

Norwood (1983) continued the 'story' of Stonebridge Park and the technique, in another London suburb. Short films of increasing technical sophistication climaxed in 1989 with The Clouds, a further topographical exploration combining another anxious fictional commentary with imagery derived from a journey across the north of England from Jodrell Bank to Whitby.

La Rényon lontan

1983 • 51 min • Reunion, France

A documentary about 1950's Reunion island.