All Films

Degrees of Limitation

1982 • 3 min

A silent film made completely in about 15 minutes on a partly cloudy day in San Francisco in 1982. With the 16mm Bolex camera mounted on a tripod, I wound the motor a single crank and ran as far as I could before the camera stopped (about 1 second). I returned and wound it 2 cranks and did the same, then repeated the process adding one crank each time. With these self-imposed limitations, would I make it to the top of the hill before the film ran out?

La phonie furieuse

1982 • 10 min • Canada

Through the Blooming Linden

1982 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Lithuanian documentary about bicycles.

Water

1982 • 2 min • Switzerland

8mm film by Swiss artist Roman Signer.

Робинзон и самолёт

1982 • 9 min • Soviet Union

The Close to Nature Garden

1982 • 24 min

Mr. Fukuoka has decided not to plow, not to grow rice in flooded fields, and not to use machinery to sow or harvest. What he does do on his farm is documented in this unique record of a full year of overlapping crops.

Babobilicons

1982 • 16 min • United States of America

Krumins’ fantasy sets the world of flora and fauna on its ear. At one moment grotesque greenish mushrooms grow, wither and reverse their life-cycle, at another, strange crustacean-like animals speed around on a bed of feathers, next a room is inundated with giant ladybugs… Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

Maria Callas

1982 • 2 min

Why was Cairo Calm

1982 • 42 min

It begins in the days after Sadat's assassination in 1981 by an islamist cell of army officers. The American media had led an outpouring of shock and grief in the United States at the death of the heroic president. All the western leaders then travelled to Cairo to say goodbye to the man who had courageously changed the course of history. But then they found that practically no Egyptians turned up to the funeral. And the western politicians and the American TV reporters couldn't understand why. The documentary tries to find the answer.

Time of Darkness and Silence

1982 • 60 min • Germany

An investigation of Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous film production of “Tiefland” during the Holocaust, one which used Sinti extras under forced labor conditions. After filming finished in 1944, these extras were sent to Auschwitz. Nina Gladitz interviews the survivors and perpetrators, wondering if Riefenstahl knew this would happen at the end of production. Tiefland was filmed from 1940-1944 but was not released until 1954. Leni Riefenstahl sued Gladitz over the documentary.

The God Makers

1982 • 56 min • United States of America

Two former Mormons seek to file a class-action lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, detailing for skeptical attorneys the history, doctrines and secret rituals of the Mormon religion.

Come to the Clearing

1982 • 9 min • Hungary

Experimental short animated film by Péter Molnár

Imitation of Life

1982 • 25 min

Finally, manipulating the "natural" flow of the film image represents another kind of intrinsic interruption. I have in mind such devices as artificially slowing motion by step printing the home movie footage for Imitation of Life in the KAPITAL cycle.

A Search for Myself

1982 • 60 min • Japan

At Tourkovounia

1982 • 25 min • Greece

Greek internal migrants in Athens, after the Greek Civil War colonize the tops of the Tourkovounia hills.

The Chorus

1982 • 17 min • Iran

An old man with a hearing aid tires of listening to the noises of the town. But when he takes his aid out he can't hear his grandchildren coming to see him.

Baby Doll

1982 • 3 min • United States of America

Tessa Hughes-Freeland’s “Baby Doll” is a tiny slice of cinéma vérité from 1982 about the girls working the now defunct Baby Doll Lounge on Church and White St. in downtown Manhattan. It captures a moment before NYC got sanitized.

Festival of Mask

1982 • 24 min • United States of America

Filmmaker Don Amis was one of the very few Black student filmmakers at UCLA (including Carroll Parrott Blue and Denise Bean) working in a documentary mode. In this film, preparations, parade and performances from the Craft and Folk Art Museum’s annual Festival of Mask illustrate L.A.’s diverse racial and ethnic communities (African, Asian, Latin American) expressing themselves through a shared traditional form.

The Voyage of Odysseus

1982 • 28 min • United States of America

The voyage section of Homer's classic tale is retold by the voice of a muse, actor Julie Harris, who recalls the essence of the adventure. A remarkable visual experience that captures the mythic quality of the ancient story.

Three Ivans

1982 • 10 min • Soviet Union

About the inextricable friendship of the Eastern Slavs: Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian Ivan.

Centralia Fire

1982 • 28 min • United States of America

A TV documentary detailing the Centralia, Pennsylvania underground mine fire and its environmental effects on the town and residents above some 20 years after its start.

Quad I+II

1982 • 14 min • Germany

Cloaked, cowled figures wander in patterns to rhythm instruments. First transmitted by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany on 8 October 1981. "Between the two parts there is an intermission of 100,000 years." -S.B. during the rehearsals.

Your Very Personal Poetry

1982 • 20 min • Soviet Union

This poetic core in youngsters is also touched in Stanukina's less known Your very personal poetry (Свои, совсем особые стихи, 1982), a wonderful film about a poetry class. It is here that one recalls Kogan's admiration of Lyalya's emotional documentary skills. And it is here that one recalls Kosakovsky's depiction of Lyalya as a person of extraordinarily prosperous feelings, sensitive and energetic, childish and female, shrill and quiet. The young poets are marvellously sneaky, respectfully adoring and creatively playing with - maybe even deconstructing - "Aleksandr Sergeevich", Mr. Pushkin, Russia's exclusive trade mark of high culture and literature.

Beardsley and His Work

1982 • 49 min • United Kingdom

Aubrey Beardsley was a phenomenon, as his contemporaries recognised. Between 1893 and 1898 (when he died from tuberculosis aged just 25) he developed into one of the world's most exciting graphic artists, and turned out hundreds of black and white drawings, which retain their power to fascinate, to amuse and to shock. In this film Brian Reade, Brigid Brophy, Ralph Steadman and a psychiatrist, discuss Beardsley's work and recall the story of his short life. The film has been made almost exclusively from Beardsley's original drawings.