All Films

Perequeté

1981 • 21 min • Brazil

A profile of Francisco Marto, an actor and dancer from Paraíba, and his relationship with the artistic world. Colleagues from work and his aunt, with whom he lives, testify about his art, talking about provincial prejudices, the dream of stardom and the possible migration to a big city.

We Are Coming

1981 • 13 min

Short film by Jochen Gerz.

Who Will Wake Up the Axolotl?

1981 • 48 min • Soviet Union

Popular science film about different views on the theory of evolution and the infinity of human knowledge.

The Little Gluers

1981 • 47 min • Germany

The almost exclusively female hands that used to glue scenes together in the film laboratory according to the director’s instructions were not recognised in a film’s credits. In a series of interviews, eight former film laboratory employees and their friends remember this challenging and little-acknowledged work from the early days of the analogue film age.

Arthur the Kid

1981 • 24 min

Three inept crooks, endeavoring to become big-name Western outlaws, advertise for a gang leader. The newspaper squib only attracts the interest of a young boy who nevertheless manages to make them famous.

The Attack of the Saucer People

1981 • 13 min

Roger, a ciné enthusiast, enlists the support of fellow ciné-club members in the making of an amateur, sci-fi film. After inadvertently filming an actual alien spaceship, his group thinks he has upped his special effects budget and suspect nothing’s amiss. It won’t be long before Roger is paid another visit by the little green men, but will this be the end or will there be a sequel?

Snake Soup

1981 • 20 min

Nakamura’s trademark repetition technique and variety of moving-image materials convey hints of a mysterious and transgressive narrative. The textures of desire and death stirring within the tableau-like arrangements of figures embody the underlying tone that pervades Nakamura’s films.

Catabasi

1981 • 11 min

Catabasi is intimately interrelated with Anabasi, constituting the second phase of the search for the self. Etymologically, "catabasis" means the descent, the return (as opposed to "anabasis": the ascent). In this film, the Woman tries to return to herself, to the depths of physiological life, to rediscover her lost identity in her own body through dance. Dazzling images spring from his liberating dance, culminating in a rite of anthropological origin (some African peoples still living at an ethnological level practice a similar dance, based on jumps upwards). In the body, the Woman finds unsuspected energies buried, releasing a vitalism that contemporary capitalist society tends to exorcise as its insidious enemy.

Dance Twelve

1981 • 4 min • United States of America

Set to an Albinoni score, Chase hypnotically manipulates line and block patterns.

Good Work Is Always Hard

1981 • 60 min • Soviet Union

Documentary about the AvtoVAZ automobile plant, everyday work and development of new 2107 and 2108 models.

Documentary about...

1981 • 10 min

A handful of young documentary filmmakers have to make a report on a lathe machine enterprise. Only that Documentary About… is also a playful, almost cheeky film about its own making.

Das Leben des Sid Vicious

1981 • 11 min

Sid and Nancy’s life as enacted by two little babies.

Papaloapan

1981 • 50 min • Mexico

“By removing us from our place it is as if they were burying us.” This production by renowned filmmaker Luis Mandoki is an important visual testimony about the resettlement of the Mazatec and Chinantec populations affected by the construction of the Miguel Alemán (1951-1957) and Cerro de Oro (1974-1989) dams.

Youth Experience

1981 • 30 min • Japan

An underground gay video already existed in the late 1970s in japan. "Seishun taiken shirīzu shōnen Jun no natsu" is the oldest ever know sold through legitimate channels however, it turned out that the Athens Ueno store was producing 8mm film works since 1973. So far, it has not been confirmed that Athens' original work was sold on VHS/Beta before Shonen Jun no Natsu. As a side note, the first domestically produced adult video for straight men was also released in the same year, and it is no exaggeration to say that these works for adults greatly contributed to the spread of VHS decks in Japan throughout the 1980s.

New York

1981 • 32 min • France, United States of America

24fps, 16mm dairy film by Pierre Parat

Towards Intuition: An American Landscape

1981 • 56 min • Spain

Having created a set of works on analogue video between 1976 and 1980 we (Vida) decided to go to America to drive across the dream of America in search of the source of intuition. The US had provided not only Americans but people around the world - such as we three British people - with a promise of improvement, not only of our circumstance, but of ourselves. As a sometimes musician, poet, writer and painter I’d become familiar with the use of improvisation to create various artefacts and moments and recognised that element when constructing moving images on a timeline into an act of durational statement.

When the Light Gray Man Carries Your Luggage

1981 • 10 min • Canada

Canadian Poet Joe Rosenblatt's reading his poem of the same name along with evocations of the poem's landscape. Using the metaphoric terrain of his allusions we draw closer to the imaginative leaps that come to light.

The Forgotten Dead

1981 • 17 min • Hungary

The porajmos, that is, the Roma holocaust, is an area of 20th century history that is still not fully explored. There are no accurate details on the number of victims and not a single Gypsy witness was called at the Nuremburg Trials. In 1981, this documentary by József Lakatos was one of the first to use the tools of motion pictures to draw attention to this devastating historical trauma. The film honours the forgotten dead through the input of a historian and the recording of accounts by survivors.

Woman Water Huron Goodbye

1981 • 11 min • Canada

Hope I will see you again!

Help! I’m Stranded…

1981 • 5 min

Help! I’m stranded… in a Spartanburg motel room with: 1. a broken TV, 2. some note cards, and 3. a red crayon. It’s a true story. A rubbing film, a sound-image guessing game.

Utlänningen

1981 • 39 min

Utlänningen is a typical exponent of independent, exile and migrant filmmaking. It contains documentary footage from both Finland and Turkey and depicts the situation of the forced migrant: to be placed in-between two countries and two different socio-political situations; between the on-going political struggle in a remote Turkey and the current situation in a foreign Finland. Özer acts the leading part in the film.

Dream

1981 • 18 min • Soviet Union

About one day of a lonely young woman, for whom life is a dream, and sleep is life.

The Propaganda War

1981 • 16 min

An Israeli student film about anti-Zionist propaganda.

Cockchafer and Ant

1981 • 7 min • Soviet Union

Hardworking ants re-educate the lazy cockchafer.