All Films

The Venus of Ille

1981 • 60 min • Italy

A wealthy landowner uncovers a bronze statue of Venus on his property. He asks an antique expert to examine the statue and confirm its wealth. Upon arrival, the expert is striken with love by the landowner’s daughter-in-law who bears an uncanny resemblance to the statue.

Tsaar Muhha

1981 • 3 min • Soviet Union

A film experiment by the legendary punk group Päratrust, satirizing Soviet power.

In the Train

1981 • 50 min • Soviet Union

The events take place in the train. Some passengers show great respect for Mr. Dadashov, but who is Mr. Dadashov?

Kluane

1981 • 57 min • Canada

Kluane National Park is situated in the Yukon area of northern Canada and is a research paradise for glaciologists, geologists and other scientists. Mountaineers come to scale the impressive heights. Animals are free to roam, protected by stringent legislation. This film reveals many facets of this beautiful park, which has been declared a protected zone by UNESCO.

In the Shadow of the Sun

1981 • 54 min • United Kingdom

'The Shadow of the Sun' draws upon Derek Jarman’s interest with alchemical processes as a metaphor for reprocessing Super-8 film. Jarman once described film’s union of light and matter as “an alchemical conjunction” and experimented throughout his career with creating dream symbolism through the superimposition of image and action. Originally called English Apocalypse, the film’s final title is derived from a 17th Century alchemical text that used the phrase as a synonym for the philosopher’s stone – the highly sought substance that turns base metals into gold and silver. The film was intended as a step toward the idea of an ambient video, that like its musical counterpart, was designed to enhance an environment.

Iggy Pop: Live San Fran 1981

1981 • 60 min • United States of America

While this film may look rough and raw to 21st Century eyes, it is also the best representation of Iggy live during an otherwise pitifully undocumented era of his career. Fronting a crack band featuring Blondie drummer Clem Burke and future David Bowie guitarist Carlos Alomar, Pop is as unpredictable and dominant as ever (no small feat since he is sporting a mini skirt, garters and stockings for most of the show). Filmed on November 25 1981 near the end of their tour supporting his 1981 album Party, Iggy and co. are raw and ready for business. Iggy Pop Live 1981 provides a snapshot of a hungry artist at the top of his game in front of an adoring crowd.

Once Upon a Mouse

1981 • 27 min • United States of America

Once Upon a Mouse is a theatrical featurette highlighting Disney's animated legacy starting with Steamboat Willie in 1928.

The First National Kidisc

1981 • 30 min • United States of America

The First National Kidisc, an original program especially produced for your LaserVision system, brings a new world of meaningful entertainment, creative play and fascinating discovery to children of all ages. This truly unique program calls into use all the special features of your LaserVision system—such as still frame, step viewing, slow motion, random access and chapter stops—to provide hour after hour, day after day, of enriching and engaging experiences.

Have You Seen The Mona Lisa...?

1981 • 45 min

Arena looks behind the Gioconda smile. The Mona Lisa hangs in the Louvre behind plate glass - an unsigned, undated portrait of a smiling woman. She is the most idolised and abused woman in the history of art.

Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space

1981 • 60 min

Shopping Bag, Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space explores nine Los Angeles based artists reflecting on ritual in their life and art. Artist David Hammons discusses the role of chance and improvisation in his work while working on sculpture on a waste site while N’Senga Nengudi talks about staging her performances in freeway underpasses. Spanning performance to spoken word, environmental sculpture to music each artist talks about how ritual and cultural traditions informs their work. This experimental essay intercuts interviews, documentation and photographs with the music of Don Cherry seeking to adjust the criteria and language used to talk about artists of colour.

Zyzak Is King

1981 • 11 min • United States of America

Gaming group plays a sword-and-sorcery RPG using a computer.

Spacy

1981 • 10 min • Japan

"His films are like a roller-coaster. His way of throwing the act of seeing into utter confusion is an attack on the eyes in their corporeal function, and to attack the eyes is to take on tile body itself as your opponent. The film makes you break out in sweat only by shooting a safe, peaceful gymnasium in the dark." (Koharu Kisaragi)

The Office

1981 • 20 min

Joseph Minion's debut short film.

Flower Music

1981 • 1 min • Soviet Union

A picturesque sketch of flowers.

A Time To Rise

1981 • 40 min • Canada

On April 6, 1980, the Canadian Farmworkers Union came into existence. This film documents the conditions among Chinese and East Indian immigrant workers in British Columbia that provoked the formation of the union, and the response of growers and labor contractors to the threat of unionization. Made over a period of two years, the film is eloquent testimony to the progress of the workers’ movement from the first stirrings of militancy to the energetic canvassing of union members.

No Time To Say Good-Bye

1981 • 10 min • Cameroon

For love, a young woman wants to leave her family and her country, which the other young man who loves her cannot understand.

Stan & Jane Brakhage

1981 • 3 min • United States of America

A poignant portrait of Stan and Jane Brakhage visiting Juarez.

Hatsu Yume (First Dream)

1981 • 56 min • United States of America

With a title referring to Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of a new year are significant, the film - an ardent dream entirely shot in Japan - stands as a spiritual allegory equating light and dark with life and death.

Mitt land (Mi país)

1981 • 7 min • Sweden, Chile

Peter Nestler's short focusses the works of four Chilean artists: two painters [Nicolas de la Cruz and Jorge Kuhn], a graphic designer [Rolando Pérez], and a guitar player [Adrián Miranda]. Together they show, without words, how they see their beautiful country after the coup d'etat - suddenly the colorful pastoral scenes change to the sharp contrasts of black-and-white woodcuts presenting the distorted faces of the military dictators - and what they hope for the future.

Dog

1981 • 32 min • Poland

A young couple's dog becomes a subject of crutiny by the other residents of their apartment complex, setting off a bureacratic nightmare in this satire of Polish society.

Death in the Family

1981 • 51 min • United Kingdom

A family gathering in Greece devolves into deception, incest, and quite a lot of murder.

ditch

1981 • 17 min

An Iranian Movie.

You Are Not I

1981 • 49 min • United States of America

A young woman escapes from a mental hospital during the chaos of a nearby multiple-car accident. She is mistaken for a shock victim and is driven to her sister's house by a rescue volunteer. Then the real story begins...

My Mother Was Never a Kid

1981 • 46 min • United States of America

A trip to the past helps a teenager learn to appreciate her mother