All Films

When photography was in its infancy, the American West was still a frontier; and, for a period of about fifty years, the two interacted in a complex and fascinating way. Dramatic subject matter in the West became accessible to photographers just when the newly-discovered wet-plate process enabled them to work outdoors.

Richard Gaikowski chronicles punk rock band The Offs' performing at San Francisco's notorious "Deaf Club"

A teenager's quest for a new look leads to a new personality. Music by Suicide, The Andrew Sisters, James White & The Blacks, Los Microwaves.

Short film by Itaru Kato

The Units’ Training Film was a visual backdrop for this groundbreaking punk-syntho band.

Djunawunya, Arnhem Land, east of the town of Maningrida, July 1978. Frank Gurrmanamana is responsible for preparing the final mortuary ceremonies for his brother who had died six years before. The brother had been buried in Maningrida, but now his remains are being brought back to his home country. Central to the ceremonies is Harry Diama, the senior blood-relative of the deceased man, but Harry lives in Maningrida and is pre-occupied with a pending court-case there involving his son. He is needed to approve each step of the preparations, and is also pivotal in bringing other people to the event, including "men of importance" for the dancing. As the day for the ceremony's climax draws near, Frank grows ever more anxious about the non-arrival of Harry and the people he is supposed to bring.

Commissioned by Remy Martin for a public exhibition in Grand Central Station in New York, Remy/Grand Central is an advertisement with a deconstructive twist. In a syncopated collage of appropriated footage (including a TV commercial for Sergio Valente jeans) and a young woman drinking Remy on a commuter train platform, Birnbaum calls attention to how mass media advertising uses a woman's body as a vehicle for selling products. In a stylized pastiche that she terms "a snack-en-route with a pretty girl, animated trains, updated Bacharach muzak (Brazilian style), and pouring Remy," Birnbaum turns the tables on the media's use of woman as commodity.

"Shot in murky black and white with a super-aggressive, super-nervous, super-8 trigger finger, INVASION is a DEVOesque time machine collapsing 50's lobotomization on 70's ecological blight to breed a future race of broiler foil mummies. Virgil, the hero, follows a path that parallels Kevin McCarthy's in the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, but Boone's blithe disregard for linear continuity produces a more divinely spacey comedia than Hollywood ever imagines." – Amy Taubin, SoHo News

Shot in the span of a few hours at a party held in Milan in 1979, the film takes the form of a reflection on a fragment of a lost youth reality in search of new references. Young people who, emerging from years of intense political activism and profound social and cultural changes (the 70s), are about to enter a new decade (the 80s) lived under the banner of rampantism and hedonism. A document attentive to individual behavior, to original ideas, to communicative intentions that go beyond parched languages. Facce di festa is built by assembling material collected with different cinematographic techniques: hidden camera, behavioral interviews, descriptive images. In the film, there is an attempt to create a delicate but tenacious interference between the author's narration and the viewer's perception. The camera becomes a vehicle for forcing the cinematographic narration by seeking a new space in the presence of the spectator.

The film concerns Michael's decision to reveal his homosexuality to his family. It follows his preparation in coming out by his participation in a lesbian and gay male peer support group. In this session, several of the participants reveal their own actual experiences, both positive and negative, in coming out to their families.

We learn about bus safety from a young girl who is a self-professed Bus Nut. Emphasizes the danger of horseplay while waiting for a school bus, the dangers of running in front of a school bus without clear signal from the bus driver, and the correct way to enter a school bus.

One film, FIGURE WITH 14 TRAINS (7 min, sound), exists in a sort-of middle ground between documentary and experimentation. Around and superimposed through images of a man in bed are elegiac shots of Chicago trains, suggesting something almost erotic, much like SWIM, but it’s unequivocal in its depiction of the transit system as a wondrous framework. -Karen Sachs

Cordelia Urueta reflects out loud about her life and creativity, she finds that the shapes of reality surrounding her are never as beautiful as the ones in her own colored universe.

This film shows the entertaining and joyful experiences of children in a series of creative workshops. With the help of artists, children make kites, poetry, music, movement, dance and film in Toronto schools - both normal and special education classrooms - as well as Scadding House, headquarters for the Inner City Angels in Toronto. The film provides a useful reference guide for alternative teaching methods and techniques for interaction between teachers and students.

Bressan's first truly fictional foray, created after he defended a thesis in literature on Alexandre Dumas. (CJC)

This documentary was produced in 1980 for WMTV in Madison, Wisconsin. It contains interviews with several Madison residents who were exploring various uses for personal computer technology.

A young man’s heart is full of passion and warmth. He decides to leave his father’s home to venture into the world. By chance, he overhears a conversation between a giant and the daughter of the sun, which reveals to him the legend of the Northern Maiden. He then chooses to set out to sea in search of this fabled being. Based on a story by Kārlis Skalbe.

An action limits the film, the swing of a microphone over a speaker modulates the sound of the action. A staging that will not do what one surprises oneself to expect.

The film follows walking feet and progresses to a preoccupation with the dancing shadow of the camera and the filmmaker. Much of the footage was home-processed to obtain the golden colours and solarization effects. In part the film documents the marking out of suburban space. By that I mean, that in suburban property the front and back yards form a private domain. This film tries to illuminate that space.