All Films

The Passage of the Bride

1980 • 6 min • United States of America

"Solomon's work - some of the best of contemporary experimental film - is difficult. Its optical and moral density eludes language, as if the films, which are often dark and cracked, were a palimpsest of obscured meaning. His PASSAGE OF THE BRIDE is dedicated to Duchamp's alter ego, Rrose Selavy - the title recalls Duchamp's 'The Bride Stripped Bare by the Bachelors, Even' - and is itself a ready-made, composed entirely from a 100-foot roll of wedding footage and what appears to be the honeymoon. BRIDE is hypnotic, dreamy. Solomon compulsively repeats recognizable images until they melt like distilled essences of the originals: The bride's run across a lawn, her climb into a car, a man (her husband?) emerging from a swim all become undulating black and white swirls of grain, ripples of water ...." - Manohla Dargis, The Village Voice

Heaven (Gay Life)

1980 • 25 min

The LGBT current affairs series visits the new Heaven nightclub, contrasting it with other parts of London’s gay scene.

Carpathian Eagle

1980 • 52 min • United Kingdom

Murder victims are being found with the hearts cut out. A police detective is assigned to find and stop the killer. Originally an episode of British horror anthology TV series, Hammer House of Horror, that later received a feature release in the United States.

A Christmas Special with Luciano Pavarotti

1980 • 55 min

Ciné-Verité

1980 • 20 min • Romania

"Ciné-Verité" is a self-reflexive movie that questions the underlying forces behind television reporting and, in a broader sense, films of different genres. The main character is a young television employee making her first attempts at reporting. She interviews ordinary people in an attempt to obtain authentic life stories (some of the footage that director Laurențiu Damian includes in the fictional fabric is real), but the idealistic reporter's work is repeatedly rejected by her boss, which eventually leads her to resort to the conventional solution of using a commentary that explains the footage in wooden language.

Ikuska 4: Euskal Telebista

1980 • 10 min • Spain

Debate on the launch of Basque television (ETB, Euskal Telebista).

A, B, C, Brasil

1980 • 19 min • Brazil

Documentary about the resumption of the workers 'movement during and after 17 years of dictatorship, led by the metallurgists of ABC Paulista (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) that culminated in the creation of the Workers' Party - PT

Mondrian in New York

1980 • 44 min

A film by Piet Hoenderdos about Mondrian’s time in New York and how his 3 years living there influenced radical changes in his work.

Disc Jockey

1980 • 10 min • Czechoslovakia

An alarm clock wakes a man who washes his face, has breakfast, drives his car to work, spins records, returns home, and takes his pills. It's a world of circles - often seen from above: an espresso cup, a stairwell, the pills, and the records spinning. At the dance where the music plays, the rhythms evoke images of a butcher slicing head cheese, gears driving other wheels and levers, a combine churning out bales of hay, a butcher cutting chunks of meat for a stew, and boxers punching. The circle of music and life.

Ten Minutes of Silence for John Lennon

1980 • 10 min • France

The documentary is about the ceremony dedicated by American people to John Lennon after his murder. The 10 minutes of silence in New York's Central Park allows a deep observation of the particularly immobile people.

Pop Pop Video

1980 • 9 min

"Dara Birnbaum's Pop-Pop Video... [has] been hailed as [a] classic of the new wave. [The tape] juxtaposes fragments from a soap opera with sequences of ice skating races. The graceful movements of the skaters punctuate repeated excerpts from a dreadfully intense discussion between a doctor and his patient: ‘He doesn't do anything, doesn't say anything.... It's just the way he looks at me.... That sound crazy?’ The narrative builds up slowly as a few more words of the deadly dialogue are released. Extended in this way, the pathos is bare, the narrative content becomes meaningless and the result is particularly moving." --Katherine Elwes, Performance (July/August 1981)

Survivor

1980 • 30 min

The third part of John Hanson and Rob Nilsson's Prairie Trilogy

Canada Vignettes: June in Povungnituk - Quebec Arctic

1980 • 1 min • Canada

On a beautiful summer’s day in Nunavik, a family enjoys the pleasures of berry picking and fishing as the sound of two Elders throat-singing fills the environment.

Paddington Bear Goes to the Movies

1980 • 21 min • United Kingdom

Paddington, having just seen Gene Kelly on the cinema screen, takes to the streets in a rain storm with his umbrella. Join him as he starts singin' and dancin' in the rain.

The Blind Waiter

1980 • 15 min

Early Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell short.

Luther Metke at 94

1980 • 27 min • Argentina

Portrait of Luther Metke, a Spanish American War veteran, poet, philosopher, and log-cabin maker, aged 94 at the time of filming. In voice over narration drawn from interviews, Metke recites his own poetry and talks about his life and his philosophy. Includes footage of Metke building a six-sided cabin, being interviewed by a local TV news station, and visiting with his family. Oscar nominated documentary short in 1980.

Duplicity III

1980 • 22 min • United States of America

The final Duplicity film does seem at resolve with the term. All previous visual manifestations have been extended to their limits, through four-roll superimpositions. Obvious costumes and masks. Drama as an ultimate bid for truth, and totemic recognition of human and animal life-on-earth dominate all the evasions a duplicity otherwise affords.

Third Avenue: Only the Strong Survive

1980 • 59 min • United States of America

The stories of six "ordinary" people who live or work along New York City's Third Avenue, which runs for sixteen miles through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, cutting through the complex social strata of the city to reveal wildly different economic and ethnic subcultures.

Meeting

1980 • 35 min • Soviet Union

Anna and Nikolai meet many years later. In their youth, they loved each other, but life separated them.

Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters

1980 • 45 min • Australia

In 1978 the police attacked demonstrators at the Sydney (Australia) Mardi Gras celebrations. This film details the communities' responses.

Fisheye

1980 • 9 min • Yugoslavia

A fishing village falls prey to a nightmare revenge from the sea. Award-winning Yugoslavian animated short film.

Szetna, a varázsló

1980 • 51 min

Energica

1980 • 9 min • Romania

The little man discovers oil and invents all kinds of machines, including a robot woman, to satisfy his consumer needs.

Dreams of Leaving

1980 • 60 min • United Kingdom

William came to work in Fleet Street in 1971. London meant girls, as many girls as he could find. Then he met Caroline and so it began, that very strange summer ... Caroline said the best of her life.