All Films

Diploteratology

1978 • 7 min

A revision of Bardo Follies, Diploteratology suggests that “death (destruction of the original image) is not an end but merely the next stage.” Preceded by longer versions entitled "Bardo Follies."

Enigma: Nazo

1978 • 3 min • Japan

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

Incontinence: A Diarrhetic Flow of Mismatches

1978 • 18 min • United States of America

The editing strategies parallel the personal relationships depicted, and a mismatched cut is literally only the other side of a mismatched couple. Rarely have sound, image and the spatio-temporal coordinates of narrative illusion been buffeted about so vigorously.

Grain Graphics

1978 • 6 min

In Filmmakers' Monthly, Edgar Daniels described GRAIN GRAPHICS as a structural film "which begins with two frames of a film strip, one above the other, occupying the middle of the screen, flanked by two vertical filmstrips with smaller frames. In grainy negative, a small number of figures interact in various ways in each of the frames. Gradually, as if the camera were drawing away, this pattern grows smaller and its units increase correspondingly in number, until at the end there appear to be hundreds of rectangles, all with figures busy in motion.” Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

The Dictator

1978 • 22 min

Ficticious interview with a fictitious dictator.

Meta Meta

1978 • 3 min • Indonesia

“Images of the life force welling up. This is a film which depicts the visual dreams I had when I was only 12 years old. I made this film in the same way that I paint.”

Canada Vignettes: Sodbusters

1978 • 1 min • Canada

A Canadian prairie farm family has a tough beginning on their new farm.

Happy Kuchkhi

1978 • 26 min • Soviet Union

Sea Travels

1978 • 11 min

"A surrealistic film made with optical printed techniques about a young girl who acts as a guide on a journey aimed at recapturing childhood through the distortion of memory." - The Independent

Once Upon a Time There Lived a Little Bee

1978 • 16 min • Soviet Union

Mao Tse-Tung: The Greatest Revolutionary of Our Time

1978 • 19 min • United States of America

A documentary on Chairman Mao and the Chinese communist revolution by Single Spark Films.

Diagram Film

1978 • 12 min

DIAGRAM FILM alternates shots of planes, cars and people walking with comically elaborate moving diagrams of them. And sometimes it reverses itself, as when a group of triangles is replaced by a shot of tepees. The diagrams head off into fantastic Rube Goldberg machine movements, with details undergoing constant transformation.

Auto-mates

1978 • 22 min

Gary Walkow shot this film in 1977 and completed it in 1978. In the August 1979 issue of "American Cinematographer" Tom Frei wrote an article "Moving Camera Shots inside a Moving Automobile." The entire film was shot inside of a Oldsmobile Starfire. Gary looped the entire soundtrack but now feels it would have been much better using the production sound. Oh, well.

I Love the Headmistress

1978 • 29 min • Soviet Union

Documentary about a school for kids from troubled homes.

Walya Ngamardiki: The Land My Mother

1978 • 19 min • Australia

Exploring the relationship between Aboriginal people and their land (including the Dreaming, sacred places), this film was inspired by Silas Roberts’ submission to the 1976 Australian Government inquiry on uranium mining - the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry. Silas, whose tribal name is Ngourladi, is an elder of the Allawa clan and was the first chairman of the Northern Land Council, established to assist Aboriginal people make land rights claims based on traditional ownership. The film, which moves from Arnhem Land in the north to Yuendumu in the centre, examines the importance of maintaining Aboriginal culture and laws and explains the reasons why they object to the mining being carried out.

Four Journeys Into Mystic Time: Trans

1978 • 8 min • United States of America

Part of the larger filmic Four Journeys Into Mystic Time, in this work director Shirley Clarke makes use of a dancer’s body not only as the primary performer, but also as a canvas on which to paint projected images. Further enhanced by editing and effective use of shadows, the film is a transformative experience.

Nightmare Series

1978 • 20 min

A decade and a half ago, poet Robert Kelly told me that the "crucial work" of our time might be what he calls "the dream work": I hope, with this Series, to have entertained his challenge more thoughtfully than with any previous "dream" filmmaking. In homage to Sigmund Freud & Surrealism, this film proposes clear visual alternatives to the consideration of both "The Interpretation of..." and all previous representations of... dreaming. (SB) "These four short films...have each individually a haunting quality but do importantly work together to form a gradually swelling curve of increasingly intense unease." -Marie Nesthus

Astragal

1978 • 12 min • Germany

Light, clouds and fog.

Tap

1978 • 3 min • United Kingdom

Dawn Patrol

1978 • 10 min • France

The shadow of an opening door sweeps across the floor...

Via Sound

1978 • 24 min • United States of America

Via Sound is a string of vignettes from a trip to Italy and Yugoslavia. As the title implies, this film should be seen through listening. The Super 8 medium offered the exciting possibility of editing in-camera both sound and images simultaneously.

Performance Wencke Mühleisen

1978 • 58 min

Rituals of performance, symbolic showdowns and murders of father figures, slaughterhouse parties, examinations of prejudice, gender and sexuality.

Djurdja

1978 • 10 min • Yugoslavia

Đurđa lives deep in the forest in a woodcutters’ settlement. The only woman in this men’s world, she does the household chores for the entire community. A film about her work and her life.

Gestuel

1978 • 20 min • France

This film is the most "plastic", the most "actionist" of Nedjar: it is his In contextus or his Double Labyrinth. Except that here - a single actor filmed in close-up on a plain black background. Nedjar "wiggles" his camera, with Gaël Badaud manipulating a green net or a mirror, wearing a gas mask or covering his head with a red-skinned knit like a bloody balaclava, he inaugurates a search for luminous calligraphies that will soon be shared with Teo Hernandez.-- Dominique Noguez.