All Films

The Cactus

1976 • 17 min • Soviet Union

A tale about a man who dreamed of growing a blue cactus and about a Hedgehog who dreamed of finding a friend.

… Pela Razão Que Têm!

1976 • 39 min • Portugal

Shortly after the fall of the Salazar dictatorship, in the early days of PREC, one of the first land occupations in the liberated country took place in the village of Quebradas (near Rio Maior). It was the first Basista occupation of that period. Soon after recovering the "land that was ours and was stolen from us", the workers elected a committee and formed a co-operative. There's a sense that the class struggle has reached its peak. …PELA RAZÃO QUE TÊM! is a rare case of a re-enactment documentary, in which the peasants themselves reenact the remarkable events of this claim, just after 25 November, when many of these operations were being reversed.

Un Miliardo di Segreti

1976 • 46 min

Super8 film by Marco Paolo Pavese.

A Prepared Text

1976 • 5 min

Shot in one continuous take and exclusively featuring Dana Hodgon's face and voice as he delivers an ironically edited monologue.

Aranhol

1976 • 1 min • Brazil

A brown spot grows and develops into the shape of a spider, which shrinks and enlarges in a repetition of frames. The spider transforms into a bird, which changes its head and performs a flying motion from the center of the screen to the lower left corner, where its shape degrades and recomposes itself into the shape of another bird, which flies toward the right side of the frame. The word “end” gradually appears, formed by small, discontinuous strokes. While writing the letter M, a hand holding a pen appears, writing. The small strokes are transformed into continuous letters, and the last movement is the transformation of the letter I into a stick figure waving, accompanied by a speech bubble containing the word “end” again.

24 Images Per Second

1976 • 11 min

The intriguing world of cinema, explored as both industry and technical art: production in a flash; the studio as ritual; location shooting; editing; sound; the laboratory; animation; fascination — all unfolding at 24 frames per second.

Take the 5:10 to Dreamland

1976 • 6 min • United States of America

Its slow somnambulic rhythm, its animalistic jungle sounds as well as the eerily mixed images create a dream mood that comes closest to my actual dreaming-feeling. The long black phases between the sequences are as important as the images themselves because they leave empty space where the "echo" of the last image can seep through without interfering with the following image. But our logical mind still somehow feels compelled to construe some kind of sense, parallel, or some erratic story out of it.

Addio Anatolia

1976 • 36 min • Greece

Staros Tornes' first non-fiction short combines a beautifully poetic text with a series of tracking shots in the streets of Rome, set to music by Charlotte Van Gelder. Somewhere between documentary and poetic essay, this film was born out of Tornes' love for Africa and the Orients, his never-ending agony over bloody revolutions and his passionate use of cinema to approach the Other

Labyrinth

1976 • 12 min • Italy

A man and a woman sit in a room and when the wind blows the window open, the man imagines what would happen if he kills the woman and the following drama blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction.

The Monument

1976 • 5 min • Yugoslavia

The clacking of heels on the floor, to the rhythm of a measured walk, accompanies the movement of a camera that scrutinises a man in close up. Slowly, the camera turns around him, from his feet on the floor to the top of his head. The man doesn't move a muscle, with his arms lying straight by his side, as though he has become an object under a woman's eye, identifiable by the sound of her footsteps. The closeness of the camera fragments and fetishises the body. There are no wide shots at any point that might enable the man to be identified. The fragments glimpsed by the camera do not provide any identifying markers, rendering the overall view disproportionate. Like a "monument", the figure is presented to the audience.

32/76: To W + B

1976 • 8 min • Austria

I took a photograph of the view out of the window and had a very large negative made from it, which I fastened to the lens hood attacement in front of the camera. I tried to bring the negative into alignment with the real landscape which I could see through the camera. Then I filmed for months, changing the focus from near to far and then back again. (K.K.)

A Beautiful Memory

1976 • 2 min

Part of BFI's "National Coal Board Collection".

The Wall

1976 • 14 min

In 1976 Matta-Clark left for Berlin claiming that he intended to blow-up the Berlin Wall as his contribution to the New York–Downtown Manhattan: Soho show. Friends dissuaded him from such a suicidal action, and so instead he created Made in America, a piece that reflects on the political origins of the Berlin Wall and the West’s fascination with consumerism.

Switch Back

1976 • 9 min

A nostalgic work, which attempts to reconstruct the materials of postwar 35 mm newsreel footage given by the filmmakers’ friend and old tinted picture postcards. He frankly describes in his own coherent style of filmmaking how he was moved when he saw these films and photographs for the first time. An attempt to rediscover fresh and new images in the past products.

Dutchman's Photographs

1976 • 7 min • Japan

Beginning with the grounded view of bare feet walking through shallow surf, the film then seizes and, in successively cumulative layers adds frames of image-within-image until we are watching the walking feet through a tunnel. The Dutchman's Photographs becomes a kinetic reiteration of itself and in doing so, succinctly detaches from spatial illusion, beginning a temporal experiment where still photographs are transformed into cinematic "action".

Substrait (Underground Dailies)

1976 • 35 min • United States of America

In this film, Matta-Clark explored and documented the underground spaces of New York City. The artist chose a range of sites (New York Central railroad tracks, Grand Central Station, 13th Street, Croton Aqueduct in Highgate, etc.) to show the variety and complexity of the underground spaces and tunnels in the Metropolitan area.

Frozen Flashes

1976 • 30 min • Germany

A series of still photographs, is various states of photographic exposure.

The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

1976 • 17 min • France

The floral park of Moutiers in Varengeville (Normandy).

Permutations and Combinations

1976 • 8 min

A close container for chance elements. Together with She Is Away, makes apparent some features of the material form of which the entire cycle would be composed.

Brave Horsemen

1976 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Mischievous boys, who consider themselves brave horsemen, teach the puppy Julbars to scare everyone. Once, to scare a neighbor girl, they painted the puppy as a tiger, and he caught a cold. Instead of helping their Julbars, the boys decided to take revenge on the girl for her kindness, and she cured the sick puppy. And she had one more friend. He who is kinder is braver, because he is kind!

Again About the Dragon and the Knight

1976 • 10 min • Soviet Union

An animated film based on an ancient Georgian fairy tale about a dragon that captured a spring and demanded a 'beautiful girl' in exchange for water every day. A brave knight defeated the dragon and returned the spring to the people. This is the content of the original tale, but the animated film also presents alternative versions of the events.

Carrier Fish

1976 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Barronhos

1976 • 52 min • Portugal

In the hot summer of 1975, in the middle of the revolution, in the heat of political and social conflicts, a crime is committed in a slum neighborhood on the outskirts of Lisbon. Analyzing this crime, as its causes, its protagonists, its local and national context, the film proposes a hot reflection on the Revolutionary Process in Progress (Processo Revolucionário em Progresso ) that throughout the year and throughout the country, and on how political contradictions, Social and economic rights that divided Portugal as a result of the military coup of 25 April 1974.

Treeline

1976 • 3 min • United Kingdom