All Films

Ballet for Birds

1975 • 8 min

Soundtrack: EBONY CONCERTO, by Igor Stravinsky.

Huando

1975 • 7 min

Review of what “Huando” (Lima) was doing, before and after the Agrarian Reform (1969) carried out by the military government of General Juan Alvarado. Images of the hacienda considered in its time as an organization model, due to its productivity and efficiency.

Film Lane

1975 • 18 min

Film is shot from a moving vehicle; from its roof pointing forward, from its rear pointing backwards. This occurs on two occasions; the summer of 1973 and the winter of 1974. The camera runs at either 24 fps or 12 fps The film is assembled according to pre-determined factors; (i) the 12 frame / half second bias as observed in Sheepman section; (ii) a double binary - alternating apparent movement away from and toward the surface of the screen, (a function relying on the perception of successive frames); (iii) combinations of one or other of these. The primary function of the 12 frame opaque film is, as in the Sheepman section, not so much as markers of time but as a constant factor comparative to those frames they surround.

Filmabuse

1975 • 4 min

A myriad of purple and blue markings flicker hypnotically across the screen in “Filmabuse.” Periodically a blue screen flashes, disturbing the trance induced by the colorful smudges. The rhythm of the colors gathers steam and accelerates as the film continues. Near the conclusion, for the entirety of one second, a woman appears; she is “put together” without a stray hair; however, her face appears scarred and swollen, juxtaposing the slight grin her lips muster.

My World... Earth

1975 • 11 min

An experimental avant-garde film intended to raise questions and stimulate curiosity and appreciation of rocks, dirt and the universe.

The Disenchantment

1975 • 29 min • France, Romania

A short film following a healer from Maramureș region, Romania.

Aerial

1975 • 3 min • United States of America

A portrait of children at play

The Dog and the Cat

1975 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Winter is coming on, and a shepherd-dog goes to a cat-furrier to get a new hat made for himself. Instead he gets cheated, thus beginning the age-old feud between dogs and cats. Based on the poem by Hovhannes Tumanyan.

Paradise

1975 • 6 min • Poland

A metaphorical image of humans cornered by the civilisation. Hustle and bustle, noise, and cracking sounds become unbearable.

Bevendzhik

1975 • 6 min • Soviet Union

A satirical film tale about the greedy and evil bubble Bevendzhik.

The Uninvited Visitor

1975 • 4 min • United States of America

A cartoonist receives a scary visitor.

Shafts of Sunlight

1975 • 47 min

Explores a weekend in the life of a Yorkshire mining community set to the music of the Frickley Colliery brass band and illustrated with paintings and prose from former miners.

Clisson

1975 • 3 min

Alchemy of the Word

1975 • 12 min

Alchemy of the Word is a hand-made film in which I applied Zip-A-Tone patterns directly to 16mm clear film stock, including upon the optical edge, so that the dancing shapes onscreen created their own soundtrack when projected. The film also features my friend, the artist David Saunders, playing the 19th-century French Symbolist poet, Arthur Rimbaud, as he reads from one of the poet’s most famous works, Alchemy of the Word. The film, as well as the poem, are about synesthesia: the artist’s transformation of one sense into another, turning light into sound, sound into emotion, and words into images.

Air Current

1975 • 14 min • Japan

A movie film shot continuously is a series of action shots, one frame at a time. This is because there is a continuation of movement between the images in one frame and the next. On the other hand, since each frame is a single photograph, it is possible to trim and enlarge or reduce the image frame by frame. For example, if the normal zoom process is A→B→C→D, by enlarging and reducing each frame, it can become C→A→D→B. This is not unnatural since a movie is a series of photographs. The movement of the subject is continuous within the image that is enlarged and reduced frame by frame.

Fleetwood Mac: Live at Capital Centre 1975

1975 • 60 min

Live at Capital Centre, Largo, Maryland (October 15, 1975) Get it Like You Used To Be, Station Man, Spare Me a Little of Your Love, Rhiannon, Why, I’m So Afraid, Oh Well, Green Manalishi, World Turning, Blue Letter, Hypnotized

Railroad Crossing

1975 • 20 min • Japan

Human eye movements are similar to the way pigeons and chickens shake their heads. I wanted to capture that restlessness in a video. I held an 8mm camera in my hand, placed it on my head, and filmed while walking down the street. I projected the film on a screen, cut out the image to capture the movement of the eyes, and re-filmed each frame. I also made a blinking mask to use in the re-filming.

Swan

1975 • 4 min • United States of America

A short experimental animation by Jules Engel

Your Death is My Delight

1975 • 17 min

A silent film shot mostly on high contrast 16mm film, attempting to tell a story mostly with titles. Put together during a particularly bad time when I had just moved to the East Village and was living in a storefront on Sixth Street just off the Bowery. In the film I was reaching out for verbal and moral support from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell and visual support from Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic. I’ve hardly ever projected this or shown it.

Nebelung

1975 • 10 min • Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

A Derry teacher turned filmmaker transforms a classroom in his school into a claustrophobic hallucination. Created over two Sunday afternoons this award winning film stars a fellow teacher and local pupils. Terence McDonald and Gerry Wills have worked together on several films; with Nebelung they achieved international success demonstrating their flare weaving this darker postmodern tale of the anxious reactions of a German teacher triggered by an old photograph.

Newspaper People

1975 • 32 min

Two of Sweden's newspapers, from morning till night.

Fire Writing

1975 • 40 min

Performance with three lasers, live camera, and three monitors.

Horseflesh

1975 • 9 min • United States of America

Horseflesh is an artifact of a year spent living on a horse farm in Vermont listening to Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. A meditation on country living, and our weird, anthropomorphic relationship to horses.

Bleach Yr Old Sox (Comiskey Park Revisited)

1975 • 25 min

I've always been interested in recording Chicago's history, particularly its offbeat and unofficial aspects. In a way, I consider myself a renegade home movie maker for the city. This piece focuses on Sox Park and my memories of it, which go way back. I've been documenting these moments for at least 25, maybe even 30 years—longer than I initially realized. I'm not entirely sure why I feel compelled to record these events, but I believe they represent an intriguing and unique history of the city. It's a history you wouldn't typically hear about or know unless someone like me took the time to document it.