All Films

Creek

1974 • 3 min

Ana Mendieta, 1974

Firework: Eyes

1974 • 1 min • United Kingdom

Stark 70s firework safety film which mixes the everyday and the uncanny.

Cataclysm

1974 • 25 min • Soviet Union

About how the cunning cat Vaska quarreled with a dog, a ram and a rooster with the owners. Once upon a time there was a grandfather and a woman. One day, when the cat ate all the sour cream, and blamed everything on the dog, the grandfather got angry and kicked Vaska out of the house. The rascal Vaska did not go alone, he tricked a rooster, a ram and a dog into the forest with him. And there are many dangers in the forest, only a wolf and a fox are worth something. And the rooster would not have lived with the sheep if it hadn't been for his grandfather...

Ongka's Big Moka

1974 • 60 min • United Kingdom

The film follows Ongka's struggles to accumulate huge numbers of pigs and other items of value to present at a Moka ceremony to another tribe.

Cartoons: Before the Fact

1974 • 6 min

Made at S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton as a class exercise, filmmaker Saul Levine performs with students who each try to mimic his previously recorded phrase and then try to imitate each other imitating the recording.

Tale After Tale

1974 • 17 min • Hungary, Soviet Union

Turn-On

1974 • 22 min • United States of America

The back of Acconci's head is seen in tight close-up. He hums to himself, first lyrically, then aggressively, violently. Suddenly he wheels around to face the camera, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, squinting at the viewer and speaking breathlessly. When finished, he turns and continues to hum, repeating this cycle again and again.

A Film on Hitchhiking

1974 • 17 min • United States of America

Short film focused on the dangers of hitchhiking in the seventies.

Path of Cessation

1974 • 55 min • United States of America

In PATH OF CESSATION the image that is communicated to us by Fulton is a highly mystifying one. Rather than analyze, or enter into a dialogue with the Tibetan culture that he photographs, Fulton has succumbed to it, and through the process has presented us a work of great surface, as well as formal, beauty.

Henry Miller: Reflections on Writing

1974 • 48 min • United States of America

Henry Miller discusses his art as a writer, among friends and colleagues such as Lawrence Durell and Anais Nin among others.

Roseblood

1974 • 8 min • United States of America

Images of a woman in dance, in flora, in picture, in eyes, in architecture, in sunshine, in color, in crystal, in space, in confusion, in danger, in disintegration, in her hand, in birth, in the Valley of Sorrow, in the sea, in repetition, in sculpture and in herself.

In-Out (Antropofagia)

1974 • 8 min

Shot originally in Super 8, this poignant short film by the artist Anna Maria Maiolino references Oswald de Andrade’s notion of cultural cannibalism from the 1920s, which was reinterpreted as tropicalismo in the 70s. The film presents a sequence of close-up shots of a male and a female mouth that trade gestures and expressions, creating an ambiguous dialogue, an oblique reference to the hardships of a female artist and the censorship and violence of the Brazilian dictatorship.

Miracle-Frost

1974 • 9 min • Soviet Union

In the harsh northern region it is so cold that even words cannot be spoken. But the people here live in harmony: they do everything together with songs and jokes. Songs freeze in the cold and turn into wondrous lace. A foreigner once saw this and wanted to take such a miracle with him. Based on the northern tales of B. Shergin.

Atal-Matal

1974 • 5 min • Iran

Animated short film

The Dama of Ambara: To Enchant Death

1974 • 60 min • France

Every five years, the mask society of the Dogons of Sanga, Mali, organizes a great Dama, a ceremony to end the period of mourning and drive away "the dangerous thing". The Dama shown here is for seven dignitaries, one of whom was called Ambara Dolo.

Satellites of the Sun

1974 • 12 min

Film animation and a knowledge of outer space bring to the screen this spectacular, awe-inspiring view of our solar system. Staggering distances are eliminated through the art of film: before our eyes is displayed the wonder of the universe. Moon, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Earth and all the other satellites and lesser matter in space are seen in amazing detail and perspective in their eternal orbits around the sun.

Dominion

1974 • 4 min • United States of America

The "Dynamo theories" of Henry Adams portrayed first person/sexual vision: an American businessman as lord of all he surveys.

The People Who Take Up Serpents

1974 • 29 min • United States of America

Members of a branch of the Holiness churches who base their religious beliefs and practices on Bible verses, especially Mark 16:18. The members handle serpents, hold fire to their bodies, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick and cast out devils.

Art Herstory

1974 • 22 min

Wonder where Cindy Sherman got the idea for those "History Portraits" in the '80s? In her brilliant video Art Herstory, [Freed] has restaged art history, putting herself in the model's role in numerous paintings... Time dissolves under her humorous assault—one moment in the painting, then out of the canvas and into that period, then back in the studio. —"In her brilliant video Art Herstory, [Freed] has restaged art history, putting herself in the model's role in numerous paintings. ... Time dissolves under her humorous assault—one moment in the painting, then out of the canvas and into that period, then back in the studio. —Jonathan Price, "Video Art: a Medium Discovering Itself," Art News 76 (January 1977)

Cinécité

1974 • 16 min • Algeria

In the Seventies, Djouhra Abouda developed a cinematographic project in the labs of the Université de Vincennes in Paris with the architect Alain Bonnamy. Together, they produced various experimental films in 16mm “conceived as kaleidoscopic assemblages grounded on a musical paradigm” (Bouhours).

Burial Pyramid

1974 • 3 min • Cuba, Mexico

Mendieta, Ana: Burial Pyramide, Yagul, Mexico.

Présence

1974 • 5 min • France

Sausage City

1974 • 5 min • United States of America

Sausage City illustrates Beckett's additive cycle process. Constantly evolving rectangular shapes provide a foundation for an environment inhabited by mutating blobs - or sausages. Sounds and shapes create a moving space that teeters on the edge between control and chaos. The ending is somewhat mystifying, pulling us out of the surreal environment and revealing its origins. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

I Can Almost See It

1974 • 7 min • United States of America

Shot from the inside of a house and through a window's curtains, one can sometimes distinguish the colorful flowers in the yard outside. But, as in much of her other film work, JoAnn Elam is apparently more interested in filming textures, light, and colors. Panning over the curtains at various speed, the camera captures their rhythm and the effect of the light on their fabric at close range, until it becomes difficult to identify the object turned pure light and movement.