All Films

Experimental trial of urban intervention in Rio de Janeiro, using moments when the country was transported, via satellite, to the World Cup, in Germany.

Life in the Atom was never completed but the existing version was digitally restored in 2009. The film depicts an ever-changing world inhabited by a man and woman engaged in surreal, erotic contortions. Their bodies are in a constant state of metamorphosis, as if to indicate psychological states or inner reflection as they contemplate their connection; they are being transported, transcending, merging and melting. - Pamela Turner. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with iotaCenter, in 2009.

Optical sound by Guy Sherwin

"Ghost Town is a study of wrecked buildings, Varela's camera panning across the strange beauty of the rusted metal, broken glass, and rotting wood of the structures, eventually discovering another symbol of time, a tree that Varela animates by his dynamic exploration." Stephen Broomer

Introduces the work of Alan Lomax and his colleagues in developing choreometrics, a cross-cultural method of studying the relationship of dance style to social structure. Shows how the group, including Forrestine Paulay and Irmgard Bartenieff, analyzed dance films from all over the world and established a connection between patterns of movement and patterns of culture.

The destruction of cinematic imagery and sound, which allows for the release of subliminal thought.

A part of Werner Nekes' lyrical anthology DIWAN.

Acconci imitates the sounds of war, gunfire and explosion; he thrusts his face, stomach or penis onto the screen. His childlike battle sounds are interrupted with monologues in which he defines himself as an American, with ironic references to cultural cliches and stereotypes. "Yeah, I'm an American. I can't help it... I'm not trying to parody America now. I'm not trying to parody myself. I really do like Coca Cola. I'm not acting, this is really the truth. I really do like it..." He asserts his cultural identity only to reject it: "No, I have an Italian name, my father's Italian. I'm not really American at all, I have a tradition, I have a culture." Vulgar and outrageous, Acconci plays out the nightmare of the American Dream. He waves his penis at the camera, raging, "The savage American is here! I'm everyone's clown, I'm everyone's fool."

In Face of the Earth, Acconci's face becomes a metaphorical theater for a narrative drama of the mythic American landscape. Eyes closed, his face filling the screen in extreme close-up, the camera looking up from his chin, he inhabits a dreamlike, intensely theatrical space. Alternately humming and whispering, Acconci begins an oddly poetic, hypnotic monologue, a stream-of-consciousness fantasy of a gunfighter in the American West. "As if I were riding in from over the mountains... Where did I come from?" His fingers run over the landscape of his face in the rhythm of a galloping horse, or caress it as the narrative tension builds. With language as a catalyst, he conducts a riveting examination of his own identity through American cultural mythologies.

Assuming roles of both performer and director in "Gestures", Wilke explores her own face as artistic material. Whether kneading her skin into misshapen contortions or enacting stereotypical poses, she stages a fluid, continuous sequence of actions in front of the camera. Her performance calls attention to and deconstructs familiar representations of women, as well as encourages the viewer's personal or cultural associations with these gestures while also reclaiming agency over such depictions as her own.

Slovenian short film about promiscuity.

This film portrays the history of the Cherokee teacher Sequoyah. This film focuses on his mission to spread the written and spoken language of the Cherokee and their struggles on the Trail of Tears, his lineage including the late Mary Ann Groundhog and Sequoyah's 4th generation Great Granddaughter Lisa Christiansen.

A documentary on the Uruguayan leftist urban guerrilla organization named Tupamaros. The documentary was shot during the height of their operations, in their midst. Contains the only known footage of the Prisíon Del Pueblo (the Tupamaros prison facility).

"SHADOWS FROM THE WESTERN WALL involves footage from Rome, the Eternal City, and from the woodlands of rural Maine. There is a bit of spoken English. A voice says, 'Just a man' A second voice says 'An ancient race. Only at the point of dying'. And the first voice replies 'I know'. The film reflects my vision of the Western Empire at the time. I also thought of Shelley’s 'Ozymandias'. The sculptured heads seen in the film are mostly anonymous relics from the past – powerful images that arise from the historical graveyard and live on to teach us some important lessons. Shadows FROM, not ON, the Western Wall. [...] Much of the imagery in Rome is qualified by insertions of Maine’s water, trees, and sky – realities that came before and will remain in some form after the 'Eternal City' is long gone." –Abbott Meader

The film was realized according to the formulaic concept "TAM 4/71."

Constructed on a pre-determined progressively self-defining ‘phased’ score and lens-matting procedure, Phased Time2 consists of six sections, each out of a 100ft roll. All work was done in camera except for linking with black spacer between sections. Apart from the first, each section is subdivided according to logical cyclic procedures. Each division (take) is a fixed position shot. At every consecutive take the camera is ‘pre-panned’ half a frame’s width to the right. Effectively, the camera is revolving in a ‘static pan’ around a room throughout the film. Also, each consecutive take is partially superimposed over its predecessor (by rewinding after each take) and consequently phases the half-frame moves… The sound phases and eventually superimposes synchronously with the picture, and was produced on a synthesiser and electric organ. -DH

13 August 1973: Despite the arduous piecework they perform, women migrant workers at Neuss-based carburettor manufacturer Pierburg are in the lowest wage group 2 (DM 4.70 per hour): so, the women start a five-day »wildcat strike«. Out of all 3,800 employees, 70 percent are guest workers, the majority of them women. The women migrant workers demonstrate against the difference in pay between men and women, demanding »one more Mark«, and call for better general living and working conditions. The compilation film documents the strike. In consultation with the strikers, film-makers Edith Schmidt-Marcello and David H. Wittenberg assembled the material, filmed by various people who experienced the strike first-hand, and supplemented it with their own film footage. The film was shown at numerous solidarity events and was the public relations vehicle for the workers and the works council. It was never shown on television and was initially forgotten.

Images from “La nuit des femmes”, an evening in support of the three Portuguese writers, Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, who, for having published in 1972 the “Novas Cartas Portuguesas”, a collective work bringing together texts denouncing the alienating and patriarchal Portuguese society, were brought to justice and risked 2 to 5 years in prison for insulting good morals.

This particular love song is an ironic, oftentimes caustic, commentary on the terror and pain of love, from a child's desperate attempts at closeness with his parents to an adult's relationship with a cruel and isolating world. Animated boldly with a paint brush and black ink, the action, like a continual dance, throbs to the rhythms of a five-string banjo. Shapes change, are metamorphosed, in an emotional roller-coaster trip through the subconscious.

The volcano Eldfell erupts, and destroys much of the town of Heimaey.

The sectors studied are the Yumbo industrial complex (the rainbow of pollution), which threatens to create a fence of smoke and pestilence around the city of Cali. The Mamonal complex (Bahía de Cartagena) and the garbage of the big cities. The film, depending on its geographical direction, is divided into five chapters, namely: air, water, garbage, noise and lack of trees.

A woman is followed as she walks through a building and up sets of stairs.

An animation film depicting the life of a certain Nina Polanski, who could be any woman. She marries amidst much fanfare and photo-snapping, and settles into a domestic routine of cooking, washing dishes, ironing, and babies. Eventually she becomes the very machines she uses every day, until one day she walks into the woods and takes back her old self.

"... is the most esoteric film I have made. It moves in a calculated, almost mathematical way. It is without any kind of special effect. With the exception of a type of rhythm that is established, its evocation is dependent upon the content of each image and how the images relate to each other relative to their position in time and space ... METONIC CYCLES raises many types of questions. They are questions which deal with philosophy and perception. While the questions are not answered, the observer, if on the proper wavelength, can develop an ambivalence, that is, a feeling that is a mixture of comprehension and lack-of-comprehension. The resulting point-of-view can be one of acceptance, e. g., that while the images have an unreal appearance, this is the way things really are." — James Cagle