All Films

Merkaba

1973 • 7 min • United States of America

"The MERKABAH is the Vehicle Of Light that comes from the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel. This animated film is a meditation on this vision based on a dream I had in Dec., 1972. This animation was produced at California Institute of the Arts in the Spring of 1973 under the mentorship of Jules Engel. It was made with luminous pigments on jet black paper." -D. Pies

The Greening of Willie Gobblee

1973 • 7 min • United States of America

A man falls in love with his plant. Long unreleased student film restored by AGFA.

The Canary Islands

1973 • 30 min

Approximately half a million Swedes vacationed to Spain in 1972, one of Europe's poorest countries who had then been controlled by Franco since 1939. 120 000 of them chose The Canary Islands as their destination. The documentary highlights and contrasts the carefree tourism with the censorship and oppression granted by a dictatorship.

The Garden

1973 • 44 min • Soviet Union

The story of a photographer who goes to work in a photo studio every day through a garden that changes depending on the state of mind of the photographer. The garden finally blooms when a girl comes to the photo studio - a dream, the same one that the photographer had glimpsed before on the street.

Two Women

1973 • 20 min

Two women kiss.

Animal’s Best Friend

1973 • 7 min

Animated felt figures tell the story of a barnyard full of animals and their faithful watchdog.

Mind Your Health!

1973 • 42 min • Soviet Union

As vacationers go on hiking trips, swim, sunbathe, fish, pick mushrooms and ski in various resorts across the Soviet Union, scientist Evgeni Chazov discusses the importance of active recreation in the prevention of diseases and fatigue.

People and Birds

1973 • 56 min • Yugoslavia

Macedonian TV drama.

Tony Williams in Africa

1973 • 38 min

Ruff’s film about the American jazz drummer Tony Williams traveling to Senegal features Super 8 footage of Williams and African drummers, as well as a framing section with Ruff, Williams, and pianist Dwike Mitchell presenting the film on 16mm to local children. (Yale Film Archive)

Midnight Intruders

1973 • 60 min

Seemingly contented Wife sees Husband off on an overnight business trip before busying herself in a tryst with Another Man. Husband returns unannounced. Early. Unfortunately. Violence ensues. A breath. More violence, unexpectedly. Mind-boggling. A sunrise pursiut up shadowy Mulholland. A SQUEAL OF TIRES!

Your Chance to Live: Forest Fire

1973 • 12 min • United States of America

Dramatizes the dilemma of a father and son who are trapped by a forest fire. Stresses the deadly realities of a forest fire's devastating power while detailing the hikers' escape and showing firefighters at work. Designed to stimulate discussion on civil preparedness for forest fires.

The Crossroads Crash

1973 • 10 min

A parody of Bonnie and Clyde leads into a 'how to drive safely' film. Not to be confused with another 1973 film with the same title.

Park Film

1973 • 8 min • United Kingdom

This is not so much a film about a park, or a record of the people passing through the park. Here the camera is not a passive observer, nor is it used as a surveillance device. Rather, the camera in Park Film, like the passers by who trigger its shutter, is an active participant in the interaction between a park and the city which surrounds it.

Arrow to the Sun

1973 • 12 min • United States of America

An animated retelling of a Pueblo tale, in which a mysterious boy seeks his father.

Sometimes I Run

1973 • 22 min

A film portrait of Stanley Maupin who cleans sidewalks at night for the Dallas Department of Sanitation.

Blonde Barbarei

1973 • 24 min • Germany

A female figure wanders inside a warehouse interior and through various motifs, including a fan and a birdcage, set to a medieval chant.

The Shoe Must Go On

1973 • 6 min • United States of America

There was a bank robbery in Hoot's town and he is trying to get his horse Fester to come, but can't because someone stole his horse shoes.

Breath Text: Love Poem

1973 • 2 min • Austria

Breath Text is a powerfully simple performance in which VALIE EXPORT creates tension by breathing compulsively. “she breathes heavily at the video camera lens while slowly moving her face across it, fogging up the entire space with her lung’s volume. Her piece takes Olson’s breathy poem ‘Gli Amanti’ a step further, not just aiming to capture the particularities of one’s pronunciation in an individual speech act but substituting the specific make her body creates – her ‘breath text,’ the moist gasp on the window glass in front of her – for the signs one would use to write an actual, linguistic ‘love poem.’” – Lisa Siraganian

Axiomatic Granularity

1973 • 20 min • United States of America

"There is a paradox in such artistically special (and significant) films as Sharits' very real and reflexively beautiful AXIOMATIC GRANULARITY. It is that in becoming so accessible and authentic through its refusal to be anything but itself - emulsion grain seen in color and movement - the film for most viewers is likely to be impenetrable ... the film begins to evoke a quiet flow of thought. That thought, however, is repeatedly returned to the light perceived on the screen as the film calls attention to itself through the random appearances of scratches, becoming simply and pleasantly what it is, refreshingly nothing more." - Anthony Bannon, Buffalo Evening News

Found Film Flashes

1973 • 3 min • United States of America

A collage of recurring speech fragments, which provide a patchy voice-over "commentary" which skids across a sampling of found film.

Magical Death

1973 • 29 min

An examination of shamanism in the Yanomamo society. Dedehiewa, a shaman of the Mishimishi-mabowei-teri village, summons spirits called hekura to "cure or kill".

Portrait

1973 • 3 min • France

The Case of H. and Eight Others

1973 • 28 min • East Germany, Germany

Documentary about juvenile delinquency in East Germany.

Visions of a Disappearance

1973 • 25 min

"Visions of a Disappearance is a newly restored performance tape that was recorded in Naples, Italy, in 1973. Crouched in a corner, hemmed in by the video camera and a closed-circuit monitor showing him the scene as it is recorded, Acconci attempts to disappear. He tries to erase his image in the eyes of those watching, alternating between urgent appeals to imagined viewers (represented by the video camera) and pleas to his own image in the monitor." - Electronic Arts Intermix