All Films

You Don’t Die Here

1972 • 19 min

Jon Else’s open-ended documentary showing Death Valley, Calif., as a cruel and sublime backdrop against which a small group of aging residents reminisce about a past that seems like a distant, half-remembered dream.

Vampeer

1972 • 10 min

VAMPEER is told through a color mist and floating vales. A non-narrative film in the tradition of the Weber-Watson "Fall of the House of Usher" (1928) VAMPEER retains all the genre clichesbut uses them atmospherically. It is a Gothic, surrealistic study in color and light. –D. D.

Perdón Del Gato Rabón (I'm Sorry!...But Not Really)

1972 • 5 min • Guatemala

An experimental film, black and white 16 mm film, made specifically to be submitted to the Ann Arbor Film Festival depicting a life drawing class where the model is dressed and the students are naked. This is Luis Argueta’s first black and white16 mm film. It includes an elaborate sound design by Joe Pearson. Argueta says that “the film was admitted to the Ann Arbor Film Festival, it was selected for the tour of campuses the festival puts together every year where each film received $1 per minute every time it was projected. My film was 7 min long and it must have been shown at least 43 times because I made back my $300 investment. It was the only time I ever made back the money I put into making a film. But it was the first time I felt I could express myself and invent something new and unique.” The title is a fake apology.

Some Of Your Best Friends

1972 • 40 min

Produced on 16mm film in 1971, this film is a wonderful piece of LGBTQ history that chronicles some of the first pride parades and gatherings of queer groups at the forefront of the movement in the post-Stonewall ripple. Some of Your Best Friends starts with the Hollywood Gay Pride Parade of 1970 and ends with the Venice, CA Gay Liberation front in its protest and takeover of a meeting of psychologists at the Biltmore Hotel; there to see how to use aversion therapy to treat homosexuality. In between these two events, Some of Your Best Friends stretches to include two gay activist group meetings in New York City. There are interviews with a variety of activists and one extraordinary recreation of how police entrapped vulnerable gay men in Griffith Park.

Planned Obsolessons

1972 • 6 min

A crowd of champagne-riddled art patrons witness and react to the unveiling of a fountain sculpted by Richard See and the filmmaker. The fountain collapsed the night this film premiered.

Mi Raza: Portrait of a Family

1972 • 31 min • United States of America

Mi Raza: Portrait of a Family is a documentary about the Navarro-Gonzalez family, a multi-generational Mexican-American family living in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, made by anthropologists/filmmakers at the University of Illinois Chicago, Paul Hockings and Susan Stechnij.

Fayrouz

1972 • 29 min • United States of America

"This film documents the U.S. tour of Lebanese singer Fayrouz (sometimes spelled Fairuz), and her troupe of 60 dancers and musicians, across eleven cities between September 29th and October 23rd, 1971. Fayrouz's husband and brothers composed all of the music for her tour, which was sponsored by the Forum for Arab Art and Culture of California" (US National Archives).

父子藝術家

1972 • 14 min

An intimate two-person portrait of painter Hsieh Hsiao-te (謝孝德) and his illiterate, self-taught sculptor father Hsieh Chin-shou (謝金壽), exploring urban-rural tensions, generational differences, and divergences in their choice of media. A short documentary from Chang Chao-tang’s (張照堂) tenure on the China Television Company’s News Highlights (新聞集錦) program.

Le Palme e Tangeri

1972 • 3 min

The film is a denunciation of Western capitalist society, which exploits the poorest regions in the world's Orient. The film opens with a closeup on a newspaper article that reads, « What Italian industry offers Asia. Modern manufacturing, sophisticated technology and willingness to do business with the East ». The following sequence is set on a beach, where musicians play Arabic music, and a dancer moves sensually. At a certain point the director, Luginbühl, interrupts the scene, even slapping the dancer's face. This is clearly an allegory of how Western capitalism exploits and enslaves the East.

Straßenfeger will er nicht werden

1972 • 25 min • Germany

Children of migrant workers talk about the discrimination they experience at school and at work, and about their limited career and training opportunities.

Vlag

1972 • 3 min • Netherlands

Colourful lines and geometric figures move and change to the notes of a disjointed Wilhelmus [Dutch national anthem]. As the film progresses the disjointed music finds its way back to the original and flowing performance of the national anthem. The colours and figures move simultaneously into the shape and the tricolour of the Dutch flag.

Scream

1972 • 8 min

"I am the man who walks down the street. At first there is no one. The protagonist smokes, goes to a bar, takes a bus, walks down the street, wanders around and little by little more people appear. And then more and more people, until he ends up on Florida Street, merging into the crowd."

Clime

1972 • 6 min

A portrait of experimental filmmaker Marie Louise Alemann in two alternating characters

Hurricane Higgins

1972 • 27 min

Documentary on a snooker legend

Chakra

1972 • 6 min • United States of America

"In Chakra, I was able to transfer the traditional order of the chakras into a film, starting with the first (lower) chakra and working up to the seventh (top) chakra…" - Jordan Belson

Différences et répétitions III

1972 • 16 min • France

Duckling Who Couldn't Play Soccer

1972 • 9 min • Soviet Union

An cartoon about how a musician duckling, who could not play soccer at all, helped his friends to win the decisive match.

Running Film

1972 • 4 min • United Kingdom

A London park and artist Chris Welsby runs repeatedly into frame and off into the distance; his actions contrast with the more leisurely activities of others passing by. The camera remained stationary at shooting and a hand-clap to synchronise sound at the start of each take is not edited out. The piece has the appearance of a film loop but it becomes clear that it is a series of different takes.

The Bombing of Washington

1972 • 1 min • Colombia

Satirical short comprising wartime footage, purporting to be from the Soviet Film Agency and depicting a successful bomb strike on Washington.

Three Preparations

1972 • 5 min

In three parts: Statice/frameline; Drops; The Cannonball Section. Unpopulated (except for the cheap ending on the Cannonball Section). (Previously shown as SLOW FLUSH.) –A. C. H.

Catwalk

1972 • 5 min • United States of America

"The film stars Bone, originally named Basil Catbone, a creature who survived several life threatening events to die at the age of 17. He was one of my mentors and a cherished friend. When this film was shown in Europe many years ago, someone called him the 'Charles Bronson of cats'. Dogs feared him, but with humans he was gentle. [...] A little girl awaits a school bus. A spider awaits its prey. Through it all, Bone, a feline Zen master, walks stolidly ahead, implying, perhaps, that there might be a means to resolve this, and we see him choose to balance himself and move on down the line, walking the path of the middle way." –Abbott Meader

Fix-Night

1972 • 6 min • Japan

16mm, b&w, 6'00

Atlantyda

1972 • 8 min

The world is plagued by natural disasters, but here comes a couple in love who boldly enter a different game. Their love cannot be thwarted by natural disasters.

The Fraction

1972 • 7 min • Soviet Union

Tolia and Olia quickly create a family and destroy it just as quickly. The man thinks about a moped and then spends his life chasing his dream. A noisy electrician keeps the city awake. The film consists of three witty miniatures: "Elevator", "Envy", and "Call".