All Films

Muñecos (Have a baby)

1972 • 15 min • Argentina

The Super 8mm film “Muñecos” (1972) — shot by the artist, Leopoldo Maler and Carolee Schneemann — combines recordings of a happening by Hirsch that took place in three cities: in Buenos Aires, London, and New York. In each, she is seen handing out 500 tiny baby dolls to bystanders, while candidly suggesting to everyone: “Have a baby!” This work was made in response to a period of strong pro-natalist and anti-contraceptive policies pushed by the Argentinian government.

Cowboy and Indian

1972 • 45 min • Canada

This film goes no farther west than Toronto. The Indian is Robert Markle, from a family of Mohawk steel workers. The cowboy is his longtime art associate, Gordon Rayner. Both are Toronto artists and art teachers, sharing also an interest in jazz: Rayner plays the drums, Markle the electric piano. This film is a study of their lifestyle, their mutual interests and their friendship.

House Movie

1972 • 14 min

The visual ‘documentary’ material in House Movie comprises essentially ‘home movie’ footage. While the great majority of this material was staged, re-enacted, or otherwise planned in advance, it is documentary inasmuch as the ‘actors’ play themselves and participate in familiar events in a familiar setting which does not represent, but is, their actuality. Taking into consideration the film’s musical form, it might be said that in terms of documentary, House Movie is an exaggeration of John Grierson’s definition.

Ricky and Rocky

1972 • 15 min

The two filmmakers use the style of direct cinema to film the Italian/Polish backyard wedding shower of a young couple, Ricky and Rocky. The pair show off their wedding gifts and guests and relatives express their approval of the shower to the filmmakers.

Breaktime

1972 • 14 min • Iran

A boy on his way home from school kicks a ball out of a street where some children are playing. He's chased and forced to take a new way home.

K-z

1972 • 20 min • Italy

K-Z is a 1972 Italian short documentary film directed by Giorgio Treves, his study of the slaughterhouse in the centre of Turin as an allegory of a German concentration camp. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Mao: Seize the Day, Seize the Hour

1972 • 34 min

Mao Zedong was not only a revolutionary leader and thinker, he was also a poet. In poems written in the classic calligraphic tradition he expresses his experiences and visions. In this film, 8 of Mao's poems are sung, recited and interpreted: 'Changsha' (1925), 'Jinggang Mountains' (1928), 'The Long March' (1935), 'Snow' (1936), 'The People's Liberation Army Captures Nanjing' (1949), 'Swimming' (1956), 'Reply to Comrade Guo Moruo' (1961) and 'Reascending Jinggang Mountains' (1965). Through these poems we get a picture of the Chinese revolution from its first beginning in 1921 until the Cultural Revolution. The poems of Mao Zedong have been published in more than 57 million copies

Richter on Film

1972 • 12 min

Shot on a September afternoon, in 1971, on the lawn and inside the studio of Hans Richter's Connecticut home. The artist talks informally with Cecile Starr about his first experiences as a filmmaker, and about the interrelationship of his films and his paintings, scrolls and collages. Excerpts from Rhythm 21, Ghosts before breakfast and Race symphony help illustrate Richter's comments about how these pioneer avant-garde films were made in the years between 1921 and 1929.

Nights in the Boulevard

1972 • 9 min • Hungary

A passionate poet feels abandoned at the places of amusement in the Boulevard.

The Brickmakers

1972 • 42 min • Colombia

This film documents the life of a family of brick makers in the outskirts of Bogotá, using the personal experience of the Castañeda family to expose the exploitation of manual laborers. Marta Rodríguez and Jorge Silva worked on this documentary from 1966 to 1972, establishing a relationship with the family which allows the viewer an intimate look at their hardships.

Easyout

1972 • 9 min • United States of America

Has to do with a consideration of one possible conceptual model for human existence: that of a primitive form of yardchair, upon which sits The Creator, impassively observing the inexorable flow of His mountains.

Death in the Port Jackson Hotel

1972 • 36 min

A filmic portrait of the Australian visual artist Vali Myers, whom Dutch photographer and filmmaker Ed van der Elksen got to know in post-war Paris. With Myers, Van der Elsken shot his photo story LOVE ON THE LEFT BANK.

El Oro del Choco

1972 • 18 min

Short documentary about the process of extracting gold to be worked as goldsmith.

Verses

1972 • 52 min • Bulgaria

April 1945. The Russian sniper Kolya joins the Bulgarian military contingent stationed in a Hungarian village. Kolya meets a Hungarian boy Yanush, with whom he shares his love of poetry. A German sniper is hiding in the woods and every day the death toll of the war grows higher. One day Yanush is killed by the German. Kolya seeks revenge.

Albert Einstein

1972 • 48 min • France

In this imaginary investigation, the scientist, who was very secretive, is presented in a new light. Actors play people who knew Einstein and retrace his journey. The portrait is followed by a debate on a point of controversy, the involvement of Albert Einstein in the nuclear war.

Die Prüfung

1972 • 19 min • East Germany

The final exam of sixteen and seventeen year olds at the end of the 10th grade. The individual in the minutes in which he is supposed to show what he can do and who he is. A last class party before the community ends and one goes apart.

Going Where I've Never Been: The Photography of Diane Arbus

1972 • 28 min • United States of America

The work of photographer Diane Arbus as explained by her daughter, friends, critics, and in her own words as recorded in her journals. Illustrated with many of her photographs. Mary Clare Costello, narrator Themes: Arbus' quirky go-it-alone approach. Her attraction to the bizarre, people on the fringes of society: sexual deviants, odd types, the extremes, styles in questionable taste, poses and situations that inspire irony or wonder. Where most people would look away she photographed.

The Summer Fever

1972 • 14 min

"This film shows the widespread participation of millions of boys, their parents, and adult volunteers in Little League baseball around the world each summer. The film includes scenes from games in several parts of the world, with an emphasis on a Little League World Series game between an Indiana team and a team from Taiwan. The film was produced and directed by John Hynd and narrated by Dick Van Dyke" (US National Archives).

Distant Activities

1972 • 6 min • United States of America

Real time development of a video feedback, processed and controlled through a video keyer. Sound results from video signals, interfaced with audio synthesizer.

Hapax Legomena V: Ordinary Matter

1972 • 36 min • United Kingdom, United States of America

"A vision of a journey, during which the eye of the mind drives headlong through Salisbury Cloister (a monument to enclosure), Brooklyn Bridge (a monument to connection), Stonehenge (a monument to the intercourse between consciousness and LIGHT)... visiting along the way diverse meadows, barns, waters where I now live; and ending in the remembered cornfields of my childhood. The soundtrack annexes, as mantram, the Wade-Giles syllabary of the Chinese language." (H.F.)

From the Notebook of...

1972 • 48 min • Italy, Switzerland

Shot in Florence, the film draws on Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and Paul Valéry’s essay on da Vinci’s creative process to explore parallels between Renaissance space and the moving image. Beavers employs rapid pans and tilts along the city’s facades, interspersed with glimpses of his own face, linking camera movement to the filmmaker’s investigative gaze. The work marks a turning point in his practice, foregrounding presence and perception as central to his method. (Note: The film was re-edited and re-released in 1999.)

The Process

1972 • 8 min • United States of America

This film by Stan Brakhage investigates the process of memory and thought by melting a series of images and a field of color. The positive-negative flickering graphs a sort of shutter-window all over the matter of the vision. Jittery flocks of space are interweaving as pieces of language in a scant illumination, whereas the process of thought is sheared in fuzzy transience.

Dental Story

1972 • 8 min • Soviet Union

A comedic story. One day a man had a toothache. He did everything to reduce his suffering, but nothing helped. He went to the clinic, where there were many same sufferers like himself. However, the instrument sounds wafting from the dental office forced him to flee. He will have an adventure as a result of the realization that dentists can easily help, and there should be no fear to them.

Shirley Chisholm for President

1972 • 51 min

About the election campaign of the first female member of the US Congress.