All Films

Fine Toys – Made in USA

1969 • 12 min • East Germany

This short puppet-animated film criticizes American toy companies for their militaristic toys and marketing which fosters politically aggressive attitudes. Catalogues and building sets made by the American toy companies Aurora and Lindberg report on the ways they are misused for imperialist manipulation. The film particularly emphasizes the rehabilitation and propagation of the German imperialist military tradition, which is seen as responsible for destroying humanistic viewpoints and replacing them with perverted and sadistic attitudes towards humanity.

Blues

1969 • 9 min • United States of America

A bowl of blueberries in milk, changing light radiant on the berries and on the glazed bowl, the ever more radiant orb of milk transforming into glowing light itself, with a brief shadow coda answering the complex play of shadows. The regular pulses of light framing the looser rhythmus of the spoon, itself a frame. A charging of each of the frame's edges with its own particular energy. Within and without, whites and blues, lines and curves. The pulses of vision, the simple natural processes, lift the spirit.

Comrade Berlin

1969 • 59 min • East Germany, Soviet Union

Documentary about East Berlin, commemorating 20th anniversary of German Democratic Republic formation.

Thief

1969 • 12 min

Thirst and hunger push the country boy to a seemingly innocent act: he drinks steamed milk right from under a neighbor's cow. But the family of the local rich regards the boy's act as a crime and decides to teach the audacious.

Merry Christmas

1969 • 3 min

This film uses an experimental painting technique on documentary footage of the bustling New York streets during Christmastime: Mary, Joseph and the unborn Christ travel through the streets.

The Horse Walker

1969 • 19 min • Soviet Union

The film tells a story of Kosynka, a pregnant mare, and her owner, a battered old man. Kosynka leads the “horse walker,” designed to train young horse to walk steadily and at a pace. Set to a soundtrack of Bach and Russian folk music, this film is another example of a parable-like narrative, which became more popular in Soviet documentary in the early 1970s.

Le Soulèvement de la jeunesse Mai 68

1969 • 27 min • France

Maurice Lemaître had the ambition to make a really creative film about the revolt of May 68. For this, he did not renounce any of his filmic audacities and he managed to plunge into this new thematic dimension the cinematographic inventions put in In its previous achievements.

Das Reiseziel

1969 • 9 min • Germany

Short by Hans Sachs.

Swimming Stone

1969 • 14 min • United States of America

Fluidity of stone. Subatomic motion asserting a surface. Mind loop wandering. Visitation of sound matrix. Liquid solid. Nature transforms a planetary cycle. Relations of a timeless void.

Activités vinicoles dans le Vouvray

1969 • 14 min

The Wine-making Customs of Vouvray. Two vineyard workers vie for the affections of a beautiful girl.

La Question ordinaire

1969 • 10 min • France

A woman wants to film a prisoner being tortured.

Boom

1969 • 17 min • Soviet Union

During World Word II, the difficult construction of a railroad through the Boom ravine at Kant-Rybachie. One of the construction workers then takes a train ride along the road he helped build.

El largo viaje hacia la ira

1969 • 24 min • Spain

America (Newsreel)

1969 • 30 min • United States of America

Against the background of the escalation of the war in Vietnam, AMERICA documents the development of the anti-war movement on the home front. Conversations with Vietnam veterans, young teenagers, and African American militants contextualizes footage that graphically depicts the heightened incidents of mass protest and police repression.

Legendary Epics Yarns and Fables Part 2: Stan Brakhage

1969 • 9 min

This film is a limited portrait of Stan Brakhage. The subject attempts to describe the experience that he is involved in by means of immediately responding to the aural and visual stimuli which surround and affect him. Brakhage involves the viewer in the subjective experience of the space in which he is seated, the camera, lights and technicians which created the experiential process. He further extends the parameters of the film's scope through the interjection of real or possibly apparent silence. -S.G., from The Film-makers' Coop

Battle for Cassino

1969 • 51 min

In this World War II documentary, we examine several of the controversial bombings of the war. Included is Allies bombing of the Benedictine Monastery on Monte Cassino.

Sensaciones – Banco Municipal

1969 • 12 min • Argentina

Intellectual

1969 • 7 min • Poland

A caveman and a modern man compare their qualities. The caveman is impressed with the intellect of the modern man, while the modern man is impressed with the mass and appearance of the primitive man. The filmmaker will help both of them.

Adagio

1969 • 4 min

A protest film, reminiscent in part of the famous Picasso painting entitled "Guernica". Expressed in child-like Crayola drawings.

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

1969 • 5 min • United States of America

Joan Crawford goes grocery shopping, in this short film for Pepsi-Cola.

Walk in

1969 • 5 min • Austria

experimental short film by Moucle Blackout

She Is Beautiful When She's Angry (Newsreel #48)

1969 • 17 min • United States of America

This film documents a play given at the March 28th, 1969 abortion rally by some very angry women. A beauty contestant is primed by her mother, her teacher, her boyfriend, an ad man, and a capitalist for the roles she must fulfill to be a successful winner.

Song

1969 • 11 min • Romania

The young female protagonist walks all over Bucharest, often times while dancing, followed only by her shadow and traumatic memories of the War.

Senza Seguito Senza Seguito

1969 • 14 min

The film portrays the political environment between the end of the '60s and the beginning of the '70s in Italy. Images of a wandering young girl are alternated with those of a man's corpse in front of an industrial landscape. The man's corpse is a metaphor of the worker forced to work dehumanizing hours. The girl, on the other hand, is the symbol of innocence. This is Luginbühl's accusation directed at a passive and powerless society. However, hope is represented in the final sequences, where Luginbühl's child, Cecilia, is shown as the embodiment of future generations.