All Films

Barbara Hepworth

1961 • 33 min • United Kingdom

A contemporary of Henry Moore, Yorkshire-born Barbara Hepworth has made Cornwall her home. This film by John Read examines how the Cornish landscapes have influenced Hepworth's work, and the artist takes us through the planning stages in the creation of her sculptures.

Here at the Water's Edge

1961 • 60 min • United States of America

Leo Hurwitz’s film, Here At The Water’s Edge, features the 1960 New York City’s waterfront. Made with photographer Charles Pratt, the film is a cinematic poem to the people who work on the water. Pratt, who largely financed the film, made it possible for Leo to use his vision as an artist and filmmaker while the blacklist still over-shadowed his life and ability to work in other areas. Here At The Water’s Edge, a film without narration, draws our attention to the often-neglected life in, on and around water – as well as bringing into view what workers on the water give us. Leo, in his own work, was always concerned with seeing what is happening in spaces in the world where others fail to look.

Water

1961 • 1 min • France

An abstract animation made for L'Oreal.

L'Ottimista Sorridente

1961 • 11 min • Brazil, Italy

The short film "L'Ottimista Sorridente" was Luis Sergio Person's graduation work when he was studying directing between 1961 and 1963 at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, Italy.

Tiempo dos

1961 • 10 min • Spain

"Tiempo dos is a melancholic and sad movie. Soft gray and poetically evocative. It is made with the heart. It has purity, it denotes clarity and is sharp and concise. The image that most remains me is that of the old-fashioned photographic apparatus protected from the rain by the umbrella" Rafael Alberti

Színes kavicsok

1961 • 7 min • Hungary

The Red Polka Dot Ball

1961 • 9 min • Hungary

The city comes to life around a little girl and plays ball with her while she is waiting for her mother to do the shopping. Made in gouache technique, this lyrical short film was highly innovative for its time, winning the first prize at the Children’s Film Festival in Venice.

Duo

1961 • 7 min • Bulgaria

Two singers quarrel over a not-so-agitated scene that the film they are in gets stuck and later breaks. To fix it, they need to get in harmony again.

Glooscap Country

1961 • 14 min • Canada

The myths surrounding the Mi'kmaq god, Glooscap, are retold using the Cape Blomidon and Cape Split areas for the setting.

The Gymnasts

1961 • 8 min • United States of America

An early work by Bruce Baillie, originally a Canyon Cinemanews.

Operation Correction

1961 • 47 min

A rebuttal to the short film (Operation Abolition) produced by the House Committee on Un-American Activities documenting demonstration and rioting during the San Francisco hearings.

Sartre's Nausea

1961 • 4 min • United States of America

This film has never been in distribution, and it’s arguably not a true Brakhage film, as it was made as a commission for a 1961 public television program on KRMA-TV in Boulder (but aired nationally), called Self Encounter: A Study in Existentialism, created and hosted by Hazel Barnes, an acclaimed scholar on the subject. This film was featured in an episode entitled “To Leap or Not to Leap”, originally broadcast on April 19, 1961. I’ve included Sartre’s Nausea in the main body of the filmography because despite its origin as a commissioned work to be incorporated into a show on existentialism, and even having no main title or credit on the film, Brakhage came back to this piece a few years later and used it to produce his 1965 film Black Vision. Black Vision was made by Brakhage from the print he had struck of Sartre’s Nausea, re-editing it and embellishing it with ink and scratching.

Merrily We Roll Along: The Early Days of the Automobile

1961 • 52 min

Combining photos, narration, musical orchestration, and archival pre-WWI footage, the filmmakers vividly capture the automobile and its transformative impact upon American history and culture

Na Tradição de Santos Dumont

1961 • 10 min • Brazil

Rare footage of Alberto Santos Dumont making his sucessful experiments in Paris.

Nord-West

1961 • 19 min • Soviet Union

A short story based on the novel by Mykolas Sluckis.

The Paladins of France

1961 • 32 min • Italy

A tale about Paladins where western knights thwart their Moorish tricks to push back these black-skined conquerors.

In the World of Silence

1961 • 18 min • Poland

The Deaf Mime Ensemble prepares the premiere of the Parasolki play at the Provincial Cultural Center in Olsztyn. Actors communicate with each other using sign language and they communicate with the audience with facial expressions and gestures.

Tiempo de playa

1961 • 11 min

"Tiempo de playa" above all. There is my whole world, all my sensitivity, all my now frustrated adolescent desire. It seems as if a time were repeating to me where the shore was not a limit and where fantastic Grandville landscapes were built on the sand. All the beaches in the world are unpublished. Something hinted Tati, and now Aguirre, of that otherworld of them. I only ask Javier to persevere in building on the sand that civilization of taste, that subtle touch to erotically enjoy them" Luis G. Berlanga.

The Coyote's Lament

1961 • 47 min

Walt Disney introduces this episode to present the coyote's side of his issues with man and dog.

The Man in Gray

1961 • 20 min • Italy

The Man in Gray is a 1961 Italian short documentary film produced by Benedetto Benedetti. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Mr. Hayashi

1961 • 3 min • United States of America

Bruce Baillie's Mr. Hayashi might be thought of as a putative East Coast story transformed by a West Coast sensibility. The narrative, slight as it is, mounts a social critique of sorts, involving the difficulty the title character, a Japanese gardener, has finding work that pays adequately. But the beauty of Baillie's black-and-white photography, the misty lusciousness of the landscapes he chooses to photograph, and the powerful silence of Mr. Hayashi's figure within them make the viewer forget all about economics and ethnicity. The shots remind us of Sung scrolls of fields and mountain peaks, where the human figure is dwarfed in the middle distance. Rather than a study of unemployment, the film becomes a study of nested layers of stillness and serenity.

This Is Coffee

1961 • 12 min • United States of America

A loving tribute to America's favorite stimulant.

The Days of Whisky Gap

1961 • 28 min • Canada

Rousing tales of the North-West Mounted Police are brought to life through photos and artists' sketches. In 1873, the North-West Mounted Police were established to maintain law and order in the North-West Territories. They undertook a trek from Fort Dufferin, south of Winnipeg, to Fort Whoop-up, near present-day Lethbridge, Alberta. The force raised the flag and proclaimed the Queen's Law, ensuring that the Canadian West would not become a lawless, American-style frontier.

Dance, Little Children

1961 • 20 min • United States of America

This public health drama follows a small town’s struggle as syphilis spreads among its young people. When local officials turn to the state health department for help, a field investigator steps in to trace the infection, interview those at risk, and ensure testing and treatment. Directed by Herk Harvey (later of Carnival of Souls), the film mixes education with stark warnings: after all, one bad date can change everything.