All Films

The Maya Bird

1961 • 3 min • Italy

Experimental animated short by Cioni Carpi based on the Mayan pictorial tradition.

When the City Falls Asleep

1961 • 17 min

Nightmare at Elm Manor

1961 • 5 min • United Kingdom

A crazed butler harasses a semi-clad woman in a hotel.

Dead Drunk

1961 • 8 min • Sweden

“We made an insane film in Ibiza”. Rut Hillarp notes in her diary 1961. Hillarp films and participates herself in the company of her friends. In its drive to intoxication and lust, Dead Drunk has similarities with surrealist films and thus opens itself up to the unconscious action. (Filmform)

Ginseng Baby

1961 • 26 min • China

The spirit ginseng baby helps a teenage tenant to pay his debts to the greedy landlord with a high quality ginseng, but the landlord wants to catch the ginseng baby and present him as a tribute to the emperor.

Dance Squared

1961 • 4 min • Canada

Squares and other geometric shapes appear to "dance" along to music through their ever-changing movements.

Heirs of the Great Mali

1961 • 16 min • Soviet Union

Soviet documentary about customs and nature of the people's Republic of Mali

Queen Elizabeth II in Pakistan

1961 • 22 min

In the middle of a six-week tour of the Indian sub-continent between January and March 1961, the Queen and Prince Philip visited Pakistan and East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

Two Faces of God

1961 • 17 min • Poland

A document about a religious sect founded in Silesia in the 1950s - the Holy See of God and the Lamb of the Apostles in Spirit and Truth, Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and the End, an informal Christian denomination whose members consider themselves to be advocates of peace and universal union.

To The Stars Again

1961 • 47 min • Soviet Union

Documentary about preparation for Vostok 2 space mission, launched on August 6 of 1961 with cosmonaut Gherman Titov on board.

Snapshots of the City

1961 • 5 min

"A Claes Oldenburg 'happening.' A black statement about the City in which two people represent the populace after a bomb raid." S.V.

High Tension

1961 • 12 min • Israel

A film produced by the Hasbarah Authority and the Ministry of Development. A Somewhat avant-garde attempt to present the generation, distribution and use of electricity in Israel. The means of electric generation are presented against a backdrop of images related to the sectors the consume the electricity, in industry, water distribution and urban-commercial use. Contrasting with all of these are images of a “backwards” rural community, combining attributes of the local-Palestinian and the Mizrahi-Jewish.

Dubois et fils

1961 • 57 min • Canada

A health problem causes a business leader to think about what will happen to his company after his death.

Two Months of Work

1961 • 22 min • Soviet Union

A builders' trip to the virgin land.

White Bells

1961 • 24 min • Soviet Union

A little girl wanders all alone in the morning, through a bustling city, looking for the white bells she noticed in the window of a florist's shop. This film heralded the birth of a new film language in Latvian cinema. It received awards at the San Francisco and Oberhausen festivals. and was included on the list of the “world’s 100 best short films” by the film critics at the 1995 Clermont-Ferrand film festival.. All three of the film’s authors together with their peers became the creators of the legendary Riga School of Poetic Documentary.

Girls Girls Girls!

1961 • 30 min • United Kingdom

Tania, Primrose and Sandra come to London separately and decide to share a flat together to save money. They find jobs in fashionable industries.

The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon

1961 • 52 min • United States of America

Teleplay adaptation of Daniel Keyes' noted short story “Flowers for Algernon,” about a gentle, disabled young man who undergoes a highly experimental treatment to increase his mental capacity.

All Birds Have Nests...

1961 • 23 min • Netherlands

This short essayistic documentary by Louis van Gasteren is an argument for the industrialised building of homes, in the typically optimistic tone of the post-war reconstruction period. In this film, Van Gasteren makes use of elements of Soviet cinema and the French nouvelle vague. In the ’50s, Rotterdam-based contractor Dura built a factory in the Eemhaven district where prefab components for whole blocks of residential buildings could be produced. Together with architect Ernest Groosman, a proponent of reconstruction architecture, Dura built homes at various locations in the Rotterdam area. The building of these ‘Groosman flats’ is shown at a construction site in Rotterdam’s Lombardijen district, accompanied by cheerful jazz music.

Canoe

1961 • 14 min • United Kingdom

Boys’ canoe trip on the Thames in London.

The Crying Giraffes

1961 • 9 min • Czechoslovakia

Keiji monogatari jazu wa kurutchai nē

1961 • 54 min • Japan

1961 Japanese movie

A Fire

1961 • 24 min • Iran

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), formed upon nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, employed film systematically, producing many films on oil and petrochemical subjects. It also made films depicting Iran's progress and modernization, highlighting the role of the Shah and NIOC in that direction. Under its auspices, Ebrahim Golestan directed A FIRE (1961), a highly visual treatment of a seventy-day oil well fire in the Khuzestan region of southwestern Iran. This film was edited by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad and won two awards at the Venice Film Festival in 1961.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza

1961 • 10 min

Made in the style of the great "city symphony" films, One Chase Manhattan Plaza celebrates the architectural achievement of this impressive New York City skyscraper as well as all the people who made it tick. From the mailroom, where thousands of letters are received and sorted daily, to the company executives in their sleek, modern offices, Engel imbues what is essentially an industrial film with great humanity and heart.

Basilisk Encounter

1961 • 9 min • Poland

A story illustrating the legend of Bazyliszek who mischief among tenement houses in Warsaw's Old Town.