All Films

The Boy and the Pigeon

1961 • 19 min • Soviet Union

The boy wants to have a pigeon, but he can't afford to buy a bird. On the market for a pigeon asking for 100 rubles! Then he decides to buy a bird, bartering it for his father's album with stamps. Having caught a pigeon, the boy releases a bird into the sky. But the pigeon is returning to it's native dovecote, to it's former owner, who again demands money for it. This is a short movie about childhood and dreams, about the first life lessons that everyone has to face in childhood, when society and its laws bring changes into life, sometimes breaking the brightest dreams.

Three of Many

1961 • 33 min • East Germany

Böttchers film showcases three young workers who learn how to paint, draw, and make sculptures out of stone. The film generated a storm of mistrust, as there is no leading communist party, and the three individuals live blithely and independently of the official dictates. It became one of the first DEFA documentary productions that were not allowed to be shown.

A Scent of the Matterhorn

1961 • 6 min • United States of America

In the French Alps, an out-of-control street-painter's wagon sprays a stripe of white paint atop a female cat's back. Enter Pepé Le Pew.

Ambulance

1961 • 11 min • Poland

In this haunting short fiction film, a group of Jewish children and their teacher are herded into an ambulance by Nazis; the vehicle, ordinarily representing comfort and safety, becomes the group’s death chamber. Morgenstern’s presentation of the incident serves as a metaphor for the horror of the Holocaust, and provides a powerful trigger for discussion of the disturbing issues raised by the film. The figure of the children's’ teacher specifically parallels Janusz Korcak (1879-1942), a famous Jewish educator who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto and died with his young charges at Treblinka.

Dragonfly and Ant

1961 • 11 min • Soviet Union

Magoo Meets Frankenstein

1961 • 4 min • United States of America

Mr Magoo goes to what he thinks is a hotel but it’s actually a mad scientist’s castle and he’s after a brain...

Rupture

1961 • 11 min • France

A man receives a breakup letter from his sweetheart, who sends him back his photo, in pieces. The pained lover decides to reply. Fountain pen, penholder, desk, stamps, paper and inkwell all contrive diabolically to thwart him.

Michael

1961 • 12 min • United Kingdom

Sensitive portrait of a boy with Down syndrome, and the small village that includes him.

Divine Love

1961 • 11 min • Italy

The film begins at night, as parishioners holding lanterns form a series of processions, travelling through the night from Rome, and villages in the Abruzzi and Lazio regions, to make it to the Santuario della Madonna del Divino Amore, 10 miles from the capital, by morning. More than an anthropological study of ecstatic devotion – with its genuflecting disciples, and women who scream desperately at the sky – Divino Amore also speaks to Mangini’s interest in disappearing rituals and communities at risk of extinction. When generations of worshippers pour out of the church at the end of the service, formality dissolves into secular leisure, as families perched on horse carts eat plates of spaghetti and men fall asleep on the grass. The velvet-clad austerity of the church’s interior gives way to a series of pastoral tableaux.

Barna Hedenhös

1961 • 60 min • Sweden

The inland ice has advanced a bit in Sweden, and animals and people are migrating down from Europe. The Hedenhös family is among the first. There is father Ben, mother Knota, daughter Flisa, and son Sten. They have brought along their primitive dog Urax, their cow Mura, and their toys. The Hedenhös family settles in Sweden, lives in caves, founds Stockholm, and travels to Egypt. The Hedenhös family discovers America, visits Native Americans, flies through the air in the world's first atomic-powered aircraft, and returns to Sweden again.

Daffy's Inn Trouble

1961 • 6 min • United States of America

Daffy Duck vies with Porky Pig in the Western frontier hotel business. Porky has more success, attracting hordes of customers with a live-action saloon party. So, Daffy decides to undermine Porky's good fortune by planting a bomb beneath Porky's inn.

Haunted England

1961 • 24 min • United Kingdom

Calm down dear, it's only an apparition! A picturesque travelogue takes a creepy turn in this delightfully kitsch look at famous haunted castles across England, directed by Michael Winner. Filmed in beautiful Eastmancolor, this fun, spooky short sees Anne Boleyn trailing the gardens of Norfolk's Blickley Hall, while Wild Lord Edric, betrayed by William the Conqueror, roams the Stiperstones. Elsewhere, Lord Bath welcomes a clairvoyant to investigate Longleat's Grey Lady.

A Fire Called Jeremiah

1961 • 49 min • United States of America

This is the story of the “smoke jumpers,” specially trained by the Forest Service to reach forest fires when they are in the inaccessible areas of US National Forests. A cabin in the woods is set on fire after an over stimulated kitten upsets an oil lantern.

Happy Go Loopy

1961 • 6 min • United States of America

Loopy goes to a masquerade party and is mistaken for a guy named "Charlie" in a wolf costume.

The Whirled

1961 • 21 min

Ken Jacobs writes: "The first two sections were shot around Jack's loft on Reade Street on two 100' 16 mm rolls. Sunday morning, following Saturday's sacrifice, I saw there was another 50 feet left. In an impromptu way, very different from my initial fastidious art-film approach, I quickly filmed Jack on the roof alongside his loft. The results had us falling onto the floor and I would never be an art-film true-believer again. After years of shooting my raging epic STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH starring Jack as The Spirit Not of Life But of Living, and after a few months of being on the outs with each other, we got together -- summer of '61 in Provincetown -- for one last stab at friendship and the making of a film. In 1963, a snatch of Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice was shown on TV. I had somehow been invited to participate in a TV quiz program called Back Your Hunch. (Or was it Hunch Your Back?)"

Jane Eyre

1961 • 60 min • United States of America

After a bleak childhood, Jane Eyre goes out into the world to become a governess. As she lives happily in her new position at Thornfield Hall, she meet the dark, cold, and abrupt master of the house, Mr. Rochester. Jane and her employer grow close in friendship and she soon finds herself falling in love with him. Happiness seems to have found Jane at last, but could Mr. Rochester's terrible secret be about to destroy it forever?

The Komarov Brothers

1961 • 58 min • Soviet Union

Three Komarov brothers experience a lot of adventures while discovering the nature.

The Spark

1961 • 50 min

When the Young Show was cancelled, Miss Young decided to produce a pilot for a new series. "The Spark" is the result. Its pilot never sold; it was released to the public for the first time on Youtube in 2018.

The Frog Prince

1961 • 10 min • United Kingdom

A princess's ball falls into a well and is rescued by a frog but she has to make a promise before he gives it back.

Nudist Memories

1961 • 27 min • United Kingdom

Nudist Memories is a 1959 British naturist film. It was inspired by the success of Nudist Paradise and was a success at the box office.

A Plane from Budapest

1961 • 6 min • Poland

Here we see short scenes from a random day at the airport. We have flying planes, landings, passport checking scenes, passengers waiting for their relatives. This documentary shows the ordinary but unique behaviors and reactions of the passengers and the airport maintenance staff.

Dadascope

1961 • 40 min • United States of America

Free-associative images are juxtaposed with disorienting poetry in Richter's late work. The film is visual dynamite: Upside-down and reversed footage, play with shadows and light, billiards and dice and balloons-- suggestive and surreal images. Tenets of Dada writing, such as games of chance, punnery, wordplay and loud nonsense noise are foist upon the viewer as Dada poems are read / performed by their orignal authors.

Fotodeath

1961 • 12 min

An experimental film from Al Kouzel which edits unrelated scenes together with a camera tying them together.

Wonders of the Water Worlds

1961 • 60 min

This tracks the course of a body of water (from brook to lake to sea, etc.) and features the lives of animals that inhabit in or near it.