All Films

An Adventure in Color/Mathmagicland

1961 • 52 min • United States of America

Professor Ludwig Von Drake provides an interesting lowdown on color.

A Sunday in September

1961 • 28 min • United Kingdom

Documentary about the anti-nuclear demonstration staged in Trafalgar Square on 17 September 1961.

Films by Stan Brakhage: An Avant-Garde Home Movie

1961 • 4 min • United States of America

"I had a camera with which I could make multiple superimpositions spontaneously. It had been lent to me for a week. I was also given a couple of rolls of color film which had been through an intensive fire. The chance that the film would not record any image at all left me free to experiment and try to create the sense of the daily world in which we live, and what it meant to me. I wanted to record our home, and yet deal with it as being that area from which the films by Stan Brakhage arise, and try to make one arise at the same time." (SB)

Inside Donald Duck

1961 • 47 min • United States of America

Ludwig Von Drake attempts to diagnose Donald's problems, deciding that the cause is romance for the opposite sex.

Operation Ice-Tickle

1961 • 5 min • United States of America

Olive tells Popeye and Brutus she'll go out with the first one who brings her back the North Pole -- which turns out to be an actual pole with red and white stripes.

It's Greek to Me-ow!

1961 • 7 min • Czechoslovakia, United States of America

This cartoon opens with a narrator introducing the ancient Greek Acropolis, describing its wealth and beautiful architecture. Tom is depicted as one of these inhabitants, an alley cat who lives in the shadows of Athens searching for food.

La Guelaguetza (ofrenda oaxaquena)

1961 • 11 min

Project Hope

1961 • 30 min • United States of America

Documenting the maiden voyage of the SS Hope, a hospital ship operated by Project HOPE, where it brought medical care to Indonesia and South Vietnam in 1960-1961.

I Am a Reporter

1961 • 12 min • United Kingdom

The inner-workings of local paper the Hertford Mercury are revealed by young, fresh-thinking reporter Peter Gibbs on his hunt for a regional scoop.

Vidunderhunden Bara

1961 • 37 min • Norway, United Kingdom

The dog Bara train from it is a small puppy to become a useful working dog. It is owned by a Norwegian farmer who, together with his wife, settles in a rugged and isolated mountain terrain. Only used as a post dog, but also to look for casualties in the mountains.

Until Next Spring

1961 • 57 min • Soviet Union

For Vera — a student of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, first love instead of joy and happiness brings disappointment — and it was enough to have one first deception, and before a self-confident girl changes, becomes suspicious and closed. She no longer believes in anyone and runs away from people — having left the institute, Vera and her small daughter leave for a remote village where no one knows her. Soon she has a thin and responsive friend — a teacher at a neighboring school, Aleksei Nikolaevich...

The Chant of Tiber’s Branches

1961 • 11 min • Italy

On a hot summer day, a group of boys of the Roman suburbs play and laugh in one of the many rivers that surround the city. The camera scrutinizes them, approaches them, reveals the gestures and glances, wraps them in a sort of visual dance, while the words of the commentary (entrusted to the poetic sensibility of Pier Paolo Pasolini) narrate the stories, desires, dreams, the future.

D' Fightin' Ones

1961 • 6 min • United States of America

Sylvester Cat and a tough bulldog escape, chained together, from a transport vehicle headed for the city animal pound and make like convicts on the lam.

Big Troubles

1961 • 10 min • Soviet Union

It is a satirical film for adults about family, the father is an embezzler, the daughter is a hunter for favorable gentlemen, and the son is a blockhead and a drunkard. The offscreen text is the story of the little girl who repeats idiomatic expressions which she doesn’t understand ("he has set going the refrigerators ", "he whips vodka", "he has lost his head"...) and these idiomatic expressions are shown in as they are represented in her mind – in the literal sense. It is one of the first films of "new", "non-Disney" Soviet animation.

Critique of Separation

1961 • 18 min • France

Debord’s eighteen-minute Critique of Separation directs its experimental attentions to “the documentary.” Debord draws from a catalogue of newsreel footage and book covers, rephotographed photographs, views of Paris and its neighborhoods, and a catalogue of disabused, seemingly offhand footage of him and his friends in the porous zone comprising the cafe and the street.

The Hired Gun

1961 • 60 min • Canada

Gunman Don Borisenko is hired by the townsfolk to mete out justice to a cruel land baron. Instead, Borisenko gets romantically involved with Tass Tory, the wife of a local farmer. When the smoke clears, the gunman has killed the rancher, and the farmer has killed the gunman.

The Omega Mystery

1961 • 60 min

Butler and Robinson have to track down a saboteur at an atomic research station before it is too late.

Weight for Me

1961 • 6 min • United States of America

After six months at sea, Popeye and Brutus see that Olive has become overweight after eating too much out of feeling lonely. Popeye wants to help her get thinner while Brutus says she is fine like that. The sailor's attempts to make her exercise are thwarted by his rival each time, ending with both Olive and Popeye trapped in the exercise machines the latter had bought. But eating spinach turns the tables and allows Popeye to trim down his beloved's pounds by using his forearms as a reducing machine. Brutus then decides to follow their example.

The Tell-Tale Heart

1961 • 25 min • Australia

A ballet based on the Edgar Allen Poe story. A woman murders an old man and is haunted by the sound of his heart.

West End Jungle

1961 • 55 min

1961 documentary about the history and seedy reality of the sex industry in London's Soho.

Man Comes Back from Space

1961 • 20 min • Soviet Union

On 12 April 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to journey into outer space.

Backstage Party

1961 • 60 min

Party, enterianment, and Behind the scenes

Christmas Fairy Tale

1961 • 11 min • United States of America

A little girl imagines that the nursery rhyme characters in her book have come to life, and sees the story of "The Littlest Snowman" as well.

Fee Fie Foes

1961 • 7 min • United States of America

A take-off on Jack and the Beanstalk where Loopy participates in the well-known fairy tale by climbing a beanstalk by bringing back Jack to his mother and meets the giant.