All Films

Dwightiana

1959 • 3 min • United States of America

Menken's 16mm, stop-motion tribute to the art of Dwight Ripley was filmed in 1959 in his apartment at 416 East Fifty-eighth Street in New York. She used his drawings as flats.The remarkably contemporary soundtrack for steel drum, guitar, flute, and voice was written for the occasion by Maya Deren's young husband, Teiji Ito, and is available in his album Music for Maya (Tzadik). Stan Brakhage called Dwightiana a pioneer example of the film portrait, abstract rather than narrative (the colored pencils represent Ripley's palette). Ripley was also a botanist, and Menken's unusual title alludes to botanical nomenclature as if Dwightiana might be the name of a species as well as a work "about" Dwight.

Ereagatik Matxitxakora

1959 • 24 min • Spain

Not unlike the travel blogs so in vogue today, this film takes us from Ereaga beach to Cape Matxitxako, treating us to an incomparable look at the beaches and towns on the way.

Hunting Keys

1959 • 5 min

A film by Hy Hirsh. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2000.

Look at Life: Coffee Bar

1959 • 9 min • United Kingdom

Part of the Look at Life Rank series reels. A look at the SOHO bohemian coffee bars of London in the 1950s.

Handwritten

1959 • 9 min

HANDWRITTEN evokes ... a combination of visual imagery and language for which the term filmpoem seems at last fully justified. Boultenhouse's film revolves around the slamming of a fist on a glass tabletop.

Astral Man

1959 • 3 min • United States of America

"An animated vision... a subliminal glance at man in light and space" S.V.

Your Voice and the Telephone

1959 • 7 min • United States of America

Early 1950s Instructional film on how to use the Telephone and how it works.

Homenagem Póstuma a Magalhães Barata

1959 • 20 min • Brazil

Documentary about the the politician Magalhães Barata's death and mourning, in Belém Brazil.

Luz - Energia - Progresso

1959 • 10 min • Brazil

The building of the first hidrelectric usine in Furnas, Brazil.

Chuang Tapestry

1959 • 60 min • China

Once upon a time the Chuang family chopped firewood for a living. Mother Tanja spent three years day and night weaving this tapestry. One day a wind storm came and the tapestry flew away. Kam Tong, one of the children, would venture off to the dangerous Tibet mountains to try to get the tapestry back. Very few have ever survived the cave.

Adventures Of A Chipmunk Family

1959 • 11 min

A nature short presenting one year in the life of a chipmunk family.

The Source

1959 • 56 min • Bolivia

An alligator hunter falls in love with a teacher who has arrived from the west. Rurrenabaque, the town where the story takes place, is at a crossroads between collaborating in the installation of a drinking water system or continuing the tradition of "drinking water from the river." Ruiz uses a historical event to tell a love story (combining his skills as a documentary filmmaker).

Der Elefant von Hoyerswerda

1959 • 15 min • East Germany, Germany

Camera study about everyday life on the Hoyerswerda construction site. Film rediscovered in 2014.

At the Photographer's

1959 • 9 min • Yugoslavia

A photographer tries to make his customer smile for the photo.

Advanced Design Equipment for Blow Molding

1959 • 8 min

A sales film about a plastic molding injection machine made by Stokes. Very very industrial and beautiful.

Electrons In A Uniform Magnetic Field

1959 • 11 min

Dorothy Montgomery uses a Leybold tube to measure the curvature of the path of the electrons in a magnetic field and thus determine the mass of the electron.

Street Carnival - Porto Alegre

1959 • 5 min • Brazil

It records the festivities that, at the time, took place in the heart of the city, at the meeting of Rua dos Andradas and Avenida Borges Medeiros.

Facts About Projection

1959 • 16 min • United States of America

This film is designed to show student projectionists some of the steps to be taken in getting ready for good film projection. A classroom scene shows a high school boy beside the projector stand as he signals to his assistants to pull the window shade.

Bongo Erotico

1959 • 10 min • United Kingdom

A devilish, surreal nightmare of bisexual lust.

Study in Depth, Opus 152

1959 • 10 min

Projector, reflector units, electrical and lighting elements, and a projection screen

Laundresses from Bizovik

1959 • 9 min • Yugoslavia

A film reportage on countryside laundresses by Jože Bevc.

Un Vintén pa’l Judas

1959 • 50 min • Uruguay

Christmas Eve. The children ask for money for the Judas (Un Vintén pa’l Judas), and the protagonist, a failed tango singer without means or will to live, meets a friend, a public employee, in search of some rummage. This one asks him to buy a lottery. The tango singer, in need of money to buy a guitar to use in a singing contest, collects the winnings for himself, betraying the trust of his friend, in the same way as the Judas that the children burn on the streets.

Montage I: Paint and Painter

1959 • 6 min • United States of America

The relationship between forms in nature and their interpretation in art is explored in independent avant-garde filmmaker Wayne Sourbeer’s gentle and thoughtful film. Sourbeer follows abstract impressionist painter Corban LePell as he creates one painting, neatly juxtaposing LePell’s various processes with the images in nature that influence him. An original score by Marvin Granostaff completes the circle.

The Christmas Play

1959 • 19 min • United Kingdom

Taking the lid off the creative process with a group of theatrically-minded 11-year-olds as they stage the nativity.