All Films

Street Fair

1959 • 5 min

This edited Ektachrome home movie with titles documents a 1959 street fair, upper Grant Avenue, San Francisco--the center of Beat culture. The film includes shots of filmmaker Dion Vigne and his wife Loreon, artist and occultist Marjorie Cameron and her daughter Crystal, artist Wallace Berman and his wife Shirley, and Beat poet and surrealist Bob Kaufman.

Kovacs on Music

1959 • 52 min • United States of America

An NBC special starring Ernie Kovacs in a variety of music-themed sketches, performances, and gags.

People Are Bunny

1959 • 7 min • United States of America

Daffy Duck needs to get Bugs Bunny into QTTV's studio ASAP in order to win the thousand dollar prize.

Magoo's Lodge Brother

1959 • 6 min

Near-sighted Mr. Magoo is on his way to his lodger-convention and latches onto a robber, whom he thinks is his room-mate. He winds up in the den of the thief thinking he is in his convention hotel room. He proceeds to toss around in fun dynamite, hand-grenades and bombs until the crook is knocked out and captured by the police. Magoo becomes a hero.

Sul lago di Garda

1959 • 17 min • Italy

Visions and suggestions of the shores of Lake Garda.

The Christmas Visitor

1959 • 7 min • United Kingdom

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Our Algeria

1959 • 19 min • Algeria

"Djazaïrouna", produced by the cinema service of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), is a montage film intended to inform the international community at the UN in 1959 on the objectives pursued by the Algerian resistance during the war of 'Algeria. Independence in Algeria (1954-1962). In 1959, Djamel-Eddine Chanderli and Mohammed Lakdar-Hamina produced Djazaïrouna (Our Algeria) from images taken by René Vautier and Doctor Pierre Chaulet. This film, completed a little later and will result in the film “The Voice of the People”. This documentary on the history of Algeria through a montage of current events, traces the political and military actions of the A.L.N, the demonstrations of December 1960, and the attack on a fortified French base on the border between Algeria and Tunisia.

My Darling Clementine

1959 • 6 min • Czechoslovakia

This animated precursor to music videos was made on commission for the American company Rembrandt Films. It illustrates an American folk song of the Old West.

The Man Who Liked Funerals

1959 • 60 min

A man wants to help a youth club that is in danger of closure. He decides to resort to blackmailing the relatives of the recently deceased, threatening to publish incriminating stories about them. Then he tries to blackmail the family of a prominent villain.

The Bevel of Kisses

1959 • 19 min

Algiers, summer, a Sunday. A young loving couple goes to Tipaza: strolls on the beach, detour to the dancing, scooter rides. Imperceptibly, the initial harmony cracks. At the bevel of kisses years go by too much.

Der kleine Kuno

1959 • 52 min • Germany, East Germany

What do grown-ups actually do at night? Little Kuno has been asking himself this question a lot lately. One day, the curious six-year-old decides to get to the bottom of it and sneaks outside his house at night. He wanders around the streets aimlessly and experiences some very exciting things.

Another Day, Another Doormat

1959 • 6 min • United States of America

Johnny Doormat has a domineering, nagging wife. He takes his ire at her out on his office workers. His wife sees him at a tobacco shop and, through an illusion, pictures him as her television hero. But when he gets home, he has turned back into his meek, spineless self.

Nascita e morte nel meridione (S. Cataldo)

1959 • 10 min • Italy

In a southern town, San Cataldo, a woman gives birth to a child, but the latter is destined to live a life of hardship like the other members of her family.

May Song

1959 • 21 min • Hungary

All Because of a Plate

1959 • 11 min • Yugoslavia

Short animated film.

Cat's Cradle

1959 • 6 min • United States of America

Images of two women, two men, and a gray cat form a montage of rapid bits of movement. A woman is in a bedroom, another wears an apron: they work with their hands, occasionally looking up. A man enters a room, a woman smiles. He sits, another man sits and smokes. The cat stretches. There are close-ups of each. The light is dim; a filter accentuates red. A bare foot stands on a satin sheet. A woman disrobes. She pets the cat. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2006.

The Sea Wall

1959 • 59 min • Japan

From the opening sequence, combining underwater and aerial footage, this masterpiece about the construction of a steam-power plant in Kurihama (south of Tokyo) far surpasses the limitations of the promotional film genre, and emerges as one of the most staggering sensory experiences in Japanese documentary.

New Year's Trip

1959 • 10 min • Soviet Union

A little boy wishes he could bring a Christmas tree to his father who is working as a weatherman in Antarctica.

Véronique and Her Dunce

1959 • 18 min • France

Véronique gives a mathematics lesson to a dunce who answers the prepared questions with disconcertingly sound answers.

March to Aldermaston

1959 • 33 min • United Kingdom

Collaborative documentary (credited to a committee rather than to individual filmmakers) detailing the CND march from London to Aldermaston at Easter 1958.

The White Trap

1959 • 58 min • United Kingdom

Serving a jail sentence for a crime he didn't commit, Paul Langley makes several attempts to escape from prison, in order to clear his name. He also has other problems, his wife is about to go into labor with their first baby.

Summer Dream

1959 • 14 min • Sweden

Summer dream or like nightmare? Somewhere, we're all on our way ...

The Cry of Jazz

1959 • 34 min

Filmed in Chicago & finished in 1959, The Cry of Jazz is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race - a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it also features the only known footage of visionary pianist Sun Ra from his beloved Chicago period. Featured are ample images of tenor saxophonist John Gilmore and the rest of Ra's Arkestra in Windy City nightclubs, all shot in glorious black & white.

Ingenuity in Action

1959 • 27 min

Hot Rod Magazine film from 1959 With the Parker Brothers from Odessa, TX, and their early hot rods. Shot similar to Endless Summer this movie follows drag racing teams as they travel to the 1959 Drag Racing Nationals. This film features the DRAGMASTER team from California. They are also shown in their shop building an early dragster. Jim Nelson, the owner of the SpeedShop in Ocean Side, California and pioneer of dragsters, is shown in the shop as well. They drag in Detroit and Oklahoma. They are shown traveling with their dragsters loaded.