All Films

Why Vandalism?

1955 • 16 min • United States of America

Life of a teenage outsider: what makes him that way and how his anger flares into violence.

Image by Images IV

1955 • 3 min • United States of America

An endless loop of film composed entirely of disparate images. Through repetition, certain images isolate themselves from the flow reforming the original pattern.

Easter in Sicily

1955 • 9 min • Italy

A short film which retells the story of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.

Letter of Sanabria

1955 • 18 min

At the end of 1954, Eduardo Ducay, Juan Julio Baena and Carlos Saura travelled to the region of Sanabria (province of Zamora) to make a commissioned documentary on the construction of a system of reservoirs. Much of the filmed material was unusable due to a technical problem, but Ducay rescued part of it and combined it with voice-over to construct a work on absences.

Amalfi Way

1955 • 10 min • Italy, United States of America

This short film takes a look at the sights, sounds, and customs along Italy's Amalfi Coast.

13 Cantos of Hell

1955 • 20 min • United Kingdom

This interpretation of 13 cantos from the first part of Dante's The Divine Comedy is dedicated to Carl Koch and Lotte Reiniger, the husband-and-wife team who pioneered the technique of silhouette animation.

Snows of Aorangi

1955 • 19 min • New Zealand

This Oscar-nominated New Zealand short looks at a number of mountains in New Zealand with a fair amount of emphasis on skiing. While a number of mountains are shown, most of the movie covers Mt. Cook (known as Aorangi to the Maori)

12 Photographers

1955 • 49 min • Japan

Documentary on photography with the participation of twelve globally famous Japanese photographers.

Mrs. Twardowska

1955 • 13 min • Poland

Animated adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz's ballad entitled Mrs. Twardowska, made on the hundredth anniversary of the poet's death (1855). Jan Marcin Szancer, an outstanding graphic designer and book illustrator, was the author of the script and the art concept. He was a person present in the Polish film industry since the interwar years. The main animator of Mrs. Twardowska was Witold Giersz, the future master of animation. The fluidity of movement and the grace of the characters, similar to the ones in The Goat Kid, evoke associations with Disney films. This beautiful film proves the creative possibilities and ambitious attitude of the Polish animation community a few years after the war.

The Days of Our Years

1955 • 20 min • United States of America

A minister reflects on the devastating traumas and injuries of railroad workers in his congregation.

Les gens du quartier

1955 • 14 min

As Brussels gears up to host the 1958 Universal Exhibition, the workers of the Marolles follow their own pace and traditions. Among the knife sharpener, the fruit and vegetable seller, the snail vendor, the roving glazier, and the mischievous "ketjes", the old coco merchant serving his last round of licorice lemonade. The vendors work side-by-side in harmony sharing a certain working class philosophy. A precious document on mid-century city life.

Niezwykła podróż

1955 • 10 min • Poland

A tale about toys that take an unexpected trip on an inflatable balloon.

Mister and Mistletoe

1955 • 6 min • United States of America

It's Christmas Eve. Popeye's nephews are staying over with Olive, and Popeye is there helping decorate. Bluto disguises himself as Santa and horns in on Olive.

¡Bombardeo!

1955 • 10 min • Argentina

Documentary about the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo in June 16 1955 perpetrated by the Argentine navy with the intention of overthrowing Juan Domingo Perón's government and resulting in many civilian casualties.

Arizona Sheepdog

1955 • 20 min • United States of America

Arizona Sheepdog is a documentary film that was originally released to theaters by Buena Vista Distribution on May 25, 1955 as a double-bill with Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.

Once Upon An El

1955 • 21 min • United States of America

"The poet Daisy Aldan (who brought Gerard Malanga into the world of experimental filmmaking) directed a beautifully evocative and impressionistic documentary, Once Upon an El, in 8mm color with a 7 1/2 ips tape soundtrack. The 15-minute film's cast included John Ashberry, James Broughton, Chester Kallman, Frank O'Hara, Olga Petroff, Kermit Sheets, and other luminaries of the Avant-Garde, the soundtrack was composed by Storm de Hirsch. Once Upon An El documented the activities of a group of writers and composers...[demonstrating] against the demolition of New York's Third Avenue elevated railway (FMC 1967, 7-8) , which was demolished anyway" - Wheeler Winston Dixon

Battle Without End

1955 • 25 min • Netherlands

The Future Is Now

1955 • 15 min • United States of America

This short goes inside government research laboratories to showcase some of the products that will be used in the near future. Some are for general use, such as computerized assembly lines, nuclear energy and solar powered batteries, and industrial uses for television. Others are consumer products, including video telephones, videotape to make instant home movies, irradiated food, and fully automated kitchens.

Cockerel - The Golden Scallop

1955 • 11 min • Soviet Union

Oklahoma Gas

1955 • 1 min

One of Fischinger's commercial jobs from the 1950s.

Gnir Rednow

1955 • 6 min • United States of America

A film composed of the out-takes from Brakhage’s The Wonder Ring (1955), which Cornell had commissioned. There has been a long-standing misconception that the film "Gnir Rednow" is simply "The Wonder Ring" mirrored or projected in reverse. However, Mark Toscano of the Academy Film Archive has definitively established that the original roll of each one of these two films is "unmistakably, completely comprised of camera original Kodachrome," and that no two shots are precisely the same from one film to the other.

Jack and the Beanstalk

1955 • 12 min • United Kingdom

Two Greedy Bear Cubs

1955 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Sea Countrymen

1955 • 11 min • Italy

Sicily, Granitola, 1955. At the first light of dawn, the fishermen set out in their boats for open water, timing the rhythm of their oars to murmured chants. They set their nets in the sea, regulate the cords, organize the boats in a square. The men’s work becomes increasingly harder as the tuna are hoisted onto the boats, wriggling, beating their tails until death arrives and the water is tinged with blood.