År 1981 - 281

A film about rural blacksmiths.

Jaime Davidovichn searches in vain for the meaning of "avant-garde".

A series of variations of abstract forms taken by "cuts" from objects in my daily universe, is an attempt to abolish the subject in favor of cinematographic language.

Featuring cameos from several international artists including actress Elizabeth Shepherd and CBS Records’ group The Industrials along with many other American performers! An amusing and surreal comment on the ‘film-within-a-film’ sub genre as expounded in the 1960’s by Fellini, Truffaut et al. —LUX

A short film for school kids about the importance of sharing.

A house of trick cards, the woman as house. "A marvelous smorgasbord of images." – Edgar Daniels "Architectural structures become the structures of relationships, establishing the windows of communication (between parents and children, between lovers) while preserving a sense of enclosure, isolation." – Dave Kehr

The film wants to highlight a dream visions through a special film technique composing the colour images (like a colour photocopier at work) through red, green and blu excepts. Some sequences have colours that only add up two primary colours. in other sequences I use masks.

Mobiles works with regulated frame movements becoming increasingly more unpredictable : a controllable, closed space, in which more random and unrestrained movement are distributed. This device allows forms to be deployed by the movement, but is still untapped by narrative film: contracting and leaking spaces, crushed signs, decomposition of movements by other movements, dripping and corpuscular choreography. Mobiles is the result of a continuous tension between abstraction and reality. The same goes for the relationship between sound and image, which echo one another.

A homage to the 80s experimental cinema. A poetic play manifesto about this form of expression that at the moment had a huge development.

"A city, its crowds; crowds processed on film then transferred to video. I used a technique particular to video to manipulate a vertical section of the image sideways, changing both its shape and color density. Each operation was repeated a number of times, in a series of consecutive incrustations. The final image was achieved in a few hours, entirely by hand (or, more precisely, by hands), like an impromptu musical improvisation. The rhythm, the flux of the city confronted with video's scanning composition and compression." (Christian Lebrat)

A film about South American immigrants who try to live in Sweden without a job.

A stony-faced Tom Morton, General Manager of Doncaster Rugby League team, has just received a copy of the Guinness Book of Records. His team now has an entry for most games without a win. What follows in Barry Cockcroft’s wonderful portrait of the club’s last four fixtures of the 1981 season is a mixture of the bleak, the poignant and the hilarious. The scattered devoted few at the aptly named Tattersfield watch as Doncaster and Hull legend Tony Banham finally comes up trumps.

Recently restored, Lisa Baumgardner's punchy Girl Pack rewrites Jean-Luc Godard's famous axiom, proving that all you need to make a film is six girls and and a six-pack of beer.

Margaret Hixon's 1981 film documents a real-life wedding in the Old Believer settlements of Marion County, Oregon, in the years 1979 and 1980. The film briefly touches on a wealth of traditional arts (embroidery, clothing construction, weaving, vernacular architecture, folk song and foodways) and beautifully presents a whole series of rituals -- the "devichnik" (engagement party), "selling" the bride and her braid, the wedding feast, the bargaining over the dowry, and the ceremony of bestowing gifts and advice on the newlyweds. In English and Russian with subtitles or voice-over translations.

Joy Unspeakable is an ethnographic film that examines the question, what does it mean to be Pentecostal, through the documentation of three types of Oneness Pentecostal services in Southern Indiana: a gospel-rock concert, a regular Sunday service, and a camp meeting. Religious behavior, doctrine, and social values are discussed by several Oneness Pentecostal church members and ministers in interviews interspersed with footage of the various services.

The Laziest Girl in Town features the transvestite antics of Morrisroe, Stephen Tashjian (Tabboo!), and Jack Pierson, culminating in an obscene sequence reminiscent of John Waters' Pink Flamingos.