Joer 1997 - 366

Swiss archaeologist Eric Huysecom and cameraman Bernard Augustoni work with 13 master smelters to recreate the building of a traditional furnace for smelting iron in Mali. There has not been any traditional iron smelting in Africa since the 1960's, in part due to the importing of cheaper substitutes. The building of the furnaces and the work involved in the actual production is deeply entwined with ritual, symbolism and gender. This film describes in great detail every aspect of the event, from the selection of the site of the reconstruction - which is the oldest remaining furnace site in the region, last active in 1961 - to the final result.

Sakura's last live that happened on hyde's birthday at Nippon Budoukan (1997.01.29) in Tokyo as part of their Carnival of True tour.

Weaving the Future is a video portrait of a unique indigenous community living in the Andean highlands of northern Ecuador. The story of the Otavalo Indians is not a stereotypical tale of "isolated people struggling to survive." Just the opposite. The people of Otavalo have successfully adapted their traditions of weaving and crafts to the international marketplace. Selling their textiles in the U.S., Europe and even in Japan, the Otavalos are by any measure the most prosperous Native people in South America. Theirs is a fascinating story of economic success and social change.

When Emily (the daughter of Holocaust concentration camp survivors) meets Gitta (a German-raised woman who considers herself removed from the events of the Holocaust), their burgeoning passion for one another is threatened by their markedly different relationships to history and memory. Negotiating, coping with, and transcending the past are the hallmarks of this compelling drama.

A highly charged and smart experimental narrative that explores the relationship between sexuality, gender, and the public sphere. Waiting for a train to an unknown destination are two couples: one lesbian, one straight. As they move through the public and semi-public spaces of the train station - lobbies, stairwells, bathroom stalls - the couples and individuals exchange a series of glances (some overt, some furtive) that implicate one another in a web of desire, power, fear, homophobia, and heterosexism.

Senegalese often set up a temporary stage at a street corner. It is the Guew Bi, the dancing circle where a cheerful crowd dressed in beautiful attire slowly gathers. The event is called a sabar. Soon drummers start playing and one at a time, women and men get up and enter the Guew Bi to perform the most exuberant, breathtaking dances. This film, which introduces us to an astonishing contemporary art form deeply rooted in African tradition, was shot in the streets of Dakar, with the participation of Master Drummer Doudou Ndiaye Rose.

The idea for "BOOKCASE" came out of my desire to educate myself by creating a catalogue of film techniques. I was attempting to distill the elements of film to a pure state by stripping away any meaning from the images, to explore film as simply the masking and filtering of light. For subject matter I shot things which had, at one time or another, struck a chord within me. In doing so, I realized that I was also creating a catalogue of my own memories. I have always seen memories as discreet units of light, not unlike books on a shelf... "BOOKCASE" became not only an experiment in "pure" film, but a reflection on the concept of memory as well. In the convergence of these two ideas, light is the common basic element. (TS)

Two very closely related species of sifaka are compared in this video in order to provide some detailed information about their behavior. The diademmed sifaka is very rare and has only recently been brought into captivity. This footage taken in its natural habitat is currently the only available material showing it in the wild. This species is compared with verreauxi's sifaka which is much more common and frequently filmed animals. Comparisons between these two similar species increase our understanding of the adaptive strategies of this type of lemur which is one of the largest remaining forms. Theverreauxi's sifaka is highly adapted to dry conditions and is shown feeding, locomoting and defending its territory from an incoming group. The pacing of this video is slow to allow the observer time to really look at this unusual animal and its highly unusual form of locomotion, which is vertical clinging and leaping between trees and bipedal dancing on the ground.

A penguin tries out various methods of flying.

A battle between rock, paper and scissors takes place on a desk.

Antics of a computer animated snowman.

Computer animated short that explores the physics of cartoons.

This acclaimed documentary explores the revolutionary movement fighting for democracy in Burma and depicts how young people, in particular, are affected by the human rights abuses of Burma’s military government. Burma Diary focuses on the story of Tint Aung, a young Burmese man who was actively involved in the protest movement while in college. He is forced to flee from his home and take refuge in the jungles of the Burmese-Thailand border along with his wife and his two young daughters. As the film chronicles four harsh years of Tint Aung’s struggle to survive, it provides a passionate and at times heartbreaking study of the hopes of and the obstacles facing the Burmese democracy movement.

Standard 8 found footage featuring a home movie wedding sequence in the 1960s. The film then goes behind the scenes to capture what happens afterwards in the newlywed`s honeymoon hotel room.

"ABC" consists of four objects: two bureaucratic looking chairs, one 27" TV monitor and a two meter long metallic table. The chairs are placed at the shorter ends of the table. While one chair is emptied by it's interlocutor, the other is occupied by a large TV monitor. The eleven minute long video displays three close up images of the mouth that in a deliberately exaggerated manner pronounce three uncanny stories.

An experimental film that looks afresh at landscape by using the medium to explore its time and space in ways other than ‘eye view’. A rich, sensual, densely textured film poem that sets out to challenge perceptual habits without being drawn into the seductive trap of the picturesque.

Short animation by Manfredo Manfredi

In the house, Koller has exposed old courses, brought up to fourteen wallpaper layers on the walls to light,with the love and care of a conservator, discovered hidden fireplaces; in the course of these activities, he found old enigmatic garments and the skull of a child and as he says a strange collection of bizarre and ritual objects.

Grandmother is a Crab borrows from an earlier digital video, made fifteen years ago, that itself used footage captured from a travel advertisement on television. Black and white, and mirror effects, take the image out of time, giving it both vividness and distance. The music is played in reverse. And the voice-over and under-titles are a poem that re-enters the magic world of a child on a beach.