Rok 1981 - 282

Short 8mm experimental film.

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.

Anne consults the dictionary in this one – what is “fat?” what is “thin?” Inanimate objects are animated, and Anne experiences problems with her camera. (Liz Coffey)

On 12 July 1981, six small airplanes, flying in perfect formation over Santiago, Chile, dropped 400,000 flyers discussing the relationship between art and society.

This superbly animated science film traces the evolution of North America from the Earth's geophysical beginnings, through the genesis of the first living organisms, right up to the arrival of humans. Radiant colours and smooth-flowing animation evoke sizzling lava rivers, oceans bursting with life, and freezing ice ages. The film provides an excellent view of the time frame within which these remarkable events took place and highlights the fact that, relatively speaking, we are newcomers to Planet Earth.

The West-German director Monica Maurer made a number of important films for the PLO. The Israeli airstrikes against Beirut on 17 July 1981 killed 350 people, including a pregnant woman whose baby could be rescued from her torn-up womb. Maurer shows the people’s suffering and pain, their victimhood. She addresses the systemic causes of violence, referring back to the history of their country and formulating arguments for the necessity of a fight for liberation.

A trip inside a Steel Valley workers’ magazine, which looks like raw material for a Bruce Springsteen song.

Produced by Carol Munday Lawrence as part of the seven-part "Were You There" series

Two brothers do laundry at a laundry mat. The older brother goes out to smoke and a policeman searches him and handcuffs him for finding a swithcblade. When the boy fights back the officer takes out his gun to shoot him. The younger brother pulls a gun for the officer’s partner’s belt and shoots the cop before he can shoot his brother. The younger brother is then put in the squad car. The film has little dialogue and has an African drum beat for a track.

A frightening vignette about violence and hatred in American society.

Blekbala explores the lives and aspirations of Aboriginal people living in the Northern Territory - on small outstations, remote desert locations and in regional town - from Arnhem Land to Central Australia. It looks at a selection of Aboriginal-run businesses and enterprises: cattle stations; children’s education; community projects; sports and music.

Film by Telscher.

The film is a superimposition of 6 to 8 takes. In each take, a horizontal piece of white paper was moved around in front of the camera by hand.

Short film about Berlin Kreuzberg.

1981 Czech experimental short by Petr Skala

How the boy Vasya and the owl Dusya went to look for the missing sun.