.Yl 1981 - 268

Experimental home movie documenting a visit by filmmakers Wayne and Eleanor Boyer and their nine-year-old son Brett to JoAnn Elam's home in Logan Square, Chicago, for a summer barbecue. Later in the film, Chuck Kleinhans and Julia Lesage, co-founders of the cinema journal Jump Cut join the group. Since Elam is on screen for much of the film, it was likely mostly filmed by Elam's husband Joe Hendrix, who also appears at the end of the film. During the visit, the friends relax on Elam's back porch and film her garden, both frequent locations in her work. A group of friends and colleagues that included Elam, Kleinhans, and Lesage adopted the name "The Rhinos" after walking to a screening at Kartemquin Films on a cold winter evening, and having a group of kids throw snowballs at them and tell them that they looked like a group of rhinos.

"Your Child Interests Me" - analyzes the ideologies, the stages and the political choices which led to the contemporary and dominant concept of education.

Satirical docudrama based on the racist practice of virginity testing that was carried out by the Home Office on Asian girls arriving in the UK from India and Pakistan between 1971-1979.

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)

Short political documentary.

For two weeks in 1980, two thousand disabled athletes gathered in Arnhem, Holland, for the sixth edition of the Olympic Games for the Physically Disabled, which had been held for twenty years and had last been organized in the Soviet Union. To begin with, one-legged Canadian Arnie Boldt cleared 1.96 meters in the high jump. Records were soon to fall like the cold rain of that uncertain summer, and for all those who dreamed of going faster, higher and stronger, there was no shortage of adversaries. Brad Parks, the wheeled American, pulverized the 100 and 1,500-meter records, Leone Williams, the Jamaican, threw the discus over 28 meters; among the "big guns", the battle was fierce between Brown, the American world record holder at 263 kilos, and Lindberg, the elf from the North.

Hajj Ali makes a living as a taxi driver during the day, carrying citizens safely across the city, but he also runs a funeral home, waiting for “customers” to be delivered daily. As he documents one man’s existence in a civil war-ravaged Beirut, Amiralay creates a tragicomic portrait of a society held captive by conflict.

Here Come the Puppets! is a special that was taped for PBS during the 1980 World Puppetry Festival. Co-hosted by Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson, it featured performances by Burr Tillstrom, Shari Lewis, Bil Baird and the Muppets. Other performers included Sergei Obraztsov, Manteo's Sicillian Marionettes (from NYC), Albrecht Roser, Bruce Schwartz, Martin Stevens, and Frank Ballard's (at the time, Puppet Arts head at University of Connecticut) "Ring of the Nibbelung."

An early "walking" performance shot on super-8 in 1981.

...a "mordantly nostalgic" sojourn across America. A landscape of mute streets, empty rooms and serene fields; the remains of a civilization which has momentarily disappeared.

Waldorf education overview from the perspective of the Toronto Waldorf School.

Aspiraciones is the beginning of a series in which Vadi-Samvadi is the second film. The grammar of Indian music suggests a micro-interval in a cinematic space-time.

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.

"Esculturas Rupestres" (Rupestrian Sculptures) was made in Jaruco Park outside of Havana. The low relief sculptures that resembled petroglyphs, were influenced by Ana Mendieta’s interest in the indigenous Taíno people of Cuba.

Animation short.

The conductor of a mosquito orchestra gets into a fight with a tuba-playing bear. Based on the story by Dmitriy Mamin-Sibiryak.