Film Catalog: Online Search

Dominic Angerame

A Film (1979) 16mm, color & b/w, silent, 2.5 min

Genre: Experimental

Keywords: Environment & Nature, Structural

An exploration of the phenomenon of constant change of Visual perception and the dynamic alteration of image perspective. The frame as a window whereby the viewer's conscienceness is both inside and outside. A graphic portrayal of the change of Chicago's seasons (from Fall to Winter) employing the technique of optical printing bi-pak. One foot black and white film was shot for ninety days consecutively and printed with color footage of close-ups of the same scene.

Rental: $20.00

Charles Atlas

Roamin' I (1979) 16mm, color, sound, 14.5 min

Genre: Experimental

Keywords: Dance

With outtakes from the filmdance LOCALE, by Merce Cunningham and Charles Atlas.

Rental: $60.00

Gordon Ball

Birds Nest Soup (1979) 16mm, color, silent, 4 min

Genre: Narrative

Keywords: Ethnic / Multicultural

In ancient China, an esteemed Gentleman's highest culinary honor was being served this most delicate soup; so it is hoped a similar honor will be felt by the viewer when his aerial subject is presented.

Rental: $20.00

Gordon Ball

Enthusiasm (1979) 16mm, color & b/w, sound, 13 min

Genre: Experimental

Keywords: Personal / Diary / Journal

It began with 'ENTHUSIASM'. I first leaned of Gordon ball at the 1979 Atlanta Independent Film Festival when, along with 400 other festival goers, I watched an utterly earnest, painful, and serious film called ENTHUSIASM sandwiched in a program, of likable festival fare. for the 14 long minutes that ENTHUSIASM claimed the screen, a roomful of unprepared viewers was confronted with a filmmakers account of his mothers death following a prolonged illness with Alzheimer's Disease, a form of premature senility. Ball's detailed narrative, recited in a voice struggling to maintain composure, accompanied the generally random series of snapshots and posed photographs of his mother, interspersed with passages of colored leader and flares which constituted the visual body of the film. Later, at the close of the festival, after five nights of immersion in film and video, ENTHUSIASM was still with me... going over these images is a universal experience. They are pictures that record the fairest moments as reflected in the face one wears in the front of a camera. They preserve the memory of a time which existed before we children came. In them the subject, even with age, is always alive. Ball's story, replete with the mundane, un-talked of details of illness, forms the dark aspect of those fair, eternal moments-the face we instinctively turn away from the camera's eye. ENTHUSIASM'S drama, takes the shape of the tension between picture and word, between the memory we cherish and the one we would often rather deny or forget. -- Linda Dubler, Art Papers ENTHUSIASM presents unique family image in brown, black, and white, and color photos collecting an older generations poignant enthusiasm romances marriages socials graces and native myths. Narrated in flashbacks from his parents graves intermixed with chronological soundtrack account of their buried histories, awkward hones and raw-voiced, hesitant and sincere, whereby Gordon Ball makes you cry for life itself. -- Allen Ginsberg

Rental: $22.00

Scott Bartlett

Heavy Metal (1979) 16mm, color, sound, 13 min

Genre: Experimental, Narrative

Keywords: History

Employing elaborate optical techniques, HEAVY METAL is an instant audio-visual trip back to 1929. A collage of gangsters shoot it out to the tunes of Earl Hines and Tiny Parham, while the molls mug through their reaction shots. In the end, the film destroys itself.

Rental: $25.00

Alan Baxter

Ace in the Hole (1979) 16mm, color, sound, 18.25 min

Genre: Narrative

Keywords: Literature & Theater

Based on one of the Olinger short stories of the same name by John Updike, ACE IN THE HOLE is a psychological study of Fred 'Ace' Anderson, an ex-champion high school basketball player, who is now no longer in the spotlight and who instead has to accept the ordinary responsibilities of manhood and married life. The film begins by showing Ace driving home from the second job he has just been fired from. As he speeds along his own high school grounds and as he visits his mother, flashbacks of Ace's golden school days dart through his mind. The movie then follows him home, where he has to confront his wife Evey with his failure for the day. This film is a period piece, since it takes place around 1962, and shows the music and dress of the 50's era. Since this is one of the earliest published works by Updike, one can surmise that Ace is the prototype of Updike's character Rabbit Angstrom, the ex-champion basketball player of Rabbit Run and Rabbit Redux

Rental: $35.00

Alan Berliner

Lines of Force (1979) 16mm, color, sound, 6.50 min

Genre: Experimental

Explores the urban and highway landscapes of cars and trucks, traffic signals, tunnels and blinking arrows. A simple electronic tone highlights small shifts and sudden changes within the flow of images.

Rental: $20.00

Tom Bessoir

Microfilm (1979) 16mm, color, sound, 1 min

Genre: Experimental

The concept of putting microfilm in a movie projector. The quantity of the interval determines the pressure of the tension. -- Eisenstein A bombardment of information. -- T. B. "... proves that brevity is indeed the soul of wit." -- Marshall Fine Rochester Times Union, May 2, 1985

Rental: $20.00

Stan Brakhage

"I" (1979) 16mm, color, silent, 6.5 min

Genre: Experimental

This begins a new series of films which would ordinarily be called abstract, non-objective, nonrepresentational, etc. I cannot tolerate these terms and, in fact, had to struggle against all such historical concepts to proceed with my work. Midst creative processes, the sound 'imagnostic' kept ringing in my ears. It seems to be an enjambment of Latin and Greek; but Charlton T. Lewis' Elementary Latin Dictionary gives me (via Guy Davenport) image... Sanskrit -- AIC -- 'like,' GNOSIS knowledge, GNOSTIC AGNOSCO = to recognize/to know and the happier IMAGINOSUS full of fancies/fantasies. illustrated by Catullus' singular use (perhaps creation of the term?) in the line His mind solidly filled with fancies of a girl. Even though exhausted by this etymological purist, and despite my prejudice against taking on foreign airs of tongue, Imagnostic keeps singing in my head and escaping my lips in conversation. I'm not sure if this work is titled I for Imagnostic, or "I" as designating first person singular or Roman Numeral One.

Rental: $20.00

Stan Brakhage

"II" (1979) 16mm, color, silent, 9 min

Genre: Experimental

Now that "II" has been completed, on would suppose that the above film "I" is "one"... unless, of course, this film's spoken title is "aye-aye" or een, perhaps, slyly referring to the two "eyes" which made it, as distinct from the singularity of vision which flattens space in the making of its predecessor.

Rental: $25.00