A slowly disintegrating painting, a bird on the painting that later flies away. An ethereal female figure that pops up from time to time, then as a counterpoint a disgusting insect, an undulating multitude of pebbles and a plethora of letters fill the picture. In other words, the combined spectacle of visual motifs and sound effects creates a unique and memorable vision of the passing of time and the continuous change of time.
Tag: 1980s
Documentary on history and culture of the gypsy communities worldwide. Part One takes us on a search for the lost gypsy tribes of Egypt, up the Nile to the ancient town of Luxor in the shadow of the great Pharaoh’s tombs. Along the way, we meet dancing girls and acrobats, magicians, fortune-tellers and even mystics performing an exorcism. Part Two is a penetrating, provocative tour of a fabled people’s existence. It reveals the prejudice they still face daily and which they combat with the lyrics and music they have carried and adapted on their long migrations.
This television essay from 1985 was written by Leonard Bernstein to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s birth. Recorded in Israel, Vienna and later in London, it is punctuated by biographical interludes and illustrated by musical examples drawn from the cycle of Mahler’s works recorded by Bernstein. Bernstein talks, plays and conducts various orchestras (Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Wiener Philharmoniker) and soloists (Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, Edith Mathis, Lucia Popp, Walton Groenroos) in performances spanning 17 years.
Budapest, in the ’80s. Géza and his family living in the block flat microdistrict. One morning Géza meets a young lady in the elevator. This moment change his life. On the same day he quits his factory job and decides to start his own business: became a wall driller, as there a big demand for it in the neighborhood.
In the first documentary feature film made in Gaza, Gaza Ghetto highlights the historical precedents of war, dispossession and military control that influence a family’s daily life in Jabalia Palestinian refugee camp. Intimate scenes –a child is born, a grandmother dies — are inter-cut with visits to the architects of the Israeli military occupation. Ariel Sharon, Benyamin Beneliezar and soldiers on patrol candidly discuss their responsibilities.
The story of a woman who searches through the country for her husband, a resistant, while the war for independence is raging. She finds him at last and saves his life. When peace finally arrives, they have to learn how to be together again and start living in a destroyed land.
I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like envisions an epic quest for transcendence and self-knowledge. Bill Viola describes this work as a “personal investigation of the inner states and connections to animal consciousness we all carry within.” The title is taken from the Rig-Veda, the Sanskrit spiritual text that defines a procession through birth, consciousness, primordial existence, intuition, knowledge, rational thought, and faith, to arrive at a transcendent reality “beyond the laws of physics.” Unfolding in powerful, emblematic images and allegorical passages, Viola articulates a dramatic quest for self-knowledge through an awareness of the Other, embodied here by a shamanistic vision of animal consciousness.
A telling story of an unemployed Vietnam vet in Butte, Montana, whose wife leaves him after seven years when she feels there is no longer communication between them and – more painfully and pointedly – because she is unable to have a child owing to his sterility from exposure to Agent Orange. Told in a gentle style, richly emotional, Bell Diamond was made with non-professionals drawn from the community of Butte.