Skip to Main Content
It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results.
16mm Films, by Title
-
2001, a space odyssey by Kubrick, StanleyCall Number: Motion picture 16101
Publication Date: 1968
OCLC#: 78557725
From the opening sequence of prehistoric man struggling to cope with a hostile environment to the interplanetary voyage to Jupiter. It is an elegant metaphor of man’s attempts to master his fate. Throughout its entire length, director Stanley Kubrick demonstrates his unmatched mastery of sight, sound and motion as he serves a visual feast. The special effects were a quantum leap over anything that had preceded them, paving the way for the high-tech look in film and graphic design. 2001 is a milestone in the history of film.
-
À bout de souffle (Breathless) by Godard, Jean-LucCall Number: Motion Picture 16060
Publication Date: 1959
OCLC#: 317365812
Godard’s first feature film (from Francois Truffaut’s story) was conceived as a break with the traditions of quality filmmaking and a return to the directness and immediacy of the American gangster movie. The story involves a young car thief wanted by police for the shooting of a patrolman, and his relationship with an American student in Paris who subsequently informs on him, with tragic results. Godard’s critical view of the cinema as a mixed form is reflected in his use of a collage of film techniques in his “quotes” from other film makers and gangster films. Undoubtedly one of the seminal films of the sixties, its elliptical style, reflection of the existential ethos, and its individualistic approach affected many of the films that followed it into the New Wave.
-
Der Amerikanische Freund (American Friend) by Wenders, WimCall Number: Motion picture 16086
Publication Date: 1977
OCLC#: 29406936
Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s suspense novel Ripley’s Game, Wenders’ bizarre thriller stars Bruno Ganz as an ordinary Hamburg picture-framer with a fatal disease who becomes involved with a mysterious, manipulative American art dealer and is persuaded to work as an assassin for a French gangster. This complex, menacing and visually rich thriller raises Wender’s favorite theme of ruthlessness and the fragility of personality to a global level by showing a world in which cities, borders, languages and cultures blur into one another. As one of many coups de theater in this film Wenders peoples his disjointed, amoral and thrillingly disorienting world with Holly wood’s greatest mavericks; Sam Fuller, Nicholas Ray and as the American friend himself, Dennis Hopper at his strangest and most disturbing
-
Animated Shorts, 1957-1981 by VariousCall Number: Motion Picture 16082
Publication Date: Various
OCLC#: 823931189
Two separate of reels of animated short films with five films per reel. Reel I: A Man and His Dog by Robert Breer (b/w, 3min, 1957) T.Z. (color, 9min, 1978) Pencil Bookings by Kathy Rose (color, 14min, 1978) Two Space by Larry Cuba (b/w, 8min, 1979) and Hard Passage by Dennis Pies (color, 10 min, 1981). Reel II has: Furies by Sara Petty (color, 3min, 1975) Make Me Psychic by Sally
Cruickshank (color, 8min, 1978) Quaisi’s Cabaret Trailer (color, 3min, 1980) Crocus by Susan Pitt (color, 7min, 1971) and Asparagus (color, 19min., 1978).
-
L'Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) by Resnais, AlainCall Number: Motion Picture 16019
Publication Date: 1961
OCLC#: 42496383
French/English subtitles
One of the most controversial works of the French New Wave, and a winner of the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, it is a surrealistic portrait of a beautiful woman at a somber, palatial hotel. While there she meets a man who tries to convince her that they have met before, "perhaps at Marienbad" had an affair and planned to meet once again and run away together. Although the woman is unable to remember him, she eventually leaves her husband and the strange hotel to go off with him.
-
Ashes and Diamonds by Wajda, AndrezezCall Number: Motion Picture 16072
Publication Date: 1958
OCLC#: 19803524
Director Andrzej Wajda’s penetrating account of the Polish Resistance Movement during the last days of World War II. Anti-communist partisans are engaged in ambushing the new Communist commandant. With Zbigniew Cybulski, Eva Krzyzenska, and Adam Pawlikowski.
-
Asparagus by Pitt, SuzanCall Number: Motion Picture 16082 reel 2
Publication Date: 1978
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 2
-
Ballet Mecanique by Leger, FernandCall Number: Motion Picture 16049
Publication Date: 1924
OCLC#: 148220579
Ballet Mecanique is surrealistic drama of painted geometric forms and photographic images.
-
Before the Nickelodeon: The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter by Musser, CharlesCall Number: Motion Picture 16110
Publication Date: 1982
OCLC#: 317365911
The film lends a richly detailed view of the formative years of film production in the U.S. between 1896 and 1908. Centering on the turn of the century, the film sees Porter’s early career as representative of the changing relations in the manufacture and presentation of moving pictures.
-
-
Blackmail by Hitchcock, AlfredCall Number: Motion Picture 16028
Publication Date: 1929
OCLC#: 33213207
Blackmail is Hitchcock’s, and England’s, first sound film. It is a bold, psychological story revolving around a young woman who stabs an artist in self-defense. Her fiancée, the detective who is investigating the case, realizes her involvement. When he tries to conceal it from his superiors, he is threatened with blackmail.
The film also features a memorable chase through the British Museum. The film stars Cyril Ritchard, Sara Allgood, and John Longden.
-
Blood of the Condor by Sanjines, JorgeCall Number: Motion Picture 16066
Publication Date: 1969
OCLC#: 225748923
Blood of the Condor is one of the most controversial and highly acclaimed films ever produced in Latin America. The film is a dramatized account based on actual events, which occurred in 1968, of a U.S. imposed population control program which sterilized Quechua Indian women without their knowledge or consent. In recounting this incident, the film offers a fascinating, almost anthropological look at the lifestyle, customs and religious rituals of the Quechua Indians. Most importantly, the film provides an accurate reflection of the predominant attitude of Latin Americans towards U.S. “aid” programs.
-
Body and Soul by Micheaux, OscarCall Number: Motion Picture 16089
Publication Date: 1924
OCLC#: 225758875
Paul Robeson made his film debut in Body and Soul. The melodramatic story is concerned with the gamblers, bootleggers, and "jackleg" preachers who exploited the deep religiosity of poor blacks. It focuses on one of the ministers of the gospel who embodies this evil. He extorts money from the proprietor of a notorious gambling house, betrays a girl from his parish, forces her to steal her mother’s savings and leave home, and finally kills the girl’s brother when he comes to the sister’s protection.
-
Born in Flames by Borden, LizzieCall Number: Motion Picture 16064
Publication Date: 1983
OCLC#: 77596729
Set in an imaginary New York very much like the present, Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames is a futuristic fable of feminist revolt. After a "peaceful" socialist revolution, unemployment, racism, and sexual harassment belie the utopian claims of the new government, on its tenth anniversary, women overcome divisions of race, class, and sexual orientation to form a guerrilla movement. Eventually, they take over control of the media and provide and alternative, unified voice.
-
Bringing up Baby by Hawks, HowardCall Number: Motion Picture 16015
Publication Date: 1938
OCLC#: 8725412
Susan, played by Katherine Hepburn, has a dog named George and a pet leopard, Baby meets a mild-mannered paleontologist, played by Cary Grant, who has just acquired the bone he needs to complete his dinosaur skeleton. George steals the bone; Baby is missing, and confusion reigns. Rapid-fire dialogue, zany story, wacky characterizations, plus the Howard Hawks style of direction makes this one of the most enduring examples of screwball comedy.
-
Broken Blossoms by Griffith, D.W.Call Number: Motion Picture 16029
Publication Date: 1919
OCLC# 33070105
A highly sentimental tale about the relationship between a gentle Chinaman and an innocent waif in the Limehouse, district of London. The imaginary Limehouse, a gloomy fog-bound quarter, permeates the whole story with its melancholy atmosphere. The Chinese boy falls in love with the young girl, who lives in terror of her father, a boxer. After losing a match, the father returns home and beats his daughter to death. Upon this discovery, the Chinese boy kills the father and then himself.
-
-
Chinese laundry by Dickson, WilliamCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1894
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
With Robetta and Doretta.
-
Citizen Kane by Welles, OrsonCall Number: Motion Picture 16008
Publication Date: 1941
OCLC#: 746920287
Welles directed, wrote, and starred in the film which is the story of Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper tycoon patterned in part on William Randolph Hearst. We get tantalizing glimpses into the life of Kane through the eyes of five people him and a March of Time newsreel. All we know is that he drives himself into voluntary exile; we never learn why.
-
City of Gold by Koenig, Wolf and Low, ColinCall Number: Motion Picture 16121
Publication Date: 1957
OCLC#: 123210741
Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, this short is a nostalgic look at the mining town of Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush. Vintage still photographs illustrate the creation and early life of the new town. Narrated by Dawson-born author Pierre Berton, the film shows thousands flocking to this frozen frontier to find their El Dorado. The contemporary Dawson City is contrasted to these earlier days when all the wealth of the river beds flowed through the town’s stores, taverns, and dance halls.
-
Il conformista (Conformist) by Bertolucci, BernardoCall Number: Motion Picture 16062
Publication Date: 1970
OCLC#: 746938549
Based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, The Conformist follows a rising young Mussolini follower whom must assassinate his former professor, now in political exile, to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist State. Through an intricate mosaic structure and brilliantly staged sequences, director Bernardo Bertolucci equates the rise of Italian fascism with the psychosexual life of his protagonist for whom conformity becomes an obsession after a traumatic homosexual experience in his youth.
-
The Conversation by Coppola, Francis FordCall Number: Motion Picture 16053
Publication Date: 1974
OCLC#: 23664790
The film uses theme of eavesdropping and wiretapping, but focuses on the personal life of an electronic surveillance technician, rather that on his victims. Award winning director Francis Ford Coppola offers a sheer thriller, a psychological study, a social analysis and a political comment. The movie ruthlessly dissects wiretapper Harry-his vulnerabilities, his beliefs, his guilt’s, his romantic involvement’s-with a complex introspective characterization by Oscar-winner Gene Hackman.
-
Country Doctor by Griffith, D.W.Call Number: Motion Picture 16112
Publication Date: 1909
OCLC#: 827797005
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel II"
14min. Made about a year after Griffith began directing, this is a melodrama about a dedicated doctor compelled to choose between saving the life of a neighbor’s child and that of his own beloved daughter. Griffith builds the suspense of this situation by cutting between the two households with ever-shorter shots. The most extraordinary element in this film, however, is the building of genuine feeling, not through the acting, which is still characterized by the gestures of the stage melodrama, but with camera movement and composition. An opening slow pan across a wide valley creates a pastoral mood, ending at the door of the doctor’s house from which the happy family emerges. A reverse pan across the same landscape that ends the film after the child’s death is elegiac. It was photographed in Greenwich, Connecticut.
-
Crocus by Pitt, SuzanCall Number: Motion Picture 16082 reel 2
Publication Date: 1971
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 2
-
Da hong deng long gao gao gua (Raise the Red Lantern) by Zhang, YimouCall Number: Motion Picture 16116
Publication Date: 1991
OCLC#: 743337557
Mandarin/English Subtitles
Directed by Zhang Yimou. Sold into marriage in the 1920’s, 19 year Songlian finds she is merely the latest of her new lord’s four wives, each ensconced in her own courtyard, where each evening she waits to be chosen for the master’s sexual attentions-an honor signaled by the lighting of paper red lanterns by her door. Besides being reduced to an object in a collection, Songlian finds herself embroiled in a cutthroat power struggle with her three craftier more experienced “sisters”, all maneuvering to be first in the pecking order. Entangled in a silken web of intrigue, with traps lurking everywhere and treachery behind every smile, the increasingly paranoid Donglian stakes everything on a desperate gamble.
-
Dash through the clouds by Sennett, MackCall Number: Motion Picture 16112
Publication Date: 1912
OCLC#: 827797005
Located under title "Early Cinema Reel II".
12min. This farce comedy was directed by Sennett during his final year at Biograph before leaving to form his own company dedicated to the slapstick comedy. It exploits the current fascination with flying machines, still a very recent invention in 1912. Mabel Normand’s boyfriend is a tutti-frutti gum salesman. When he goes to a Mexican border town to sell his product, his attraction for women gets him into a difficult situation with the Mexican men. Meanwhile, Mabel’s interest has turned to a glamorous aviator and she has taken up flying. When her boyfriend calls for help, she stages a thrilling rescue in the aviator’s biplane. Mabel does her own flying, giving evidence of the risks expected of early actors and actresses.
-
Daughter Rite by Citron, MichelleCall Number: Motion Picture 16065
Publication Date: 1978
OCLC#: 317373096
Daughter Rite is the first Feminist film to examine intensively the issues posed by mother-daughter-sister relationships. Although it looks and sounds like cinema vérité, it is a fiction film based on interviews with more than 40 women. This patchwork document has broken not only the boundaries of orthodox form holding most feminist films in check, but also the taboos of subject matter restraining most women working within the avant-garde. Daughter Rite combines successfully traditional film forms-documentary, experimental and fiction.
-
Dead by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16098
Publication Date: 1960
OCLC#: 52469579
This is the second film on the reel. Photographed in the Paris graveyard of Pere Lachaise, this film reflects upon the weight of history and the presence of the dead.
-
Devi (The Goddess) by Ray, SatyajitCall Number: Motion Picture 16088
Publication Date: 1960
OCLC#: 8097389
Bengali/English subtitles
An elderly landowner becomes convinced that his daughter-in-law is the incarnation of a Hindu goddess, to whom he is fanatically devoted. Religious rituals, embellished by moody, atmospheric photography, bring horror to Ray’s most intensely dramatic film.
-
Dewar's Scotch whiskeyCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1897
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
The International Film Co.
-
-
Dog Star Man Part II by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16096
Publication Date: 1964
OCLC#: 83828676
This is the second film on the reel. The third movement of Brakhage’s masterwork, images of life, regeneration, spring and early morning.
-
Double Indemnity by Wilder, BillyCall Number: Motion Picture 16076
Publication Date: 1942
OCLC#: 746963662
Scripted by Raymond Chandler based on the James M. Cain novel of conspiracy and murder, Double Indemnity is the story of an insurance salesman who is conned into killing the husband of a beautiful client. Directed by Billy Wilder and starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson, this film has been called one of the best “films noir” of the 1940’s.
-
The Draughtman's Contract by Greenaway, PeterCall Number: Motion Picture 16090
Publication Date: 1983
OCLC#: 747046816
In this beautifully filmed, 17th-century tale, and arrogant, young artist receives strange commissions from the mistress of an estate-in return for sexual favors.
-
Drowning By Numbers by Greenaway, PeterCall Number: Motion Picture 16085
Publication Date: 1988
OCLC#: 750209318
With this film Peter Greenway returns to the playful punning, ludicrous lists, and quizzical conundrums of his earlier work: opening with a girl counting 100 stars, the plot then proceeds with these same numbers appearing roughly in sequence either in dialogue or in suitable bizarre images. Equally teasing is the film’s complex web of absurdly interlocking allusions to games, sex, and mortality. Drowning explores Modernist black comedy filled with arcane, archaic and apocryphal lore.
-
Early Cinema Reel I: Edwin S. Porter by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16111
Publication Date: 1903-6
OCLC#: 827791442
Life of an American Fireman. 1903. 6 min.
Rube and Mandy at Coney Island. 1903-13min.
The Train Wreckers. 1905-12min.
The Strenuous Life, or Antirace Suicide. 1906-5min.
Waiting at the Church. 1906-7min.
-
Early Cinema Reel II by VariousCall Number: Motion Picture 16112
Publication Date: 1909
OCLC#: 827797005
The Country Doctor: 1909-14min.
Her Choice. 1912-9min.
A Dash through the Clouds. Biography Co. 1912-12min.
A Vitagraph Romance. 1912-8min.
-
Early Cinema Reel III: Films of the 1890's & Trick Films by VariousCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1890-00
OCLC#: 864630888
Chinese Laundry. 1894.
The execution of Mary Queen of Scots. 1895.
Dickson Experimental Sound Film. 1895.
The Irwin-Rice Kiss. 1896.
Feeding The Doves. 1896
Morning Bath 1896.
Burning Stable. 1896.
The Black Diamond Express. 1896.
New York Street Scenes. 1897.
Fatima. 1897.
A Wringing Good Joke. 1899.
Dewar’s Scotch Whiskey. 1897.
An Impossible Voyage. 1904. Voyage a Travers L’impossible.
The “Teddy” Bears. 1907.
-
Eight and One Half (8 1/2) by Fellini, FedericoCall Number: Motion Picture 16014
Publication Date: 1963
OCLC#: 23721891
Italian/English subtitles
Guido, a 43 year old director is trying to sort out ideas about his new film. The problems are intensified by the arrival of both his mistress and his wife. Moving between reality, fantasy, and memory, he is crushed when he meets the vain actress who is to play the young, innocent girl, abandons the film, and dreams of suicide. In the final sequence, Guido leads everyone in his life--alive and dead, real and imaginary--in joyous procession around a circus ring. Academy award winner as Best Foreign Language Film.
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Claudia Cardinale, and Sandra Milo.
Cinematographer: Gianni Di Venanzo.
-
L'Enfant sauvage (Wild Child) by Truffaut, FrancoisCall Number: Motion Picture 16024
Publication Date: 1970
OCLC#: 78082582
French/English subtitles
It is based on a remarkable journal, the 1806 memoirs of a French physician, Dr. Jean Itard. Hearing of the discovery, in 1798 of a child living in the forest like an animal, Dr. Itard sends for him and takes upon himself the task of educating the boy. After some success the boy flees, but soon returns of his own accord.
-
Les enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise) by Carne, MarcelCall Number: Motion Picture 16042
Publication Date: 1946
OCLC#: 756496974
Set in the theater district of Paris, this romantic epic holds a particularly revered place in the French Cinema. Directed by Marcel Carne, the project was begun in 1943, but was not completed until the end of the Occupation. Conceiving the film in the spirit of French novelists Hugo and Balzac, Carne centers on the loves and ambitions of a group of actors who eventually achieve fame, but never the happiness they so desperately seek. In the process of developing the story, Carne explores in depth the
relationship between life and art. Often shown in edited form, this complete print reveals an unqualified masterpiece in its full glory.
-
Every Man for Himself and God Against All by Herzog, WernerCall Number: Motion Picture 16061
Publication Date: 1975
OCLC#: 5589586
In the 1820’s a young man named Kaper Hauser appeared in a town in Germany. Unable to speak and barely able to stand, he was taken in by the town’s people and taught to speak, read and write. As mysteriously as he first appeared, he was murdered.
-
-
FatimaCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1897
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
The International Film Co.
-
Feeding the dovesCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1896
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
-
Furies by Petty, SaraCall Number: Motion Picture 16082 reel 2
Publication Date: 1975
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 2
-
Le Gai Savoir (Joy of Learning) by Godard, Jean LucCall Number: Motion Picture 16055
Publication Date: 1969
OCLC#: 317357868
French/English subtitles
Jean-Luc Godard made this feature film for French television. It is a Godardian exploration of language in all its permutations. He uses many film techniques, leaping visual metaphor upon metaphor to make his points.
-
Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) by Fellini, FedericoCall Number: Motion Picture 16022
Publication Date: 1965
OCLC#: 476690947
Italian/English subtitles
When Giulitetta confirms her suspicions that her husband is having an affair, he denies it. As he leaves on a "business trip" Giuletta faces the fact that her entire existence has centered around her husband and that she must find another role in life. The screen becomes a canvas filled with vivid colors, stunning sets, and elaborate costumes in a lavish, overwhelming display.
-
-
The Gold Rush by Chaplin, CharlieCall Number: Motion Picture 16006
Publication Date: 1925
OCLC#: 37014799
Charlie Chaplin plays a pathetic little lone Prospector, who journeys to the Klondike hoping to discover gold and make his fortune. In Alaska, he shares a flimsy shack with Big Jim McKay, and falls in love with Georgia, a dance hall queen.
-
Golem by Wegener, Paul and Galeen, HenrikCall Number: Motion Picture 16016
Publication Date: 1915
OCLC#: 5711397
German/English subtitles
For this version, Wegener returned to the legend, setting the film in medieval Prague. Rabbi Loew gives life to the Golem who falls in love with the Rabbi’s daughter and brings fear to the emperor’s court. He is destroyed by an innocent child who offers him an apple and then removes the Star of David from his chest, sending him crashing to the ground.
-
Greed by Stroheim, Eric VonCall Number: Motion Picture 16038
Publication Date: 1924
OCLC#: 77614373
Eric Von Stroheim’s masterwork, cut to a fraction of its original length, is noteworthy for vivid detail and realistic settings, including scenes shot on location in Death Valley. The film is based on Frank Norris’ McTeague. A former miner opens a dentist office in San Francisco. He soon meets and marries the daughter of German immigrants, who quickly shows her greedy nature. When the miner is exposed as a charlatan by his romantic rival, he is forced to give up his dental practice. He becomes a drunkard and a tramp, and winds up killing his wife. When he later encounters his rival in Death Valley, he kills him as well but remains bound to the corpse by handcuffs.
-
Hard Passage by Pies, DennisCall Number: Motion Picture 16082 reel 1
Publication Date: 1981
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 1
-
Harlan County, U.S.A. by Kopple, BarbaraCall Number: Motion Picture 16067
Publication Date: 1977
OCLC#: 423681922
Portraying a classic century conflict between labor and between labor and management; Harlan Co. U.S.A. chronicles the efforts of 180 coal mining families to win a United Workers contract at the Brookside mine in Harlan County, Kentucky. The strike began in 1974 after the miners voted to join U.M.W. and Duke Power Company, parent company of the Brookside mine, refused to sign a standard U.M.W. contract. This was the first major confrontation in Harlan County since bloody union organizing battles in the 1930’s resulted in the deaths of five men.
-
Her choice by Ince, RalphCall Number: Motion Picture 16112
Publication Date: 1912
OCLC#: 827797005
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel II"
9min. Vitagraph films are still rare enough to justify the inclusion of this incomplete and rather poor quality print, even though half of the film is missing. The film’s story is there in all its essentials: A wealthy schoolmistress anonymously gives scholarships to her two nieces to attend her exclusive girls’ school. One of them is a vain girl, who snubs her more humble cousin. The generous girl wins her reward when her aunt names her as heir to the school.
-
Hiroshima mon amour by Resnais, AlainCall Number: Motion Picture 16002
Publication Date: 1959
OCLC#: 4533657
French/English subtitles
"When I’ve forgotten you, I’ll remember the night as a symbol without memory, the anguish of forgetting." This line is spoken by one of the lovers in Alain Resnais’ first feature film, a powerful portrait of two people, haunted by dark memories, seeking escape in a fleeting love affair. A French actress and a Japanese architect meet at Hiroshima and fall in love. Within 24 hours the actress must return to France and the brief but passionate encounter between two strangers must end. Resnais intercuts expressionistic shots of the two naked lovers, clinging to each other in bed, with newsreel footage of the bombing and its aftermath at Hiroshima. The architect still bears the scars of the tragedy and defeat of his people; his lover has equally painful memories of the War-her love for a German soldier and her humiliation at Nevers.
-
Hong gao liang (Red Sorghum) by Zhang, YimouCall Number: Motion Picture 16117
Publication Date: 1987
OCLC#: 71558393
Mandarin/English subtitles
Winner of the 1988 Golden Bear award at Berlin, this gorgeous fable begins as a romantic comedy telling of a nervous young bride’s arrival at a remote provincial winery, her wooing by a clumsily passionate peasant, her abduction by a notorious chieftain, and her successful assumption of the family business upon the murder of her aged husband. Then surprisingly but effectively, the widow’s story turns into a heroic and harrowing drama dealing with enemy brutality and partisan resistance fighting during Japan’s occupation of China.
-
I...Dreaming by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16094
Publication Date: 1988
OCLC#: 823929886
This is a setting-to-film of a ‘collage’ of Stephen Foster phrases by composer Joel Haertling. The recurring musical themes and Melancholia of Foster refer to ‘loss of love’ in the popular torch song mode, but the film envisions a re-awakening of such senses-of-love as children know, and posits (along a line of words scratched over picture) the whole psychology of waiting.
-
Illusions by Dash, JulieCall Number: Motion Picture 16103
Publication Date: 1982
OCLC#: 756509297
The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor, the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. The story is about Mignon Dupree, a black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, a black woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star. Forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo. Illusions follow a Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality.
-
L’Immortelle (Immortal) by Robbe-Grillet, AlainCall Number: Motion Picture 16040
Publication Date: 1962
OCLC#: 823753699
French/English subtitles
A beautiful, ageless woman, identified only as "She", has a brief affair with a French professor. She disappears in Istanbul and he follows her through bazaars and winding alleys. His search becomes and enigmatic, compulsive journey and finally leads to his own destruction. Through the repetition of images, flashbacks and flashes forward, Robbe-Grillet tries to subjectively portray emotions--love, loss, fear, and suspicion--mixing what is true with what might be true and what might have been.
-
Irwin-Rice Kiss by Heise, WilliamCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1896
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
Edison Co. From the Play the Widow Jones. With May Irwin and John C. Rice.
-
Ivan Grozniy (Ivan the Terrible, Part I) by Eisenstein, SergeiCall Number: Motion Picture 16004
Publication Date: 1944
OCLC#: 33401495
Russian/English subtitles
In 1942, Sergei Eisenstein, at the height of the conflict with Germany, began what was supposed to be three-part epic biography of Czar Ivan IV. His goal was to offer a comprehensive vision of Ivan... "concealing nothing...detracting nothing from the splendid image of the past." Part I opens with Ivan’s coronation, an event which aroused the indignation of the foreign envoys and the boyars. Ivan announces his intention to unify all Russian lands seized by foreign powers. After a successful military campaign, he falls ill and his aunt poisons Ivan’s wife Anastasia, so that her son can become heir to the
throne. Ivan, learning of Anastasia’s murder vows to destroy all his enemies and rallies massive support against the boyars.
-
Ivan Grozniy (Ivan the Terrible, Part II) by Eisenstein, SergeiCall Number: Motion Picture 16005
Publication Date: 1946
OCLC#: 42485162
Russian/English subtitles
Continues Eisenstein’s epic of the 16th century Czar Ivan IV. Filmed East of the Ural Mountains while Russia was still fighting German invaders, this tragic portrayal of a man’s thwarted efforts to unify his country is especially provocative. Part II opens with selected scenes from Part I, summarizing events leading to Ivan’s return to Moscow weary of war and internal strife. Charges and counter charges lead Ivan to become what he has been unjustly called, Ivan the Terrible. Learning of his aunt’s plot to have him murdered, he devises a scheme which results in her accidentally slaying her own son. The banquet scene during which the slaying occurs, was filmed in color and remains the only color sequence of
Eisenstein’s career. Part II was banned by the Soviet government until 1958, and Part III was never completed due to Eisenstein’s death.
-
Jeanne Dielman by Akerman, ChantalCall Number: Motion Picture 16080
Publication Date: 1975
OCLC#: 827347953
French/English subtitles
Jeanne Dielman is an underground epic that has achieved a popular reputation as an experimental cult classic. It is the story of three days in the life of a Belgian housewife and part-time prostitute who is obsessed with perfectly executed and superbly ordered ritual. One day, when the ritual is disrupted at its core, it yields chaotic results that are terrifying and sinister.
-
Le Jour Se Leve (Daybreak) by Carne, MarcelCall Number: Motion Picture 16079
Publication Date: 1939
OCLC#: 79019125
French/English subtitles
Told in three recollected sequences, it conveys the intense drama, irony, and nostalgia of urban life. Jean Gabin gives a tour de force performance as Francois, a tormented man becomes a murderer.
-
Ju Dou by Zhang, Yimou & FengliangCall Number: Motion Picture 16115
Publication Date: 1990
OCLC#: 148229056
Mandarin/English subtitles
This tautly plotted exquisitely filmed fable of passion and retribution is the story of Jinshan, the miserly, impotent owner of a rural cloth-dyeing mill who acquires a young, ripe -bodied Ju Dou, whom he abuses atrociously, but when his downtrodden foster-son Tianging falls in love with Ju Dou, she seduces him and gives birth to a son. Ostensibly the master’s but actually Tianging’s. In the first of the series of ironic reversals, the ties of convection prove stronger than those of biology and the fierce, silent boy bonds with Jinshan and turns against his natural parents becoming a remorseless instrument of social justice.
-
Killer of Sheep by Burnett, CharlesCall Number: Motion Picture 16104
Publication Date: 1978
OCLC#: 823930920
In a moving portrait of Stan, a young black man employed in a Los Angeles slaughterhouse. His grueling work, gutting and cleaning the carcasses of dead sheep, infects his whole life, including his relationships with his wife, children, and friends. Burnett unfolds Stan’s story with compassion and honesty. His film hauntingly evokes the physical details and the bittersweet emotions of working-class life. The extraordinary soundtrack, made up of a wide range of musical styles, together with the film’s
mood and powerful vignettes dramatically suggest a vast social and historical experience beyond the individual hardship and tragedy of one person.
-
Kindering by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16095
Publication Date: 1987
OCLC#: 842963613
This film presents the voice of a child play-singing in relation to full orchestral ‘takes’ of the times and visually juxtaposed with children -at-play (my grandchildren Iona and Quay Barek) in Americana backyard. They are seen, as in dream, to be already caught-up-in yet absolutely distinct-from the rituals of adulthood. The visuals were photographed and edited to the music of Architect's Office performance A0124 by Tevor and Joel Haerting and Doug Stickler.
-
Kumonosu-jo (Throne of Blood) by Kurosawa, AiraCall Number: Motion Picture 16118
Publication Date: 1957
OCLC#: 29599356
Japanese/English subtitles
Throne of Blood is a Graphic, powerful adaptation of Macbeth in a samurai setting. This film contains a gripping finale, with Taketoki Washizu attacked by arrows.
-
Life of an American fireman by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16111
Publication Date: 1903
OCLC#: 827791442
Located under title "Early Cinema Reel 1: Edwin S. Porter".
6 min.
The film is restored from an original print recently discovered by the American Film Institute Archives Program and should finally resolve the perplexing problem of its various versions and as film histories have given him credit, will expose Porter as the leading proponent of the “non-continuous” narrative style of much of early cinema.
-
Love Me Tonight by Mamoulian, RoubenCall Number: Motion Picture 16077
Publication Date: 1932
OCLC#: 74459525
Love Me Tonight is musical fantasy about the story book romance of a poor tailor and a rich countess. This delightful interweaving of songs, music, and story was done in an imaginative, fresh, and structurally sound manner by Mamoulian.
-
Lucia by Solas, HumbertoCall Number: Motion Picture 16056
Publication Date: 1969
OCLC#: 22160695
Spanish/English subtitles
Lucia dramatizes three separate periods in Cuba’s struggle for liberation, and the participation of Cuban women in that fight. In 1895, Lucia is embroiled in a tale of love and betrayal during Cuba’s war for independence from Span. In 1933, Lucia leaves her middle-class family and is involved in the overthrow of the Cuban dictator, Machado. In the 1960’s, Lucia learns to read and write during Cuba’s literacy campaign, and as a newlywed confronts her husband’s "macho" attitudes. Each episode is filmed in visual style which symbolizes the spirit of each historical era.
-
The Magnificent Ambersons by Welles, OrsonCall Number: Motion Picture 16009
Publication Date: 1942
OCLC#: 71359934
Orson Welles’ vivid imagination turns this film into a classic of cinematic invention. He utilized the stationary camera and long tracking shots in this story of the declining magnificence of the Ambersons’ dynasty. Welles’ depicted the individual who was forced to change to meet the new socio-economic world head-on. Greed, arrogance, and ruthlessness are traded for fear, remorse, and tragedy.
-
-
Malenkaya Vera (Little Vera) by Pichul, VasilyCall Number: Motion Picture 16108
Publication Date: 1988
OCLC#: 823931136
Russian/English subtitles
The first Soviet film to show sex on screen and realistically depict life in the modern working class, Little Vera, attracted worldwide media attention and catapulted actress Natalia Negoda to stardom. Vera is a teenager solely interested in frequenting dance halls with her friends, but when one of her flings turns serious, she finds herself with a live-in boyfriend and her life in shambles. Little Vera manages to
entertain while revealing the personal and bureaucratic problems of the last days of the U.S.S.R. Also starring Andrei Sokolov and Yuri Nazorov.
-
-
Man with a Movie Camera by Vertov, DzigaCall Number: Motion Picture 16034
Publication Date: 1929
OCLC#: 33348290
A film documenting Russian life in 1929. It is a complex, experimental film, which demonstrates Vertov’s "Kino Eye" theory in which the lens of the camera is identified with the human eye. The "hero" of the film is actually the camera which is shown throughout, including a trick sequence where the camera appears to be walking about without human assistance.
-
Meet Me in St. Louis by Minnelli, VincenteCall Number: Motion Picture
Publication Date: 1944
OCLC#: 18786229
Minnelli’s first color film is a captivating evocation of family life in St. Louis at the time of the 1903 World’s Fair. Wonderful music sets the mood for this charming tale.
-
Memorias del subdesarrollo (Memories of Underdevelopment) by Gutiérrez Alea, TomásCall Number: Motion Picture 16109
Publication Date: 1968
OCLC#: 823931159
Spanish/English subtitles
As the first film from post-revolutionary Cuba to be released in the U.S., Memories of Underdevelopment had a widespread impact unequaled in the history of the Third World Cinema. Set in the early 1960’s the film centers on a Europeanized Cuban intellectual, who is too idealistic to leave for Miami, but to decadent to fit into the new society. A critique of revolutionary society (the "underdevelopment" extends to many levels), a critique of that critique, and a remarkable demonstration that artistic subtlety, political commitment and entertainment are not incompatible. Based on a novel by Con Sergio Corrieri.
-
Menilmontant by Kirsanoff, DimitriCall Number: Motion Picture 16048
Publication Date: 1926
OCLC#: 71359997
This is a sensitive and exquisitely made silent film about two sisters whose lives are touched by almost unrelenting tragedy. One is seduced by a fickle youth and abandoned while pregnant; the other drifts into prostitution. Their ultimate reunion reaffirms their faith in life and restores their will to live. Wonderfully acted and directed, and evocatively shot on location in Paris, not so much as a melodrama as a precursor to neo-realism.
-
Meshes of the Afternoon by Deren, MayaCall Number: Motion Picture 16047
Publication Date: 1943
OCLC#: 823863591
The study of a split personality, and the first film directed by Maya Deren, who also plays the lead character. An immigrant from Russia, Deren was a pioneering American experimentalist, who became an expert on the “personal” film... “in which the artist crosses the threshold from that which already exists into the void where he/she creates....
-
Morning bathCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1896
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
-
Mother by Pudovkin, V.I.Call Number: Motion Picture 16017
Publication Date: 1926
OCLC#: 4610227
Mother is probably V.I. Pudovkins’s greatest work. It is the best illustration of his mastery of film technique, as well as a moving drama of revolution. Mother depicts an aspect of the abortive 1905 revolt. Concentrating on individual injustice during Tzarist rule, Pudovkin illustrates, not in abstract heroes, but specific human problems. The father is a drunk, a reactionary, and a strike-breaker; the mother is patient and long-suffering; and the son, Pavel, symbolizes the new Communist Youth.
-
Mothlight by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16096
Publication Date: 1963
OCLC#: 83828676
A film collage of moth wings and plant life, literally pasted upon the filmstrip, showing the fugue-like movements of a moth in flight. Most of this film really concerns the persistence of the essential form, image, and motion of being.
-
Narayama bushi-ko (Ballad of Narayama) by Imamura, ShoheiCall Number: Motion Picture 16084
Publication Date: 1983
OCLC#: 746161066
Deep in an isolated, impoverished village, the elderly are customarily abandoned on a mountaintop to
meet the Gods of Narayama upon reaching the age of seventy. Orin, a Matriarch whose time has come, must make plans to assure the survival of her family as stolen crops, and newborn additions threaten their very existence. Nayrayama has established Shohei Imamura among the greatest of Directors. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
-
Nashville by Altman, RobertCall Number: Motion Picture 16120
Publication Date: 1975
OCLC#: 746079895
Novelistic off beat drama, offers insightful panorama country music capital, and by extension America as a whole. This essential 1970 classic appeals to fans of social critic.
-
New York street scenesCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1897
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
-
Night Music by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16095
Publication Date: 1986
OCLC#: 842963613
This film (originally painted on IMAX film stock) attempts to capture the beauty of sadness, as the eyes have it when closed in mediation on sorrow.
-
Nihon no roru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan) by Oshima, NagisaCall Number: Motion Picture 16073
Publication Date: 1960
OCLC#: 222397196
Japanese/English subtitles
The wedding celebration of two young political activists becomes the catharsis for a series of political confrontations. Show with a dazzling style that combines flashbacks, off-screen scenarios, blackouts, and balletic tracking shots. This is one of Nagisa Oshima’s most ingenious and radical films. It was withdrawn in Japan as “Politically Inflammatory” three days after its initial release.
-
North by Northwest by Hitchcock, AlfredCall Number: Motion Picture 16083
Publication Date: 1959
OCLC#: 756517888
This suspense thriller uses the streets of New York and Chicago, the U.N. building, Grand Central Station, the Mt. Rushmore national monument, and a barren Indiana prairie as dazzling backgrounds for this bizarre and very delightful intrigue. When an unsuspecting Madison Avenue advertising man is mistaken for a Central Intelligence man, his life is in danger. Foreign agents try to kill him in ingenious ways and when he eludes them, a gorgeous, double-dealing blonde lures him into her train compartment. She “kills” him to impress James Mason, and art dealer who deals in stolen microfilm. In a superb
Hitchcockian finale, they escape together after an exciting chase over the Presidential stone faces of Mt. Rushmore.
-
-
On the Waterfront by Kazan, EliaCall Number: Motion Picture 16054
Publication Date: 1954
OCLC#: 7562824
Winner of eight Academy Awards, this hard-hitting film is about corruption in the Longshoreman’s Union. It tackles complex social, political and personal issues without losing any of its dramatic force. It has become a lasting influence on American culture.
-
Palm Beach Story by Sturges, PrestonCall Number: Motion Picture 16078
Publication Date: 1942
OCLC#: 756648126
This “screwball” comedy was directed by Preston Sturges. The story is centered around the debated marriage arrangement between Gerry and Tom Jeffers. Gerry leaves her husband in order to pursue a marriage between herself and a millionaire in order to further Tom’s career. The ensuing calamity has J.B. Hackensacker III, one of the richest men in the world, and his sister, amorously pursuing Gerry and Tom, who are posing as sister and brother.
-
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) by Dreyer, CarlCall Number: Motion Picture 16012
Publication Date: 1928
OCLC#: 37497601
This film depicts the events of the final five months in Joan’s life compressed into a drama apparently taking place in one day. Director Carl Dreyer portrays the interrogations as Joan’s trial, her imprisonment, execution at the stake, and the stake, and the massacre of the crowd by the English. Above all, Dreyer stresses the very human, emotional anguish which most often accompany spiritual faith in a world governed by hypocrites and compromises. It is this anguish which leads Joan to abjure; and it is faith which leads her to withdraw her abjuration, although it means her death.
-
Pencil Bookings by Rose, KathyCall Number: Motion picture 16082 reel 1
Publication Date: 1978
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 1.
-
Persona by Bergman, IngmarCall Number: Motion Picture 16045
Publication Date: 1967
OCLC#: 7645823
Persona expresses a sense of visual, moral, and spiritual ambiguity with an intensity and completeness previously unseen in Bergman’s work. The plot concerns Elizabeth, a renowned stage actress, who suffers a nervous breakdown and cannot speak. She is sent to an isolated seashore where she is cared for by a nurse-companion, Alma. An odd mechanism of mutual identification develops, and the actress comes to rely on Alma for moral sustenance, a need that is almost physical.
-
Pickpocket by Bresson, RobertCall Number: Motion Picture 16046
Publication Date: 1959
OCLC#: 823862339
The subject is the agitation and transformation of a soul. Like a Dostoyevsky novel, Pickpocket probes the conscience of a criminal and the question of criminal compulsions.
-
Playtime by Tati, JacquesCall Number: Motion Picture 16023
Publication Date: 1967
OCLC#: 43997160
French/English dialogue; no subtitles
Playtime reflects the confusion and mixed enjoyment of a group of international tourists who arrive by jet planes at Orly airport. They are dispatched to Paris, a city so ultra-modern that is hardly differs from other cities throughout the world. A science fair preempts the traditional visit to the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower; the quaint bistros have been supplanted by snack bars and nightclubs. Mr. Hulot the innocent-at-large in his native Paris, shares the tourists’ experience as he bumbles about with his unique brand of curiosity.
-
-
Rear Window by Hitchcock, AlfredCall Number: Motion Picture 16075
Publication Date: 1954
OCLC#: 756659082
Rear Window is a film about a news photographer with a broken leg who passes time by watching neighbors from his window. Equipped with a telescopic lens, he notices the strange behavior of one neighbor. Armed with a few facts and a great deal of ingenuity, he eventually concludes that his neighbor has killed his wife. His enforced immobility is transformed into a brilliant exercise in suspense.
-
Roma città aperta (Open City) by Rossellini, RobertoCall Number: Motion Picture 16031
Publication Date: 1946
OCLC#: 80345277
Italian/English subtitles
This film was planned in secret by Roberto Rossellini and his colleagues while the Nazis still occupied Rome, Italy. It revolves around a group of resistance fighters and a local priest. It contains strong melodramatic elements, such as broken marriages, prostitution, drug addiction, and Nazi occupation. Grand Prize Winner at Cannes and the Venice Film Festival, and starring Anna Magnani, Open City is one of the most important of all Italian Neo Realist films.
-
Rube and Mandy at Coney Island by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16111
Publication Date: 1903
OCLC#: 827791442
Located under title "Early Cinema Reel 1: Edwin S. Porter".
13min. This is a comedy in which two leading vaudeville performers play country bumpkins taking in the wonders of Coney Island in 1903. It is a series of comic episodes connected by a common motif rather than an integrated narrative. It demonstrates how early cinema employed close views as a code to the main structure of a film, with its final shot of Rube and Mandy enjoying hot dogs.
-
Sauve qui peut (Every Man for Himself) by Godard, Jean-LucCall Number: Motion Picture 16081
Publication Date: 1980
OCLC#: 173697884
French/English subtitles
Continuously and inherently experimental, Every Man For Himself is the intersecting story of a TV Director, his girlfriend, and a young prostitute. It is a mediation on modern life, infused with perverse wit, explicit eroticism, and startling beauty.
Starring Isabelle Huppert and Natalie Baye.
-
Scorpio Rising by Anger, KennethCall Number: Motion Picture 16050
Publication Date: 1963
OCLC#: 43997110
This movie is considered one of the best underground films. It is a study, lyrical in form and in the manner of its execution, of a group of black-leather-jacketed young men, whose chief object of worship is the motorcycle. These young men are the priests of a cult dedicated not to a shining, wheeled god, but to death---that sudden death which James Dean and other apostolic predecessors have already embraced.
-
She's Gotta Have It by Lee, SpikeCall Number: Motion Picture 16114
Publication Date: 1986
OCLC#: 71357570
Perhaps the most striking debut film of the last twenty years. Lee’s first feature is sexy, bawdy, freewheeling and electric; an exuberant collage of staccato of montages, still frames and confidential asides to the camera. At the center of the vortex is one of Lee’s most impressive creations. Nola Darling, a free-spirited woman who shares her bed with three men yet is too independent to fall for the vanities of masculine behavior.
-
Singin' in the Rain by Donen, Stanley and Kelly, GeneCall Number: Motion Picture 16063
Publication Date: 1952
OCLC#: 18845540.
This is undoubtedly one of the best musicals of the fifties, matching An American in Paris in its pace, rhythmic structure, and memorable songs , and On the Town in its smoothly constructed and witty script by Adolph Green and Betty Comden. Its background of the Roaring Twenties and satire on Hollywood during the introduction of sound add much to the film’s appeal. The imaginative choreography includes several tributes to Busby Berkeley and a striking semiabstract ballet by Kelly and Cyd Charisse.
-
Le souffle au cœur (Murmur of the Heart) by Malle, LouisCall Number: Motion Picture 16032
Publication Date: 1971
OCLC#: 823745946
Set in Dijon, France, 1954, the film tells the story of a boy passing through adolescence. This comedy-drama pierces the moral facade of an upper-class French family during a period of shifting values, when France was fighting a lost cause in Indo-China. Although the theme is essentially incest, it has been handled with delicacy, sophistication, and humor.
-
La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet) by Dulac, GermaineCall Number: Motion Picture 16102
Publication Date: 1922
OCLC#: 9233043
The Smiling Madame Beudet is the story of an intelligent woman trapped in a loveless marriage. Her husband is used to playing a stupid practical joke in which he puts an empty revolver to his head and threatens to shoot himself. One day, while the husband is away, she puts bullets in the revolver. However, she is stricken with remorse and tries to retrieve the bullets the next morning. Her husband gets to the revolver first only this time he points the revolver at her.
-
Stagecoach by Ford, JohnCall Number: Motion Picture 16020
Publication Date: 1939
OCLC#: 148118655
A classic among Westerns, this film relates the saga of a westbound stagecoach with eight passengers traveling through dangerous Indian territory. The interaction between the eight is delineated with great depth and compassion, aboard a stagecoach which serves as a metaphor for life’s journey. Stagecoach was the first Western to introduce moral dilemmas and character studies into an action-oriented plot. It reveals director John Ford’s unfailing sense of human conflict and dignity in one of his most compelling, memorable works.
-
Potomok Chingiskhana (Storm Over Asia) by Pudovkin, VsevolodCall Number: Motion Picture 16018
Publication Date: 1928
OCLC#: 78175036
The last silent film by Vsevolod I. Pudovkin, is one of his finest achievements. It tells of the Mongolian uprising against the British occupation forces during the Civil War period. Pudovkin focuses on Bair a young Mongolian hunter who brings a rare silver-fox skin to market. There, he is cheated out of it by an English fur trader protected by the British forces. They use Bair as one of the reasons for the intervention. Finally, Bair’s rage breaks out, and the film ends in a symbolic “storm” as the Mongolian army sweeps away the interventionists.
-
Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Roofs of Paris) by Clair, ReneCall Number: Motion Picture 16030
Publication Date: 1930
OCLC#: 317028718
A street singer, Albert, has a mistress, Pola, a pretty Romanian girl who also flirts with his best friend, Louis. While Albert is in jail for a theft he did not commit, Louis and Pola become lovers. When he is released, Albert and Louis quarrel over the girls, but when Albert sees that Pola really loves Louis, he abandons his claim and the three remain friends. The title song is passed from one to another like a musical toast and comforts Albert in the melancholy moments when he loses the girl. Under the Roofs of Paris is a film portrait of the ordinary Parisian, yet features amazingly ingenious shot construction and suggests that narration can cross the boundaries of both the directly visual and verbal narrative into a space-in-between the two which is deliberate and artistically articulated.
-
Strenuous life, or antirace suicide by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16111
Publication Date: 1906
OCLC#: 827791442
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel 1: Edwin S. Porter"
5min. The film is about a new father who is presented with more babies then he expected. It is a good mid-scene. The semi-close up of the baby being weighed is repetition of what is known in the long shot and is not integral to the narrative structure.
-
Suna no onna (The Woman of the Dunes) by Teshigahara, HiroshiCall Number: Motion Picture 16058
Publication Date: 1964
OCLC#: 756757474
Japanese/English subtitles
This is a strange poetic drama of a man and a woman trapped at the bottom of a sand dune. It is a disturbing allegory of the fate of man. It projects a strong expression of the enslavement of the spirit by all the demands of our environment.
-
Teddy bears by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1907
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
15min. The Familiar fairy tale of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” is given a topical twist by its references to Theodore Roosevelt’s much publicized passion for hunting that resulted in the contemporary craze for “Teddy” bears. The bears in the story are costumes actors, cruelly shot by a hunter representing Roosevelt, who, as he claimed to do in the public press, spares the baby bear. However, the real novelty of this film, and one that Porter is said to have particularly proud of, is a
sequence of puppet animation. The little girl pees through a knot-hoe and sees a scene (matted in) of toy bears moving about by stop-motion effects.
-
Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story) by Ozu, YasujiroCall Number: Motion Picture 16070
Publication Date: 1953
OCLC#: 756704746
Japanese/English subtitles
Yasujiro Ozu tells a deceptively simple tale of an elderly couple who journey to Tokyo, where they are received less than enthusiastically by their grown-up children. Parents and children play out their generational conflicts, suggesting the weakening of traditional Japanese social customs and values. Tokyo Story uses the nuclear family and the interactions between parents and children as a kind of microcosm of the world.
-
Train Wreckers by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16111
Publication Date: 1905
OCLC#: 827791442
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel 1: Edwin S. Porter".
12min. This popular thriller features a brave and resourceful heroine who foils the efforts of outlaws to wreck a train. It represents an intermediate stage between films such as the Great Train Robbery (1903) and Rescued By Rover (1905), and Griffith’s 1909 thriller, The Lonely Villa. By separating the actions of its characters into different scenes it contains the suggestion of parallel editing yet to come, although not in the work of Edwin S Porter. Filmed on real locations, the film is visually exciting, fast-moving, and full of action, with a care for screen direction as it moves from one shot to the next. It set an Edison company record for number of prints sold of any one title up to that time.
-
Two Space by Cuba, LarryCall Number: Motion Picture 16082 reel 1
Publication Date: 1979
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 1
-
T.Z.Call Number: Motion picture 16082 reel 1
Publication Date: 1978
OCLC#: 823931189
Located under title "Animated shorts, 1957-1981", reel 1.
-
Ugetsu by Mizoguchi, KenjiCall Number: Motion Picture 16057
Publication Date: 1954
OCLC#: 127108065
Ugetsu is one of the most moving and beautiful works of Japanese cinema. Directed with insight and sensitivity by Kenji Mizoguchi it is set in 16th century war-torn Japan. Two peasant families leave their homes in search of fortune. The husbands abandon their wives and children along the journey. Mizoguchi utilizes an exquisite sense of the past and the world of the supernatural. It enables him to successfully portray how war leads to restlessness and greed.
-
Ukigusa monogatari (Story of Floating Weeds) by Ozu, YasujiroCall Number: Motion Picture 16074
Publication Date: 1934
OCLC#: 756693977
Yasujiro Ozu is considered “the most Japanese of Japanese directors”. The film, which was produced in 1934, is the pinnacle of his silent period. It depicts a down-at-the heels acting troupe which reaches the end of the line in a remote mountain village.
-
Il Vangelo secondo Matteo (Gospel According to St. Matthew) by Paolini, Pier PaoloCall Number: Motion Picture 16003
Publication Date: 1964
OCLC#: 751465392
Italian/English subtitles
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy’s controversial writer-poet-director, has avoided the spectacular over-dramatization so characteristic of films on Jesus’ life. “I haven’t put the gospel together,” he has stated, “and written a scenario of the life of Christ; this is precisely the Gospel According to Saint Matthew.” Pasolini’s unconventional approach is reflected in his use of rugged southern Italian landscapes, hill town, costumes of coarse material, and faces without makeup. There are no “stars” all of the performances are non-actors whom Pasolini selected for their natural unglamorous quality. Pasolini’s Christ is a man who preaches with urgency; feels deeply for the afflicted people around him; experiences anguish, impatience, and anger. The film is basically a simple recreation of human drama, set against the everyday life of the times.
-
Viridiana by Buñuel, LuisCall Number: Motion Picture 16010
Publication Date: 1961
OCLC#: 321035077
After a 23 year exile, Luis Buñuel returned to Spain to direct Viridiana, which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes, and which many consider a masterpiece. A devastating, outrageous attack on religion and society, Viridiana is a further elaboration on the subject of Nazarin: the impossibility of living a pure Christian life. The film has a consistently disturbing atmosphere, created by some of Bunuel’s most unusual erotic and religious imagery. In the famous orgy scene, everything which society holds sacred is demolished--the beggars fight, dance, and make love while Handel’s “Messiah” plays in the background.
-
Vitagraph romance by Young, JamesCall Number: Motion Picture 16112
Publication Date: 1912
OCLC#: 827797005
Located under title "Early Cinema Reel II"
8min. The special delight of this drama is that it shows the Vitagraph lot in Brooklyn and the making of movies there. The plot revolves around a senator’s daughter who is disowned when she marries a penniless writer and reconciled with her father after becoming a famous motion picture actress.
-
Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live) by Godard, Jean-LucCall Number: Motion Picture 16025
Publication Date: 1962
OCLC#: 20783616
In twelve segments, Nana goes from wife and mother into casual promiscuity and then to the harder world of prostitution. However, this is not a film about prostitutes, or women who desert their husbands. Director Jean-Luc Goddard makes films about ideas. “My three films all have, at the bottom, the same subject. I take an individual who has an idea, and who tries to go to the end of his ides.” Godard said in an interview in 1961 in “L’Express”. This film is about idea of freedom--it’s a minute exploration of the conditions, the qualities, and the problems of freedom.
-
-
Waiting at the church by Porter, Edwin S.Call Number: Motion Picture 16111
Publication Date: 1906
OCLC#: 827791442
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel 1: Edwin S. Porter"
7min. The film, showing what happens when a miscreant married man is tempted to propose to a young lady, is a typical chase comedy. It contains a “daydream” inserted in the same shot with the woman who imagines it, the kind of trick effect that was a Porter specialty. The film was probably suggested by the newly introduced popular song of the same title.
-
Wavelength by Snow, MichaelCall Number: Motion Picture 16051
Publication Date: 1967
OCLC#: 842929930
This film is a non-continuous zoom which takes 45 minutes to go from its widest field to its smallest and final
field. As an underground film, it is a straightforward document of a room in which a dozen businesses have come and gone. For all of its sophistication, (and it is overpowering for its time-space-sound inventions) it is a singular uncomplicated, and realistic way to view three walls, a ceiling, and a floor.
-
Weekend by Godard, Jean-LucCall Number: Motion Picture 16021
Publication Date: 1968
OCLC#: 43995021
French/English subtitles
Cinematically revolutionary, Weekend is full of rage, violence, and cruelty. It is also full of tender poetry, metaphors, and exciting imagery. The film has many Godardian themes, including the consumer society and the horror of the bourgeoisie. Godard has every sequence serve to destroy the illusory reality of the previous experience, so that we are constantly reminded we are watching a film. The result is brilliant, extraordinary cinema.
-
Window Water Baby Moving by Brakhage, StanCall Number: Motion Picture 16098
Publication Date: 1959
OCLC#: 52469579
Brakhage’s treatment of the birth of his first daughter is a picture so forthright, so full of primitive wonder and love, so far beyond civilization in its acceptance that it becomes an experience like few in cinema.
-
Wringing good jokeCall Number: Motion Picture 16113
Publication Date: 1899
OCLC#: 864630888
Listed under title "Early Cinema Reel III".
-
Xala by Sembene, OusmaneCall Number: Motion Picture 16087
Publication Date: 1974
OCLC#: 156934357
Wolof and French/English subtitles
Zeroing in on the myth of African independence and the black-facing of white colonial policies by African leaders, this savage and funny satire deals with a self-satisfied, half-westernized black businessman who is suddenly struck down by the Xala (pronounced “ha-la”): a curse rendering its victim impotent. While he desperately chases after witch doctors and soothsayers in search of a cure, his impotence becomes a mirror of the impotence of young African nations that are over-dependent on white technology and bureaucratic structures.
-
Young Mr. Lincoln by Ford, JohnCall Number: Motion Picture 16068
Publication Date: 1939
OCLC#: 756765369
Director John Ford utilized a young, charming and gangly Henry Fonda in this fictionalized portrait of Abraham Lincoln, a man with a gift for using simple language to reveal elusive truths. The result is a legendary masterpiece that has grown in stature over the years.
-
Zerkalo (Mirror) by Tarkovsky, AndreiCall Number: Motion Picture 16071
Publication Date: 1976
OCLC#: 317360525
Russian/English subtitles
It depicts cracked, jagged, and jumbled images of Andrei Tarkovsky’s childhood, mixed with fragments of his adult life----a child’s wartime exile, a mother’s experience with political terror, the breakup of a marriage, life in a country home---all intermingled with slow-motion dream sequences and segments of stark newsreels.
-
Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct) by Vigo, JeanCall Number: Motion Picture 16007
Publication Date: 1933
OCLC#: 823641344
French /English subtitles
Jean Vigo who died in 1934 at the age of 29, was one of film’s most original and remarkable talents. His masterpiece, tells of the oppressive life in a French boarding school and the eventual revolt of the boys. The entire film is filled with stylized sequences, climaxing in a lyrically photographed dormitory riot and procession. Because of its attack on French educational methods, the film was banned in France for 16 years.
-
Zorns Lemma by Frampton, HollisCall Number: Motion Picture 16091
Publication Date: 1970
OCLC#: 317400943
It began as a series of 2,000 black and white still photographs of the urban environment, later re-shot in color with a motion picture camera. It has three parts: First is image-less as a woman’s voice reads couplets about each of the letters of the Bay State Primer, used to teach the alphabet to children. The second part is forty five minutes long, totally silent, and consists of over 2,500 images, each one second long. The longest metrical editing exercises in film history, each presents a record of a different word appearing on a store sign, a wall mural, etc. Part three is a long take of a snowstorm in a white field, which is gradually traversed by a couple and a dog until they disappear into the distant woods. Five separate rolls of film were spliced end to end to present a continuous field of action. This movement is now accompanied by a soundtrack-the talkie has now emerged-which is taken from Robert Grosseteste’s eleventh century essay, “On the Light or the Ingression of Form” childhood emerging from conceptual darkness through literacy, and then toward an apprehension of the world through photography and then through cinema.
-
Zvezdy I soldaty (Red and the White) by Jansco, MikiosCall Number: Motion Picture 16107
Publication Date: 1968
OCLC#: 823931993
Russian/English subtitles
In Central Russia during the Civil War of 1918, an abandoned monastery and a field hospital are silent witnesses to the endless conflicts between opposing armies. This is a moving visual feast where every inch of the cinemascope frame is used to magnificent effect.