The smallpox virus has created its own unique atmosphere in Terayama’s film where the skin of a bandaged adolescent and the surface of the filmic image are subjected to a bizarre ‘disturbance’ as snails cross the screen and nails are hammered into the skull of the ailing patient. Illness in this film is as much a psychic entity as a physical one and manifests itself in an array of theatrical tableaux from grotesque women rigorously brushing their teeth to a snooker game where the players in white face makeup behave like automata. A Tale of Smallpox uses a medical theme to chart the traumatic dream life of Terayama’s times, evincing deep-rooted concerns in the Japanese national psyche that hark back to the upheaval of Meiji modernisation and the devastation of World War Two.
In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity.
The main protagonist is a young fellow who tries to live his life within 30 frames. He's a person suitable for any atmosphere, which makes him different from the rest.
Part of a collection of restored early works by Nam June Paik, the haunting Beatles Electronique reveals Paik's engagement with manipulation of pop icons and electronic images.
A short film recounting the travels of a lonely astronaut confronted by the unknown. Unfolding as a mystery, it becomes a carefully subtle, autobiographical examination of the feeling of loneliness and the existential issue of not understanding life on earth and ones place among it.
For us, a thought always presupposes a society, a culture and above all the consciousness of time. We are haunted by immortality, human notion par excellence.
Exploring the duality between friendship and loneliness, this intimate narrative short tells the story of David, a bright young boy struggling with a broken home life, as he tries to reconnect with his childhood best friends as they search for something to do in their small suburban town.
This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought.
A short, wordless horror film about the terrors lurking just beyond the veil of reality. Shot almost entirely on Super 8 and taking an experimental narrative approach to cosmic horror, Sungazer is an ultra-grainy, high contrast nightmare beamed from another dimension.
Popular movie trailers from 1976
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1976:
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
Footage of a yacht race and a (Highland?) Show in Kirkwall, as filmed by Margaret Tait. [this is possibly incomplete footage from her 'Aspects of Kirkwall' series?] See also Additional Information file at 11/1/455.
Rocky Balboa is a Philadelphia club fighter who seems to be going nowhere. But when a stroke of fate puts him in the ring with a world heavyweight champion, Rocky knows that it's his one shot at the big time — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go the distance and come out a winner!
Cornélio, an aged man and famous baritone, marries the young Angelica, who plans with her ex-boyfriend Bruno, to kill the husband with contaminated oysters, but she ends up the one who gets sick.
Comments
Have you watched Smallpox Tale yet? What did you think about it?
