Backyard Winter

Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at work.

Mudos testigos is a cinematographic collage made from all the surviving material of Colombian silent films, re-editing the images in such a way as to create a single imaginary film: the impossible love story of Efraín and Alicia that traces the convulsive first half of the twentieth century in Colombia. Compiled by the late Luis Ospina and finished posthumously by Jeronimo Atehortúa.

Abstract short.

A covered bridge and the nature surrounding it.

USPS workers go bowling.

Elam turns in place while filming nature.

An outdoor gathering.

Two women gardening on a sunny day.

Contrasting environments, in and outside.

Elam records several men moving boxes and furniture as they track across her backyard.

“Tai Chi II,” similarly to Elam’s “Tai Chi Bowling” and “Tai Chi,” focuses on movement. Through a sequence of close-ups, Elam coyly records portions of several individuals practicing tai chi, primarily focusing on the practitioners’ extremities as they float about. Distinct from its affiliates, “Tai Chi II” finds the action taking place outside.

Filmed during the 52nd National Convention of the American National Association of Letter Carriers in August 1980.

Documentary that details the daily habits of beavers and their interaction with the ecosystem at large. Filmed mostly in Digby County, Nova Scotia.

Shows masked mental patients enacting various schizophrenic symptoms as they were understood at the time. A disturbing film that raises questions about the condition and treatment of its subjects. (archive.org) “Abstract: This film describes and demonstrates four types of schizophrenia. Filmed at various New York institutions, it shows patients singly and grouped in large, outside recreational areas. Some patients are blindfolded. Symptoms shown include: social apathy, delusions, hallucinations, hebephrenic reactions, cerea flexibilitas, rigidity, motor stereotypes, posturing, and echopraxia.” (Guide to Mental Health Motion Pictures)

Events that took place in the capital of the Tajik SSR, the city of Dushanbe in 1929.

On September 11, 1929, the first Termez-Dushanbe train arrived at the newly built station in the Tajik capital. However, not only the train was the first that day - the shots of the arrival of the locomotive, as well as people waiting for it with excitement, became the basis of the first Tajik film.

Sprocket holes moving across the screen.

Elam's husband prepares vegetables at the sink.

Farm work and nature.

Peter Hutton's New York trilogy. An act of urban archaeology, a chronicle of indelible impressions of the city.