Finding Vision, Finding Voice

Carlos Gardel and guitars performing "Añoranzas", vals written and composed by José María Aguilar.

Puppet animation of Bert Ambrose and His Orchestra performing. A Puppetoon animated short film.

A short film created for Spanish TV touching on the subject of Catalonia's struggle for independence, interspersed with symbolic images.

Short film based upon a ballet by Yves Bonnat & Françoise Adret

Short film by Mary Ellen Bute

In this short film, a boy holds a talent show in his backyard by and for his adolescent friends.

Behind the scenes taken from the original Absolution Special Edition CD + DVD.

Hansjürgen Pohland's short documentary is an audiovisual study that captures events and people on the streets on film. The special feature of the work is that the people and objects are portrayed exclusively through their shadows.

DO

Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

An engine moves from the roundhouse to a track where it couples with several passenger cars. At 2:10 in the afternoon, it starts a trip out of the station through the countryside to its destination. The film consists of a montage of shots, some close up, of the engine and its gears and wheels. With the accompanying ambient sounds and an orchestral score, the emphasis is on the engine's power and speed. Parallel lines of multiple tracks, telephone wires, and trees confirm a careful composition.

At the zoo, the animals have all gone to play baseball. Animals fill the stands as they watch the antics that can only come about from exotic animals who play baseball.

The first of a series of six two-reel "Musical Parade" shorts produced in Technicolor for the Paramount 1943-44 production season. The series would continue into 1948, and then were reissued in the early 50's. Songs included "All the Way" and "At the Mardi Gras."

Crescendo

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.

‘La course à l’abîme’ is a depiction of the final ride into hell from ‘La Damnation de Faust’ (1846) by Hector Berlioz.

A simple filmed performance featuring Cantor, done up in his stage minstrel makeup, allegedly at the Ziegfeld Theatre Roof Garden, but actually filmed on a soundstage at the Paramount Astoria studio.

"Nothing Escapes My Eyes" is about a silent transformation of a place and a human being. Inspired by the texts of Edward W. Said, the poems of Mahmoud Darwish and Verdi’s opera Aida, the film depicts in a metaphoric form current issues of cultural identity, loss and the pressures to conform. With no dialogue, the film is backed by a musical excerpt from Aida whose lyrics express the difficulties of being loyal to one’s country and cultural identity. The personal and urban transformation tackles on issues of identity, loss and disorientation as a result of historical colonialism and contemporary globalization.

The film is a series of comical musical numbers and skits following Phil Harris around, starting with him performing at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which is listened to by Dorothy on the radio whose home-brewing husband Walter hates Harris. The action then moves to the country club where Walter unknowingly encounters Harris while being aggravated by his music. Walter then pretends to be Phil to meet a woman while Harris "entertains" her friend, Dorothy. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, in 2012.