Alco-Beat (1965)

The film is officially untitled, but is referred to by the dedication that appears in place of a title card. It is dedicated to Marilyn Brakhage, the filmmaker's wife. Out of all the 350+ films that Stan Brakhage made, this was his personal favorite.

Dr. Benchley is addressing the Ladies Club on the subject of the reproductive habits of the polyp, a small aquatic organism. Although he is not able to display his live specimens, he has prepared a series of pictures of his subjects. He explains that the subject is made more complicated by the fact that polyps are able to change their sex from time to time. Then he presents some of the pictures of his specimens and the experiments that he has done with them. (IMDb)

The Jenkins Orphanage Band - comprised of young African-Americans in Charleston, South Carolin performs for the newsreel.

I saw people flee in fright before the force of Chromaticité I, during which I remained fastened to my seat, in the clutches of fear. The last image, the screen turns white: I glance at my neighbour, immobilised just as myself. (Bernard Weidmann, Rhizome Hérétique, 1980)

A frantic child reports to the tribal chief that her father killed her mother. The tribe chases and captures the man, dragging him back for tribal justice.

The plight of children in South Vietnam studied by an American child psychologist, whose interest is in evacuating some of them to the United States.

A woman dressed elegantly walks purposely through the water gardens at the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, as the music of Vivaldi's Winter movement of The Four Seasons plays. Heavy red filters give a blue cast to the light; water plays across stone, and fountains send it into the air. No words are spoken. Baroque statuary and the sensuous flow of water are back lit. Anger calls it water games.

In an Indian tribe, a girl escapes from her father and suitor to be with the man she loves.

Frank Sinatra teaches a group of young boys a lesson in religious tolerance.

Three best friends attending a heavy-metal show cross paths with sadistic killers after they travel to a secluded country home for an after party.

A rapturous audio-visual mix that “deliberately seeks a hidden order in randomness.” The film combines the face of a woman in ecstatic, contemplative prayer with shots of an animal rights activist, and a scantily clad model advertising Russian cars at the International Auto Show, New York. - Harvard Film Archive

The photographs of a member of the Gestapo, with narration from the captions he left in his album. Film released in 1964.

The lives and interactions of four neighbours in an apartment building are seen simultaneously in four different rooms. Flatlife is an animated film created by Jonas Geirnaert in 2004 was chosen for the competition of short films at Cannes in 2004.

Four young men and a young woman sit in boredom. She smokes while one strums a lute, one looks at a magazine, and two fiddle with string. The door opens and in comes a young man, cigarette between his lips, a swagger on his face. The young woman laughs. As the four young men continue disconnected activities, the other two become a couple. When the four realize something has changed, first they stare at the couple who have kissed and now are dancing slowly. The four run from the house in a kind of frenzy and return to stare. The power of sex has unnerved them.

With the screen split asymmetrically, one part in positive, the other negative, the film documents the evolution of simple celled organic forms into chains of cells then more complex images from tribal cultures and contemporary modernist concepts. The images react, interpenetrate, perhaps attack, absorb and separate, until a final symbiosis (or redemption?) is achieved.

"I have not changed the editing structure. I have made the films printable. They are the first known fully collaged films, i.e., films made from found footage, and were done sometime in the ‘40s. Cornell combines Vaudeville jugglers, animal acts, circus performers, children eating and dancing, science demonstrations, mythical excerpts, and crucial freeze-frames of faces into a timeless structure, totally unconcerned with our usual expectations of “montage” or cinematic progression. He collects images and preserves them in some kind of cinematic suspension that is hard – impossible – to describe. But it’s a delight to anyone whose soul has not been squashed by the heavy dictates of Art." —Larry Jordan

A cellist attempts to rescue a woman swept out to sea, only to find he must battle a series of overly possesive sea creatures.

". ..As though you were approaching earth as a god, from cosmic consciousness. You see the same things but with completely different meaning."

The dangers of drinking and driving are illustrated to a teenager returning from a beach party, where after having "one too many beach beers" he runs over a young mother and her child. This black and white short is not to be confused with the later color film, with same title, from 1968 (some sources indicate 1965).