• Jump Rope

  • Baby Rabbit

  • Zane Forbidden

  • Sour Death Balls



Play is the work of life



In Conversation

  • Adrianne Finelli

    Adrianne Finelli is an artist and curator and the media technology specialist in the Department of Film and Media at UC Berkeley.

  • Jon Shibata

    Jon Shibata is BAMPFA’s film archivist.

  • Pamela Vadakan

    Pamela Vadakan is the director of California Revealed, a California State Library initiative that helps cultural heritage organizations digitize, preserve, and provide online access to materials documenting the state’s history, art, and cultures. 

  • Antonella Bonfanti

    Antonella Bonfanti is the Film Archives Manager at Lucasfilm, and the former BAMPFA Film Collection supervisor.

Play is a primal instinct often forgotten in a culture obsessed with business. This program is an attempt to attune, to reconnect to that essential call to play within us all. A boy creates driftwood sculptures on junkopian mudflats. Synths swirl as girls jump rope in slow motion. Dorothy Wiley immortalizes her son’s freewheeling glee and spilt-milk meltdown in Zane Forbidden. Is Pamela Wong old enough to navigate the city streets alone, Grandma’s birthday cake in hand? Paul Fillinger’s Trees, a kinetic dance set to Elinor Armer’s tender score performed by the San Francisco Conservatory Children’s Chorus, jubilantly explores the natural world.

— Jon Shibata

Films in this Screening

Home movie: Ocean Beach, San Francisco

Richard Gaikowski , United States, 1964

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 6 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

A Boy Creates

Bert Van Bork, United States, 1971

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 9 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

Jump Rope

Robert Primes, United States, 1971

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 7 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

Zane Forbidden

Dorothy Wiley, United States, 1972

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 9 mins
source
  • BAMPFA
permission
  • Canyon Cinema
Additional Info
  • BAMPFA preservation print, Preservation funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation

Sour Death Balls

Jessica Yu, United States, 1993

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 4 mins
source
  • BAMPFA
permission
  • Jessica Yu

Pamela Wong’s Birthday for Grandma

Jackie Rivet-River, United States, 1977

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 7 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

Computer image fragment

,

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 2 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

Baby Rabbit

Larry Klingman, United States, 1971

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 7 mins
source
  • BAMPFA

Celebration of Life: Trees

Paul Fillinger, United States, 1973

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 16mm
  • 11 mins
source
  • BAMPFA
permission
  • Paul Fillinger

Home movie: Girl with Flower

,

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 16mm
  • 2 mins
source
  • BAMPFA