One Minute Movies is a short film written by and starring The Residents. The Residents are an avant-garde music group (one of my all-time favorites) and an art collective.
I've always loved the multimedia aspect of The Residents' work, and the way that their prolific body of work feels like an entirely different dimension within itself. The Residents always appear in costume in order to conceal their identity, and are known for their iconic look of wearing giant eyeballs over their heads and top hats.)
One Minute Movies was released in 1980 and directed by Graeme Whifler. The film features the songs "Moisture", "The Act of Being Polite", "Perfect Love" and "The Simple Song" from the album Commercial Album.
The film contains people in psychedelic eye-ball-headed costumes, a strange man holding a framed photograph and floating up the side bedroom wall, spooky ritual-like scenes, and other happy mutant scenarios. I love the experimentation and other-worldliness of these clips. Despite the avant-garde nature of these videos, MTV played these clips often because music videos were still a newer medium and there was little else available to play at the time.
One Minute Movies was one of the first films that demonstrated how through the marriage of song and video, music videos could be an art form on their own. The Museum of Modern Art currently holds One Minute Movies as well as the rest of the resident's films and discography.