Beckman began making films in the mid-1970s using Super-8 sound film. Neither documentaries nor narratives, these works, as Jim Hoberman puts it, are "like primitive cartoons ... enigmatic allegories filled with nervous activity and comic violence, sexual imagery ... perceptual game­ playing and ingenious optical effects."

This first anthology brings together three pieces from 1978-1980: We Imitate; We Break Up (1978); The Broken Rule (1979); and Out of Hand (1980), made after her CalArts studies and featuring many other artists as actors.