All Films

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1989 • 40 min • Sweden

In In Letters from silence, the reconstructed home of German writer Kurt Tucholsky is portrayed. Tucholsky was a left-wing democrat of Jewish heritage, a pacifist and antimilitarist who lived in exile in Sweden between 1932 and 1935. In letters written to his friends Hedvig Muller and Walter Hasenclever, he warns of anti-democratic tendencies in politics, the military and the judicial system in Sweden as well as in Germany and the rest of Europe, but also of the current threat of Nazism. With unconventional austerity, slow travelling shots of details and empty rooms, (a form recognized from Landscape), along with the bitter tone of the letters, Söderquist conveys the existential emptiness and exclusion that exile from Germany meant for the writer.

Jembe

1989 • 3 min

In Jembe, Jones transposes African visual motifs and image construction to the electronic medium. Vibrant images, rendered as abstracted electronic color and form, are fused with the dynamic music of Coulibaly Aboubacar. This vivid, impressionistic piece explores the development of codes based on what Jones terms "emotional progressions and an African sensorium," without dependence on specific language comprehension.

Lambs Are Born in the Snow

1989 • 27 min • Iran

Shot in winter in a difficult-to-reach mountainous region in north-western Iran, the film depicts the lives of nomadic shepherds who are believed to be descendants of the ancient Kadusian people. Mehranfar focuses a family’s daily life, determined by the care of the animals.

The Schoolboys Who Cracked the Soviet Secret

1989 • 60 min

The Schoolboys Who Cracked the Soviet Secret recreates the story of a British schoolteacher and his students who discovered secrets of the Soviet space program. In the 1960s, Geoffrey Perry at the Kettering Grammar School gave his students used short wave radios for a science project, but the school project had international reach when the group connected with Soviet transmissions.

Echoes of War

1989 • 56 min

Echoes of War is a 1989 episode from the PBS science series NOVA. World War II may have ended with the atomic bomb, but it was the radar which provided the key to winning the battles leading to Hiroshima. The NOVA team recounts the importance and history of the radar in modern warfare.

The Condor and the Bull

1989 • 56 min

Villagers from remote hamlets high in the Andes join together with people from the roadside village of Ocongate for the Peruvian Independence Day celebration. Festivities require that a wild condor be captured and pitted against a bull during a bullfight in the town plaza. Through this event power relations are revealed between the villagers of Ocongate and the highlanders, and of both of them to the Peruvian state.

The World's Greatest Tattoo Fan

1989 • 41 min

A documentary about Elizabeth Weinzirl who got her first tattoo in 1947.

The Waxing Book

1989 • 3 min • United Kingdom

"Material that has collected me throughout my life, embedded into the pages of a book, using film as a transferring, alchemical tool. The birds fly, the candle is lit, the eyes open and the powers of pixilation brings active the dead." – P. R.

Face

1989 • 16 min • Soviet Union

Life in the Tajik city, everything a neighbor of everything else: a Muslim burial rite, a Soviet May 1st demonstration, women sweeping the floor, a quarrel in a theater about a contemporary set, old men queuing for groceries, young men leaving home for the army, an elderly women coming up to the camera and asking “And why are you filming?” The film, capturing the time, faces, songs, thoughts and hopes of the people, ends with a panorama of peaceful Dushanbe and a song in the background by Boris Grebenshikova.

Four Wives and a Marabout

1989 • 53 min • Norway

The film is about Al Hajji Malam Schaaway – Quran teacher and court member at the Sultanate of Adamaoua – and his four wives. The camera follows everyday life inside a polygamous household and, also, Al Hajji in his daily work as a religious teacher.

My Room

1989 • 14 min

An intimate portrait of the film maker's family home located in an apartment above his parent's Chinese restaurant in Saint Catherines, Ontario.

Metalhead Teens in a Record Store

1989 • 17 min

Larry & Darrell go to Sunburst Records in Huntsville Alabama, and make a few stops along the way.

On the Way Home

1989 • 12 min • Taiwan

On the Way Home follows a man on his way home on a rainy night, while cross-cutting the happenings after he returns home: doing laundry in a flooded bathroom, drinking tea, reading, and repeatedly opening and closing the door.

The Sword

1989 • 17 min • Soviet Union

On the motives of the same name story of Tomazo Landolfi.

Media Message

1989 • 4 min

Short film by Jill Scott.

Passe Pas Seul

1989 • 4 min

Short film.

Vision

1989 • 2 min

A short film by Abdullah Habib, shot in New York City.

Poet

1989 • 4 min

A short film by Abdullah Habib, shot in New York City.

This is not a Pipe

1989 • 10 min

A short film by Abdullah Habib, shot in New York City.

Panoramicon

1989 • 25 min

Travelogue of journey around Europe

Into the Great Solitude

1989 • 56 min

This now classic outdoor adventure film tells the story of Robert Perkins’ seventy-two day solo canoe journey in the Canadian Arctic. Perkins not only takes on arduous physical challenges, but he lyrically describes in film and language how the journey helps him make peace with a difficult father.

The Animators: Playing God

1989 • 30 min • United Kingdom

BBC documentary about West Country animators. The first half covers CMBT, the studio behind The Trap Door and Stoppit and Tidyup (along with an unmade feature, tantalising concept art for which is shown). The second half covers Maya Brandt, an independent animator who had recently begun her career with a couple of shorts made for Channel 4; again, concept art for an apparently unfinished film is showcased in the documentary.

Target City Hall

1989 • 28 min

About a 28 March 1989 ACT UP demonstration against New York City Mayor Ed Koch's inadequate response to the AIDS crisis.

Gaël lit Pessoa

1989 • 3 min

Experimental short by Teo Hernández.