All Films

The Last Navigator

1989 • 53 min • United Kingdom, United States of America

This is the story of two cultures and two technologies. An American navigator is taught the skills of navigation by a traditional Micronesian navigator on Satawal island. The American tries to navigate a boat through dangerous waters, without Western technology, while the traditional navigator watches him. The making of the film brought out interesting conflicts within the Micronesian community and in the interactions with the American navigator.

Jean Reverzy, tentative de lecture

1989 • 29 min

The camera scans the typography of a book while the voice launches into a first attempt at reading: "Chapter one... The Passage..."; The camera freezes on the word Polynesia. In an abandoned waiting room, an ageless man keeps coughing. He is waiting. The voice resumes its attempt to read, but is interrupted by that of the witness (the writer Charles Juliet), who recounts his meetings with Jean Reverzy. The coughing man ventures into the apartment; Polynesia emerges from a television. At the origin of this series of essays, there is the desire to invite European writers of the 20th century to be read today. What they have in common is having lived and written in a Europe shaken by crises, wars and revolutions. Their works and their lives bear witness to this. Each film has the character of a very personal preface and expresses the pleasure of discovering a work.

Our Darren

1989 • 40 min

Darren Lillywhite was 17, mischievous and high-spirited. He and his mates were a lively lot, always getting into scrapes around the village of Cranleigh, where they grew up. Darren had owned his prized Vauxhall Astra for just a few weeks. One August evening in 1987 he drove it into a roundabout and was thrown from the car. Now he is paralysed from the neck down and can do nothing for himself. Darren has been at Stoke Mandeville Hospital for ten months, but his family is determined to get him back home. Terry and Marilyn Lillywhite have built a special extension to their house. If Darren makes it, his family, neighbours and friends will all be joining in the celebration. No one can help liking Darren. 'I don't feel bitter about it at all,' he says. 'It's like being born again, really....'

Breast of Britain 6

1989 • 51 min

Volume No 6

Shadow

1989 • 9 min • Soviet Union

An experimental film with philosophical undertones, in which a boy paints cotton paper black, smudges his hands and draws black circles around his eyes. After a while, the boy disappears and only a black paper silhouette of a man remains on the easel.

Calm Me Down

1989 • 10 min • Soviet Union

A chronicle of the beginning of the century, images and people, are shown while B. Grebenshchikov performs Vertinsky's romances.

Francuella the Foundling

1989 • 40 min • Soviet Union

Based on French fairytales.

Soldier and Judge

1989 • 32 min • Soviet Union

Soldier Ivan Varezhkin will tell his story when he helped poor Janym get rid of the slavery of the local rich judge Baytemir and his son, and rescue his beloved camel Gulchatai with her baby camel.

Diamonds and Dragons

1989 • 30 min • Canada

What treasures will Charlotte find in the old trunk in her Granny's attic? ... her favourite Hug Bug, a pair of worn-out running shoes, a sash from her French-Canadian Uncle Emile, a delicate crystal Unicorn, and a Dinosaur, called Dicky! Every discovery leads to the magical world of memories and imagination. With her friends, Jackson Davies (as Slimy the Slug) and the Hug Bug Band, Charlotte takes us on a musical adventure, filmed around beautiful Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

The Dispute About Grapes

1989 • 9 min • Soviet Union

One day, a fight broke out between an Arab, a Turk and a Greek because one wanted aynab, the second wanted uzum, and the third wanted stafil. The poor guys didn't know that all three of them wanted the same thing.

Animated Alphabet

1989 • 43 min • United Kingdom

A specially created tape devised to make learning the alphabet fun and entertaining. Contains over 400 words to help children develop their early vocabulary.

Murder in Ostankino Precinct

1989 • 60 min

Documentary which follows a murder investigation in Moscow from the discovery of the body to the arrest and interrogation of the final suspect.

Réminiscences carnivores

1989 • 19 min • Canada

Created during a workshop focussing on the representation of the human body at the 2nd Video Biennial in Medellin, Colombia, Réminiscences carnivores engages the imagination and all of the senses. Memories of an incestuous relationship come to the surface as the apprehensive narrator waits for a reunion with his brother. With readings from Augustin Gomez-Arcos, Gide and Verlaine, the work has the rich texture of a cameo.

Elevation

1989 • 11 min • Australia

Two men are on an elevator when fantasy intervenes. Going up? Going down?

A Metamorphosis in Logic

1989 • 7 min

Combining animation with live action, this is an absurd, dark, slightly comic portrayal of a man who feels stuck and wonders how he got there. While it borrows images from Kafka's Metamorphosis and from Jack Arnold's Incredible Shrinking Man, it is not an interpretation of either. This is a film about logic that feeds on itself. In developing its own peculiar logic, the film plays with narrative form. A METAMORPHOSIS IN LOGIC is the meditation of a man who can't decide whether he has gone too far or not far enough.

A Disregarded Galaxy

1989 • 5 min • Soviet Union

An extraterrestrial tries in vain to establish contact with scientists on Earth. Unfortunately the first human he meets is Akimych the forester who doesn't believe in miracles.

The Married Woman of Nam Xuong

1989 • 23 min • France

The cinematic tale recounts the story of a woman whose husband has left for war. When night comes, she pretends to her child that the shadow projected on a sheet is his father. When the father returns, two years later, the child rejects him, telling him that his father only returns at night.

Chili Line Stops Here

1989 • 21 min • United States of America

A journey that begins in a Kansas City hotel and ends up in New Mexico. The bumpy ride is fuelled with libidinous juices as it lurches through college dormitories and sun-baked ghost towns. Rocks are lifted and things crawl out for all to see.

The Time Slit

1989 • 5 min • Japan

This film was very delicate to process because of the static electricity that sucks up dust. The filmmaker wanted to keep on the screen a kind of dust protection that would be the equivalent of human eyelashes. This is why eyelashes appear continuously throughout the film. The image of the comb, which gradually becomes a musical instrument, was also indispensable. The dust gradually covers the image. The sound is also dusty. Suddenly, the image splits in two and the time of the cinema begins to double.

THEORY OF ANGEL – Chapter 4 –

1989 • 10 min • Japan

"This film was originally intended to set up the projector scratching the film and destroying the image. But, I don't know why the work stored in VHS format." [Jun Kurosawa]

Labyrinth

1989 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Matī Kütt’s experimental short animation plunges into the subconscious of a sick society. Through abstract, painted-on-film imagery—twisted pyramids, reverse tunnels, caged woodpeckers—a lone bureaucrat’s inner turmoil unfolds. Birds, oil, and surreal figures evoke existential entrapment, as the bureaucrat’s psyche becomes a labyrinth of alienation and absurdity.

Uruguay, the Unrendered Accounts

1989 • 30 min • Uruguay

The Uruguay of restored democracy alter years of military dictatorship remains divided about what to do with de military accused of violations of human rights during their government. This documentary records that division and the opinion of different people previous to the referendum on April 16, wich finally granted amnesty for the military.

Julie Andrews – Live In Concert

1989 • 60 min • United States of America

Live concert recorded at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

Bakwet: Refugees in Their Own Land

1989 • 33 min • Canada

Examines the plight of Filipino peasants who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the Aquino government's military offensive against rebels of the New People's Army, with the evacuees facing an uncertain future in crowded, makeshift camps.