All Films

Max Miller: I Like The Girls Who Do

1989 • 40 min

A celebration of Max Miller , comedian and star. Presented by Gerald Scarfe with Max Bygraves Charlie Chester , Doris Hare Jean Kent , Alec McCowen, Tommy Trinder , Max Wall, Bernie Winters and Max Miller 'I'm ready for bed - anybody?' Max Miller , dazzling in chintz and gaudy plus-fours, one foot on the footlights, leering and howling with delight, confronted his audience. Sexual innuendo was his game. He trod a dangerous line, just this side of respectability, across the Music Halls of the 30s and 40s. On the stage of the Hackney Empire, with chorus girls and full supporting acts, Gerald Scarfe re-creates Max Miller 's rise from the back streets of Brighton to the top of the bill. The most outrageous comedian of his day, Max was banned by the BBC, in trouble over the Royal Command Performance, admired and hated by the comics of his age - and ours

Urusei Yatsura: The Electric Household Guard

1989 • 30 min • Japan

Mendou hires a new personal Ninja with some very unusual abilities, only to have him fall head-over-heels for his manipulative sister, Ryoko.

Lighthearted Nation

1989 • 57 min

This documentary is an insightful look into the Duplex Nursing Home in Massachusetts and the resident contributors to the Duplex Planet. Director Jim McKay interviews David Greenberger, the magazine's founder and member of the band Men & Volts. The real stars of this documentary-essay, however, are the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, who offer interesting anecdotes and opinions on subjects ranging from their mothers, moon-walking and fortune tellers, to their attitudes about life. This work also includes a special tribute to Duplex resident-poet Ernest Noyes Brookings. As director, McKay does not attempt to mediate the experience or moralize on why the lives represented in this tape are significant or worthwhile, he simply lets them speak for themselves.

Living with the Living Theatre

1989 • 29 min

One of Paik's most compelling and poignant tapes, Living with the Living Theatre pays tribute to Judith Malina and the late Julien Beck, founder of the Living Theatre. Reversing the theme of the earlier Allan 'n' Allen's Complaint, which dealt with two artists and their relationships to their fathers, Paik explores Malina and Beck's relationship to their children. Interviews provide the memories of actual lives lived together, while Betsy Connors' animated sequences transcend the specific to suggest the universality of childhood. Garrin and Paik edit these elements into an electronic synthesis that is at times dizzyingly psychedelic and always affectionate towards its subjects. Infused with personal and cultural memories that evoke time and place — Janis Joplin concert footage, Living Theatre performances — Paik creates a haunting and deeply moving homage.

At One View

1989 • 7 min

Two men in chairs by the open hearth; photos move in front of their heads.

The Fairies

1989 • 5 min

Based on a tale by Charles Perrault, Tom Rubnitz's The Fairies comes complete with frogs, princes, kind fairies, and evil stepsisters—all costumed à la Rubnitz. Featuring Sister Dimension as the fairy godmother, Michael Clark, and others, the tape playfully illustrates a familiar fairytale moral, as each person gets what they deserve. The evil girl spits up toads, while flowers and jewels emerge from the mouth of Matilda the Good, and a dancing prince carries her away.

Dreaming Rivers

1989 • 33 min • United Kingdom

A bittersweet and nostalgic short drama illustrating the spirit of modern families touched by the experience of migration. Miss T., from the Caribbean, lives alone in her one-room apartment, her children and husband having left her to pursue new dreams. When she dies her family and friends gather at her wake. The tapestry of words that interweave the drama convey the fragments of a life lived, but only partly remembered.

The Butch Willis Show

1989 • 18 min

A collection of clips featuring Butch Willis, produced and compiled by Jeff Krulik following his decision to cease being manager of the band Butch Willis & The Rocks. The short features Butch at a University of Maryland record convention, Butch singing happy birthday to John Heyn, and Butch pontificating and showing off some records in the basement of his childhood home.

Mikael Wiehe: Tre nya och en som lever kvar

1989 • 26 min • Sweden

Performances and an interview with the musician Mikael Wiehe.

K.

1989 • 12 min • United Kingdom

Strangers in Paradise

1989 • 55 min • Australia

On the eve of bicentennial celebrations, Strangers in Paradise looks at Australian culture through the eyes of tourists on a ‘Dreamtime’ tour.

Brute Charm

1989 • 24 min • United States of America

BRUTE CHARM consists primarily of images of animals I shot in Africa, combined with animation on an optical printer. A steady stream of conscious and unconscious visual choices loosely constructs a journey through the animal kingdom and my thoughts which developed around it. BRUTE CHARM is an exploration into our unsocialized selves. Lion Sex Flamingo Death and a yellow rubber glove in the Kenyan wild. There's mud in your Ear easier than an Elephant thru the eye of the beholder.

Ultraman Ace: Giant Ant Terrible-Monster vs. The Ultra Brothers

1989 • 25 min • Japan

Theatrical version of episode 5 of Ultraman Ace TV series. Two women go missing, with witnesses testifying that they vanished underground. The only common link between the incidents was that both women had type O blood. TAC closes the case, but when Yuko and Seiji are out shopping, Yuko herself is targeted. Seiji manages to free her, and the two catch a glimpse of the terrible-monster, Aribunta.

Watch the Sparrow Bleed

1989 • 22 min • United Kingdom

In a small town in the North West of England a vagrant serial killer is stoned to death by a gang of teenage vigilantes wearing white hoods. He then rises from his grave in the woods as a zombie a year later to gorily kill the vigilantes one-by-one!

The Defender

1989 • 54 min • Canada, United States of America

This documentary is about Bob Diemert of Carman, Manitoba, and his dream of building the world's next great fighter plane. His worldwide reputation as a genius at restoring "warbirds" enables him to finance his dream. The Defender is a lively, sometimes wild and funny, tale about a remarkable, modern-day folk hero.

Go Nagai's Scary Zone: The Mysterious Demon

1989 • 45 min • Japan

Japanese direct-to-video horror film

Anniversary

1989 • 12 min • Canada

Computer animated short film created to commemorate the National Film Board of Canada's 50th anniversary.

Norman Gives A Speech

1989 • 8 min

Just before quitting time Norman's boss makes the fateful decision to delegate tomorrow's big presentation to his least accomplished and most accident-prone employee. Norman works on his speech throughout the night, despite several interruptions, but the next morning he delivers it with typical Krasnerian results.

Weather Diary 5

1989 • 38 min

A man and a hotel room. One of the best of the series. Writes Kuchar: "Set in central Oklahoma during May, I spend 3 weeks in a motel and get talked at by a small weather-radio that seems to rule my life. I, myself, get to talk at the lady who runs the motel and who runs a cosmetic empire downtown. The viewer gets to see her equipment and her corner of the world as storms lurk somewhere off-camera, waiting to enter stage left and bring down the house. This is one of the more social installments of the weather diary series."

Nullarbor Dreaming

1989 • 45 min • Australia

In 1988, Andrew Wight and his team went on to attempt a record cave dive in Pannikin Plains Cave on the Nullarbor Plain, where flash floods turned the expedition into a life-or-death adventure. This was captured on film by his support team, and eventually published as Nullarbor Dreaming. This short film launched his career as an international film-maker and culminated in him becoming James Cameron's right-hand man on many 3D and other film projects. Sanctum was inspired by his Nullarbor experience

The Last Night of Rasputin

1989 • 38 min

Billed as "the final orgy and dreadful end of the notorious monk, Rasputin, on the eve of the Russian Revolution," THE LAST NIGHT OF RASPUTIN tells a story of pre-revolutionary Russia. Rasputin, confidante of the Tsarina, storms through St. Petersburg in endless orgies and bachannales. Into the aristocratic decadence come three friends from the productive classes - a worker, a student and a ballerina. The troika fall victim to evil doers but heroically triumph in the end.

Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker

1989 • 59 min • United States of America

A documentary about the legendary Jazz player Charlie (Bird) Parker.

Louie Anderson: Mom! Louie's Looking at Me Again!

1989 • 59 min • United States of America

Louie Anderson Live at the Guthrie

A Comedy Celebration: The Comedy & Magic Club's 10th Anniversary

1989 • 60 min

A variety special, taped October 30, 1988 during the 10th anniversary of the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California, featuring routines by stand-up comics.