All Films

The Judicial Experiment

1988 • 38 min • Romania

Multiple kinds of "judicial experiments" (re-enactments) are presented, their purposes and procedures being revealed throughout the film.

Hauling Sharks

1988 • 10 min

The coastal Danakil in Northeastern Ethiopia have found an environmentally suitable way of life netting sharks far out to sea which they export to the south Arabian states.

Jyoppin

1988 • 3 min

The title means "key" in Hokkaido dialect. The man runs out of the room and attacks the children playing, but the microphone is snatched away by the girl. If the microphone is a symbol of the penis, is the act of putting the microphone in his mouth at the end a form of self-fellatio?

City for Sale

1988 • 12 min

City for Sale is a short film about the demolition of buildings in the Brisbane CBD in the lead up to EXPO 1988, and includes short anecdotes about buildings and areas by several people affected by the demolition.

Uniform Diary: Complex Pleasures

1988 • 30 min • Japan

Yukari, a high school, girl is asked by a woman at her part-time job to stay at her mansion. Her boyfriend soon makes a visit...

Hiromi Mukumuku: Please Be Kind to Melancholy

1988 • 30 min • Japan

A woman is recruited into the video industry, soon gaining the attention by male crew.

George Best: Best Intentions

1988 • 52 min

Depending on your point of view, George Best is either the carefree hedonist who played football for the love of it, and gleefully enjoyed the fringe benefits (booze 'n' birds) which came with the territory, or he is the sad, shambolic, wife-beating alcoholic who frittered away his God-given gifts. Both perspectives are given a full airing in Best Intentions, an old Ulster TV documentary which has been re-released on video to coincide with Best, the recent biopic starring John Lynch as George Best.

The Poet: Becoming

1988 • 18 min • Soviet Union

An evocative animated film on the life and works of the great Kyrgyz poet Alykul Osmonov.

Internacionales

1988 • 6 min • France

An aspect of the life of international truck drivers. The drivers' evenings and meals in all-night petrol stations and their waking up in the morning before setting off on the motorway again. An "impressionist" documentary made of successive touches, without any voice-over. The dialogues and atmospheres alone reconstruct this very particular atmosphere.

black tape for a blue girl: fragments

1988 • 60 min

A recollection of early video art by Sam Rosenthal. Recorded between Spring 1985 and November 1987. "permitted to control – frame by frame; a cruel spectre, peering in upon a world i may never touch. a life i may not have. my window shines like the world i try so desperately to control. as if i intrude upon a world, forced to watch by hands not my own. desire to watch, my own insatiable lust. permitted to control – but never to take part. the friend who silently passed. i feel that i’m to blame. for closing in upon a world, not mine. trying to create, and only creating pain. i hurt inside, crying in my darkened room. i only achieve my isolation."

Grand Hotel

1988 • 29 min • East Germany

The film follows the creation, construction and design of the “Grand Hotel” on Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin: from the excavation pit to the shell of the building to its completion and the handing over of the keys.

A Spirit of Humility, Patience, Love...

1988 • 30 min • Soviet Union

A documentary commissioned by the Executive Committee of the Soviet Red Cross Society for the 150th anniversary of the death of Alexander Pushkin.

Mômimages, le monde des Spoks

1988 • 24 min • Belgium

Six Brussels children between ten to twelve years old make an animated film together in which they let their imaginations run wild. With great care, they sculpt characters, build sets, and bring everything to life with stop-motion. The end result is a universe full of angels and monsters, a creative translation of the way they experience the world around them. Filmmaker Patrick Van Antwerp gives a fascinating insight into the children’s creative process and the workings of the studio.

Half Past Midnight

1988 • 35 min • Netherlands

This is one of Wim Vink's earliest movies about a girl who gets bullied at school by her fellow classmates and after gets her revenge by killing them one by one in an extremely gruesome and bloody way.

July

1988 • 25 min • Soviet Union

One hot summer afternoon, two boys try to earn the cash for a movie in this beautiful evocation of the landscape of childhood.

White Town

1988 • 27 min • Soviet Union

Akhalkalaki, Armenian-inhabited town in Georgia, is depicted as burlesque and the same time tragic model of a Soviet town.

This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement

1988 • 10 min • United Kingdom

This highly stylized short asserts sexual desire over fear in gay romantic relationships.

Chalk Coloured People

1988 • 54 min • Japan

OVA adaptation of a manga by Watase Seizou.

The Solution

1988 • 3 min • East Germany, Germany

Animated East German short about a dissenting bird.

Banana, Banana, Banana Slugs!

1988 • 8 min • United States of America

This film introduces children to an animal usually overlooked in nature studies: the slug -- the shell-less snail -- the slimy, yucky animal we don't want to touch or see. Related to the ordinary garden slug (invertebrate mollusks), the Giant Banana Slug is a vital link in the chain of life in western North American forests.

The Praying Mantis

1988 • 7 min • China

A cicada is resting high on a tree. It is chirping for all it’s worth and drinking in the dew, oblivious of a mantis behind. The mantis, bending over and arching up its front leg, is going to catch the cicada but does not know that there is an oriole beside it. The bird has stretched out its neck, ready to peck at the mantis. Again the oriole is unaware that a weasel is sneaking up to it. The three creatures all covet gains ahead without being aware of an imminent danger behind.

Elfriede Jelinek. News from Home 18.8.88

1988 • 30 min

“Writer Elfriede Jelinek has repeatedly made statements about her television-watching habits. She watches a great deal, a wide variety of what is broadcast, though rarely for pleasure or the purpose of gaining knowledge. On the contrary, the TV program is one of her favorite objects of study. Three separate times on a particular day, while sitting in a comfy TV chair, she commented on Austrian TV news for VALIE EXPORT.” – Brigitta Burger-Utzer

Park of Remembrance

1988 • 14 min • Austria

Parco delle Rimembranze is a film which offers us the opportunity to reflect, to observe and to listen and thereby experience something that happens when we slowly close our eyes and expose ourselves, not yet asleep to dreams, to uncertainness and chance, to unwanted events.

Dastarkhan

1988 • 9 min • Soviet Union

A cartoon for children about the hospitable Abzal, who is ready to please everyone who is a welcome guest.