All Films

Alien Sex Dream

1988 • 60 min • Japan

Pink film distributed by Xces / Nikkatsu.

Dawn of an Evil Millennium

1988 • 20 min • United States of America

An epic, 20-minute, completely fabricated theatrical trailer for a crypto-Vestron Video cheapie (by way of Willow-era Ron Howard)—a supposedly 18-hour movie about a Jeff Daniels lookalike demon sent to destroy the planet (and possibly the universe) with his "Turbo-power!" Olds dragster. There are shades of John Carpenter's They Live, caffeinated Evil Dead speed-freakery, a cameo by Miles O'Keeffe, and uncanny movie preview clichés, such as sentence prepositions that never reach a resolution: "On an alien planet…the beauty and wisdom of a sorceress…." Sometimes the liner note blurbs speak for themselves: "Damon Packard is to Stephen Spielberg what George Kuchar is to Douglas Sirk."

On the Record

1988 • 1 min

Titles, a crocodile crossed with Big Ben roams the UK.

Lune Froide

1988 • 26 min • France

A César award winning short drama based around Charles Bukowski's two stories "Copulating Mermaid of Venice" and "Trouble with the Battery"

Little People Video - Three Favorite Stories

1988 • 30 min

The Little People Family recount three of their favorite tales in a delightfully animated story.

The Artist Was a Woman

1988 • 59 min • United States of America

The history of Western art has few examples of great women artists. This documentary uncovers the works of some gifted women, while exploring why talent such as theirs was overlooked. We learn that women were denied admission to art school, or if admitted, not allowed to study the human figure. Also, male art historians did not take their work seriously, denying them the recognition they deserved. Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt and Georgia O'Keeffe bear witness to the fact that talent knows no gender. Jane Alexander reads from letters and diaries and Germaine Greer provides wry social commentary.

Taraz

1988 • 55 min • Iran

The documentary "Taraz" is about a group of nomads in Bakhtiari alley who live in two provinces of Khuzestan (tropical region) and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari (cold region) every year according to the hot and cold seasons. The group, which spends seven months of the year in an area north of Masjid Suleiman (Andika), migrates from this area to their summer territory on the southern slopes of Zardkuh in late April. As the weather cools in their cold territory and before rain and snow fall, they return to their winter territory in Khuzestan province in September. (A group of nomads about whom the film Taraz has been made is a few families from the "Bamdi" tribe of the "Haft Lang" Bakhtiari tribe.)

The fairy-tale world of Aleksandr Ptushko

1988 • 30 min • Soviet Union

The wizard Finn sends Masha and Vanya on a journey through the fairy tale films of Aleksandr Ptushko, many dangers await them there.

Super Lewd Match: Toyomaru Special

1988 • 60 min • Japan

A Japanese woman is invited by her friend (a UCLA student) to visit Los Angeles. She soon meets an American man and another Japanese tourist. To pass the time, the woman and her friend compete...

Jean-Michel Jarre - Destination Docklands - The London Concert

1988 • 52 min • United Kingdom

Destination Docklands was an event consisting of two concerts by musician Jean Michel Jarre on the Royal Victoria Docks, Docklands, London on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th October 1988, to coincide with the release of Jarre's new album Revolutions. The concerts were attended by 100,000 people on each night.

Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul

1988 • 60 min

Aretha Franklin's recording career is examined through archival footage and interviews with family and prominent figures within the music industry.

Yanks

1988 • 2 min

The Deadly Rapeman 3: Pleasure, Feeling, Beast, Demon

1988 • 60 min • Japan

Erotic-drama distributed by Nikkatsu for home video.

From Us To Me / Vom Wir zum Ich

1988 • 60 min • East Germany, Germany, United Kingdom

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the brigade and family of a trade union active cook and unemployed person of various ages and professions in Newcastle on the one hand and a brigade of crane operators of the Warnowwerft and fishermen of the Warnemünde cooperative on the other hand, insights into the way of life and attitudes of people of our time are to be conveyed.

Life without…

1988 • 29 min • Soviet Union

Estonia's suicide rate is one of the highest in the world. The author tries to trace the social causes of the tragic cases in the footsteps of one schoolboy's suicide.

Five

1988 • 4 min • Canada

Five deals with questions of identity and self-perception, highlighting the inherent difficulties (impossibility?) of expressing or communicating such. Four individuals appear alternatively : although they seem to be describing someone, it is not always clear to whom each is referring.

Zukkoke Sannin-gumi: Zukkoke Jikuu Bouken

1988 • 57 min • Japan

Three reporters from the school paper get transported back to the Edo period.

The Lure and the Lore

1988 • 15 min • United States of America

A collaboration between filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira and performance artist Thomas Pinnock, who performs his "immigrant folktales" using traditional lore of his native Jamaica to dramatize his migration to New York in the 60's.

An All-Star Toast to the Improv

1988 • 60 min

To celebrate the "birthday" of the famous Improv comedy club, 6 famous comedians get up on stage and do their thing. However, to make things interesting, while each one does his particular routine, the other 5 comics sit at the back of the stage and heckle the performer. This video is especially notable for Martin Mull issuing a zinger at Robin Williams that shuts-up the otherwise motor-mouthed comic for at least 5 seconds.

Rite & Expression

1988 • 9 min

Originally an eight-monitor installation, Rite and Expression is an impressionistic evocation of the cultural history of Our Lady of the Rosario Church, a Baroque edifice in the central Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. Built during the seventeenth century in the historic gold-mining town of Ouro Preto (Black Gold), the Rosario Church was intended as a cultural and social locus for African slaves. Santos draws on the natural (earth, wood, stone, gold, inks and paints), the human, the social and cultural (the Rosario Feast, African garments and ritual objects) in his electronic reconstruction of the sole Minas Gerais church imprinted with Italian influence. The church's round shapes and forms evoke both Baroque motifs and African cultural rituals.

I See

1988 • 25 min • Poland

This film takes the audience to the centre for the blind in Laski. We try to get to know the reality of blind children - full of sounds, smells and carefully studied shapes. Carefully, with their fingers, they check the physiognomy of living animals and then recreate them from clay. Thanks to the aesthetics of the film, seemingly simple activities performed by the wards of the establishment gain a deeper, symbolic dimension.

Inside the Soviet Circus

1988 • 60 min

Go behind the scenes at Moscow's Circus School and experience the magic and wonder of the performances that delight millions. See lion tamers risk life and limb, trapeze artists glide through the air, of course, the beloved clowns who inspire imagination and fantasy. With laughter as their language, the Soviet Circus bridges the gap between generations, borders, and all peoples of the world.

Battle on Canvas: The Creation of a Monumental Painting by Werner Tübke

1988 • 21 min • East Germany

In 1987, after over ten years of work, Werner Tübke (1929-2004), one of East Germany’s most important painters, completed the monumental, oil-on-canvas painting The Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany. Painted in the Renaissance styles of Albrecht Dürer and Albrecht Altdorfer, the painting—measuring 14 meters high and 123 meters wide—is in the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen, Thuringia, the site of the last battle of the German Peasants’ War. The museum was specifically built for the painting, one of the most figurative in recent art history.Interspersed with interviews with the artist, the documentary follows the complicated and elaborate creation of the monumental work, from signing the contract in 1976 to the last brush stroke on September 11, 1987. In 2011, the Panorama Museum was awarded the European Seal of Cultural Heritage.

WAVE of Terror

1988 • 55 min • United States of America

Two tales of unending horror! Hadley's Hellhole finds a female reporter (Clancey McCauley) and an archeologogist (GW Lawrence) investigating the reopening of an old mine that was rumored to be haunted by the men who died in a cavein back in the 30's. Will they find themselves confronting the ghosts of the past and will they be able to escape? (25 min.) Road Kill finds a jealous wife haunted by the ghost of the husband she murdered! Will her guilt get the best of her? Starring clancey McCauley and Mike Brady. (25 min.)