All Films

Marc Chagall, Artist from Russia

1987 • 30 min • Soviet Union

A documentary on the life and works of artist Marc Chagall.

Baby in the Subway

1987 • 6 min • Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia

A mischievous toddler goes into a subway, turns into a flower, messes up the escalator, and finally boards the metro. The authorities are after him.

Tokyo Sanpo Vol.2

1987 • 28 min

Experimental film by Hiroyuki Sekine.

Dedykacja

1987 • 18 min • Poland

The documentary presents children from the village of Paszyn, who paint on glass. The boys also became interested in carving figures in wood. They were encouraged by the local parish priest, Father Edward Nitka, to develop local, folk culture. The children talk passionately about the themes of their works.

Proba

1987 • 21 min • Poland

Children from the Youth Culture Centre in Nowy Sącz, under the care of their instructors, prepare for a performance to dance and sing together. They belong to the regional song and dance ensemble "Sądeczoki". They try to follow the teachers' instructions as best as they can to improve their skills and refine their performance.

Mike

1987 • 4 min

Here, "another regular day" in the life of Mike reveals a world completely envisioned and experienced through the images and slogans of the media. Mike enacts his daily routine — waking, shaving, dressing — as if he were in one advertisement after another. His language is the empty jargon of ad copy, his possessions are visualized as consumer products, his environment has the aestheticized, air-brushed look of a lifestyle commercial. In a collapse of image and self, of simulation and reality, Mike's mundane everyday life becomes a seductive TV ad, devoid of content, in which the viewer is exhorted to "make the ordinary extraordinary."

Frances Steloff: Memoirs of a Bookseller

1987 • 28 min

"Frances Steloff: Memoirs of a Bookseller" is a wonderfully dynamic portrait of an American cultural heroine. Now 100 years old, Frances Steloff was the founder and force behind the renowned Gotham Book Mart of New York City, a center for avant-garde literature and literati since 1920. She began with only $100 and thirty books and she modestly recalls her role in the bookstore's past.

El asunto Taylor

1987 • 27 min • Spain

The police hunt for a mysterious killer known only as 'Taylor'.

Preludes in Magical Time

1987 • 4 min • United States of America

Directed by Sara Petty.

Spring

1987 • 9 min • Soviet Union

One of the most structured of Yufit’s reels with an elaborated montage work. This film combines three diverse worlds in an absurd manner to show the author’s passion for black humour: traditions of the avant garde cinematography of 20s, the social motives of contemporary Russia, and forensic medicine. —arsenals.lv

Jackson Pollock

1987 • 52 min

This British documentary examines the life of painter Jackson Pollock--from his childhood in Wyoming to his death in a car crash on Long Island in 1956--in an effort to understand both the development of his work and its place in the history of art.

Alfalfa

1987 • 9 min • United Kingdom

Film introduces a gay alphabet, with the aid of images and music, which it is argued is a defense against heterosexual language, and the hidden insults contained within.

Loud Visual Noises

1987 • 3 min

Hand-painted — closed-eye — film envisioning optic feedback in response to sound. Collaborative soundtrack compiled by Joel Haertling with sound contributions by Die Tödliche Doris (WG), Zoviet France (UK), Nurse With Wound (UK), The Hafler Trio (NL), Joel Haertling (US) and I.H.T.S.O. (WG). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

Les Misérables

1987 • 2 min • Austria

In this film, Mattuschka works exclusively with animation. The cheerful cartoon characters Mimi and Max have a bit of a childlike-bisexuality to them, even when the subject seems to be the desire for and the differences from the other sex: "Look at what I´ve got here," says Mimi when she lifts up her skirt, the reply she gets being, "Is that real...?".

Art of Memory

1987 • 37 min • United States of America

Manipulating a variety of sources, Vasulka uses creative imaging tools to situate historical images against Southwestern landscapes of incredible beauty. Contorting the images into a variety of isomorphic forms, Vasulka creates a literal shape for these memories, developing these shapes as metaphors for the processes of fragmentation, condensation, and inversion, that inevitably contort fact into memory. While much of the raw material for the tape is drawn from World War II and its rehearsals, the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution, The Art of Memory is really an extended meditation seeking to reconcile the blurry, banal photographs of historic figures with the mass destruction they helped engineer.

Ruth, Roses, and Revolver

1987 • 47 min • United Kingdom, United States of America

Television documentary from BBCs Arena program in which David Lynch, fresh off the release of Blue Velvet, examines his surrealistic influences in cinema which excerpts from several classics works of the avant-garde

Damnation of Faust Trilogy

1987 • 22 min

1. Damnation of Faust: Evocation - Using "found" imagery shot in a SoHo playground, the first part of the Damnation of Faust trilogy explores the possible relations between childhood play and a woman looking on from outside. Without dialogue, the gestures of the characters become their primary mode of communication. Visual motifs of pillars and fans, achieved through video wipes, plunge the viewer into the image while building parallels of movement and feeling. 2. Damnation of Faust: Will-o'-the-Wisp (A Deceitful Goal) - The second part of the Faust project centers on the development of Marguerite, the female character in the Faust legend. 3. Evocation of Faust: Charming Landscape - The final work in the Damnation of Faust trilogy, ironically titled Charming Landscape, investigates the way in which the urban landscape is a place "where you lose your identity."

Prince Hotel

1987 • 10 min

Men sitting on the street.

Cooperation of Parts

1987 • 39 min • United States of America

The film follows Eisenberg as he explores Europe, focusing on France, Germany, and Poland. His journey is shaped by questions about signs, landscapes, memories, and fixed meanings. He visits historical sites, including the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps.

Babel

1987 • 17 min

1987 Peter Rose short film

Ekh, Toptygin, Toptygin

1987 • 10 min • Soviet Union

The tale of the gullible bear.

Light Bread

1987 • 9 min • Soviet Union

The fairy tale forms the idea of the child that nothing in life is given just like that. To achieve something, you need to work hard, and you need to pay for "light bread".

Hide & Seek

1987 • 15 min • United Kingdom

Beautiful slowed down images, often framed through doors and windows, offer a metaphorical and lyrical journey of discovery through memory. The silent images of childhood memories contrast with room interiors and windows. The seemingly innocent nature of the children at play is threatened by the haunting sounds of their voices over the interior spaces.

Family Tyranny (Modeling and Molding)

1987 • 8 min

Experimental video about child abuse. McCarthy: "I was given access to a community television studio for two days of shooting and one day of editing. I had been given the grant based on a proposal to do a video tape on child abuse. I taped for one day alone and one day with Mike Kelley. I asked Mike Kelley to be the son and I would be the father. There was no written script. After taping for two days, I edited the tapes, making two separate tapes: Family Tyranny and Cultural Soup. They are often shown together."