All Films

A New Leash On Life

1987 • 14 min • United States of America

Discusses aspects of pet ownership, including quality time, a good home, investment, medical care, and other vital matters in a dog or cat's life.

Call Me Madame

1987 • 52 min • France

In a small French village, Communist activist and poet Ovida Delect undergoes her social gender transition with the unbridled support of her wife Huguette. Meanwhile, the couple's teenage son harbors some serious reservations about Ovida's transition.

Faustfilm: An Opera

1987 • 42 min • United States of America

This is the realization of a 30 year old dream, a wish of the young filmmaker to film a modern Faust which finally came to a fulfillment as unpredictable and as absolute as, say, three decades of living experience. Like earlier artists who have treated the Faust legend,he uses it to explore the nature of obsession. But reversing the familiar idea of Faust as an old man yearning to be young, Brakhage makes him a world-weary young man who longs to be old... What makes the film striking is its rich imagery, superbly photographed in dark-hued tones, and its insistent visual rhythms. Brakhage is close to his peak as a bard of the camera and the editing table. – David Sterritt

Closed Jeans

1987 • 4 min • France

A commercial by Marithé and François Girbaud's jeans company directed by filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. In this entry, JLG presents a couple looking at classical drawings and paintings quarreling about something. Later on, it's revealed the product being advertised.

Stieg Trenter - Ett porträtt

1987 • 49 min • Sweden

A portrait of Swedish crime writer Stieg Trenter (1914 - 1967), born Stig Johansson, he started out by using the name Stieg Trenter as pseudonym but soon changed his name to this in real life as well. His first novel was "Ingen kan hejda döden" ("No One Can Stop Death"), published in 1943.

ECM: The Most Beautiful Sound Next To Silence

1987 • 58 min • Norway

Record label manager and producer Manfred Eicher established the record label ECM in 1969. He has been a key promoter of European - and Norwegian - jazz.

Living as One Should

1987 • 43 min • Vietnam

A Vietnamese documentary on human suffering and the meaning of kindness.

Recess VI

1987 • 8 min • Soviet Union

Cartoon for school-age children, based on well-known motives.

U-Boats: The Wolfpack

1987 • 22 min

This documentary looks at the Nazi submarine threat, their fleet known as the "Wolf Pack," and how it almost helped to defeat the Allies in World War II.

What Shall We Do About Little Jill

1987 • 11 min • Norway

A film about a lonely child and the self-absorbed parents: "What shall we do with little Jill? Imagine sitting in a chair all day. Maybe we should give her something nice - a picture"? But a picture can not want to speak with - or? In the picture sits a girl who wants a horse - and Jill goes into the world to find.

Mole and the Medicine

1987 • 29 min • Czechoslovakia

Soft Shoe

1987 • 20 min

"Optical printing links East with West within a mosaic of looped, layered and shifting images filmed originally on Super 8 while on a (train/car/thumb) trip across Europe in 1978. Swinging cow udders, woman sweeping, farm woman walking, nuns chanting, Nude Descending, voices in a bread shop, Dachau and other artworks from Documenta 7, riding the escalator of the Centre Pompidou, etc. are layered in overlapping, shifting, and repetitive frame-clusters pulled from Super 8 footage filmed on a trip that began in Bucharest and ended in Paris. Disparate elements are combined and manipulated to construct a lyrical work about walking, history, and memory." - Holly Fisher

Music of Revolution

1987 • 10 min • Soviet Union

Direct Hit

1987 • 5 min • Soviet Union

Animated short film about a boy going to an arcade.

Étude pour Déserts

1987 • 24 min • France

Desert Vision

1987 • 49 min

Enter the desert's magical spirit by navigating through narrow slot canyons. Gliding past statuesque saguaro cactus and exploring underground caverns. Music score by David Lanz and Paul Speer.

Usinimage

1987 • 10 min • Germany

Selected industrial and city settings from the three films were documented again for Usinimage and intercut with the corresponding fiction film scenes, in order to give the landscapes a new accent through artistic defamiliarization and condensation. It is an exploration of city architecture, in which the shooting location serves not just as reflective or constrastive backdrop but rather becomes itself content.

Dunia

1987 • 52 min • Burkina Faso, France

Nongma, a ten-year-old girl, goes to join her grandmother in a remote village. An official offers to send Nongma's grandmother to school, but she must go to the city. Through the journey of Nongma and her grandmother, "Dunia" raises the problems of women in Burkina Faso, torn between tradition and modernity.

Voyage en Amérique avec un cheval emprunté

1987 • 58 min • Canada

During an improvised journey, which takes the route of memory and reflection, a man is confronted with the precariousness of existence.

51º 29.9’ N , 0º 11’ E

1987 • 7 min

RAINHAM, ESSEX, UK, 1987. Bow Gamelan Ensemble (Paul Burwell, Anne Bean and Richard Wilson) were invited to make a piece specifically for television by 'Alter Image' (Channel 4). They chose to work with the concrete barges near Rainham where they had previously explored sound on several of their many river trips into the estuary, recognising the huge differences in sound from low to high tide. They were filmed for over ten hours as the tide ebbed and flowed capturing the massive energy of this amount of incoming water and the ways one could harness this power to shift and shape sound. As the huge resonant chambers of the barges filled up, they deepened the sounds of the metal reinforcing bars sticking out as they were played with sticks and beaters. Passing vessels obliged by blasting their horns, adding to the Bow Gamelan’s own array of foghorns, sirens and hooters.

The Window

1987 • 10 min • Soviet Union

On an autumn evening, the artist draws a summer landscape on the window pane, and then a young character. Gradually, his whole life begins to pass in the picture.

Contrappunti

1987 • 23 min

An afternoon with Franco and Dario, two young friends who made different choices at the end of compulsory school. Franco decided to continue studying, Dario chose to go to work in a mechanical workshop, to fix machines. It is the end of the first week of work for Dario, Franco is waiting for him outside the workshop, they spend a few hours together, playing, talking, and picking up on old conversations.

Your Honour, I Object! Guccione V Russell

1987 • 60 min

A courtroom 'drama' featuring Bob Guccione versus Ken Russell in a breach of contract case regarding disagreements over a script for a film version of Daniel De foe's "Moll Flanders" which Guccione hired Russell to direct.

Home and Dry?

1987 • 8 min

Four women discuss their housing situations. None of them would describe themselves as homeless - after all they've never slept out on the street. However, as they listen to each other's stories, they begin to understand that homelessness is something they've all experienced. The film analyses the inadequacies of housing policies and examines the political thinking that lies behind them.