All Films

Twenty-Five Cents Before Noon

1987 • 22 min

Short documentary scrapbook about movie palaces and one screen theaters in Washington, DC. The project was started in 1984 and completed 1987. It aired on Washington DC PBS Station WETA.

Great Journey

1987 • 9 min • Soviet Union

A tale about how the hippopotamus Topa and the kitten Tutti made a journey to a distant mountain and felt the joy of discovering a great and beautiful world.

Genesome: The Teenage Girlpods

1987 • 16 min • United States of America

Aliens abduct young girls who look good for breeding on their planet. The girls are wrapped and podded, then beamed up for delivery to the laboratories on planet Merkos where evil gynecologists administer artificial insemination.

How Donkey Got Sick with Sadness

1987 • 10 min • Soviet Union

Once there lived a very hardworking donkey. Everyone loved him, including the girl whom he drove to school. But one day in the house appeared a truck who carried out all his work. The donkey felt like no one needed him and fell ill with sadness.

Elizabeth Bishop: One Art

1987 • 56 min • United States of America

Illustrates the writer's wandering spirit, from a childhood in Nova Scotia to travels in Brazil, and the central themes of her work: geography, landscape, and the quest for consciousness and identity through travel.

The Iconography of Venus

1987 • 5 min

A look at private and public images of women and their "place" in society. The act of being placed on a visual pedestal of unrealistic proportions and its accompanying expectations. The operatic soundtrack written by the filmmaker is performed by Suzanne Palmer.

Zeichenfilm II - Fragmente Fragile

1987 • 13 min • East Germany, Germany

An independent experimental short from the GDR.

The Last Chinese Laundry

1987 • 28 min • Canada

A documentary from 1987 featuring the life of early Chinese immigrants to the island of Newfoundland.

Summer Horror Day

1987 • 55 min • United Kingdom

A teenager stumbles upon a mysterious book from which he reads the written words out loud. As it turns out, playing with black magic spells is not the most sensible idea, because soon a bloodthirsty zombie appears, and the carnage begins. However, the curious young man reads another spell from the book in which he then surrenders his soul to the devil. Now he becomes the target of the zombie hunt, and all its victims, who rise up as the next living dead!

The Marzipan Comedy

1987 • 42 min • Czechoslovakia

Loosely updates the Hansel and Gretel story to a world where the wicked witch is now a scantily-clad quasi-hippie.

Ramses' Pranks 4

1987 • 9 min • Soviet Union

About the life of a hunting dog. The protagonists go on a fishing trip.

Karate Kat: Aristokratic Kapers

1987 • 33 min

Karate Kat betrays the myth of a graceful feline in his half-hour animated series. First aired on The Comic Strip in the late '80s, The Aristokratic Kapers follows a martial arts expert who heads the McClaw Detective Agency. The crime-fighting fur ball must contend with a trio of evil-doing misfits: Sumo Cat, Burglar Cat, and Mafia Cat. Karate Kat is joined by other lively characters like Meow-Baby, Katmandu, and Cat Gut. Using his sixth sense and somewhat questionable physical prowess, Kat takes the view on a series of misadventures.

Наездники (киноальманах)

1987 • 50 min • Soviet Union

Films consisting of: Riders ("Mosfilm"), Theorist ("Mosfilm"), Peacetime of Roman Shmakov (VGIK).

El sueño del ratón en la sopa

1987 • 56 min • Chile

Video made by the Audiovisual Writers Workshop formed by Rodrigo Maturana in 1987. This work is the product of improvisation for three weeks, in the courtyards of the Sacred Heart school of the Alameda.

Alvar Aalto: Technology and Nature

1987 • 59 min • Finland

The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) is one of the great figures of modern architecture, ranked alongside Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. This film analyses Aalto’s uniquely successful resolution of the demands and possibilities created by new technology and construction materials with the need to make his buildings sympathetic both to their users and to their natural surroundings. His inventive use of timber in particular represents both a reference to the forest landscape of Finland and a building material that is ‘warm’ and extremely adaptable. Filmed in Finland, Italy, Germany and the USA, this documentary shows how the Finnish natural environment and art traditions were essential elements in Aalto’s pioneering harmonization of technology and nature.

The ADS Epidemic

1987 • 5 min • Canada

A short remake of Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice where instead of a cholera epidemic it's the "Acquired Dread of Sex" (ADS) epidemic.

Meerschweinchen

1987 • 14 min

Lisa has a guinea pig and already knows well how to take care of it. Her friend Janis is also allowed to buy one. He prepares a cage and food, and the guinea pig soon feels at home. At the end of the film, both children let their animals play together.

Her Fragrant Emulsion

1987 • 10 min

“Her Fragrant Emulsion is an obsessional homage to the ’60s B-film actress Mimsy Farmer. The film’s visceral collage images act as a metaphor for sensuality and move in and out of sync with the soundtrack to evoke the distancing and intimacy cycles that are common in love relationships.”—Lewis Klahr

Promised Land: A Musical

1987 • 31 min

To find out whether he has any talent, Danny, a Hollywood actor going nowhere fast, sets off in pursuit of Irving J. Schwartz, the greatest agent in the world. In a frenzy of musical numbers and disguises, Danny makes his way through the promised land toward discovery of who he is and what it takes to be an actor

Classified People

1987 • 55 min • France

Filmed clandestinely, Zauberman’s extraordinary documentary exposes South Africa’s insidious apartheid policy of “race classification” by focusing on the love affair of Robert and Doris, and unresolvable, moral fissure with Robert’s children and the country. Winner of the Paris Film Festival Grand Prize.

The Web

1987 • 18 min • United Kingdom

Dark gothic puppet animation based on a section of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, Titus Groan.

Nhambiquara - A Festa da Moça

1987 • 18 min • Brazil

Documentary about indian people Nhambiquara, living in Brazil, and their celebration of girls' first menstruation, which is for them a sign they are ready for marriage. The film also tackles their struggle to keep their cultural identity and retrieve their lost lands.

So Many Miracles

1987 • 58 min

A documentary that follows Israel and Frania Rubinek on their emotional return journey to Poland to reunite with the woman who saved their lives 40 years earlier.

Scary Tales

1987 • 22 min

1987 demo version of Doug Ulrich's film Scary Tales from 1993.