All Films

The Best of Max Headroom

1987 • 53 min • Japan, United Kingdom

Some of the best bits from 'The Max Headroom Show'.

Stalin's Sickle

1987 • 26 min • New Zealand

It is 1962. New Zealand is emerging from the austerity of the 1950s into a new age. Daniel is a nine-year-old Catholic boy, an only child given to colourful imaginings. He discovers that an old man who passes the plate in church bears a striking resemblance to the great Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin. Daniel starts to believe that the old man really is Stalin, come to take over New Zealand. Daniel takes it upon himself to give Stalin a fright and send him on his way. He hits on a method of doing so after finding where the old man lives and spying on him. Stalin is banished, but events take a strange twist, leaving Daniel with an even worse threat to deal with.

Model

1987 • 9 min • Japan

Animation using photos and copies. The double image on the left and right makes the woman's face change rapidly.

Dialogue (A Mole and an Egg)

1987 • 6 min • Soviet Union

The blind mole and the not hatched chick are having a fascinating conversation about what the world is like.

The Hospice

1987 • 55 min • United Kingdom

When he loses his way on a country road and is bitten by an animal, Maybury stumbles across a strange house where an extravagant dinner is taking place.

Professor Taranne

1987 • 51 min • France

Professor Taranne, a conceited university Professor, is subject to several absurd and disquieting incidents from the world surrounding him. He is being accused of things he couldn't have been doing. He starts doubting himself - a self that might be fragmented or multiple.

Smith and Jones: The Home-Made Xmas Video

1987 • 30 min • United Kingdom

Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jone star in festive special about a family with a video camera. Christmas usually means a little over-indulgence, but to the Aldershot family it is an orgy of hitherto uncharted proportions.

Hina

1987 • 3 min • Japan

Experimental work by Isao Yamada (Color, 8mm).

Savannah: The Video Postcard

1987 • 31 min • United States of America

In this box is a videotape you would have made of Savannah if you had vision of an artist, the expertise of a master technician, the very finest equipment, unlimited funds, and all the time in the world. Two years in the making, Savannah, The Video Postcard is a portrait of timeless beauty. All of the romance, magic, and charm that made Savannah the first Lady of the south have been captured by award winning videographer Mickey Youmans. Here is Savannah just as you remember it...and as you've never seen it before: A visual feast, in glorious color, in perfect light, in idea whether, in just the right season. Savannah, The Video Postcard is no mere than travelogue, but an aesthetic experience to be savored again and again.

Monsters, Maniacs and Moore

1987 • 39 min • United Kingdom

1987 documentary featuring comic book writer Alan Moore.

Huey Lewis and the News: Before!

1987 • 31 min • United States of America

Huey Lewis And The News: BEFORE! follows one of the world’s top rock-and-roll bands of the 80’s and a crew of fifty technicians to the Bahamas for the making of a music video for their number one hit single, “Stuck With You” for their album, “FORE!” Blank takes us behind the scenes for an off-beat look at what happens when a song is transformed into visuals and musicians are transformed into actors. Hidden in the straightforward reportage are sly comments on the MTV machine, sexism in the media, and the business of rock-and-roll. Best of all, Huey Lewis and the News maintain their sense of humor even when absurdity threatens to overwhelm them.

The Red Forest: An Oracle in Nine Illustrations

1987 • 34 min • Denmark

With the relationship between mother and daughter as a common theme, the film is divided into 9 image rooms with action patterns that are based on archetypal images and motifs. The film is unconventional in its choice of means of action. Ursula Reuter Christiansen, who is a painter, tells her adventurous stories with an emphasis on the visual element, which works in interaction with Henning Christiansen's original soundtrack. (DFI)

Kimagure Orange☆Road: Tanabata Special

1987 • 40 min • Japan

Tanabata is approaching but Kyousuke, being his usual indecisive self, is unable to invite Madoka to a concert and later gets beaten up after making Hikaru cry. In a hospital room Madoka approaches a sleeping Kyousuke, and then...

Вера и Анфиса тушат пожар

1987 • 9 min • Soviet Union

The Laughing Prisoner

1987 • 41 min • United Kingdom

A funny remake of "The Prisoner" - with a 1980's twist to it 'The Laughing Prisoner' is a remake (or homage) of (to) the Kafkaesque 1960's television show 'The Prisoner' with Patrick McGoohan in the lead role. This time it is a successful television presenter (Jools Holland) who decides to quit at the height of his stardom. He is abducted from his apartment and brought to the village, where number 2 (a young Stephen Fry) is questioning him. The whole show has a cosy 1980's feel to it, with several bands from that period performing their music.

Lewd Peach: Mai Hayami

1987 • 30 min • Japan

Erotic-drama distributed by Nikkatsu for home video.

Not a Jealous Bone

1987 • 11 min • United States of America

Invoking a biblical story of life coming from dry bones, Condit constructs an experimental narrative about an older woman’s confrontation with her own mortality after the death of her mother. The bone represents the promise of youth and hope—a promise jealously coveted by the young, but needed more by those grown old. Inverting cultural values, Condit represents feminine youth as a mannequin, and seeks humanity in the form of the older woman, who is reborn by overcoming her fear of death.

There used to be another time

1987 • 17 min • Soviet Union

The story unfolding during one day, tells about the male vileness and ever-hard female share ... The action takes place against the background of the first hits of the young group "Nautilus Pompilius" ...

The Best of Electric Blue 08

1987 • 53 min • United Kingdom

Sensuous Stewardess with Kitten Natividad, Lois Ayres, Michelle Bauer & Julia Parton

Reel Six: Charles Ludlam’s Grand Tarot

1987 • 8 min • Argentina

The New York underground linked the paths of the actor and playwright Charles Ludlam, the superstar of avant-garde cinema Mario Montez and the Argentine artist Leandro Katz. An underground community found refuge in a porn cinema that Ludlam rented at night to stage his theater of the ridiculous. In 1970 he premiered The Grand Tarot, an extravagant burlesque where the arcana became characters and a reading of cards before the performance began established the order of the scenes. Rollo Six materializes that furtive experience, recovering in its formal commitment the inventiveness of chance that guided Ludlam's work. Katz superimposes edited scenes in camera, fracturing the screen through the use of masks that cover the lens and allow him to separately expose each corner of the frame.

Secrets of the Unknown: Amelia Earhart

1987 • 26 min • United States of America

Amelia Earhart explores the mysterious disappearance of America's beloved aviator during a highly publicized around-the-world flight in 1937. Since she vanished, speculation on the flight pioneer's demise has been an ongoing source of controversy.

Double Portrait

1987 • 5 min • Japan

"Double Portrait" and "I Love You" are a paired piece with Akiko Iimura. Both Iimuras play individually as well as a unit. In "Double Portrait" they are never together, but one by one in three points of view, front, side, and back, assigned to the words "I", "You" and "He/She" respectively. The pronouns rotate with every repetition, for instance, in front view with "You", then "He/She" and back to "I". Often the words are destroyed acoustically making them unintelligible. "I Love You" is not a style of confession, but the words, and a linguistic practice using a sentence and shifting the pronouns.

Milk House Dreaming: Ai no Shiki

1987 • 43 min • Japan

Original video animation, setting watercolors from Yumiko Kawahara's 1983 manga to a series of 11 pop songs.

Persia, the Magic Fairy: Merry-go-Round

1987 • 45 min • Japan

A recap of the TV series with six and a half minutes of new footage.