All Films

The Game

1985 • 8 min • Soviet Union

About good needle and thread create comfort and beauty around, and harmful and cruel scissors try to stop them. The characters embroidered with a needle and thread have their personalities, and they want to have fun and do good, but they have to hide from the scissors that destroy everything on their path. Will they be able to defeat the evil, having won the right to exist?

John Cage Performs James Joyce

1985 • 15 min • United States of America, Japan

A voice performance by John Cage who "reads", "vocalizes" and "whispers" in three different manners his artificial language taken from "Finnegens Wake" by James Joyce. Cage freely composed the letters according to a chance operation using the I-Ching.

Louie Bluie

1985 • 60 min • United States of America

Crumb director Terry Zwigoff’s first film is a true treat: a documentary about the obscure country-blues musician and idiosyncratic visual artist Howard “Louie Bluie” Armstrong, member of the last known black string band in America. As beguiling a raconteur as he is a performer, Louie makes for a wildly entertaining movie subject, and Zwigoff honors him with an unsentimental but endlessly affectionate tribute. Full of infectious music and comedy, Louie Bluie is a humane evocation of the kind of pop-cultural marginalia that Zwigoff would continue to excavate in the coming years.

The Drip

1985 • 14 min • Ireland

McAdam’s debut, a comical short, about Jack (Jack Lynch, who co-wrote the film) and the catastrophic effects of a night’s drinking. This marked McAdam’s first film collaboration with actors Donal O’Kelly and Pom Boyd.

The Perforated Epoch

1985 • 15 min

In 2056, a scientist will receive the risky task of resuming the excavations of the Meyeratelies in 2056.

Dhaulagiri, Mountain of Winds

1985 • 27 min • France

In October 1984, Pierre Béghin, an engineer from Grenoble, and Jean-Noël Roche, a high-mountain guide, completed the Himalayan ascent of Dhaulagiri (8,172 m). The expedition's context: seven people crossed Nepal to Muri, collected accounts from trekkers—including that of the author Robert Rieffel—and attended Sherpa prayers at base camp. Then, the two of them embarked on a rocky and snowy route without supplemental oxygen. At over 5,000 meters, on the mountain of winds, Jean-Noël Roche made a paragliding flight. The climbers brought back footage with their Super 8 camera from 6,500 meters, but only photographs have been able to confirm their presence on the summit ridge of the seventh highest peak in the world.

The 29 Minute Workout

1985 • 30 min • United States of America

Goodtimes Home Video brings you this 29-minute long aerobic workout that is straight out of the 1980s.

Ett porträtt av John E. Franzén

1985 • 45 min • Sweden

About the artist John-Erik Franzén and his work to portray the Swedish Royal family 1984-85.

Do You Know Where Herr Kisch Is?

1985 • 19 min • Czechoslovakia, East Germany

The “Raging Reporter” Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948) was one of the most significant journalists of the 1920s and 30s. He wrote from a communist point of view, in language that sparkled with humor. Historic photographs and footage describe Kisch’s eventful journalistic and political life, which brought him to important cities including Berlin, Moscow, Sydney, and New York.

Where the Bay Becomes the Sea

1985 • 29 min • Canada

This is a documentary about the fragile and complex marine ecosystem in the Bay of Fundy. The film traces relationships within the food chain - from tiny plankton to birds and seals and finally to whales and humans. The film is a plea for careful management of our ocean resource and was first telecast as part of CBC's Nature of Things series.

No Dance

1985 • 22 min

An experimental documentary on dancing and its part in subcultures from punk to electro.

A Greek Tragedy

1985 • 7 min • Belgium

Three scantily-clad female figures struggle to hold up the crumbling remains of an ancient Greek temple.

To Have Done With the Judgement of God

1985 • 28 min

Play by Antonin Artaud adapted for the stage and directed by Billy White.

Humor ist eine ernste Sache - Der Filmregisseur Kurt Hoffmann

1985 • 45 min • Germany

Air's Rock

1985 • 30 min • Japan

A portmanteau of two films about Uluru (then known as Ayres Rock). "A huge isolated rock in the midst of desert in Australia: Ayers Rock. I produced two films around this rock; however, the method of the filming are different. The first, "Moments At The Rock," shot with an amateur video camera, was made as a free style improvisational film. The camera got strange halations from the strong sunshine in the desert of Australia, and I was quite surprised by the result which surpassed the color change caused by nature over the rock. This film was awarded Grand Prize at the Edison International Film Festival. In "A Rock In The Light", I requested the music of Haruyuki Suzuki, a contemporary composer. This music is unified with the image, which is visually structured, setting the rock at the center, along the axis of light. For the new DVD version, I titled "Air's Rock" - Takahiko Iimura

The Death Lullaby

1985 • 27 min • Japan

The story of child violence and the national violence. And the problem of the old Japanese environmental pollution.

Glamour Night

1985 • 55 min

At the local camera club the men are arriving for a glamour session. The model is on her way. George wants a 'nice friendly evening's photography'. The others have rather different hopes.

Desperate Cat Vaska

1985 • 10 min • Soviet Union

The red-haired cat Vaska could not resist his curiosity to explore the roof of a high-rise building, from where incredible views of Kyiv can be seen. But one day the passage to the roof was blocked by a worker who was repairing antennas.

A Worst Child in the World

1985 • 57 min • Hungary

A funny comedy about a young boy who lives with the very busy parents and got all the chances to become a worst child in the world.

Bob Uecker's Wacky World of Sports

1985 • 28 min • United States of America

Here is the legendary Bob Uecker hamming it up, commentating on sports bloopers and other sports-related skits for 30 straight minutes!

Sherlock Holmes and I

1985 • 9 min • Soviet Union

Dog Tom tells a group of puppies, as well as a cat hiding in a tree, about his adventures with the great detective Sherlock Holmes.

The African Lover

1985 • 19 min • Mexico

A singer is on the run from the law and a criminal gang. She takes refuge at a hotel where she finally reveals a complex story of betrayal and revenge to the investigating detective.

Barão Vermelho 1985 - Rock in Rio

1985 • 45 min

The Brazilian hit "Barão Vermelho" makes an enigmatic show that made the history of the biggest rock festival in the country, Rock in Rio

A Hero of Our Time

1985 • 28 min

Loosely based on a section of Mikhail Lermontov's classic Russian novel of the same title, the film involves a displaced cowboy (played by Kevin Jarre, the screenwriter of Rambo), a sociopathic record producer (Dennis Hopper) and, caught between them, a gum-chewing valley girl who would rather be somewhere else (Natalie Zimmerman). Lermontov's 19th century novel leaves a vapor trail on the action, but A Hero of Our Time is more precisely a portrait of contemporary Los Angeles, a tale of wayward heroism played out against a landscape of yearning and desolation. Director/writer Michael Almereyda, whose screenplay for Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World will be produced this year, completed principal photography for A Hero of Our Time in October of 1985. Dennis Hopper's participation occurred during a break in the filming of Blue Velvet.