All Films

Deutsche Weihnacht

1989 • 58 min

A german christmas video tape, accompanied by music and christmas poems.

The Last Battle

1989 • 10 min • Soviet Union

Two military men, who live in the neighborhood, lack the past battles and exciting events. And they manage to avoid routine. For example, one uses his ability to control cockroaches, and the second pushes his army of flying insects against the first one. A crushing battle begins.

Incompatible with Life

1989 • 15 min • Soviet Union

An accident on a gas pipeline near the Chelyabinsk-Ufa railway section leads to a powerful explosion and fire in two passenger trains, Novosibirsk-Adler and Adler-Novosibirsk.

Umbabarauma

1989 • 4 min • United Kingdom

This film, set to Ponta de Lanca Africano (Umbabarauma) by Jorge Ben, was created to accompany Beleza Tropical: Brazil Classics 1, the first in a series of albums compiled by David Byrne to promote the unique music published by Brazilian artists during a repressive period of military rule in the 1970’s-1980’s. The aim was to visually invoke the album’s sensual and lyrical breadth and depth, and to subtly reflect the underlying social and political issues of that time.

Nick: The Film

1989 • 10 min

A one-boy monologue about the shape of things in his life circa 1989.

Because We Must

1989 • 50 min • United Kingdom

The Michael Clark Dance Group perform to the music of T.Rex, Chopin, the Beatles and the Velvet Underground.

Julie and Carol: Together Again

1989 • 60 min • United States of America

Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews join forces for their third TV Special. Following the format of their first two specials, Julie and Carol: Together Again is an entertaining hour of comedy, song, and dance, featuring clips from their first performances together, an extended medley of 70s and 80s hit songs and even riotous a rap number!

The Magic Portal

1989 • 16 min • Australia

An astronaut and his crew venture into a portal and encounter some strange occurrences.

Mister Power

1989 • 15 min • Brazil

On the day of a bus strike, a bourgeois man takes a ride on a waste picker's wagon.

Iranian Nights

1989 • 56 min • United Kingdom

A Channel Four special presentation of the Royal Court Theatre 1989 production, London. with Paul Bhattacharjee, Nabil Shaban and Fiona Victory. "Iranian Nights" was a play written and produced as a direct response by writers and artists to the notorious Feb 14 1989 Fatwa (a sentence of death) from Iran's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, placed on Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses", regarded by fundamentalist Muslims as blasphemous.

Something like Hyde Park

1989 • 19 min • Bulgaria

In the weeks and months surrounding the overthrowing of Bulgaria's socialist dictatorship, the public's taste for democratic discussion begs to be sated. Kiryakov's camera walks through Sofia's South Park as it turns into a hotbed for ideological debate and picketing, where citizens from all walks of life share their hopes despite the winter weather.

Kimi to boku

1989 • 60 min • Japan

"Junai" is a bar run by Okama's mom and is crowded day and night with male and female couples and gay men. The Miss Pure Love Contest is scheduled to be held soon, and Yamakawa, a regular customer who is obsessed with Kimitaro, an employee of the store, boasts that Kimitaro will be the one chosen again this year. Kimitaro, who had an early shift that day, left Goro, his junior, to handle the rest of the customer service, and got into the car of his girlfriend, Yukio, who had come to pick him up. The two went to see the sea at night and kissed in the car without paying attention to the people around them.

Queensrÿche: Video:mindcrime

1989 • 36 min • United States of America

Compilation of music videos for the US heavy metal band Queensrÿche's classic 1988 concept album Operation: Mindcrime about disillusioned Nikki, brainwashed by sinister Dr. X to kill for him. Nikki falls for one of his targets - nun Mary.

Frida

1989 • 40 min

Frida is 11 years old and on the threshold of adolescence. Her older sister Kaisa is into boys and sticky, romantic youth magazines. Frida thinks Kaisa is behaving very stupidly and she herself has never intended to be like that.

Crimes Against Pussycat

1989 • 2 min • United Kingdom

Experimental short.

First Date

1989 • 4 min

1989 (United States)

Ribnitz-Damgarten

1989 • 22 min • East Germany, Germany

Ribnitz-Damgarten, the jewel at the coast of the Baltic Sea, is located directly at the Saaler Bodden, between Stralsund and Rostock. The town and its surrounding area are made for vacationing. This documentary from 1989 also shows the other side, like, for example, how the increasing population density and the industrial production influence the ecological balance of the region. A community for the protection of the Bodden landscape is actively making an effort for conservation. At the institute for deep-sea fishery, research about the fish population is conducted, and agriculture as well is looking for solutions to preserve an intact environment.

Max Miller: I Like The Girls Who Do

1989 • 40 min

A celebration of Max Miller , comedian and star. Presented by Gerald Scarfe with Max Bygraves Charlie Chester , Doris Hare Jean Kent , Alec McCowen, Tommy Trinder , Max Wall, Bernie Winters and Max Miller 'I'm ready for bed - anybody?' Max Miller , dazzling in chintz and gaudy plus-fours, one foot on the footlights, leering and howling with delight, confronted his audience. Sexual innuendo was his game. He trod a dangerous line, just this side of respectability, across the Music Halls of the 30s and 40s. On the stage of the Hackney Empire, with chorus girls and full supporting acts, Gerald Scarfe re-creates Max Miller 's rise from the back streets of Brighton to the top of the bill. The most outrageous comedian of his day, Max was banned by the BBC, in trouble over the Royal Command Performance, admired and hated by the comics of his age - and ours

Urusei Yatsura: The Electric Household Guard

1989 • 30 min • Japan

Mendou hires a new personal Ninja with some very unusual abilities, only to have him fall head-over-heels for his manipulative sister, Ryoko.

Lighthearted Nation

1989 • 57 min

This documentary is an insightful look into the Duplex Nursing Home in Massachusetts and the resident contributors to the Duplex Planet. Director Jim McKay interviews David Greenberger, the magazine's founder and member of the band Men & Volts. The real stars of this documentary-essay, however, are the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, who offer interesting anecdotes and opinions on subjects ranging from their mothers, moon-walking and fortune tellers, to their attitudes about life. This work also includes a special tribute to Duplex resident-poet Ernest Noyes Brookings. As director, McKay does not attempt to mediate the experience or moralize on why the lives represented in this tape are significant or worthwhile, he simply lets them speak for themselves.

Living with the Living Theatre

1989 • 29 min

One of Paik's most compelling and poignant tapes, Living with the Living Theatre pays tribute to Judith Malina and the late Julien Beck, founder of the Living Theatre. Reversing the theme of the earlier Allan 'n' Allen's Complaint, which dealt with two artists and their relationships to their fathers, Paik explores Malina and Beck's relationship to their children. Interviews provide the memories of actual lives lived together, while Betsy Connors' animated sequences transcend the specific to suggest the universality of childhood. Garrin and Paik edit these elements into an electronic synthesis that is at times dizzyingly psychedelic and always affectionate towards its subjects. Infused with personal and cultural memories that evoke time and place — Janis Joplin concert footage, Living Theatre performances — Paik creates a haunting and deeply moving homage.

At One View

1989 • 7 min

Two men in chairs by the open hearth; photos move in front of their heads.

The Fairies

1989 • 5 min

Based on a tale by Charles Perrault, Tom Rubnitz's The Fairies comes complete with frogs, princes, kind fairies, and evil stepsisters—all costumed à la Rubnitz. Featuring Sister Dimension as the fairy godmother, Michael Clark, and others, the tape playfully illustrates a familiar fairytale moral, as each person gets what they deserve. The evil girl spits up toads, while flowers and jewels emerge from the mouth of Matilda the Good, and a dancing prince carries her away.

Dreaming Rivers

1989 • 33 min • United Kingdom

A bittersweet and nostalgic short drama illustrating the spirit of modern families touched by the experience of migration. Miss T., from the Caribbean, lives alone in her one-room apartment, her children and husband having left her to pursue new dreams. When she dies her family and friends gather at her wake. The tapestry of words that interweave the drama convey the fragments of a life lived, but only partly remembered.