All Films

Perils

1986 • 4 min • United States of America

The condensed filmic work of Abigail Child, borrowing strategies from found footage, Appropriation Art, Language Poetry and experimental music, stands a a landmark in the experimental cinema of the 1980's. The processing of interruption and fragmentation inform the series IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR?, reactivating the stakes of montage applied in different artistic practices.

Yukihiro Takahashi – Japan Tour '86

1986 • 55 min • Japan

Concert video filmed during Takahashi's 1986 tour

Hustle with My Muscle

1986 • 4 min

This rapid-montage music video for John Sex’s song “Hustle with My Muscle” portrays the singer as a ladies’ man with ample endowment to share. “Can you handle all the man below my belt?” he provocatively asks.

A Nervous Life of Cosmos

1986 • 4 min • Poland

A short black comedy movie with a scent of horror. A distant planet somewhere in space inhabited by black Characters from fairy tales.

Strange Tales

1986 • 58 min

Aliens! Junkyard hoes! This highly varied anthology of whacked out stories, some of which have no real dialogue, pretty much all of which will leave you wondering what the hell is going on. Most have really cool music that sets the mood, some genuinely creepy moments and good atmosphere throughout. The first story, "The Visitant", features a man in a cemetery visiting his dead son's grave after he died in a car accident. He is soon tormented by visions of his son, as well as other spirits, including an axe-wielding ghoul! The second story, entitled, "Desire In A Public Dump", starts out with a man in a junkyard fixating on a paper with an attractive woman on it. The picture then disappears, and the woman is suddenly in front of him!

The Spirit of Cape Verde

1986 • 28 min

Originally titled, "Espirito de Cabo Verde"

L’Amour d’Allah

1986 • 18 min

Humiliated by the 1967 defeat, the Egyptian people look for ways to rebuild their sense of identity. Religion seems to point the way for them: Jocelyne Saab portrays the success of the Muslim Brotherhood and the increasingly rigid cultural values taking over Cairo at the end of the 1980s.

Mrs. Lupe

1986 • 33 min • Mexico

Two nasty characters try to take advantage of an ageing land-lady, all but taking over her house until she has had enough and takes her revenge.

Reetta Robinson

1986 • 25 min • Finland

Reeta is on holiday with her baby brother and parents. When her parents fail to return to their isolated island house after going shopping, Reeta and her brother are marooned.

Dead Heart

1986 • 44 min • Germany

The Australians call the endless deserts in the interior of the continent the "dead heart". Here lies the town of Birdsville, 23 houses and a bar with a liquor license. The long-awaited telephone connection arrived in 1979, 90 years after it had been applied for. For one weekend, this place at the end of the world turns into a cauldron when 5,000 Australians, tired of civilization, invade for the annual horse race, the "Birdsville Cup". They come in buses, off-road vehicles, motorcycles and sports planes and have become a veritable plague. Because here, everyone can do what they've always wanted to do: for example, get drunk until they drop and never get up again. The collective mass drinking reaches its peak on Saturday night. By Monday morning, the fun is over. What remains is a village with 23 houses, a bar and a street littered with 80,000 empty beer cans.

Whistling...1985

1986 • 56 min • Japan

Is this fiction or reality? The filmmaker himself suddenly appears on screen with his real name, and the process of making a film with his friends is described. There are casual, everyday conversations with a girl who happens to be an actress and her friends. At the end, the filmmaker visits the girl's room. This is the "truth of the filmmaker's own life" captured by the camera, which moves almost continuously and without any sense of artifice. The last scene in particular is condensed and infinitely endearing.

Der Mensch ist seines Lebens froh - nicht nur als Embryo

1986 • 4 min • Germany

The London Story

1986 • 15 min • United Kingdom

A mysterious woman recruits a Cabinet doorman and an ex-civil servant for a plot to bring down the British government.

The Music Lesson

1986 • 10 min • Soviet Union

About how the Maestro toured cities with concerts, and Drakoshi’s grandmother recalled the music of her childhood and shared her impressions with her grandson and his friends.

A Letter to Fir Trees

1986 • 36 min

A spruce tree begins growing on a man's shoulder one day, forcing him into an existential predicament.

Mano Destra

1986 • 53 min • Switzerland

A lesbian art film by the Swiss filmmaker Cleo Übelmann, released in 1986. In black and white, Mano Destra (Italian for "right hand") is a study of erotic objectification which depicts one woman tying up another woman in a lengthy act of consensual bondage.

A Gottle of Geer

1986 • 43 min

Ray Alan presents a documentary about the history of ventriloquism.

Glen Campbell | Live in Dublin

1986 • 60 min

Country legend Glen Campbell performs many of his greatest hits live in front of an enthusiastic Dublin audience in this historic 1981 concert. The Grammy Award-winning artist kicks off the show with the classic "Rhinestone Cowboy," then treats Ireland to a true taste of country and blues with "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," "Country Boy," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," a bluegrass instrumental with Carl Jackson and many other favorites.

Pierre

1986 • 1 min • United States of America

John R. Dilworth's 1985 student film. A simple animation of a man smoking a cigarette, which generates a strange angry cloud of smoke.

Paddington Goes to School

1986 • 25 min • United Kingdom

The local truant officer informs Mrs. Brown (Paddington's keeper) that since he is of age, Paddington must go to school.

Terminals

1986 • 20 min • United Kingdom

A filmic exploration of the working conditions of female workers at nuclear power stations. Voices of women describe their heightened exposure to the risks of lung cancer, miscarriage, Down syndrome or neurological damage. Echoing the way that the nuclear workers’ bodies are harmed by exposure to radiations, the filmstrip is constantly overexposed, burned to the point of the image’s near disappearance. Sandra Lahire (1950-2001) was a central figure in the experimental feminist filmmaking that emerged in the UK in the 1980s. She made a number of films addressing the dangers of nuclear power.

The Town Where No One Got Off

1986 • 30 min

Provoked by the snobbish attitude of a city slicker towards the people from the countryside, a man gets off his train at a random village to confirm his positive attitude about the country folk. He's in for a surprise - but so are they.

Ralph Erskine

1986 • 58 min

The British architect based in Stockholm looks back on major projects of a long career inspired by European Modernism combined with his personal sensitivity to nature and community. Erskine is especially valued for his vital understanding of social interaction, exemplified in commissions for universities and housing complexes built from Scandinavia to Italy. The architect takes the camera on a tour of his buildings while offering revealing comments and interpretations.

William Shatner's Mysteries of the Way We Feel

1986 • 25 min • United States of America

A classroom film about the way kids feel and how to control emotions.