Cinematic Era: 1985 Vintage

A group of 10- to 14-year-old boys and girls work together to try to make wishes come true and plans come true.

Short animation movie by Valerie Swanson on Charley Booker's song "Charley's Boogie Woogie"

Horror-comedy film based on the legend of Mae Nak Phra Khanong.

Four young adults try to form meaningful relationships in a barren world of dead end jobs and awkward conversations in Greg Hanec’s acclaimed minimalist drama Downtime. The Woman (Maureen Gamelsetter) is at the center of a quartet of bewildered, though gently touching, low-income slackers and dreamers.

A film by Alain Philippon.

A drunken nightmare from a man passed out on the street of Pittsburgh's South Side

Ethopian Documentary

A meditation on both the creative and destructive powers of human nature.

This film looks at the work of three prominent lace makers in Carrickmacross, Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Mary Wilson, Mary McMahon and Rose Feeney show various intricate lacework techniques that were inspired by their natural surroundings, as well as teaching us the history and language of lace through detailed demonstrations, all captured beautifully in this film by Roy Spence for the Ulster Folk Museum. Although the popularity of lacework has declined in recent years, the Ulster Folk Museum continues to preserve these disappearing traditions for future generations.

In this documentary by Roy Spence, willow weaver Alison Fitzgerald takes the viewer through the labour intensive process of weaving a ciseog from willow rods, from her workshop Greenwood Baskets in Loughgall. A ciseog is a type of basket that is traditionally used for straining potatoes. From the cutting of the willow rods to the intricate weaving of the sally rods, we are treated to a brief history of a craft and tradition that’s admired all over the world.

Left at home by his owners, Rascal watches various shows on WDOG-TV to pass the time.

Woolly's Gift takes youngsters step by step through the making of fabric for Annie's new dress. Students see Annie and her family shear Wooly, a mother sheep, and wash the wool. They see the wool carded, spun into yarn, dyed and woven, how leftover wool was bartered, and the daily activities of a pioneer girl.

In his film work from the early 1980s, the artist used an Apple computer hooked up to a laser disc player. He scratched the laser disc, creating a stammering image, and a disconnection between time and space.

Young band musicians from the Province of Turin face the idea that they won't ever be famous.

A time-lapse document of a farmhouse in the Netherlands mapping the changing seasons, the light and shadows. Made with an interval-meter fashioned out of a wind screen wiper motor.

Short film.

Short film.

Two cosmonauts arrive on a barren world and begin a clean-up operation. In the course of their duties, they revive the planet’s civilisation and discover the real reason for its devastation- thermonuclear war. Produced after the peak of tensions in the late Cold War, this animated short from Armenfilm reflects a muted optimism that humanity might- just- avoid total destruction. It also demonstrates the strength of animation under the Soviet system, where even the smaller state studios were capable of inventive but technically polished work.

A satire of the early 1980's gay male dating scene.

Pecko has a big nose and because of that problem he has a lot of unpleasant incidents.

The Beat Farmers captured in their prime for the Live from LA Television program in 1985. Recorded at Universal Studios, Hollwood, highlights include: "There She Goes," "Powderfinger," "Riverside," Happy Boy," Gun Sale at the Church" and more!

Brazil, 1985 | 9 min.

Close childhood friends Teresa (Nora Aunor) and Cholo (Tirso Cruz III) were separated from each other for a while.

Documentary that narrates the origins and acts of the Shining Path and the injustices committed by the Armed Forces at the time of the internal armed conflict in Peru. The acts of the former will be seen in Lima and Ayacucho, and the latter mostly in Ayacucho.

M.I.T linguist, social critic, and influential author and radical thinker, Noam Chomsky discusses U.S. foreign policy towards Central America through deconstruction of an article published in the New York Times discussing the Nicaraguan conflict of the mid-1980s. By examining this article alongside the reality of the conflict, Chomsky illustrates two propagandistic strategies which the New York Times, a publication which for all practical purposed writes history, utilizes in order to support the ethical flaws of U.S. foreign policy towards Central America.

The film was commissioned by South West Arts and Watershed as a community project celebrating the longest day of the year, 21st June in Bristol, UK, 1985. The project was shot on Super 8mm film, edited on video and played later on a screen as part of a photographic exhibition at Watershed Media Centre.

Our hero stumbles across the road looking for the other side. He walks into a smoky pub while wandering in the city at night.

"This tape is comprised of a sensual drift of images which allude to or trace evidence of psychic energy that surfaces within the image. The tape begins with a tableau of architectural stone to a saxophone player (Charlie Braden, a musician from Minneapolis) who is playing through a 34 foot elevated rectangular tube wood structure. The intention was to support a "physical soundtrack." The piece then moves to an outdoor garden restaurant setting during the credits, where a mental patient speaks of various subjects, shifting the emphasis away from the previous content." - David Askevold

Manipur, which became a state of India in 1972, abounds in natural beauty in the north-eastern region. As mythology goes,God Nongpokingthou and Goddess Panthoibi created Manipur in their cosmic dance for the happiness of ancient tribes. This film has a panoramic view of life, culture of Manipur and various developments that have taken place since 1972.

Tell Me a Story, Sing Me a Song showcases the work of three theater companies that performed together in the mid-1980s as a way to celebrate cultural pluralism and bring theater from diverse cultural traditions to underserved audiences. Members of Junebug Productions, A Traveling Jewish Theater, and Appalshop's Roadside Theater are seen in this program in performance excerpts, interviews, and playing to a group of Calhoun County, Alabama fifth and sixth graders. The program explores how different cultural groups within the United States can use the performing arts to maintain and promote their own cultural identity while also addressing the mainstream. A film by Dudley Cocke, Anne Johnson, and Susan Wehling.

"Breaking Silence" is a searingly compelling assessment of the sexual abuse of children as told through well-compacted, sensitively ping-ponged first-person narratives of adults.

Short film by Shin Harada, Single-8, produced in 1985. This work was produced under the condition of a 3-minute frame for the exhibition of the event "First Pictures Show" in the Department of Imaging, Osaka University of Arts.

A short animation with photo collage, scratch, watercolour painting.

A love triangle between Carlinhos, Fernanda and Rosa. Carlos is a medical student in Porto and he is engaged to Fernanda. They’re both from wealthy families and their engagement has everyone's approval but, when he meets Rosa Maria, modest and kind, Carlos begins to doubt his path. Torn between two women and two lives, which will Carlinhos choose?

Mixed-media installation with tape slide. An examination of the historical legacies of the British Empire and the impact of these legacies within the contemporary context.

This dreamlike, hypnotic work is structured in four sections, each of which repeats, in various permutations, key visual and verbal systems. Part One introduces the main theme — a poetic text, music, and a set of images that relate to language play in the text. The sections Key/Code, Translations and Adagio systematically translate and abstract these elements, as in a theme and variations. Images and spoken text are subtly interwoven in an insistent rhythm of sonic and visual codes, a language of "telling motions" and gestures: A gyroscope turns in a shaft of light, hands twist in slow motion, a figure signals with flags on a train track. Seaman writes that he "explores repetition and change based on context and treatment, (and) the relative nature of time."

A naked woman in the water, two women caressing each other in a pool without water, a woman in a cage, four half-naked women standing in a room. The fragmentary images of the various women are chained together in a discontinuous manner, and as a whole, a dry eroticism with ambiguous meaning drifts from the screen. The laughter, murmurs, and screams of the women overlap to form a unique internal world that the artist, a woman, has captured with her physiological sensibility. A film that attempts to confirm the uncertainty of our existence.

A young girl named Mu lives alone on the roof of a building. She is a whale from the sea. She has a black back and a white belly. One day, her back wants to meet her belly." Eventually, the girl's inner world slips away to the outside... This is a problematic work of "women's cinema" that reconstructs the subconscious of a young girl who is changing into an adult with symbolic images. Based on a psychological approach, the film weaves a unique fairy tale or nightmare with a multiple structure.

On a hot summer day, a camera climbs up a tree after hearing the unusual cicada cry, and catches a duel between a cicada and a praying mantis. Not wanting to miss the moment, the camera clung desperately to the tree, trying to get as close to the target as possible. The camera's breath is vividly conveyed on the screen of the same recording, and along with the tragic cries of the cicadas that have fallen prey to the mantis, we are forced to experience three minutes of tension. At the end, the artist's bloodied leg is painful.

Two girls fail the entrance exam to a public high school and are forced to enter an all-girls school. A slapstick comedy about two girls who make a bet to see who will get a boyfriend first. The daily lives of the girls are depicted in an amusing manner, almost in a dotsuki manzai style. The sheer energy of the "life-sized girls," played by the author herself, breaks through the fiction of the story, and the dynamism of their bodies and words is very refreshing.

The silhouette of a man takes a few steps away from the camera, 'into' the image. His back is to the audience as he seemingly stares into the same view that we, the audience, see around him. There he stands, partially obscuring the image that is now projected over him. His body is almost still in contrast to the jerky, handheld footage which was filmed walking through what appears to be a cemetery. A second scene takes us down a long (underground?) corridor illuminated by strip lights. Throughout the film, the camera is in constant motion, penetrating forward, at times looking out from a moving vehicle. The sound we hear could simply be that of a running projector, but in combination with these murky images, a more ominous, foreboding atmosphere is implied.

Working "in film," interweaving projected parts of the film, the filmmaker approaches a memory and repeatedly indicates how the seeing and the seen are cyclically superimposed in the image. A fast drive, a road cuts through the man's silhouette. The gaze advances through a young forest, following a woman from above who soon reveals her calm, bright face from up close, alternating with that of the man. We advance slowly down a hallway, the woman's face in double exposure. Viewed in close-up, a row of lamps creates sections and perspectives. Hovering lights appear in succession. Steps and a pumping pulsation lead to a car ride, while the white section of the sky bleaches the woman's image.

An elderly woman takes a job as a housekeeper in an elegant villa.

This video portrait of two gay 15-year-old Latino youths blends documentary style with fantasy segments in which the boys act out their "wild" day in Los Angeles. We see them change into their "wild style" clothes on the street, cruise around "gay city," and "throw attitude" with friends at the gay park. Along the way they answer questions about the nature of being gay, relationships with friends and lovers, style and image, and their use of gay language. As the piece progresses, the positions of fact and fiction overlap, highlighting the contradictions in their stories and in the artist's own method of constucting this "wildlife documentary."

An Animated Short Film by Pacific Data Images.

Read-along and sing-along for preschoolers.

At the time of his death in 1985, Enver Hoxha, along with Fidel Castro, was one of the world’s longest-ruling absolute dictators. This doc highlights the cult-like, nearly religious fervor that accompanied the passing of the seventy-six year old Hoxha, a three pack a day smoker and diabetic who’d already suffered two heart attacks and a stroke. Though the funeral and burial were carefully choreographed, amid the uncontrollable sobbing is a traumatized Albania uncertain of what the future holds.

Literally, ‘Together in Life, United in Death.' Writing found on a gravestone in a cemetery in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. Death's shadow everywhere.

Woman seeks revenge on the two gangsters that killed her parents.

The story and personal reminiscences of the children, now grown, of those who worked at Cape Canaveral during the golden age of space missions and exploration, or the heydays of American space program.

Recorded Live at Tsubaki House January 17th 1985

Two AIDS sufferers recount their experiences battling the disease and society’s misconceptions.

Super 8mm. Details and duration unknown.