1981-1990

  • Jurriën Rood & Leo de Boer – De Weg naar Bresson aka The Road to Bresson (1984)

    1981-1990DocumentaryJurriën RoodLeo de BoerNetherlands

    SYNOPSIS
    The film style of Robert Bresson is the subject of this documentary tribute to the French director and screenwriter, and to his minimalist auteur films about sensitive individuals (or even animals) trying unsuccessfully to survive in a cruel world. Weg Naar Bresson is divided into several segments with specific themes, such as “camera” or “theory,” that are illustrated by film clips, and interviews with Bresson himself (a coup), and also with acclaimed directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, and Paul Schrader (who also wrote a book on three directors, including Bresson).

    – Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Various – Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986)

    1981-1990ArthouseBette GordonChantal AkermanFranceHelke SanderShort FilmUlrike Ottinger

    Quote:
    What constitutes a deadly sin today? Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film. Helke Sander (THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN) reverses GLUTTONY with her vision of Eve forcing her apples into the hands of a reluctant Adam. Bette Gordon (VARIETY, EMPTY SUITCASES) finds GREED during a fight in the ladies’ room of a luxury hotel over a lottery ticket. Strangers reply to director Maxi Cohen’s ad in a newspaper to share their litanies in ANGER. Award-winning director, Chantal Akerman, battles to overcome her SLOTH in order to complete her film, while Valie Export (INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES) strips bare notions of the skin trade in LUST. Read More »

  • Jacques Richard – Rebelote (1984)

    1981-1990ArthouseComedyFranceJacques Richard

    Quote:
    Rémi Chauveau, 10 years old, lives in a divided family. He first experiences life in a severe boarding school before living with a strict and domineering nanny. As a teenager, he assists a butcher in Paris while getting into mischiefs on saturdays which sometimes lead to the prison. One day, he meets the love of his life …Read More »

  • Terence Davies – Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaQueer Cinema(s)Terence DaviesUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    The film, depicting life in working-class Liverpool from the 1940s into the 50s, is already a modern classic.

    Now that Eileen, Maisie, and Tony are adults, their childhood memories – and in particular those associated with their father – are inconsistent. While Eileen clings to happier times, her siblings remember his brutal violent nature, which has been a major influence on their growth and development. This troubled family must deal with the day-to-day alongside their past. Terence Davies creates a loving portrait with this partly autobiographical tale (shot in two sections), and it was voted one of the greatest British films by Sight & Sound.Read More »

  • James Benning – Him and Me (1982)

    1981-1990ArthouseExperimentalJames BenningUSA

    Quote:
    In ”Him and Me,” at the Film Forum, James Benning, one of our more highly regarded experimental film makers, appears to be looking back over his life, from the 1950’s to the 80’s, recalling it in terms of public events and private sorrows, landscapes, streets, music and colors.

    I emphasize the word ”appears” because ”Him and Me” makes no attempt to be coherent in any conventional sense. The film is composed of dozens of sometimes startlingly beautiful fragments of images and sounds, involving people who are never identified, sometimes accompanied by off-screen voices that may take the form of first-person reminiscences or of inconclusive conversations.Read More »

  • Nobuhiko Obayashi – Noyuki Yamayuki Umibe Yuki AKA To the Fields, to the Hills, to the Beaches (1986)

    1981-1990AsianDramaJapanNobuhiko Obayashi

    During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her. With surprising moments of caricature and slapstick, Obayashi celebrates the anarchic world of adolescence while also satirizing adult hypocrisy and conformism.Read More »

  • Ali Badrakhan – al-Gou’ AKA The Hunger (1986)

    1981-1990Ali BadrakhanDramaEgypt

    A cinematic masterpiece produced by the revolutionary 1960s generation inspired by the folk hero myths of Nobel Prize Laureate Naguib Mahfouz. Based on his 1977 novel about the Egyptian ‘urban rabble,’ The Harafish, the film portrays the rise of a people’s hero and his rapid corruption through power. Although set in the late 19th century, ‘The Hunger’ can also be read as a commentary on present day social and political realities.Read More »

  • Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Schwarze Sünde (1990)

    1981-1990AdventureArthouseDanièle Huillet and Jean-Marie StraubItaly

    This is the Straubs’ film of Hüolderlin’s third attempt at Empedokles’s death.Read More »

  • Nicolas Humbert – Step Across the Border (1990)

    1981-1990ArthouseDocumentaryGermanyNicolas Humbert

    from imdb,
    “This film is a snapshot of the life of Fred Frith, an English-born multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improvisor. It finds him in Europe, Japan, and the US, working and playing with a variety of avant garde artists.

    There is no narrative, or narrator. The images blend with his music, and visa versa, creating a narrative all their own. His performances, widely varied, reveal a light hearted intensity. In one scene, he uses his violin to ‘sing’ with seagulls and, in another, he conducts a quartet. Most of all, it shows him as a human being whose being is infused with music. It pours out of him in all its varied forms, and he welcomes it all.Read More »

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