Radically ahead of its time in its candor and compassion, this groundbreaking documentary follows a group of transgender individuals struggling to make their way in every strata of 1980s America. From finding employment to finding acceptance, WHAT SEX AM I? gives empathetic voice to the everyday challenges faced by trans people decades before issues of gender identity were widely discussed in the mainstream.Read More »
1981-1990
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Lee Grant – What Sex Am I? (1985)
1981-1990DocumentaryLee GrantThe Female GazeUSA -
Marcell Jankovics – Fehérlófia AKA Son of the White Mare (1981)
Marcell Jankovics1981-1990AnimationHungaryQuote:
The history of Hungarian animation begins in 1914 and carries through to the modern day. Starting with short promotional cartoons prior to the two World Wars, Hungarian animation underwent a sporadic and halting development during the turbulent war years which were characterized in large part by the emigration of much of the field’s top talent. This exodus slowed dramatically during the 1950s when the Hungarian Communist Party took power and the Iron Curtain took shape.Read More » -
Takashi Ito – Miira no yume AKA The Mummy’s Dream (1989)
Takashi Ito1981-1990ExperimentalJapanShort Film

Takashi Ito wrote:
The filmic version of a city in which all surface beauty has rotted away. In order to find images of death like landscapes of the city from which people have vanished, and buildings from which the decorations have been stripped away and the inner organs exposed, I walked all over Tokyo taking photographs, then animated them.Read More » -
Bohdan Kosinski – Narodziny Solidarnosci AKA The Birth of Solidarity (1981)
Bohdan Kosinski1981-1990DocumentaryPolandPoliticsQuote:
A film showing the social mood and tensions in the period between the end of the strikes in August 1980 and the registration of the Solidarity Trade Union in November 1980.The film won awards, among others:
1981 – Kraków (Kraków Film Festival – Polish Competition; until 2000 National Short Film Festival) – “Bronze Lajkonik” Award in the documentary film category for Bohdan KosińskiRead More » -
Takashi Ito – Wall (1987)
Takashi Ito1981-1990ExperimentalJapanShort Film

Takashi Ito wrote:
The further developed and completed version of a 15-second advertisement for an interior design firm on which I had worked. It repeats over and over again the violent back-and-forth, half-revolving motions of a giant brick storehouse inside the frame of a hand-held photograph. I wanted to emphasis the flat nature of the photograph while creating a dynamic feeling of depth inside the photograph’s frame.Read More » -
Alexander Kluge – Vermischte Nachrichten AKA Miscellaneous News [+Extras] (1986)
Alexander Kluge1981-1990ArthouseDramaGermany

Quote:
Let’s follow the lady announcer and listen to some stories: the one about Max the waiter and the black lady or the one about Nina Petrovna, or others about soldier lost at Stalingrad, about the sick woman, or the European military conventions and Helmut Schmidt’s visit to Erich Honecker.Read More » -
Werner Herzog – Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen AKA Where the Green Ants Dream [+Commentary] (1984)
Werner Herzog1981-1990ArthouseDramaGermany

Quote:
The geologist Lance Hackett is employed by an Australian mining company to map the subsoil of a desert area covered with ant hills prior to a possible uranium extraction. His work is impeded by some aborigines who explain that this is the place where the green ants dream. Disturbing their dreaming will destroy humanity they claim. Hackett informs the company which offers various “solutions” such as a large amount of money or a percentage of a possible revenue. Invited on a trip to a city some of the aborigines sees a military aeroplane and express the wish to own it. The company buys it and gives it to the aborigines as a sign of good will. A runway is made in the desert and the plane is flown to the location. All negotiations concerning the area fail and the dispute goes to a court of the Commonwealth. Parties and experts are heard, obstacles are met such as an aborigine who is the sole survivor of his tribe (and language) and therefore no-one understands what he is saying.Read More » -
Béla Tarr – Kárhozat AKA Damnation [5:3] (1988) (HD)
Béla Tarr1981-1990ArthouseDramaHungaryQuote:
Damnation tells the story of Karrer (Miklós B. Székely), a depressed man in love with a married torch singer (Vali Kerekes) from a local bar, the Titanik. The singer breaks off their affair, because she dreams of becoming famous. Karrer is offered smuggling work by Willarsky (Gyula Pauer), a local bartender. Karrer offers the job to the singer’s husband, Sebestyén (György Cserhalmi). This gets him out of the way, but things don’t go as Karrer plans. Betrayals follow. Karrer despairs.Read More » -
Hideo Gosha – Kai aka Oar (1985)
Hideo Gosha1981-1990AsianDramaJapanKiwa is Iwago’s devoted wife. A former wrestling champion, he has become a ‘zegen’ : He buys young girls from poor families to sell them to geisha houses. He is quite successful but Kiwa, though she accepts his money, loathes his work. One day Iwago comes back with a young girl he’s bought from a man who wanted to sell her in China. They adopt her and she raises her, as a respectable girl, with her two sons. But Iwago wants to manage the career of a singer who becomes his mistress and the situation becomes very tense in the couple. This is the third and last adaptation of Tomiko Miyao (mostly autobiographical) novels about the world of prostitution and yakuzas in Kochi by Gosha.Read More »




