1980s

  • Gillian Leahy – My Life Without Steve (1986)

    1981-1990ArthouseAustraliaGillian Leahy

    An essay film, staged as a short drama deploying a first person, diary film narration over exquisitely designed object oriented “still life” tableaus, Gillian Leahy’s My Life Without Steve (1986) was a sensational hit in the mid-1980s. It won the Grand Prix and the Irwin Rado Award for Best Australian Film at the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the General Category of the Greater Union Awards (today’s Dendy Awards) at the Sydney Film Festival. The film screened widely and generated passionate debate.Read More »

  • Takashi Ishii – Tenshi no harawata: Akai memai AKA Angel Guts: Red Vertigo (1988)

    1981-1990EroticaExploitationJapanTakashi Ishii

    Nami is a nurse and the unwilling object of her patients’ lust. When she is hit by a car whilst fleeing from the home of her unfaithful boyfriend, the driver of the car takes her as a sexual prisoner.Read More »

  • Tatsumi Kumashiro – Bedtime Eyes (1987)

    1981-1990AsianJapanTatsumi Kumashiro

    Based on a polemic novel by Amy Yamada, Bedtime Eyes is about the intense love relationship between a second rate Japanese jazz singer and a black American GI on the margins of the law.Read More »

  • Jeff Kanew – Gotcha! (1985)

    1981-1990ActionComedyJeff KanewUSA

    Jonathan plays a game called Gotcha in which he hunts and is hunted by other students with paint guns. After a big win, he goes off for a vacation in France where he meets the sexy Sasha who says she is only interested in him because he is a virgin. She takes him with her to East Germany where they are separated and he has to escape back to the west on his own, all the while being trailed by East German spies. He arrives home only to find the game is still going on, and a canister of film is in his backpack. Then Sasha re-appears.Read More »

  • Joe D’Amato – L’Alcova AKA The Alcove (1984) (DVD)

    1981-1990EroticaExploitationItalyJoe D'Amato

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    Written by Thomas Simmons (IMDB)

    An English soldier (Cliver) returns home from the Zulu war with the daughter of a tribal king (Gemser) as his slave (a gift that he was given for “saving” the kings life). The spoils of war, ya know? While he’s been gone, his wife has been having an affair with the female housekeeper (Belle). Not at all pleased with being a slave, the Ebony princess notices the mistress of the house engaging in a quick bit of foreplay with the housekeeper and plots her revenge starting with the seduction of the mistress. Jealousy spreads like wildfire and before you know it, she has turned the household into a lustful frenzy of sex and hatred. I can’t give away too much more or it would ruin the story, but there are plenty of little twists along the way. Speaking of twists, this film is actually far more twisted than it sounds. One of the more disturbing moments being a sequence about the filming of an inquisition-themed porno that turns into the sadistic rape of a lesbian / virgin by the filthy and none too bright gardener. Sporting tons of full-frontal nudity, simulated lesbian and straight sex and some hard-core (as seen in an old stag film), this has the sleazy goods to go along with the D.H. Lawrence-ish setting and atmosphere, and is definitely recommended for fans of such. Read More »

  • R. Bruce Elder – Lamentations a Monument for the Dead World (1985)

    1981-1990CanadaExperimentalR. Bruce Elder

    Quote:
    MONOGRAPH is pleased to present a new restoration of R. Bruce Elder’s epic 1985 film Lamentations: A Monument to the Dead World. The restoration was undertaken as part of a larger project to restore and preserve Elder’s monumental film cycle The Book of All the Dead, by filmmaker and scholar Stephen Broomer and the Gatineau Preservation Centre. Lamentations has a total running time of 435-minutes and is composed of two parts. Part one: The Dream of the Last Historian (195-minutes) will commence at 1:00pm followed by an evening intermission. The film will resume at 6:00pm with part two: The Sublime Calculation (240-minutes). There will be an encore presentation on Saturday April 6, 2019, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge.Read More »

  • Ruy Guerra – Kuarup (1989)

    Drama1981-1990BrazilPoliticsRuy Guerra

    Another rare movie of a great brazilian author, Ruy Guerra. Adapted from the famous book of Antonio Callado. The history of Nando, a priest who goes preach in the Xingu River region, an almost unexplored place, and becomes a political actor. But, in the same time, he sees come to the light an internal sexual conflict.Read More »

  • Theodoros Angelopoulos – Taxidi sta Kythira AKA Voyage to Cythera (1984)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaGreeceTheodoros Angelopoulos

    Quote:
    Spyros (Manos Katrakis), a political refugee, returns to his homeland in his old age after many years in exile. His return is thorny, as even his wife (Ntora Volanaki) is like a stranger to him. Spyros no longer belongs to his society or his land; he is a man without nationality whose heart beats in the past, an Ulysseus who returns to a home that no longer exists.Read More »

  • Satyajit Ray – Pikoor Diary (1980)

    1971-1980IndiaSatyajit RayShort Film

    Quote:
    “Pikoo is a very complex film by Satyajit Ray. It is a poetic statement which cannot be reduced to concrete terms. One statement the film tries to make is that, if a woman is to be unfaithful, if she is to have an extramarital affair, she can’t afford to have soft emotions towards her children, or, in this case, her son. The two just don’t go together. You have to be ruthless. Maybe she’s not ruthless to that extent. She’s being very Bengali. A European in the same circumstances would not behave in the same way.”Read More »

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