1980s

  • Larry Gottheim – Natural Selection (1984)

    Larry Gottheim1981-1990ExperimentalUSA

    Quote:
    Radiating from the Darwinian text-fragments outward through the material is much pictorial and spoken signifying text having to do with issues such as communication, translation, dynamics of perception, art, science, isolation and social interaction etc. In a certain sense a meaning does arise from all of this. At the same time the endless groupings and regroupings of material suggest yet another realm of meaning. Finally it is the experience of our own selection of a pattern among the myriad richness of combining materials, superimposed on my own composed pattern, that opens up the real film–L. G.Read More »

  • Rodjara – Dimorfo AKA Dimorphic (1980)

    1971-1980CampCultQueer Cinema(s)RodjaraSpain

    Quote:
    This is one of the most weird, bizarre and oscure movies from Spain. Very hard to find nowadays and a total masterpiece for the collectors of hidden spanish gems.

    The plot is about a man, Salomon, living in a hermit in the forest. He scaped from a concentration nazi camp and falls in a house in the middle of the mountains where a strange family lives there.

    Illness, Sex, Homosexuality, rape, violence… rated “S” in Spain in those years.

    The quality is very good and this is the uncut version, 95 minutes. Only for lovers of strange movies.Read More »

  • King Vidor – The Metaphor (1980)

    King Vidor1971-1980PhilosophyPhilosophy on ScreenUSA

    Andrew Wyeth’s letter to Vidor wrote:
    “For years I have wanted to write and tell you that I consider your war film The Big Parade the only truly great film ever produced. Over the years I have viewed the film many, many times and [with] each showing the certainty of its greatness deepens…I have always viewed it with awe and must tell you that in many ab­stract ways it has influenced my paintings.”Read More »

  • Patricia Mazuy – Peaux de vaches AKA Thick Skinned (1989)

    Patricia Mazuy1981-1990DramaFrance

    Plot: This brooding, enigmatic story won the 1989 Prix George Sadoul at the Cannes Film Festival, in the category “Un Certain Regard,” which focuses on “smaller” films. In the story, Gerard (Jacques Spiesser) and his wife Annie (Sandrine Bonnaire) have made a nice life for themselves on their farm. That life is disturbed by the arrival of Gerard’s older brother Roland (Jean-François Stévenin) – a brother Annie never knew existed. It gradually becomes clear that both brothers had once negligently set fire to a barn while drunk, inadvertently causing the death of a sleeping wanderer. Roland took all the blame for causing the death, and spent ten years in prison for it. Now he wants Gerard to make those years up to him. Gerard, who up until then had succeeded in putting the incident out of his mind, is now consumed by guilt, and, since he loves both his brother and his wife, doesn’t know what to do about those demands. Not only that, but he is a little bit afraid of Roland. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Antonio D’Agostino – Eva man (Due sessi in uno) [Uncut XXX Version] (1980)

    1971-1980Antonio D'AgostinoEroticaExploitationQueer Cinema(s)Spain

    Quote:
    Beautiful Eva, hermaphrodite from birth, with clear signs of both sexes, under the strict guidance of his uncle, Professor, masters the secrets of sexual energy, which give the possibility of a Superman. But an angry gangster steals it, with the help of a doctor-villain to move into the body of eve and take over the world. He tries to prevent his rival, who is going to deprive the girl masculinity and thus not to let it turn into Superman…Read More »

  • Marlon Riggs – Tongues Untied (1989)

    1981-1990DocumentaryExperimentalMarlon RiggsQueer Cinema(s)USA

    Quote:
    Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the “Institute of Snap!thology,” where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap. The film closes with obituaries for victims of AIDS and archival footage of the civil rights movement placed next to footage of Black men marching in a gay pride parade.Read More »

  • Vadim Abdrashitov – Ostanovilsya poezd AKA The Train Has Stopped (1982)

    Vadim Abdrashitov1981-1990DramaUSSR

    A 1982 Soviet drama film directed by Vadim Abdrashitov and written by Aleksandr Mindadze. The last role of actor Anatoly Solonitsyn. Before the official premiere the film was shown in spring of 1982 at the Concert Hall of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

    This movie is a typical exanple of a production drama, a type of movies associated with artistic representation in cinema (mainly in the USSR) of social relations of participants in the sphere of industrial (agricultural, resource-mining, and so on) production. They were very popular in Soviet Union from 1930s till late 1980s.Read More »

  • Anthony Spinelli – It’s Called Murder, Baby (1983)

    Anthony Spinelli1981-1990EroticaFilm NoirUSA

    This is the R-rated version of the hardcore sex film Dixie Ray, Hollywood Star. It’s of somewhat historical significance as being one of the few porno films to feature a name Hollywood actor: Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell doesn’t have any sex scenes (thankfully), but he plays a gangster boss (much like his role in My Favorite Year) in this 1940s-set period film. Star John Leslie (who does have sex scenes) plays a detective who is hired by a former movie star to find some “indiscreet” photographs of her.Read More »

  • Jesus Franco – Botas negras, látigo de cuero (1983)

    Jesus Franco1981-1990CultExploitationSpain

    Quote:
    Private eye Al Pereira was one of Jess Franco’s recurring characters – in fact, maybe his only recurring hero. A genuine noir type who always accepts cases he should have let pass, who always loses his heart to the wrong floozy fatales, who usually comes out of a case worse than he went in, he was introduced in 1962’s “077 Operacion Jamaique” with Conrado San Martin playing the part. Then Eddie Constantine took Al around the block in 1965’s “Attack of the Robots,” followed by Howard Vernon in 1972’s “Les Ebranlées” and Olivier Mathot in 1975’s “Midnight Party.” After two test drives as a similar character named Al Crosby in “La chica de las bragas transparentes” (1981) and “La noche de los sexos abiertos” (1983), Antonio Mayans resurrected the role and became its definitive interpreter in this movie. It was followed by four other adventures – the last being Franco’s very last film, the recently released “Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies” (2013).Read More »

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