1980s

Yulian Kalisher ( 1935-2007) was a relative late-bloomer in the field of puppet animation. Coming from the field of puppet theatre, where he had worked in Tasjkent, Uzbekistan and in Moscow. He was hired by the Soviet TV organisation Ecran to direct puppet-plays for TV in 1971. In 1974 he was teamed up with Youri Trofimov and co-directed 3 episodes of The Wizard of Emerald City ( see DVD 17) In 1977 he realized his first solo-direction: a feature film puppet animation after a puppet play. From then on his work always stood out for its originality and inventiveness. “A New Year’s Adventure” on DVD 20 is a good example of his work between 1977 and 1982.
Russian animation uses the words Puppets and flat Puppets (in English called Cut-out) for stop-motion techniques, and cell animation for drawn animation. Read More »

Here is a nice little student film directed by Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil). A future love story set amidst the decline of society and the rise of devastating mech wars. Stanley’s prototype for Hardware. The story and setting are consistent with Hardware for the first half, then diverge a bit more into the future wars behind the torrid love affairs and relationships of the story. Explains how Max’s (Moses’) robotic hand came to be. No killer robots, but there is a cameo of a Robotech action figure!Read More »

Here is a nice little Super-8 student film directed by and starring Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil). “Rites of Passage” feels like the result of what might happen if Derek Jarman attempted to adapt Kubrick’s 2001 into a short.

As a primordial man (Richard Stanley) wanders in the plains and forests of the Dark Continent, seemingly at the dawn of the human race, a narrator reminisces on past lives, all of which he remembers. These outspoken thoughts seem to be with the primordial man as he travels towards an unknown destination; the two co-exist simultaneously despite the gap of thousands of years. Their lives are intervowen – as they’ve always been…Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Stanley, a pianist, lives in a cheap boarding-house near the sea and never talks about himself. But the past catches up with him when Mr. Goldberg and Mr. McCann arrive – clearly, they don’t wish him well.’
– IMDbRead More »

Quote:
The wife of a barbaric crime boss engages in a secretive romance with a gentle bookseller between meals at her husband’s restaurant. Food, colour coding, sex, murder, torture and cannibalism are the exotic fare in this beautifully filmed but brutally uncompromising modern fable which has been interpreted as an allegory for Thatcherism.Read More »

Synopsis
In 1923 a Japanese comes to Munich and immediately falls in love with a street artist with a red hat, without knowing her past is. She turns to the Japanese, for the first time she thinks she has found her really great love- exotic stranger attracts her. They say a lot, but they do not understand each other – but they can show their love. Nevertheless, the relationship is doomed to failure from the beginning. Disappointment, death and loss.Read More »

Quote:
Mr. Neville, a cocksure young artist is contracted by Mrs. Herbert, the wife of a wealthy landowner, to produce a set of twelve drawings of her husband’s estate, a contract which extends much further than either the purse or the sketchpad. The sketches themselves prove of an even greater significance than supposed upon the discovery of the body of Mr. Herbert.Read More »

Quote:
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath who can only be stopped by two teenagers and a group of psychics.Read More »

Quote:
STOURLEY KRACKLITE (Brian Dennehy), the central figure in Peter Greenaway’s ”Belly of an Architect,” is at one point seen reflected in the central panel of a triptych mirror in his Rome apartment, wearing a blood-red robe and flanked by multiple Xerox copies of classically sculpted abdomens, copies he has made from photographs of Roman statuary. It’s a perfect moment, or at least the kind of perfect moment Mr. Greenaway favors: orderly, symmetrical and obscure, offering great compositional beauty but no compelling reason why its riddles require solution.Read More »