1980s

  • Fernando E. Solanas – El Exilio de Gardel: Tangos AKA Tangos, the Exile of Gardel (1985)

    1981-1990ArgentinaDramaFernando E. SolanasMusical

    The dictatorship forced thousands of Argentines to leave their country and settle in different corners of Europe. This film follows the daily routine of a community of Argentine exiles in Paris. While waiting to return to Argentina, the days pass and liven up the wait with the tangos, which were the exile of Gardel and now represent the only connection of these people with the land that saw them born.Read More »

  • Enrique Colina – Estética AKA Aesthetics (1984)

    1981-1990CubaDocumentaryEnrique ColinaShort Film

    Aesthetics provides a humorous glimpse into Cubans’ sense of style. Enrique Colina reveals the desire for expressing individuality through diverse conceptions of beauty in everyday life whether in the form of a hood ornament, a display window, or a star-studded tooth.Read More »

  • Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville – Soft and Hard (1986)

    1981-1990DocumentaryFranceJean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie MiévillePolitics

    Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader wrote:
    Soft and Hard (A Soft Conversation Between Two Friends on a Hard Subject)
    Soft and Hard, a highly intimate 48-minute video made by Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville for English television three years later, shows Godard and Mieville at their home in rural Switzerland. In many ways the most intimate and domestic of Godard’s works, it broaches the matter of what distinguishes film from video. Can be viewed in retrospect as necessary preludes to his recently completed magnum opus, the eight-part Histoire(s) du cinema.Read More »

  • John Woo – Die xue shuang xiong aka The Killer (1989)

    1981-1990ActionAsianHong KongJohn Woo

    Quote:
    Though John Woo’s lifelong admiration of Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick are also evident in this stylish actioner, the film is essentially a tribute to Jean-Pierre Melville and his cult thriller Le Samourai. During a restaurant shootout, hitman Jeff (Chow Yun-Fat) accidentally hurts the eyes of a singer (Sally Yeh). Later he meets the girl and discovers that if she does not have a very expensive operation very soon, she will go blind. To get the money for the surgery, Jeff decides to perform one last hit. The cop (Danny Lee), who has been chasing Jeff for a long time, is determined to catch him this time. The film’s number of victims makes The Terminator or Rambo pale in comparison, but its brilliant visual style and bravura direction earned accolades even from non-action fans.Read More »

  • Ann Guedes & Eduardo Guedes – Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale (1989)

    1981-1990Ann GuedesDramaEduardo GuedesPortugal

    Johnny Fortune is no good to anyone, not mean, but just no good. To escape Casino bosses
    who want him for stealing money, he flees to England. He gets a job dressed as a bear for
    Punch & Judy shows, which is an effective disguise. But when the Casino thugs track him
    down it’s up to his two resourceful bosses to help him.Read More »

  • Bill Gunn – Personal Problems (1980)

    1971-1980Bill GunnDramaUSA

    Quote:
    An “experimental soap opera” centered around a Harlem nurse, her husband, her father-in-law, and her lover.

    Quote:
    This entirely African American-conceived and produced ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration of a pair of pioneering Black artists: writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess and wrote the screenplay for Hal Ashby’s The Landlord. Originally intended to air on public television in 1980, it went unseen for many yearsRead More »

  • Mika Kaurismäki – Paperitähti AKA Paper Star (1989)

    1981-1990DramaFinlandMika Kaurismäki

    Synopsis:
    Anna, a former top model, is relegated to second-rate modeling jobs. Her lover, Ulf, a drug dealer and pimp, leaves her to settle in Stockholm. Anna gets involved with Ilja, a middle-aged fashion photographer who treats her badly and violently. The police arrest Anna and hold her in custody for a fortnight. After she is released from the prison, Ilja continues his disgusting behaviour towards her. Supported only by Taukka, a young biker with a good heart, Anna leaves for Stockholm to rejoin with Ulf. After a fatal shooting incident in the beautiful Gamla Stan, the old town district of Stockholm, Anna meets up with Taukka who has been released from the prison and together they ride towards a better future on Taukka’s gleaming bike.Read More »

  • Johan van der Keuken – De Meester en de Reus aka the master and the giant (1980)

    1971-1980DocumentaryExperimentalJohan van der KeukenNetherlands

    Between documentary and fiction, The master and the giant approaches the topic of the rivalry in the creation: a first God created the world, a second God destroyed it to build one new, better. Myth and reality meet in this film that puts in scene two different universes: a man and a woman in a neighborhood in demolition of Amsterdam, and images of the life in the confines of the tunecian Sahara. (Written in collaboration with Claude Ménard.)Read More »

  • Marcel Hanoun – Un film (autoportrait) (1985)

    1981-1990DocumentaryExperimentalFranceMarcel Hanoun

    The shooting diary of a film shot in France and in the United States. Using photos of Paris and of New York City, excerpts of his former films, statements by friends of his and shooting sequences of the film itself, tormented filmmaker Marcel Hanoun has made a heterogeneous and unclassifiable film about the difficulty of filming.Read More »

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