1980s

  • Charles Atlas – Hail the New Puritan (1987)

    1981-1990Charles AtlasQueer Cinema(s)United KingdomVideo Art
    Hail the New Puritan (1987)
    Hail the New Puritan (1987)

    Quote:
    Employing a documentary treatment with a fictional script, Atlas presents a time capsule of London in the spring of 1985. Michael Clark, hailed as the rock star of British contemporary dance, is cast as a successful young choreographer. The film charts a half-typical, half-imaginary day in Clark’s life, beginning with a dream sequence.

    Clark’s vigorous day includes an interview with a dance critic in a surreal skit featuring members of The Fall; a cemetery filming for an underground featurette; an erotic encounter in a mirrored bedroom; a nightclub scene; and dancing to exhaustion at home alone. The heart of the film centers on 12 principal dance sequences set in rehearsal, photo session, performance, and nightclub scenes.Read More »

  • Yoshishige Yoshida – Ningen no yakusoku AKA A Promise AKA The Human Promise (1986)

    Yoshishige Yoshida1981-1990DramaJapan
    Ningen no yakusoku (1986)
    Ningen no yakusoku (1986)

    Synopsis:
    Yoshida returned to feature filmmaking after a hiatus of thirteen years with this brave and moving film about the struggle to maintain dignity in the face of old age and approaching death. The Human Promise reaffirms Yoshida’s ability to deal with difficult and even taboo topics by exploring the question of euthanasia with a profound sensitivity and subtlety. The film’s unusually frank meditation on death is anchored by the restrained performances by its veteran actors, including Rentaro Mikni, who starred in several of Yoshida’s earlier works, including A Story Written on Water. The Human Promise’s use of water imagery enriches a motif central to the rich ambiguity at the heart of Yoshida’s cinema.Read More »

  • Iradj Azimi – Les îles (1983)

    Iradj Azimi1981-1990DramaFantasyFrance
    Les îles (1983)
    Les îles (1983)

    Quote:
    “The abstraction of the story and the concrete presence of the natural settings apprehended with a beautiful sense of the frame infuse a mythical dimension to this worthy successor of Jean Epstein’s Breton films.”

    “This is Azimi’s third film in Brittany, he has already shot Les jours gris in 1973 in Dinan and Utopia in 1978 in Cap Fréhel.
    “Here everything overlaps: the sea, the sky, the flat orange of the sun, the clouds and the foam around the rocks, the salt. Only the island tears.”
    (auto-translated)Read More »

  • Martin Scorsese – The King of Comedy (1982)

    Martin Scorsese1981-1990ComedyDramaUSA
    The King of Comedy (1982)
    The King of Comedy (1982)

    Plot:
    Rupert Pupkin (De Niro), a stage-door autograph hound, is an aspiring stand-up comic with obsessive ambition far in excess of any actual talent. A chance meeting with Jerry Langford (Lewis), a famous comedian and talk show host, leads Rupert to believe that his “big break” has finally come. His attempts to get a place on the show are continually rebuffed by Langford’s staff and, finally, by Langford himself. Along the way, Rupert indulges in elaborate and obsessive fantasies where he and Langford are colleagues and friends.Read More »

  • Claude Pinoteau – La Boum 2 AKA The Party 2 (1982)

    Claude Pinoteau1981-1990DramaFranceRomance
    La Boum 2 (1982)
    La Boum 2 (1982)

    Two years after the first “Boum”, Vic – now 15 and a half years old – has a very calm love life, actually no boyfriend at all. Her parents are happily together again, Grandma Poupette thinks about finally marring her long-term boyfriend. But then Vic meets Philippe and is overcome by his charm. She’s in heaven again and considers going all the way this time – a step, that her girlfriend Penelope already has taken.Read More »

  • Akinori Nagaoka and Minoru Okazaki – Yami no Teiô Kyûketsuki Dorakyura AKA Dracula (1980)

    Akinori Nagaoka1971-1980ActionAnimationJapanMinoru Okazaki
    Yami no Teiô Kyûketsuki Dorakyura (1980)
    Yami no Teiô Kyûketsuki Dorakyura (1980)

    In this animated adaptation of the Tomb of Dracula comic book series, Dracula assumes control of a satanic cult and fathers a child through one of his followers, but the forces of both good and evil align themselves against him.Read More »

  • Constantine Giannaris  – Jean Genet Is Dead (1989)

    Queer Cinema(s)1981-1990Constantine GiannarisDramaGreeceShort Film
    Jean Genet Is Dead (1989)
    Jean Genet Is Dead (1989)

    SYNOPSIS
    A collage of images, a metaphor for love in the time of AIDS, a personal reading of Jean Genet’s influence on gay culture and queer aesthetics. Put together like a palimpsest of images and sounds, the film brings Genet’s words to the foreground…Read More »

  • Jean-Michel Tchissoukou – La chapelle (1980)

    1971-1980African CinemaComedyCongo (Brazzaville)DramaJean-Michel Tchissoukou
    Affiche du film la Chapelle de Jean MichelTchissoukou 1980
    Affiche du film la Chapelle de Jean MichelTchissoukou 1980

    Quote:
    It’s the 1930s. In a village located several kilometers from the administrative post, men attached to ancestral traditions have no other ambition than to live in peace. The evangelical mission has set up a school and asked the population to build a chapel. Work drags on, exasperating the parish priest, who enlists the help of the sacristan and the village chief to speed up the construction of the chapel. The arrival of a young teacher, full of modernist ideas, and the hostile attitude of the schoolmaster, enabled the parish priest to reinforce his authority.Read More »

  • Shinobu Hashimoto – Maboroshi no mizuumi aka Lake of Illusions (1982) (HD)

    1981-1990JapanSci-FiShinobu Hashimoto
    Maboroshi no mizuumi (1982)
    Maboroshi no mizuumi (1982)

    A 1982 sci-fi cult drama about a grudge of a woman whose dog was murdered.

    Clive Davies wrote:
    I was lucky enough to see this wrongheaded 164 mins epic (a cult favourite in Japan) on a big-screen during an all-night movie show in Tokyo. Hashimoto was a celebrated screenwriter of both commercial and critical hits (including several for Akira Kurosawa), when he was given an awful lot of money to helm this seriously pretentious non-categorisable oddity.Read More »

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