Sena 1981 - 17

Up in Heaven, Yuki’s grandparents decide that, having turned thirteen years old, she must go down to Earth to a village that is torn by bandits and intervene to save its people. However if she does not succeed within one year she will become as insubstantial as the wind. Down in the village, Yuki is befriended by a group of orphans whose parents have all been killed by the bandits and who now subsist by begging. Yuki amazes them by taming the wild horse Blizzard. She is instrumental in getting the orphans and farmers to stand up to first the warring bandits and then Goemon, the greedy lord that owns the region. But Yuki must face her greatest challenge yet when the displeased Demon God that lives in the volcano emerges to destroy those who live beneath.

With film clips and photos, Eric Sykes gives a tongue-in-cheek account of his follies and fortunes as an actor, gag writer, and comedian in a long and successful career in the theatre, on radio and television. He pays tribute to his friends in showbusiness and in particular to Hattie Jacques, Richard Wattis and the team of his long-running Sykes series.

An issue of the magazine Kino 81, designed for the film department of WDR by staff of FILMKRITIK

Victim of manipulation, Cop Choucas is wanted for two murders and searched for by every cop in town.

After ex-con Joe Braxton violates his probation, he is given a second chance. All he has to do is drive a group of special kids across the country.

It’s coming up to competition time for the pretty office girls of the Kara Cosmetics Company. Kei (Junko Asahina) and her co-workers are preparing their amateur rhythmic gymnastics team for an upcoming competition. In order to assist the sexy ladies, Aoki (Funasaku Sasairi) is brought in as their new coach. As the team wonders about the coach’s ability to perform both on and off the court, Kei’s relationship with him is revealed. Long ago, Aoki slept with Kei before a competition and she lost. Now, he’s worried it will happen again! Can the coach overcome his sexual issues and help Kei win this time?

The Legal Illegals is a Hong Kong crime movie starring Chan Wai-Man and Alan Tang.

The movie is about an illegal salt smuggling ring run by Tanny and her male partner, who spend most of the movie arguing which one of them is going to sacrifice him/herself and surrender to the police.

An overweight man and woman become penpals but are too embarrassed to send each other photographs of themselves and instead exchange pictures of two thinner people. Comedic complications arise when the two penpals finally arrange to meet in person.

Portrait of a fractious Welsh village near Merthyr Tydfil. Life in the valley isn't what it was, there's no pit in Deri now, but the humour survives, and it's amazingly peaceful considering.

Life seems to be good for Shintoto, an up-and-coming rakugo artist who has just had his first sexual experience at a local brothel. Lucky for him, he gets to date the beautiful sex worker he meets that day, and a younger high school rakugo aficionado is also vying for his attention. But for clumsy, heart-on-his-sleeve Shintoto, life doesn’t stay rosy for long.

Early Errol Morris documentary intersplices random chatter he captured on film of the genuinely eccentric residents of Vernon, Florida. A few examples? The preacher giving a sermon on the definition of the word "Therefore," and the obsessive turkey hunter who speaks reverentially of the "gobblers" he likes to track down and kill.

In the 1860's, Giorgio (Giraudeau), a young Italian soldier is sent to a remote post, far away from his lover, Clara (Antonelli). He is lodged in the house of the colonel (Girotti). He becames friends with the colonel and the local doctor (Trintignant). Among the inhabitants of the house, there is a strange young woman - Fosca (d'Obici) who is both unattractive and mad. However, she has a passion that Giorgio will have to cope with.

Executive George Dupler loses his temper and is demoted to the night manager at a 24 hour drugstore. After he suggests to his teenage son Freddie that he stop having an affair with suburban housewife Cheryl Gibbons, who is a distant cousin, Cheryl tries to seduce George. At home, in front of his mother, Freddie accuses his dad of stealing his girl, because he found Cheryl serving George a meal in the middle of the night, while her husband Bobby was on duty at the fire station. George then separates from his wife Helen, quits his job, moves into a warehouse, and asks Cheryl to move in with him.

When Susan was a little girl, she rejected the Valentine of a lovestruck classmate. Decades later, she’s come to the hospital for a routine medical examination, and finds herself trapped in a bizarre nightmare, made all the worse as her vengeful childhood valentine, disguised among the hospital staff, begins murdering everyone in his path as a means of proving his undying ‘romantic’ obsession…

Three macabre short stories about gambling, vengeance and homicide.

A dramatization of the controversial trial concerning the right for Neo-Nazis to march in the predominantly Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois.

With soft curves and deadly cunning a widow and her two daughters take revenge for the killing of her husband who was the leader of their gang. Based on the novel by Azusa Katsume.

The story of two brothers and a tramp. Harold Pinter's first major success as a dramatist.

In a 1940s New York, two Jewish teenage boys are determined to remain friends despite the deep differences between their two families.

Fitz and Bones is a short-lived American television series, starring Dick and Tom Smothers, that aired on NBC in 1981. Fitz and Bones details the investigative dynamic between reporter Ryan Fitzpatrick and cameraman Bones at a San Francisco news station, along with key cast members and plot tensions with bosses and rivals.

Feuerdrachen is a German television series.

TV mini series

The population of a small Scottish island is gripped with fear following a strange discovery and a series of savage murders. Adapted from David Wiltshire's 'Child of Vodyanoi'.

Familie Meier is a German television series.

Sorry, I'm A Stranger Here Myself was a British sitcom that aired for two seasons from 1981 to 1982. It was co-created by actor David Firth and Shelley and It Takes a Worried Man creator Peter Tilbury. The first series was co-written by Firth and Tilbury, and the second one by Firth alone. It starred Robin Bailey, David Hargreaves, veteran Anglo-Jordanian actor Nadim Sawalha, Diana Rayworth and Christopher Fulford. It was made by Thames Television for the ITV network.

Pityke is a Hungarian animation about Hungarian police and funny crime stories for children and the young.

At the beginning of the summer of 1905, representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party Krasilnikov and Elkonen turned to Captain Zhanis Trautman, a Latvian political emigrant living on the outskirts of London, with a proposal to lead a steamer with a cargo of weapons to the shores of Russia. Having recruited a team of old and tried comrades, Trautman changes the crew of an English cargo ship bought by the front men. In the course of the squabble that arose on this occasion, a sailor of the old crew, David Blake, was stabbed. The wounded Blake and the veterinarian Gruber, who accompanied the cargo of anthrax drugs, are forced to leave on board. On the high seas, weapons and explosives were loaded on board. The steamer headed for the Oresund Strait, where a messenger was to meet him.

Under the Mountain is an eight-part television series based on the novel of the same name written by Maurice Gee, first transmitted in 1981 and produced by Television New Zealand. Many of the minor roles in this series were played by people who were at the time well known performers in New Zealand.

A one-episode television pilot for a proposed 1981 spin-off of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features former series regulars Sarah Jane Smith, an investigative journalist played by Elisabeth Sladen, and K9, a robotic dog voiced by John Leeson. Both characters had been companions of the Fourth Doctor but they had not appeared together before. The single episode, A Girl's Best Friend was broadcast by BBC1 as a Christmas special on 28 December 1981 but was not taken up for a continuing series.

I Can Jump Puddles is a 1981 Australian television mini-series based on the 1955 autobiographical series of the same name by author Alan Marshall. Adapted for television by screenwriters Cliff Green and Roger Simpson, the series starred Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Adam Garnett, Tony Barry, Julie Hamilton, Ann Henderson, Lesley Baker, Olivia Brown, Debra Lawrance and Darren MacDonald. Several prominent television actors also had supporting roles including Lisa Aldenhoven, Kaarin Fairfax, Maurie Fields, Terry Gill, Reg Gorman, Matthew King, Julie Nihill, Maureen Edwards and Dennis Miller and Jason Donovan and Cliff Ellen. A large part of supporting and minor roles also featured cameo appearances by cast members of Prisoner such as Esme Melville, Peter Curtin, Ian Smith, Christine Amor, Fiona Spence, Edward Hepple, Sigrid Thornton, Leila Hayes, Sandy Gore, Mary Ward, Anne Phelan. Future cast members included Billie Hammerberg and Pepe Trevor.

That Beryl Marston...! is a British sitcom produced by Southern Television for ITV. Created by Jan Butlin, the six-episode series stars Julia McKenzie and Gareth Hunt. Novelty shop owner Georgie Bodley's life was going well until her husband Gerry leaves her for Sussex sex strumpet Beryl Marston. But now Gerry's back, and he wants to reconcile.

Fanny by Gaslight is a four-part British television miniseries adapted by Anthony Steven from Michael Sadler's 1940 novel of the same mame, directed by Peter Jefferies, and produced by Joe Waters. It initially broadcast from 24 September to 15 October 1981 on BBC One. Victorian orphan Fanny Hooper navigates hardship and scandal, eventually discovering her true parentage and finding love amidst the city's demi-monde.