The 1980s (pronounced "nineteen-eighties", shortened to "the '80s" or "the Eighties") was a decade that began on January 1, 1980, and ended on December 31, 1989.
The decade saw a dominance of conservatism and free market economics, and a socioeconomic change due to advances in technology and a worldwide move away from planned economies and towards laissez-faire capitalism compared to the 1970s. As economic deconstruction increased in the developed world, multiple multinational corporations associated with the manufacturing industry relocated into Thailand, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Japan and West Germany saw large economic growth during this decade. The AIDS epidemic became recognized in the 1980s and has since killed an estimated 40.4 million people (). Global warming theory began to spread within the scientific and political community in the 1980s.
The final decade of the Cold War opened with the US-Soviet confrontation continuing largely without any interruption. Superpower tensions escalated rapidly as President Reagan scrapped the policy of détente and adopted a new, much more aggressive stance on the Soviet Union. The world came perilously close to nuclear war for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but the second half of the decade saw a dramatic easing of superpower tensions and ultimately the total collapse of Soviet communism.
Developing countries across the world faced economic and social difficulties as they suffered from multiple debt crises in the 1980s, requiring many of these countries to apply for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Ethiopia witnessed widespread famine in the mid-1980s during the corrupt rule of Mengistu Haile Mariam, resulting in the country having to depend on foreign aid to provide food to its population and worldwide efforts to address and raise money to help Ethiopians, such as the Live Aid concert in 1985.
By 1986, nationalism was making a comeback in the Eastern Bloc, and the desire for democracy in socialist states, combined with economic recession, resulted in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, which reduced Communist Party power, legalized dissent and sanctioned limited forms of capitalism such as joint ventures with companies from capitalist countries. After tension for most of the decade, by 1988 relations between the communist and capitalist blocs had improved significantly and the Soviet Union was increasingly unwilling to defend its governments in satellite states.
The 1980s was an era of tremendous population growth around the world, surpassing the 1970s and 1990s, and arguably being the largest in human history. During the 1980s, the world population grew from 4.4 to 5.3 billion people. There were approximately 1.33 billion births and 480 million deaths. Population growth was particularly rapid in a number of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian countries during this decade, with rates of natural increase close to or exceeding 4% annually. The 1980s saw the advent of the ongoing practice of sex-selective abortion in China and India as ultrasound technology permitted parents to selectively abort baby girls.
The 1980s saw great advances in genetic and digital technology. After years of animal experimentation since 1985, the first genetic modification of 10 adult human beings took place in May 1989, a gene tagging experiment which led to the first true gene therapy implementation in September 1990. The first "designer babies", a pair of female twins, were created in a laboratory in late 1989 and born in July 1990 after being sex-selected via the controversial assisted reproductive technology procedure preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Gestational surrogacy was first performed in 1985 with the first birth in 1986, making it possible for a woman to become a biological mother without experiencing pregnancy for the first time in history.
The global internet took shape in academia by the second half of the 1980s, as well as many other computer networks of both academic and commercial use such as USENET, Fidonet, and the Bulletin Board System. By 1989, the Internet and the networks linked to it were a global system with extensive transoceanic satellite links and nodes in most developed countries. Based on earlier work, from 1980 onwards Tim Berners Lee formalized the concept of the World Wide Web by 1989. Television viewing became commonplace in the Third World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing by 15 and 10 times respectively.
Chapman planned the killing over several months and waited for Lennon at the Dakota on the morning of 8 December. Early in the evening, Chapman met Lennon, who signed his copy of the album Double Fantasy and subsequently left for a recording session at the Record Plant. Later that night, Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, returned to the Dakota. As Lennon and Ono approached the entrance of the building, Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets from a .38 specialrevolver, four of which hit Lennon in the back. Lennon was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in a police car, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 11:15 p.m. at age 40. Chapman remained at the scene reading The Catcher in the Rye until he was arrested by the police. It was later discovered that Chapman considered Lennon's friend David Bowie a target. (Full article...)
Image 10Stage view of the Live Aid concert at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium in the United States in 1985. The concert was a major global international effort by musicians and activists to sponsor action to send aid to the people of Ethiopia who were suffering from a major famine. (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 11The world map of military alliances in 1980: NATO & Western allies, Warsaw Pact & other Soviet allies, Non-aligned countries, China and Albania (communist countries, but not aligned with USSR), ××× Armed resistance (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Image 13The Grateful Dead in 1980. Left to right: Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh. Not pictured: Brent Mydland. (from Portal:1980s/General images)
Payanangal Mudivathillai is Sundarrajan's directorial debut and the inaugural venture of Kovaithambi's Motherland Pictures. The film was produced by R. Elanchelian, Pollachi M. V. Rathinam and P. Muthusamy. Ilaiyaraaja composed the music and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and S. Janaki performed the songs. Cinematography was handled by Kasthuri and the editing by R. Bhaskaran. (Full article...)
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Americana is a 1981 American drama film starring, produced, edited and directed by David Carradine. The screenplay and story, written by Richard Carr, was based on a portion of the 1947 novel, The Perfect Round, by Henry Morton Robinson. The novel's setting was originally post-World War II, but the screenplay involved the post-war experiences of a Vietnam War veteran, obsessed with restoring an abandoned carousel.
In 1981, the film won The People's Choice Award at the Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.[disputed – discuss] Financing the film himself, Carradine shot most of the footage for the film, which was co-produced by Skip Sherwood, in 1973 with a band of 26 people, mostly his family and friends, over the course of 18 days. Problems with financing and distribution kept the film from being released until 1983. The film was well received by audiences, but met with primarily negative criticism. (Full article...)
Scrooged was filmed on a $32 million budget over three months in New York City and Hollywood from December 1987 to March 1988. Murray returned to acting for the film after taking a four-year hiatus following the success of Ghostbusters, which he found overwhelming, although he had a minor role in Little Shop of Horrors. Murray worked with Glazer and O'Donoghue on reworking the script before agreeing to join the project. The production was tumultuous, as Murray and Donner had different visions for the film. Murray described his time on the film as "misery", while Donner called Murray "superbly creative but occasionally difficult". Along with Murray's three brothers, Brian, John and Joel, Scrooged features numerous celebrity cameos. (Full article...)
Set in rural Yorkshire during the summer of 1920, the film follows a destitute World War I veteran employed to carry out restoration work on a Medieval mural discovered in a rural church while coming to terms with the after-effects of the war. (Full article...)
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Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (Japanese: 王立宇宙軍~オネアミスの翼, Hepburn: Ōritsu Uchūgun: Oneamisu no Tsubasa) is a 1987 Japanese animatedscience fiction film written and directed by Hiroyuki Yamaga, co-produced by Hiroaki Inoue and Hiroyuki Sueyoshi, and planned by Toshio Okada and Shigeru Watanabe. Ryuichi Sakamoto, later to share the Academy Award for the soundtrack to The Last Emperor, served as music director. The film's story takes place on an alternate world where a disengaged young man, Shirotsugh, inspired by an idealistic woman named Riquinni, volunteers to become the first astronaut, a decision that draws them into both public and personal conflict. The film was the debut work of anime studio Gainax, whose later television and movie series Neon Genesis Evangelion would achieve international recognition, and was the first anime produced by toy and game manufacturer Bandai, eventually to become one of Japan's top anime video companies.
Yamaga and Okada had become known through making amateur fan-oriented short films, particularly the Daicon III and IV Opening Animations, but their pitch for Royal Space Force argued that growing the anime industry required a shift away from works that pleased fans on a surface level but reinforced their isolation, advocating instead for a different type of anime that attempted to engage with fans as human beings who shared in the alienation issues of a larger society. The making of Royal Space Force involved a collaborative year-long design process using many creators, including some from outside the anime industry, to construct an elaborately detailed alternate world described as neither utopian nor dystopian, but "an attempt to approve existence". Science fiction writer Ted Chiang, author of "Story of Your Life", the basis for the film Arrival, would later describe Royal Space Force as the single most impressive example of worldbuilding in books or film. (Full article...)
Inseminoid (titled Horror Planet in the United States) is a 1981 British science fictionhorror film directed by Norman J. Warren and starring Judy Geeson, Robin Clarke and Stephanie Beacham, along with Victoria Tennant in one of her early film roles. The plot concerns a team of archaeologists and scientists who are excavating the ruins of an ancient civilisation on a distant planet. One of the women in the team (Geeson) is impregnated by an alien creature and taken over by a mysterious intelligence, driving her to murder her colleagues one by one and feed on them.
Inseminoid was written by Nick and Gloria Maley, a married couple who had been part of the special effects team on Warren's earlier film Satan's Slave. Filmed between May and June 1980 on a budget of £1 million, half of which was supplied by the Shaw Brothers, it was shot mostly on location at Chislehurst Caves in Kent as well as on the island of Gozo in Malta, combined with a week's filming at Lee International Studios in London. Composer John Scott completed the film's electronic musical score over recording sessions that lasted many hours. (Full article...)
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Le Dernier Combat (French:[lədɛʁnjekɔ̃ba]; English: The Last Battle) is a 1983 French post-apocalyptic film. It was the first feature film to be directed by Luc Besson, and also features Jean Reno's first prominent role. Music for the film was composed by Éric Serra. The film was the first of many collaborations between Besson, Reno and Serra. A dark vision of post-apocalyptic survival, the film was shot in black and white and contains only two words of dialogue. It depicts a world where people have been rendered mute by some unknown incident. (Full article...)
Rudraveena focuses on the ideological conflicts between 'Bilahari' Ganapathi Sastry, a reputed carnatic musician and his younger son Suryanarayana "Suryam" Sastry. Sastry's discrimination towards the people belonging to lower castes is criticised by his son, Suryam, who believes in society's welfare and walks out for good later. The events that led to the change in Sastry's views form the remaining part of the story. Ganesh Patro wrote the film's dialogue and worked on the script with Balachander for two months, though it was tweaked many times during the shoot. Ilaiyaraaja composed the soundtrack and background score. R. Raghunadha Reddy was the director of photography. Ganesh Kumar edited the film and Mohanam was the art director. (Full article...)
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Wings of Desire (German: Der Himmel über Berlin, pronounced[deːɐ̯ˈhɪml̩ˈʔyːbɐbɛɐ̯ˈliːn]ⓘ; lit.'The Heaven/Sky over Berlin') is a 1987 romantic fantasy film written by Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger, and directed by Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting the distressed. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist, played by Solveig Dommartin. The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can discover human love with the trapeze artist.
Inspired by art depicting angels visible around West Berlin, at the time encircled by the Berlin Wall, Wenders and author Peter Handke conceived of the story and continued to develop the screenplay throughout the French and German co-production. The film was shot by Henri Alekan in both colour and a sepia-toned black-and-white, the latter being used to represent the world as seen by the angels. The cast includes Otto Sander, Curt Bois and Peter Falk. (Full article...)
The starting point for the script was the ensemble cast of friends and previous collaborators Jarmusch had conceived characters for, while the tripartite formal structure of the film was inspired by his study of literary forms. Cinematographer Robby Müller and musician John Lurie were among the many contributors who had been involved in earlier Jarmusch projects and returned to work on the film. Mystery Train's US$2.8 million budget (financed by Japanese conglomerate JVC) was considerable compared to what the director had enjoyed before, and allowed him the freedom to rehearse many unscripted background scenes. It was the first of Jarmusch's feature films since Permanent Vacation to depart from his trademark black-and-white photography, though the use of color was tightly controlled to conform with the director's intuitive sense of the film's aesthetic.[according to whom?] (Full article...)
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Nostos: The Return (Italian: Nostos: Il ritorno) is a 1989 Italian adventuredrama film directed by Franco Piavoli, starring Luigi Mezzanotte [it] and Branca De Camargo. Drawing from Homer's Odyssey, the film depicts Odysseus' homeward journey across the Mediterranean Sea following the Trojan War, and his struggles against natural obstacles and inner torments. The film relies on visual storytelling and the portrayal of nature; dialogue is minimal, without subtitles, and spoken in an imaginary Mediterranean language. Nostos: The Return explores themes of homecoming, the memory of war, time, and man's relationship with nature.
Piavoli began to make films in the 1950s, but Nostos: The Return was his first feature-length fiction film. Envisioning it as "symphonic" as opposed to "theatrical" cinema, Piavoli was in control of most of the creative process and a cast with little film experience. The processes of preparing, filming, and editing the project each took one year to complete. (Full article...)
Gale and Zemeckis conceived the idea for Back to the Future in 1980. They were desperate for a successful film after numerous collaborative failures, but the project was rejected more than forty times by various studios because it was not considered raunchy enough to compete with the successful comedies of the era. A development deal was secured with Universal Pictures following Zemeckis's success directing Romancing the Stone (1984). Fox was the first choice to portray Marty but was unavailable; Eric Stoltz was cast instead. Shortly after principal photography began in November 1984, Zemeckis determined Stoltz was not right for the part and made the concessions necessary to hire Fox, including re-filming scenes already shot with Stoltz and adding $4million to the budget. Back to the Future was filmed in and around California and on sets at Universal Studios, and concluded the following April. (Full article...)
The screenplay of Blue Velvet had been passed around multiple times in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with several major studios declining it due to its strong sexual and violent content. After the failure of his 1984 film Dune, Lynch made attempts at developing a more "personal story", somewhat characteristic of the surrealist style displayed in his first film Eraserhead (1977). The independent studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, owned at the time by Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis, agreed to finance and produce the film. (Full article...)
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![Image 1 Payanangal Mudivathillai (pronounced [pajaɳaŋɡaɭ muɖiʋatiɭɭaɪ] transl. Journeys never end) is a 1982 Indian Tamil-language romantic drama film written and directed by R. Sundarrajan. The film stars Mohan and Poornima Jayaram, with Rajini, S. Ve. Shekher, Poornam Viswanathan, Rajesh and Goundamani in supporting roles. Its plot revolves around a woman who falls in love with a singer whom she helped to rise to fame but struggles to declare her love for him. Payanangal Mudivathillai is Sundarrajan's directorial debut and the inaugural venture of Kovaithambi's Motherland Pictures. The film was produced by R. Elanchelian, Pollachi M. V. Rathinam and P. Muthusamy. Ilaiyaraaja composed the music and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and S. Janaki performed the songs. Cinematography was handled by Kasthuri and the editing by R. Bhaskaran. (Full article...)](/wiki/File:Blank.png)
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