The grandfather, whose house is guarded by seven flames, sends his three grandsons fishing. An evil witch casts a spell on two older grandsons and turns them into pigs. The youngest grandson calls the flames for help…
Category: Short
A synthesis of documentary, dramatic, and experimental styles, this film follows two women recollecting their personal and familial experiences from World War II. One woman recounts the story of an aunt from story Hiroshima whose father had been a member of the peace party when the militarist government forced its way to power. Exiled from Japan they were then interned with Canadians of Japanese descent. The other woman recounts the details of her experience as a young nurse on the morning of August 6, 1945.
François Truffaut said of Paul Vecchiali in his early days that he was “the only true heir of Jean Renoir.” The first short film of this director, who was to become a singular figure of independent French cinema, follows the path of an elderly woman towards her memories and beyond. Attentive, affectionate and sometimes cruel, Vecchiali’s camera invents its own expressive language.
Vera and Heike are two friends who aspire for a dazzling lifestyle, but don’t own any savings to do so. Vera decides to start stealing from men while sipping drinks with them in bars. When Heike takes over her job, her technique doesn’t prove as successful and she ends up being caught at once.
A juggler in a park opens his magic box and takes out 3 balls. The audience marvels at his dexterity, until one ball escapes. The mutinous ball takes on magical properties as it draws the juggler into a series of adventures with many levels of meaning: appearance, fantasy and love. Without words.
Irene’s mother is a seamstress who has been chosen to make a dress for the Duchess to wear to the big ball. When her mother gets sick, Irene decides to take the dress to the duchess herself. On the way there it begins to snow, but Irene is determined to reach the palace before the ball. Based on the book by William Steig.
This anti-drug film uses common childhood habits and activities, such as building a machine out of Lego blocks, to metaphorically illustrate the effects and dangers of drug abuse.
Wavelength is anything but simple, however, as Snow’s statement of intention suggests. He describes the film as “a summation of my nervous system, religious inklings and aesthetic ideas.” The spine of the film is its famous zoom from a fixed camera position facing a wall with four tall sash windows. Over the course of the film, the angle of view narrows until the frame is filled with a black and white photograph of waves pinned up between the middle two windows. Other features of the room, in which four events involving people take place, are sloughed off. The spectator is led to concentrate on this central element, the photograph—it has been there all along—until the image is washed out and the film comes to an end.