A documentary about the U.S. judicial system, explaining the types of cases tried in the lower court, showing the typical minor offenders and examining the inadequate jailing facilities.
Category: Short
James Ivory’s second documentary, The Sword and The Flute, also dealing with schools of art, grew out of his experience in making Venice: Theme and Variations. Only here, instead of photographing works by the Italian masters, he has used superb examples of Indian miniature paintings. Ivory’s intelligent script, narrated with feeling by Saeed Jaffrey, and accompanied by the music of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, traces the history of Indian miniature painting after the Moghul invasion as it develops into two principal schools, the Moghul (Muslim) and the Rajput (Hindu).
This 14-minute film talks about the Hindu god Brahma’s creation of life, the world and of course the first woman. Saeed Jaffrey narrates the story as dancers Bhaskar, Dinu and Anjali Devi “act” out the story.
Black and white shots of a carnival segue into a psychedelic reverie as a pair of disembodied hands prepare and consume a fresh persimmon. Soundtracked by T. Rex, and featuring repurposed footage from Dumbo, Last of the Persimmons is a layered and playful homage to the simple pleasures in life.
Too fast a pace of life in overcrowded, noisy and polluted cities make people sick, neuroses is a common occurrence. A man is trying to sleep but noises keep him up. Trying to stop the noise he reveals a bizarre mixture of sounds and images. The film explores what can happen to a man irritated by noise when all he wants is to peacefully read his newspaper. From being peaceful the man turns dangerous. He is ready to destroy.
Tomek and Gucia are a pair of seven-year-olds. On a beautiful, sunny afternoon, they engage in typical children’s games after school – playing hopscotch and hide-and-seek, doing somersaults on the beater and climbing the wall. But above all, they play with each other – the boy tries to turn the girl into a boy named Piotrek. However, behind childhood games there is something much more serious – the first feeling.
Buster Keaton portrays the janitor at a newspaper who accidentally intercepts a call from the editor, ordering him to do a story about safety practices at a massive construction site. He sneaks onto the construction site and finds a list of 16 safety rules posted on a wall. He takes the list and attempts to confront workers when he sees them acting in an unsafe manner, often causing more accidents than he prevents. Keaton is silent throughout the film as he recreates several routines from his youth.
In Istanbul, American writer James Baldwin muses about race, the American fascination with sexuality, insights into his interrupted writing decade in the country, the generosity of the Turks, and how being in another country, in another place, forces one to re-examine well-established attitudes about modern society.