As we’ve mentioned before, the Texas Archive Of The Moving Image site is one of the best portals on the whole internet to disappear into for an hour or two of fascinating video. One of the best corners of the archive, for us, is the Carolyn Jackson collection. As the host of a talk show on KTBC (now Fox 7) and, later, at the station that is now KXAN 36, Jackson frequently attended press calls on the coasts or in Dallas that were set up by the film studios for publicity purposes. These junkets have produced some notoriously terrible interviews, particularly as the talent becomes more and more bored, but Jackson’s work is a cut above the usual standard. She is clearly prepared, asks smart questions at the right time, and makes a personal connection with each guest. It’s a pleasure to watch these interviews.
Here are a pair of interviews with SILVER STREAK (1976) stars Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder for a start.
First is Pryor, always candid, debunking some of the lies that appear in his official bio, and talking about his creative method as writer and performer. (WATCH >>)
Then it’s Gene Wilder’s turn. Jackson finds a great rapport with him here as they talk about the impulse to entertain. (WATCH >>)
And, if you’re wondering what has become of Jackson, here’s a piece from earlier in the year where she reminisces about some of the old days in Austin broadcasting.
Today, Don Hertzfeldt is one of the best-known and most highly acclaimed makers of animated films in the world. He has won hundreds of international prizes and been nominated for multiple Academy Awards. Back in the year 2000 however, he was a relatively unknown commodity, toiling away at an old-school 35mm animation rig in his home workshop. That was the year of his big breakthrough, a short film called REJECTED that was an immediate hit with festival audiences and became one of the first pre-YouTube viral videos – shared via email and on message boards over slow dial-up connections – it was certainly worth the 10-minute download.
Back in February, Don Hertzfeldt joined us at the AFS Cinema to reflect on those early years, how his creative method has evolved, and, as is generally the case with Hertzfeldt, his memories and anecdotes are simultaneously as humorous and as philosophical as is his film work. We are eager to welcome Don back to the Cinema after the pandemic has passed, but in the meantime we are proud to present this discussion with him for your entertainment and edification.
See more of Hertzfeldt’s films and find out more about his work here.
On stage or on screen, Eartha Kitt was a mesmerizing talent. And, as we can see in this 2001 interview, she was also a conversationalist with few peers. The performance aspects of great conversation come to the fore here, as she tells her best stories and, along the way, provides a master-class in stage presence.
Don’t start watching this if you don’t have 27 minutes to sit riveted in front of the screen, because she is truly a magnetic force of personality, using her speaking – and purring – voice, her limbs and her eyes with the flair of a great artist.
Topics covered: Orson Welles, Katherine Dunham’s dance company (watch the impromptu moves she uses to illustrate Dunham’s style), her tough upbringing, the resonance of the Catwoman character, her experiences with Black activism, Lady Bird Johnson, the CIA file that called her a “sadistic nymphomaniac,” and more.
It’s a little hard to believe, but Bette Davis, whose acting career spanned nearly 60 years and whose talents produced so many sublime performances, was not an instant hit. As she explains to Joan Bakewell in the following 1972 interview, it took some time for Hollywood to adapt to her look and her peculiar skill set.
She describes the first few years as “heartbreaking” and recounts something her mother told her: “it’s the best fruit that the birds pick at.”
This video is fairly short but it is a catalogue of small joys – Davis’ understated way of registering disapproval, her explosive laugh, the way she talks about Steve McQueen. Her personality is enormous, and she plays the part of a movie star very well. Enjoy these few minutes with a legend.
It’s no secret that we at AFS love, love, love the great screen star Barbara Stanwyck. She is not only one of the best technicians of the actor’s art in all of classic Hollywood, she exemplifies a sort of independence and self-reliance that we think are always worth admiring and emulating.
A few years back we dedicated three successive Augusts to seasons of Stanwyck’s films:
Precode Stanwyck:
Stanwyck In Her Prime:
And Stanwyck Noir:
And don’t worry. We’ll show much, much much more.
Recently we stumbled across this interview with Miss Barbara Stanwyck (as she was invariably billed in her later years). It appeared in the New York Times at the time that the Film Society at Lincoln Center was welcoming the Brooklyn-born Stanwyck back to the five boroughs for a retrospective of her work. She doesn’t disappoint. Tough, unsentimental, quintessentially Stanwyck. We only wish it were longer:
Some samples:
“Barbara Stanwyck withdrew into Hollywood shadow a decade ago, after her Western television series, ”The Big Valley,” ended. Recluse? She shakes her head determinedly. ”I’m not a yesterday’s woman. I’m a tomorrow’s woman. If I don’t have a job, what am I going to give interviews about? ‘And then I did… And then I did…’ Who the hell cares?”
“Sitting straight as a ramrod, she takes a cigarette from a gold Art Deco case decorated with the sunburst of her face and a ruby, her birthstone. It was a present from Robert Taylor, early in their marriage. That marriage ended in divorce as did her first marriage to Frank Fay, the comedian who starred at the Palace Theater in New York but shriveled in the shadow of his wife in Hollywood. She caresses the cigarette case. ”Losing somebody you love by death or divorce is hard. But if they decide they want to be free, there’s nothing to battle for. You have to let go. Bob and I didn’t stay friends. We became friends again.” She lifts her chin in a jaunty gesture, and the husky voice is a remembrance of dozens of films. ”Time does take care of things.”
For this week’s Streamers recommendations we turn to our own AFS Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen, who is known for having tastes that encompass the whole of Cinema, from the exalted heights of art films to some of the deepest crevices where not-art films reside. As one of the founders of the American Genre Film Archive and a current advisory board member, he is a recognized authority in the field so we asked him to select some genre films – elevated and otherwise that you might enjoy.
Here are his picks:
DREADNAUGHT
(1981, Dir. Yuen Woo-Ping) – Streaming on Amazon Prime
Usually when martial arts films attain a high plateau of artfulness, it is because in some sense the makers sacrifice action and melodrama to give the film a gloss of “real-movie” respectability. The Yuen clan will have none of that. Director Yuen Woo-Ping and his brother/collaborators here tell a story of a revenge obsessed killer who hides out in a masked theater troupe. There are several sequences here that are as good as anything you’ll ever see in a martial arts film, including a gravity-defying fight between two “dragons” that will leave you gasping for air.
GANJA & HESS
(1973, Dir. Bill Gunn) – Streaming on Amazon Prime
A unique, Black-bohemian take on that old chestnut – the vampire story. Made on an extremely low budget on grainy-looking 16mm film stock, this film finds yet a new angle on vampirism, which even at the time was a badly distended metaphor. Here it comes to represent both addiction and also the “blood” of African traditions. Maybe best of all is the cast, Duane Jones (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) as Dr. Hess Green is excellent, as is Marlene Clark as Ganja Meda. Her voice is wonderfully expressive and gives her character added dimensions. Gunn himself plays an important part in the film, as Ganja’s eccentric husband. The music by Sam Waymon – processed with echo units to add elements of dreamlike reverie to the fantasy scenes, is – like the rest of the film – spectacularly effective despite the economy of its means.
THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK
(1974, Dir. Francesco Barilli) – Streaming on Kanopy
I’ll be damned if I can tell you what this movie is about. It stars the fascinating Mimsy Farmer as a woman haunted by traumatic memories who may or may not in fact be pursued by a real antagonist. The giallo-esque plot is labyrinthine, and if you lose the thread of it, don’t worry too much. It was never that important anyway. More than anything this is a photographic study of Farmer and her psychologically fraught surroundings. The mise-en-scene is full of layered and reflecting compositions suggesting that a state of wildness and chaos is closing in at the edges of the frame. Directed by 30-year old Francesco Barilli with stellar production design by Piero Cicoletti and cinematography by Mario Masini.
THE BELLE STARR STORY
(1968, Dir. Lina Wertmüller and Piero Cristofani) – Streaming on Amazon Prime
This must be the only Italian Western directed by a woman – Lina Wertmüller took over direction after a few days shooting. It is the sort of low-budget western that proliferated in the wake of Sergio Leone’s genre-defining classics. It certainly lacks the polish of much more expensive Leones, but it has a charm all its own – and one certainly senses that the approach to gender is very different than in most of the other films of this kind. Elsa Martinelli plays the outlaw Belle Starr and George Eastman plays the role of Larry Blackie, their love story is as rough and violent as the old west – as they say. This is an odd one, and not for everyone, but if you enjoy Italian Westerns, take a look at this one.
DEMENTIA aka DAUGHTER OF HORROR
(1955, Dir. John Parker)
Not to be confused with Francis Ford Coppola’s DEMENTIA 13, which is also good. This is perhaps the best example of nightmare-put-on-film before David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD. There is no dialogue in the film – though one version contains narration. The soundtrack consists of a relentless but beautiful score (credited as New Concepts In Modern Sound) by George Antheil which features the soaring, theremin-like sounds of singer Marni Nixon. The story is about a young woman who commits a crime and is pursued down noirish night streets by demons of guilt and societal retribution. Surreal and inventive. A complete outlier in film history.
The film trailer is an art form in itself, and, for many of us, an invisible art. We don’t even know the names of the people who cut the trailers, or how it’s done. If you have ever sat in your seat and watched the seemingly dozens of trailers* unfold before a film starts, perhaps you have wondered about the process by which the decisions are made.
We have too, and we happen to know an expert, so we asked. Trevor Lee, née Trevor Garza, is an editor who has cut a good number of trailers for us at AFS. He has also worked – pre-pandemic furloughs – for the Alamo Drafthouse in the same capacity, and also edits for national distributors. In the podcast that follows he discusses how he got his start in the field as part of his AFS internship and went on to learn a lot of important lessons.
He is, as you will note, fairly obsessed with trailers and their inner workings. He is a perfectionist and the work speaks for itself. This is a pretty arcane subject we admit, but it is always interesting to hear someone who really excels at a trade describe it in detail. You can listen to the podcast here.
During the course of our conversation Trevor mentions a few of the trailers he has cut for AFS, as well as some trailers that inspired him. We share them below. You can also check out some of his other work or get in touch with him via his website.
“A labor of Quarantine Love. This was my experiment to see if i could make a super trailer that kept your attention the entire time rather than checking your watch for when it was over. Very proud of it.”
“My first trailer for Kino Lorber. A beautiful and exquisite film that I hope my trailer does justice.”
“To date my favorite trailer for an individual film.”
Inspirations:
“A far cry from the bombastic trailers you get for most blockbusters these days. It starts out very quiet and simply uses the momentum of Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score to build to a colossal end. It’s a trailer that’s honestly better than the film.”
“Here is another trailer that feels like an emotionally stirring 2 minute short film. This trailer still makes me feel all the feels and I can remember the insane hype I had for it in the wake of Malick’s magnum opus Tree of Life. The film is good, definitely the best of what I call his “Improv Trilogy” but this trailer is one of the most emotionally resonant trailers I’ve ever seen.”
“This might be the greatest trailer of all time. A Serious Man is one of my all time favorite Coen Brothers films and I would never in a million years think of cutting a trailer with this energy for that film. But that’s what makes this such a stroke of genius. If I ever watch this trailer, I watch the movie within a few days.”
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*We should note here by means of patting ourselves on the back that we limit our trailer reels at the AFS Cinema to 4 short trailers each. Carry on.
Richard Linklater’s film SLACKER, made in Austin on a minuscule budget with a huge cast of local performers, is bound to be on anyone’s short list of most important Texas films, and is certainly the most Austin of all Austin movies. It was a national breakout hit – as these things go – and quite literally changed the national cultural dialogue in a lot of ways both substantial and trivial after it was released by Orion Classics on July 5, 1991.
But, and this is the part of the story you may not have heard before, it almost never broke nationally. Only a few festivals accepted it, distributors didn’t think they could promote it, and, as you will hear him say in the new video that follows, he had downsized his expectations considerably, and was ready to execute a fallback plan of selling VHS tapes of SLACKER “in the back of Film Threat magazine.”
But he wasn’t done yet. In the absence of national distribution, he took the movie to Scott Dinger, owner and manager of the Dobie Theater on the edge of the University Of Texas campus. Dinger agreed to play the film a couple of times a day and it became a sensation, selling out dozens of shows in the 200 seat auditorium. The secret, other than the high quality of the film, was the promotional efforts that Linklater and his cohorts made – inspired by several years of promoting film screenings for the Austin Film Society, which Linklater founded in 1985.
At the same time, John Pierson, the producers’ representative who was shopping the film, was making headway in convincing the heads of Orion Classics that the film could find an audience, with the box office totals from the Dobie run as a convincing piece of evidence. The deal was done, and the rest is history.
Here is a new, original video about the events of 1990 featuring interviews with Linklater, Dinger, and writer Alison Macor, whose 2010 book Chainsaws, Slackers, And Spy Kids covers the whole story as part of an overview of 30 years of Austin film history. Special thanks to the RICHARD LINKLATER: DREAM IS DESTINY filmmakers for originally finding much of the b-roll footage and photographs here. Enjoy.
During this quarantine period, when so many people are spending much more time at home, we have been asking some of our friends in the film community for some streaming recommendations.
Chances are, if you are an AFS member or a regular attendee of the AFS Cinema, you already know Chale Nafus, former Director of Programming at AFS. Before his legendary 12 year run programming for AFS, he was head of Austin Community College’s RTF department, where he mentored countless young people who were interested in film. One of those students, Richard Linklater, went on to found AFS, and Chale was there to pitch in the whole time. The Chale story is too big to go into, and our debt to him is too great to go into now, but you can read more about his amazing journey in Raoul Hernandez’s article here.
We were thrilled when Chale sent us this essay about some of the more recent films he has watched on streaming services. It gives us something of the feeling that his perceptive xeroxed movie notes had. So, without further ado, here’s Chale Nafus:
À NOUS LA LIBERTÉMODERN TIMES
Let’s start out with a double feature of two films from the era of the Great Depression — À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ (René Clair, France, 1931, Criterion Channel) and MODERN TIMES (Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1936, Criterion Channel). The French film considers the lives of two convicts, Louis and Emile, who spend their days with other prisoners assembling toy horses. After his escape, like any stereotypical capitalist of the time, Louis uses stolen money to methodically turn himself into a titan of industry. His memories of the toy horses in prison become a line of men assembling the parts of record players. When his old cellmate Emile shows up, Louis gives him a job on the assembly line, but Emile’s mind often wanders off into daydreams of the office worker Jeanne. Consequently, he brings chaos to the rigid orderliness of manufacturing. Louis, already married (unhappily), is not really interested in love so much as money and power. Inevitably the two people who should really be together end the film heading down the road to new adventures. With the avant-garde music of composer Georges Auric, the striking set design by Polish modernist artist Lazare Meerson, and spoken dialogue throughout, À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ is a delightful film embodying the best of silent cinema compositions and the new technology of sound film.
Although he denied ever having seen Rene Clair’s comedy, Charlie Chaplin put certain scenes into MODERN TIMES that suggest otherwise. While the characters and stories are very different, both films deal with dehumanizing elements of 20th century life, before and during the Great Depression. Chaplin simply knew how to fully exploit all the comic elements of his settings. It’s impossible to forget the factory scenes: Chaplin dragged through the gears of the monstrous machine, the automatic feeding machine, and the use of television as a surveillance tool.
In the same way that Louis became the accidental winner of a bicycle race by stealing a bike and crossing the finish line first in the French film, Chaplin becomes the unintentional leader of a Communist protest march by running after a lumber truck to return their red flag. For this and other reasons, he goes to prison, so often that he really feels comfortable there and doesn’t want to be released. Although made nine years after the first all-talking THE JAZZ SINGER, Chaplin used the new technology for music and very clever comic moments, such as the duel of the gurgling stomachs and the barking dog. He adamantly stuck to being a visual director. Of course, there is love in MODERN TIMES, and this time, rare for the Little Tramp, it is not unrequited. The two people going off down the road at the end of this film are likewise the ones who should be together.
DETOUR
Two people who definitely should not be together are Al Roberts and a woman we only know as Vera in DETOUR (Edgar G. Ulmer, USA, 1945, Criterion Channel). Obviously, Jack Kerouac never saw DETOUR before writing “On the Road”, or he would never have started his first trek across America using his thumb. Al and Vera are both hitchhikers with dark pasts. When fate throws them together on a California highway, Vera starts concocting an evil scheme which could only lead to greater trouble for them both. Al tries to be a decent guy, but the fates see him as a toy to toss about, while Vera is so dangerous and evil that most men would be safer bedding an electric lawnmower. At least they would have good chances of just a mild shock, survivable moments of strangulation, or some painful but healable cuts. With Vera, they would get full deadly doses of all three. Ulmer’s low-budget 68-minute film for a low-rent studio can still enthrall us 75 years later.
MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL
Changing course but still looking at bigger-than-life, uncontrollable characters, MILES DAVIS – BIRTH OF THE COOL (Stanley Nelson, USA, 2020, Netflix) takes us deeply into the life and mind of jazz-god Miles Davis. Specializing in documenting African American lives in the 20th century, Stanley Nelson was bound to finally confront the mysterious genius, but he waited until he had produced 30 other documentaries. One does not approach Mount Olympus casually. Using interviews with people who knew Davis and original footage of numerous performances, Nelson intermingled Davis’s own words, raspingly voiced by Carl Lumbly. The musician’s abuse of alcohol, drugs, and women isn’t ignored but fades into the background whenever he puts lips to horn and blows out all his moods. We are treated to fine examples of each of his musical styles – bebop, sensuous, lyrical romantic, cool, blue, and dozens of improvisational approaches. His encouragement of young musicians is remarkable, but we can’t be surprised by his sharp dismissal of those who have displeased his ears. A man who could compose and play such music has to have been complex, sometimes unlikable, but never forgettable. As Quincy Jones remarks, “He makes my soul smile.”
SEBERG
SEBERG (Benedict Andrews, USA, 2019, Amazon Prime Streaming or Kanopy streaming) is not a film I would have recommended earlier this year, but now because of the rise of Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests, I think that even this anemic film has something to say to contemporary audiences. Barely 18-years-old, Jean Seberg was discovered and burned by Otto Preminger for his SAINT JOAN (1957), but she became a different kind of French heroine when she starred as Patricia Franchini in Godard’s milestone New Wave film BREATHLESS (1960). Seemingly not interested in New Wave Jean, this “bio-pic” instead focuses on her return to America to work in Hollywood around 1969. Not really knowing what to do with an actress accustomed to the freedom of French filmmaking in the 60s, she is stuck into a musical Western (PAINT YOUR WAGON, 1969) featuring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood bursting into song. What does make SEBERG watchable is the actress’s interest in various Black Power movements – the Black Panthers for one, but more importantly Hakim Jamal, Malcolm X’s cousin, who is more focused on educating young Black children than overthrowing the government. But, as seen in the movie, it is J. Edgar Hoover’s racist paranoia that led the FBI to try to destroy Jamal by destroying Seberg’s career and sanity through COINTELPRO, the Counter-Intelligence Program, using audio bugs, visual surveillance, innuendo, and lies planted in willing or unquestioning media. The film shows how one powerful government agency determined the Black Power movement could be discredited and destroyed through attacking their radical-chic allies and financial benefactors. At best, SEBERG is a cautionary tale; at worst, it is rather disjointed. Even so, it is thought-provoking to compare this representation of what happened fifty years ago with what is going on now. Also on the plus side is that the soundtrack contains Miles Davis’s “Green Haze,” Abu Talib’s “Blood of an American,” Sun Ra’s “Ankh,” and Nina Simone’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.”
Everyone who has ever appreciated the work of writer/director/actor Adrienne Shelly (born on this date in 1964) feels a complicated tangle of emotions about her. She was murdered in 2006, and her final film, WAITRESS, which she wrote and directed, was released the following year to acclaim that she was never able to enjoy. Her career was still on the rise and her death is too cruel to contemplate. A tragedy for cinema and for the many people who loved her.
But this is a body of work that deserves to be celebrated for its vitality of expression. You can get a sense of Shelly’s energy in this trailer for Hal Hartley’s 1990 film TRUST:
That’s an indie movie star for you. But she also wrote and directed films. Here’s the trailer for her directorial debut feature SUDDEN MANHATTAN (1996):
As well as the uniquely Shelly-esque romantic comedy I’LL TAKE YOU THERE (cheesy trailer alert):
It was WAITRESS (2007), however, that seemed ready to introduce her into the top rank of American independent filmmakers. When it was posthumously released, it garnered acclaim from all quarters. It says a lot that even with the loss of Shelly so fresh in people’s minds that they were able to enjoy the film’s light comic touch. Subsequently, the film has become a classic with people who work in restaurant service. Enjoy the trailer below, and maybe shell out a couple of bucks to stream the film here if you haven’t yet had the pleasure.
Nostalgia is always a safe way out in times of turmoil – or if you’re trying to come up with a subject to write a blog post about. To that end, we were poking around some of the archived issues of the Austin Chronicle and looking around to see what movies were playing around Austin in June 1995, and, in fact, it looks pretty good from here, especially since we’ve been starved for the theatrical experience during the quarantine.
So, let’s step into the Time Machine for a few moments, back before anyone heard of the Corona Virus, before the Y2K crisis devastated the World Economy. Let’s go to the movies. Here’s what’s playing on Austin screens this month – June 1995.
Wong Kar-Wai’s epic ASHES OF TIME, reviewed here by Joey O’Bryan (who would go on to become a Hong Kong screenwriter – he wrote FULLTIME KILLER!). As O’Bryan says, it “is so structurally complex in its unfolding of plot and characters, not to mention so ruthlessly revolutionary in its destruction of typical narrative techniques, that films like Pulp Fiction look like simple A-Z storytelling by comparison.”
The still not properly appreciated Joel Schumacher has a new one has a new one, BATMAN FOREVER, reviewed here by Marc Savlov. Warning: Schumacher seems to be laboring under the deeply misguided idea that a superhero movie should be colorful and fun and not a Wagnerian exercise in pain and self-abasement.
CONGO, reviewed here by Steve Davis, gets the “BOMB” rating, and that doesn’t mean “the Bomb” like, say, today’s top hitmaker Montell Jordan, it means bad. Reportedly the Taco Bell CONGO cups are excellent however.
A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM, reviewed here by Marjorie Baumgarten, is the documentary story of a single photograph – a stoop-side portrait of a veritable galaxy of jazz stars, as they gathered together in 1958 – 37 years ago – for an Esquire photo shoot. It’s an excellent documentary, and highly recommended.
JLG BY JLG, reviewed here by Baumgarten, is the latest from Jean-Luc Godard. He’s getting into his tender late years now, so this may be one of his last naval-gazers. Let’s appreciate his philosophizing and dense word-play while we still can. He is forever a treasure.
There’s a new Hal Hartley, AMATEUR, reviewed here by Alison Macor. This is one of Hartley’s best yet, and a signal American indie of the year, as Macor writes: “A Hal Hartley film is an acquired taste. A viewer can slip in and out of appreciation for Hartley’s work, but it takes a true Hartley-ite to champion all of his films without pause. With Amateur, Hartley has once again proven that he’s cornered the market on independent film etiquette: making the film’s narrative just left of center, casting actors with whom you’ve worked previously, having them deliver dialogue with deadpan slyness.” There you go. See it.
A new Charles Burnett film is always cause for celebration, and a Burnett film with marquee stars aimed at a mainstream audience is truly unique. THE GLASS SHIELD, reviewed here by Baumgarten, is, as she notes, “rich and rewarding,” The subject matter, racism and sexism within a disturbingly insular police department, is deeply resonant.
And here are some of the trailers you’ll be seeing in theaters this month – remember that Austin is a small city, and we don’t get the major art film releases until many weeks after the big cities, if even then.
The late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (born on June 22, 1940) was a giant of Cinema. His feature films, which played in festivals around the world and often had substantial arthouse runs in the the film capitals of the world, helped to give Iran a place at the table in terms of contemporary artistic expression. Interestingly, his first films were shorts made as part of his day job for the government.
For twenty years, Kiarostami worked for Iran’s Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. He made films that were intended to help kids develop the coordination of their values, judgment and actions. The situations depicted in the films could be quite simple – seemingly trivial even, until we actually consider the thought processes being depicted, which are often pretty complex – especially for the youthful target audience.
For example, in 1975’s TWO SOLUTIONS FOR THE SAME PROBLEM, two boys have an argument over a book, tearing it in the process. We are shown two possible outcomes of the situation. In one, the two have a violent fight, and in the second, the two boys work together to repair the binding.
In the following short film, THE BREAD AND ALLEY (1970), Kiarostami’s first as a director, a boy returning home from the bakery with bread is menaced by a dog in an alley. He discovers a solution – but one that cannot be used by the next boy confronted with the problem of the dog.
