Eros & Shorts
In Eros, three acclaimed directors—Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni—each direct a short film on the subjects of love and sex. Wong's The Hand features typically gorgeous cinematography in its tale of unrequited love between a tailor and a call girl in the 1960s. Soderbergh's witty Equilibrium stars Robert Downey, Jr. as a hardworking advertising executive who discusses with psychiatrist Alan Arkin possible connections between work stress and a recurring erotic dream. Finally, Antonioni's Il Filo pericoloso delle cose uses the coast of Tuscany as a backdrop for a sensuous ménage-à-trois and its repercussions.
This prototypical example of Dadaist surrealism suggests the structure of a woman's dream but with some of Man Ray's most radical techniques in play, the film defies synopsis. The title comes from an old Basque expression which loosely translates to "don't bother me."
Thanks in part to his California upbringing, Anger's quintessentially underground films often engage in a subversive dialogue with Hollywood. Puce Moment, a fragment of an incomplete film titled Puce Women, follows the fetishistic dressing ritual of a glamorous woman as she prepares to walk her dogs. The short film demonstrates Anger's preoccupation with classic Hollywood as he both laments its decline and provides a tongue-in-cheek exploration of Hollywood iconography.
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Lines Horizontal
Directed by Norman McLaren and Evelyne Lamart.
Canada, 1962, color, 6 min.
MacLaren and Lamart give their unique interpretation of visual music in this animated short. A series of horizontal lines come to life with the accompaniment of an absorbing score by folk artist Pete Seeger.
Sarah Pucill questions the traditional female role as provider in society in this experimental work in which she creates a collage of domestic objects to reflect her modest heroine's interior struggle.