Naked Childhood / Small Faces

Thursday | August 16, 2007 7:00 pm

Naked Childhood

Directed by Maurice Pialiat

Small Faces

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon

Screening on Film

Often compared to Francois Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Maurie Pialat’s debut feature follows the plight of a young boy abandoned by his mother and sent to live in foster care, where his behavior becomes increasingly erratic. Produced by Truffaut and Claude Berri, the film seems removed from the political realities of May 1968 yet reveals a rawness of human emotion in its characters (played mostly by nonprofessionals) which is timeless. Gillies MacKinnon’s Small Faces follows two brothers who try to make it on the violent streets of Glasgow in a Sixties milieu that is anything but swinging. Overlooked in the shadow of the more accessible Trainspotting, MacKinnon’s film offers a more personal portrait of real-life struggles.

PROGRAM

Naked Childhood (L'enfance nue)

Directed by Maurice Pialiat.
With Michel Terrazon, Marie Marc, Linda Gutemberg.
France, 1968, 35mm, color, 83 min.
French with English subtitles.
Small Faces

Directed by Gillies MacKinnon.
UK, 1996, 35mm, color, 108 min.