Backbone Tale
Short Films and Mid-Lengths
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9m 10s
Directed by Jérémy Clapin | 9 mins | 2004
Clapin’s first short is a game of Tetris as much as it is a love story. It centers on a man whose spine bends at a striking right angle: his eyes can gaze only downwards, his hat perched on the back of his head. The appearance of a woman whose back bends in the opposite direction would seem to signal an end to his loneliness.
Up Next in Short Films and Mid-Lengths
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Beast
Directed by Benjamin Nicolas | 11 mins | 2021
While the opening of this Expressionistic short film—depicting a perfunctory exchange between a rideshare driver and his passenger about Christmas shopping—gives little indication as to the direction it’s headed in, then the ominous title is rather mo... -
Blonde Cobra
Directed by Ken Jacobs | 34 mins | 1963
In Blonde Cobra, dubbed “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema” by Jonas Mekas, Jacobs turns his camera on fellow underground icon Jack Smith. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one of the most wildl... -
Carl Ruggles' Christmas Breakfast
Directed by Carolee Schneemann | 9 mins | 1963
In her first video work, Schneemann crafts an impressionistic portrait of another fearlessly provocative multidisciplinary artist: the eponymous Ruggles, best known for his dissonant, ultramodernist compositions and his lacerating tongue. Blotches of...
