Daily Archives: March 5, 2004

Jim Jarmusch’s Favorite Shorts

This shorts program was originally compiled for a personal appearance by director Jim Jarmusch at last December’s Movieside Film Festival but proved so popular that the organizers have scheduled an encore screening. It’s indicative of Jarmusch’s singular taste that all but two of these items — Sara Driver’s energetic documentary The Bowery (1994) and Hype Williams’s equally energetic music video I Got ‘Cha Money (1999) — are in black and white. The others, in chronological order of release, are Buster Keaton’s wonderful The High Sign (1920); Max Fleischer’s wild surrealist cartoon Bimbo’s Initiation (1931); Carl Dreyer’s spooky public-service short on auto safety, They Caught the Ferry (1948, in Danish with subtitles); Orlando Jiminez Leal and Saba Cabrera’s celebration of Havana street life, P.M. (1961); Anthony Balch’s strange experimental film with William S. Burroughs, Towers Open Fire (1963); Jem Cohen’s reflective video about a Manhattan crowd after a street parade, Little Flags (2000); and Jarmusch’s leisurely Int. Trailer. Night. (2002), which follows Chloe Sevigny in a trailer during ten minutes between takes on an urban movie location. (JR)

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