Short Stories

A film based on Franz Kafka's short story "The Metamorphosis," the story is told through the animation of beach sand on a piece of glass. An imaginative sound track and innovative artwork combine to recreate a Kafkaesque world of alienation and guilt.

Hadleyburg has a reputation for unshakable honesty. The smug towns-people are proud of this virtue and keep themselves honest by simply avoiding temptation. That is until The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg arrives in town. Robert Preston stars as the stranger who plots a revenge on the hypocritical residents by promising a fortune to the citizens who once showed him charity many years before. One by one the stranger tempts the leading citizens to scheme for the money- until Hadleyburg's honest reputation is mud before the world. Based on one of Mark Twain's best-known short stories, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg is a cynical, yet humorous view of life in America's small towns-a life that the acerbic Mr. Twain knew only too well.

Jack London's famous short is filmed with complete fidelity to London's graphic narrative and could be called a screen short story in its purest form. The stark realism of the chilling images combined with the power of Orson Welles' reading fills the viewer with an awesome admiration for the story's courageous hero. The visuals add a new dimension to London's prose and the viewer feels the icy cold to an extent that reaches far beyond the power of words alone. This chilly discomfort provides a tense background for the suspense which is to come as the man attempts to build the fire he must have in order to survive. Narrated by Orson Welles.

The Oscar-nominated short comedy (based on a story by Roddy Doyle) poignantly captures the experience of being the new kid in school through the eyes of Joseph, a nine-year-old African boy.