Commercials and Shorts by Roy Andersson

A selection of Andersson's droll little capitalist nightmares (“the best in the world” according to Ingmar Bergman) featuring color-drained people who have ceased to be consumers and become the consumed. Middle-aged newlyweds pound one another's skulls with appliances; new purchases bring disasters; and an infamous ad for Sweden's Social Democratic Party rhetorically asks “Why Should We Care About One Another?” as nurses offhandedly toss patients around rooms, teachers shake down kids for lunch money, and commuters kick a man while he's down. In 1987 the Swedish Social Affairs Department sanctioned Andersson to create an AIDS information film; the notorious result, Something Happened (1987, 24 mins), was so disturbing, both visually and polemically, that the government disowned it as “too dark.” The Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival named World of Glory (1991, 15 mins) one of the top ten shorts of all time; beginning with nude men, women, and children herded into a moving van while businessmen passively watch, it presents a world where banality turns absurd, and the absurd horrific.

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