Before he turned to feature filmmaking in 1968 with Naked Childhood, Pialat worked on a series of short films, many of them financed by French television. “Turkish Chronicles” is a compendium of poetic and visually striking pieces shot in Turkey. Byzance uses a text by Stefan Zweig to describe the Ottoman conquest of the city in 1453. Maître Galip is a typically perceptive study of children, and includes a poem by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet.