Film: Summer Laughs — SUGARBABY (Adlon, 1985)

THE BLACKSMITH, b&w, silent, 21 minutes. Directed by Buster Keaston and Malcolm St. Clair, 1922. Starring Buster Keaton.

Harkening back to the films done with Fatty Arbuckle, this short stars Keaton as a resourceful blacksmith's assistant. He fries eggs on the forge, fits a horse with new shoes in the manner of a shoe salesman and rigs a motor-car spring system under the saddle of a sore woman rider. He also saves a pretty young woman when her horse bolts.

SUGARBABY, color, 86 minutes. Directed by Percy Adlon, 1985. In German with English subtitles. Starring Marianne Marianne Sägebrecht, Eisi Gulp, Toni Berger, Manuela Denz, Will Spindler, Hans Stadlbauer, Meret Burger, Werner Zeussel.

Marianne, a plain, overweight woman, leads an uneventful life as a mortician's assistant. When not dressing corpses, she consumes large amounts of food and watches late-night television. One day during her commute she is beguiled by the voice of the conductor announcing the station stops. Catching a glimpse of Eisi, Marianne takes time off from her macabre job to devote herself full time to stalking her beloved.

Join us for a not-your-usual film. Here at 96th Street Library we try to continue an Art Film Theater tradition. We screen older, lesser known, foreign, avant-garde, feature length and short films usually grouped into a theme. If it's unusual we'll show it.