Film (Alan Schneider, 1965)

Conceived of by Nobel Prize–winning Irish author Samuel Beckett and featuring beloved silent comedian Buster Keaton, Film is a one-of-a kind, profoundly existential take on the chase film. Filmed late in his career and completely unlike any of his previous roles, here Keaton plays a nameless man pursued by an unrelenting camera through the summertime streets of New York City. As with his modernist novels and plays, Beckett addresses the structure of his medium by making his main protagonist the cinematic apparatus itself: the camera, the image, and the viewer. (22 mins., 35mm)