Image Union, episode 0028

Two part episode of Image Union featuring "Relation" by Jeff Jur and "Exercise" by Len Amato.

0:00Copy video clip URL Slate.

0:27Copy video clip URL Image Union opening.

1:11Copy video clip URL “Relation,” by Jeff Jur (In black and white.) A young lady and an old lady play checkers. The older woman wins.

3:08Copy video clip URL A silhouette of a person. We hear the old woman, Grandma, coughing. The young lady, her granddaughter, checks on her. When the granddaughter asks her father if there’s anything they can do, he tells her they’ve decided to send Grandma to a nursing home.

4:48Copy video clip URL Upset, the granddaughter checks on Grandma again, but there’s nothing she can do.

5:14Copy video clip URL Granddaughter watches television. We hear Grandma crying. People come in and put her in a wheelchair to take her out. Granddaughter stands uncomfortably in the living room, obviously sad, and watches from the window as Grandma is taken away.

7:13Copy video clip URL We see granddaughter lying in bed, and go to Grandma lying in bed listening to music. We hear whispering from nowhere in particular.

7:58Copy video clip URL We see a series of still shots of a casket being taken to a hearse and hear a preacher reading.

8:27Copy video clip URL Granddaughter rides the El Train, and is obviously taken by grief and worry.

9:33Copy video clip URL Granddaughter wanders through her house and comes to a box of photos and things of her Grandma’s. She finds two photos of her grandmother, one as a young woman and one as an old woman, and compares them. The End.

11:19Copy video clip URL “Exercise,” by Len Amato. (In black and white.) A man does push-ups on a Chicago rooftop. A woman wanders the rooftop. The man spots her. We realize the woman is going to jump to her death.

13:05Copy video clip URL The man yells to her, stops her jump, and offers her coffee. She accepts.

13:55Copy video clip URL He finishes his push-ups as she watches. They make small talk about coffee. He offends her by asking if she’ll hold his legs while he does sit-ups. She is unhappy to have been bothered in the first place, and refuses.

16:40Copy video clip URL The man demonstrates the difficulty of doing sit-ups without a partner. She decides to hold his legs. He proceeds with sit-ups enthusiastically. She acts irritated and refuses to do any herself.

19:20Copy video clip URL He finishes. When asked, the woman admits that she had planned to kill herself. He wants to help and invites her down, but she becomes indignant, asking what he thinks he could do for her. We find out that the man served in Vietnam. She asks if he killed anyone, he ignores the question and begins jumping jacks.

23:48Copy video clip URL He tells her he knows her as the woman in the blue robe across the alley, says he’s watched her for ages and always wanted to speak to her. This upsets her, and she moves to the edge of the roof again. She engages in a monologue wherein she says that there’s nothing he can do to stop her from killing herself; that there are a million rooftops she can jump from. She leaves.

26:09Copy video clip URL A shot of the city from high up–all the rooftops. Lem Amato.

26:57Copy video clip URL Image Union closing.

27:51Copy video clip URL End of program.