Quad I+II

Follows the "Beckett on Film" project, which produced film adaptations of writer Samuel Beckett's nineteen stage plays. The documentary features excerpts from the "Beckett on Film" versions of "Not I", "Krapp's Last Tape", "Endgame", "What Where", and "Waiting for Godot".

A reader tells a sad story to a listener, who only knocks in response.

a 22-minute French experimental short film directed by Marin Karmitz and Jean Ravel, based on Samuel Beckett's 1963 play. It features actors Eléonore Hirt, Michael Lonsdale, and Delphine Seyrig in a stark, black-and-white adaptation focusing on light and sound, which was notably showcased at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Somewhere sits two men, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for a man named Godot. Internationally acclaimed Swedish TV dramatized version of the classic stage play.

In Krapp's Last Tape, which was written in English in 1958, an old man reviews his life and assesses his predicament. We learn about him not from the 69-year-old man on stage, but from his 39-year-old self on the tape he chooses to listen to. On the 'awful occasion' of his birthday, Krapp was then and is now in the habit of reviewing the past year and 'separating the grain from the husks'. He isolates memories of value, fertility and nourishment to set against creeping death 'when all my dust has settled'. One part of 19 parts for series "Beckett on Film" featuring filmed versions of Beckett plays, some screened at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival and some on Channel 4 television in the UK in June 2001.

Two tramps wait for a man named Godot, but instead meet a pompous man and his stooped-over slave.

The land is filled with people in urns chattering at top speed, but only to themselves, not to one another. The focus goes to three people: a man, his mistress and his wife.

A man attempts to evade observation by an all-seeing eye.

A 1963 TV film directed by Michel Mitrani.

An old blind beggar and an old cripple in a wheelchair meet on a desolate street corner. The latter proposes that the two form an alliance, but the men are not destined to get along together.

Manoel de Oliveira plays his film in three stages: the first part - a play, the second can be roughly defined as a silent film (with the behind the scenes read excerpts from Beckett works), but in the end the director brilliantly performs the same material of the avant-garde exercise. Surprisingly, a joke, repeated three times, each time everything sounds fresh and develops into an almost verbatim adaptation of the biblical "Book of Job" - a spectacular point in a parable about how hard to empathize with other people's misery, when you have your own.

Performed at the Royal Court Theatre on 16th January 1973

An autocratic Director (Harold Pinter) and his Assistant (Rebecca Pidgeon) put the final touches to the last scene of some kind of dramatic presentation, which consists entirely of a man (John Gielgud) standing still onstage.

Two derelicts occupy themselves as they wait for 'Godot' to make an appearance on Pozzo's estate.

The camera swoops down on a circular area, seemingly suspended in space. It is filled with medical waste and other trash. A labored exhalation is heard. Then it stops. Then it starts again, culminating in a windy, dying sigh.

Two vagabonds, Vladimir and Estragon, meet on stage in a non-place ("Country road with tree") at dusk to wait for "Godot". This man - who will never come - has promised them that he will come to the rendezvous; although it is not clear what he is supposed to bring them, he represents a hope for change. While waiting for him, the two friends try to find occupations, "distractions" to make the time go by.