Short Stories

VC BOYS Boys and Girls. 26 min.

The story takes place on a fox farm in the 1940’s. Margaret comes to identify with her father’s spirited horse, scheduled to be shot for fox feed. She helps the horse escape, but it is captured and its spirit broken. Margaret decides that she will escape herself, and is determined that she will not be caught like the horse was.

VC BRADBUR The Screaming Woman. 26 min.

To this youthful girl with an active imagination, evil spirits, eerie sounds and strange occurrences are all part of the average day. Unfortunately, she discovers something stranger than fiction right in her own backyard.

VC BRADBUR BAN The Banshee. 26 min.

At John’s house, Douglas hears eerie noises coming from outside. John dismisses them, calling them “the Banshee.” Responding to a dare, John goes out to search for the Banshee, ad Douglas locks him out of the house, leaving him to his fate.

VC BRADBUR ELEC The Electric Grandmother. 32 min.

Ray Bradbury's story "I Sing the Body Electric" is the source of this gentle and affecting tale. A young father and his three children lose their wife and mother. During their mourning they are visited by a mysterious helicopter from an amazing fantasy world where a perfect grandmother can be made to their exact specifications,

VC BRADBUR INV The Invisible Boy. 23 min.

Fantasy, mountain magic, the impatience of youth, and the loneliness of old age are elements that work to make this a whimsical tale.

VC BRADBUR LON The Long Rain. 26 min.

What kind of planet is this, where it rains & rains? No light, no sun. And creepy, rain creatures that attack, invade, & dissolve all life forms - especially human ones!

VC BRADBUR TOW The Town Where No One Got Off. 26 min.

Jeff Goldbloom is a writer who, idealizing small town life, accepts the challenge of a cynical passenger and gets off the train at a whistle stop in the middle of nowhere. He is surprised to find a man who has been waiting for him, a stranger, for 20 years.

VC BRADBUR VEL The Veldt. 24 min.

The Hadley’s new house does everything for them–it cooks, does the housework, reads to them, even comforts them. Why, in this technological paradise, are Mr. and Mrs. Hadley bitterly unhappy and increasingly horrified by the image and sounds of the African Veldt on the playroom walls? Satire and horror mix in this science fiction story of mounting suspense.

VC CONNECT Connection. (by Alice Munro) 26 min.

Maureen appears to have everything, but finds that her life is empty of warmth and happiness. A visit from a cousin makes her realize that she can no longer sacrifice her self-esteem to fit into her husband’s world.

VC LAWRENC The Horse Dealer’s Daughter. 30 min.

A haunting short story of a young woman’s search for identity.

VC MAUPASS The Necklace. 22 min.

Mathilde Loisel is married to a decent, but minor governmental official. Her dreams of rising to a better station in life were probably common to the 19th century French bourgeois class, but the loss of a borrowed necklace reduces her to menial work to replace it. What she learns years later will shock everyone.

VC OCO Flannery O’Connor’s “The Displaced Person. 58 min.

Addresses the subtle cruelty that comes from fear of the unknown.

VC OLSEN I stand here Ironing. 18 min.

An autobiographical story of Tillie Olsen.

VC POE CAS The Cask of Amontillado. 18 min.

VC POE TEL 1971 The Tell-Tale Heart. 30 min.

VC POE TEL 2000 The Tell-Tale Heart. 25 min.

VC POE FAL Fall of The House of Usher. 30 min.

VC PORTER JIL Jilting of Granny Weatherall. 57 min.

VC PORTER JIL 1980 Jilting of Granny Weatherall. 57 min.

VC RED Red Balloon. 34 min.

VC SAKI The Open Window and Child’s Play. 28 min.; 11 min.

The open window: How a young girl’s descriptive narrative fuels the imagination of her attentive visitor.

Child’s play: a young boy’s struggle for identity amid the conflict with his restrictive guardian.

VC THEN Then / Now. 26 min.

Karen Sasaki dreams of becoming a writer. Her father, Kaz, wants her to join him in running the family flower shop. She becomes a writer and eventually is brave enough to make the1st move towards reconciliation.

VC UPDIKE The Music School. 30 min.

In this very personal short story, John Updike explores the turmoil of one man, a writer, in his search for the form and harmony in life.

VC UPDIKE A&P A&P. 31 min.

Dramatization of author’s frequently antholigized story of irony and innocence.

VC UPDIKE Pigeon Feathers. 45 min.

The story of a young man’s search through the questions of life and death, and the wondrous discovery of living in the soaring beauty of one of nature’s simplest creations.

VC VONNEGU Fortitude. 25 min.

A popular soap opera star, gets a letter from an elderly woman accompanied by a check for a million dollars.

VC VONNEGU Next Door. 25 min.

Nine-year-old Paul convinces them that he will be fine alone while they go out for their anniversary, but the sounds of evening in the apartment are menacing when one is alone.

VC VONNEGU ALL All the Kings Horses. 25 min.

American Ambassador Bryan Kelly is on his way to a new post in a Central American county when his plan is hijacked. He is taken prisoner by Col. Vaccaro, the leader of a rebel movement, who knows he may soon die for his ideals, but still believes that a concern for the common good exists in mankind.

VC VONNEGU DP D. P. 25 min.

On the barren wasteland that is post-W.W. II Germany, we become emotionally torn between a soldier’s duty and compassion.

VC VONNEGU EPI Epicac. 25 min.

Epicac is a super computer with unprecedented power. Epicac’s programmer, Eric Novak, is having personal problems.

VC VONNEGU EUP The Euphio Question. 25 min.

Fred Bockman, an astronomer, offers to play a signal he has picked up from a distant planet to a TV talk show host. They experience an incomparable feeling of euphoria when the signal fills the studio, which brings forth different responses from each of the men.

VC VONNEGU MOR More Stately Mansions. 25 min.

When Alan & Anne move to their new house in the suburbs, their neighbor Grace is full of ideas on how to improve their house. Grace soon has her dream but is lost to insanity.

VC WELTY The Hitch-Hikers. 30 min.

Sense the heat languor and indolence of a Southern small-town summer night. A hitch-hiker you kindly picked up for company on the long country road has been murdered.

VC WELTY A Worn Path. 32 min.

A heroic image of the human spirit enduring against tremendous odds and a poignant commentary on the African American experience.

VC WILLIAM The Blue Men. 45 min.

Amid the tourists and white washed houses of small summer island, a young boy and his grandmother make efforts to forge an uneasy relationship and discover love in the shadow of an unusual tragedy.

VC WRIGHT Almos’ a Man. 51 min.

Although Dave and his family are poor sharecroppers in the deep south in the 1930’s,this 15-year-old’s problem is still shared by teenagers today:

SC AME America’s Dream. 86 min.

Captures the joy, the pain, and the struggle to survive in a land where dreams can be lost ... and found. Three stories included: “Long black song,” “The boy who painted Christ black,” and “The reunion.”