THIS programme comprised three short films and two music promos directed by Jem Cohen, whose feature length documentary Benjamin Smoke was also being screened at the EIFF.

The first film, Lucky Three (1998) was a promo for US singer-songwriter Elliot Smith, intermingling Smith performing three tracks with images of small town Americana.

This was followed by Lost Book Found (1996), the longest of the films comprising the programme. A narrator tells the story of how, when he first came to New York city, he worked as a push cart vendor and got to know other people on the margins. One of them, who eked out a living by fishing for things dropped down drains, had found a note book.

Inside were hand-written lists, drawing out seemingly bizarre interconnections between things. Accompanying the narration - and sometimes existing solely on their own - was a montage of images of the signs and images that surround the city dweller, their inter-relationships heightened by the narrative.

The next film, the promo for REM's song "Nightswimming" (1994) included colour footage, whereas its precedessors had been in black-and-white. The most interesting aspects of it - the video essentially accompanies the story in the song, of people swimming at night - were the unaccompanied sections at the start and middle of the film, with genital nudity that presumably wasn't permitted to be shown on the likes of MTV.

The fourth film, Blood Orange Sky (2000), was a narrative-free portrait of a Sicilian city, intermingling colour and black-and-white footage and with interesting music from Sparklehorse.

The last film, Little Flags (also 2000), was also the shortest. Shots of Gulf War victory parade crowds - complete with flags, balloons and "Fuck Saddam" T-shirts - were brilliantly counterbalanced by a lone man chanting ironically "Lets all celebrate 250,000 dead" at the end.

I was interested in seeing these films because Jem Cohen had made a feature documentary, Instrument, about Fugazi, one of my favourite bands, with whom he has had a long involvement.

I liked Lost Book Found and Little Flags a lot - the latter, particularly, made its point with great simplicity and elegance - but wasn't so interested in either of the music videos (they're just not my sort of thing to be honest) and felt that Blood Orange Sky needed something more than just the images of Sicilian markets and Mount Etna (I presume), interesting though they were.

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