A silent film shot mostly on high contrast 16mm film, attempting to tell a story mostly with titles. Put together during a particularly bad time when I had just moved to the East Village and was living in a storefront on Sixth Street just off the Bowery. In the film I was reaching out for verbal and moral support from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell and visual support from Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic. I’ve hardly ever projected this or shown it.
This film is a revealing portrait of a tough cop with a big heart. Sergeant Bernie "Whistling" Smith walks the beat on Vancouver's Eastside, the hangout of petty criminals, down-and-outs and a variety of characters.
Karl Maiwald, a Dortmund auto mechanic, struggles amid neighbor disputes and family tension. Discovering his company’s clandestine bugging, he exposes management, expecting union backing.
