Prelude 21 is most characterized by the double-time of single-frame printing of extremely thick swatches of multiple colors as if in a furiously boiling cauldron.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.
Corky, a tough female ex-convict working on an apartment renovation in a Chicago building, meets a couple living next door, Caesar, a paranoid mobster, and Violet, his seductive girlfriend, who is immediately attracted to her.
When Ashtray moves to South Central L.A. to live with his father (who appears to be the same age he is) and grandmother (who likes to talk tough and smoke reefer), he falls in with his gang-banging cousin Loc Dog, who along with the requisite pistols and Uzi carries a thermo-nuclear warhead for self-defense.
A young man makes ends meet by selling camotes in his small providence town, has zero luck getting with the ladies, and is too broke to afford the hookers of the town.
Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims to have never seen a movie before making his first film. Doubtful as it sounds, this boast matches perfectly with the controversial artist's personae.