In this scene from the French-American feature-length documentary Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris, France, burns his hair with a candle to avoid going to a barber who “would fool around for 20 minutes.” George cuddles with two girls who live in his bookshop-commune for writers, poets and travelers, then recites a poem. […] The 52-minute film won first prize in the 2003 Printemps des poètes film festival (Paris), and has been screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF), the Festival Internacional de Cine Contemporáneo de la Ciudad de México (FICCO), the Era Nowe Horyzonty Film Festival (Cieszyn, Poland) and the non-competition Venice Screenings section at the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica, known as the Venice Film Festival in English. […] The Italian title is Ritratto di una Libreria in un Vecchio Signore. The score was composed by Michael Galasso, who wrote part of the original score for Wong kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love.
