Cocoon (1968)

This unusual short was made while the director was at U.S.C., prior to returning to his native Iran, where he made a few feature films before his untimely death at the age of 48. Cocoon follows a frustrated young black dishwasher who visits adult bookstores and lives a lonely, meager existence. Filmed against a particularly sleazy (and hippie-filled) late-1960s Hollywood. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called Cocoon "one of the finest serious short films ever made, right up there with Roman Polanski's Two Men and a Wardrobe."