Steady Diet of Film

Short Films: Peque Varela's "1977"

A clip from Peque Varela's film 1977 about a girl who daydreams of a different identity.

Short Films: Theodore Ushev's "Drux Flux"

Inspired by "One-Dimensional Man" by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, Drux Flux is an intoxicating, disorienting examination of how industrial progress can crush the soul.

Short Films: Jonas Odell's "Lies"

Jonas Odell's Lies received the Best International Short film award at Sundance in 2009. The film follows three different episodes of major lies and their consequences.

I saw Lies earlier this year at Hot Docs where it screened with Simon Backes's wonderful documentary Stolen Art (subtitle-less clip available here).

Short Films: Orly Yadin's and Sylvie Bringas' "Silence"

Silence is an 11-minute animated documentary film about a little girl holocaust survivor and her learned and self-imposed silences.

In conjunction with the film, Yadin presented a fascinating paper at The Holocaust and the Moving Image held at the Imperial War Museum in July 2003. She writes about the experience of making the film:

Whilst I was interested in Tana’s story for personal reasons, I could not imagine, initially, how to produce a film that would shed new light on survivors’ experiences and how to reach out to a new audience. Apart from a couple of photographs and three letters, Tana had no visual documentation of her childhood. Apart from the Nazi propaganda film made of Theresienstadt, there was no footage that I knew of that could help illuminate her story. I was not interested in filming yet another interview with a survivor talking about events she experienced at a much younger age. So, I kept on saying no to the idea of making a film. Tana, however, was persistent. She was determined to end her silence, but didn’t want to face an audience herself.

Short Films: Johnny Kelly's "The Seed"

Commissioned by Adobe to promote their Creative Suite 4, The Seed is Johnny Kelly's short animation about nature’s life cycle.

Short Films: Floris Kaayk's The Order Electrus

Floris Kaayk's animated film The Order Electrus looks at what might happen if nature adopted some of humans beings' destructive habits.

Scaredy Cat, the POV online shorts film festival choice this quarter

 
Starting December 10th until March 10th PBS's Online Short Film Festival (hosted by P.O.V.) will be streaming free online Andy Blubaugh's film Scaredycat. The 15-minute experimental documentary, examining the role fear plays in our daily lives, starts out as somewhat precious picture of the film-maker's OCD. But when Blubaugh delves into his recent mugging and assault as a point of departure (illustrated with animation and his 911 phone call) to look at PTSD, mandatory sentencing laws and emotional closure the film reaches surprising depth.

I caught the film when P.O.V. bumpered it with Frieda Lee Mock's wonderful Tony Kushner documentary Wrestling with Angels and highly recommend them both.