Stanley Pickle

Stanley Pickle

Victoria Mather

2010, about 15 minutes

UK

The embedded video is a trailer for Stanley Pickle, the full short is unavailable online.

I have an issue with Stanley Pickle. Its an issue that I think a lot of films share with Stanley Pickle. I find that Stanley Pickle does not recognize how insane its own characters are. The film treats what is arguably criminal insane as some sort of twee charm.

The main character in this film has taken all of the people in his life who have died (we can only hope that they died of natural causes), emptied out their organs and reanimated them as clockwork automatons to do imitations of what they did in life. if a real person was caught doing this, they would immediately be carted off to an asylum.

On some level, the filmmaker understands this, and Stanley does take on a certain evil tone at points. But all of these are clearly intended to be sight gags more than acknowledgement of how insane the entire proceeding is.

Over the course of the film, Stanley becomes obsessed with a strange girl but refused to contact her. Then he reanimates her dead pet and it attacks her. Then he decides to leave the little world of insanity he's built for himself. And this is all portrayed as a simple coming of age story.

It's a shame that this film has this problem, since their are several strong points in the film. The style of filming, which the director describes as animation, is a kind of live-action stop-motion. It is extremely cool and fits the world of the short well. But the entire thing is ruined by its refusal to make its tone match the insanity of its protagonist.

DER EISANGLER

After my very interesting night trying to get back home from my DC shorts viewing in time to post this, I finally was able to sit down and really think about which film was my true favorite of the night. I had a very close tie between Sudden Death! and Der Eisangler (The Icefisher).

So for my post I have decided on Der Eisangler, really only because someone already talked about the hilarious Sudden Death!. I was very skeptical as Der Eisangler began because it was already in German with English subtitles, but as soon as the movie started I was intrigued. The movie opens to find a very young boy named Jonas sitting in the back of a car driven by his Mother. They are headed down a freshly shoveled street, but the rest of the area around them is blanketed within at least a foot of snow and ice. As they arrive at the destination, a beat up trailer home owned by Jonas' Father, we see the bickering begin between the two parents almost instantly. The little boy, whose innocence just radiates through his adorable face and deep eyes, just stares at them until his Mom leaves and he can ask his Dad about going ice fishing. His Dad tells him tomorrow morning they will go and that he should never, ever go ice fishing alone (instant red flag). So that night while they laid in bed together, the Dad reads the little boy a story. This story is basically about a Fisherman, His Wife, and an Enchanted fish. The Fisherman tells his Wife of the Enchanted fish he threw back into the water after she begins to yell at him for not bringing any fish home. After she hears of the wish, she orders her husband back to the water to make a wish to the fish. He reluctantly goes back and sure enough the fish grants her wish of a bigger house. As the story goes on, the wife is never happy and continues to order her husband back to the lake to make more wishes, each one granted. The story ends after one or two wishes for the night, because Jonas falls asleep.

The next morning, Jonas wakes up before his Father, took the story book, and ripped the picture of the Fish out of it. Then he took the fishing gear and headed out to the ice. He finally found a spot to his suiting and as he chipped away at the ice, he said the poem asking for the fish to come to him and grant his wish for his parents to fall back in love with one another. I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that there was about an 82.7% chance I was crying at the end.

I really enjoyed this film because not only did it absolutely break my heart, but the actual set up of the film was immaculate. The director has such beautiful scenes with the massive amounts of white snow as the backdrop and doesn't try too hard with the contrast of color throughout the film. The simple color contrast of a little boy in his brown coat tugging fishing supplies behind him is already so beautiful in one frame alone that I was very relieved she didn't try and throw in some sort of loud, bright color. The other amazing set up that I loved was that since the story really ended early to the audience when Jonas fell asleep, the director used a voiceover of the Father continuing the story throughout the rest of the film. We'd hear more developments in the story as the day of fishing went on for Jonas. The climatic parts of the film were synchronized with the climatic parts of the story, all up until the very end when we learn that the moral of the fishing story is that "you cannot always have what you wish for," but at that moment it is too late for our precious Jonas to learn that lesson. That ladies and gentlemen, is when you find yourself looking for tissues because all of a sudden you are bawling your eyes out while the end credits run up the screen.

All in all, I definitely had a very pleasant evening at the DC short film festival and hope all of y'all did too!

Tattoo

Paul Hellin, 20 mins, Finland



It was obvious to me that this film was the one to write about when at its end, the audience was too confused and disgusted to applaud for a good 15 seconds. The film does a remarkable job of creating tension at an excruciatingly slow pace - tension that is supported by eerie murmuring background music, close up reaction shots, dark cinematography, slow movements in camera, and terse, ominous bits of dialogue that complicate rather than clarify.

The film begins when a young girl enters a tattoo shop late at night to find a very ornery, quietly smoking tattoo artist who is in turn suspicious, mean, taciturn, and mysterious. He agrees to tattoo the girl all across her back, and gives her a shot to help ease the pain. The shot eventually makes the girl fall asleep, and when she wakes up, she finds she's gotten something very different than what she asked for.

Though the premise of the film is relatively simple, the slow pace really lends the film a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat quality. A noticeable total silence descended over the crowd during the scene when the girl starts getting tattooed, and lasted for nearly ten tension-wracked minutes. It's impossible to determine if the tattoo artist is merely grumpy or dangerous.

Interview Date

INTERVIEW DATE - D.C. Shorts Festival

Directed by Mike Lemcke

United States, 2011, ~20 mins

The short “Interview Date” by Mike Lemcke is the tail of two meetings set up by two separate groups getting mixed up and having some hilarious effects. Simply put, the short follows the stories of a job interview and a online date coming together and getting mixed up. With one person from each appointment with a person from the other appointment hilarity ensues as both groups attempt to figure out what’s wrong. Without ruining the final plot twist, the ending wraps up the short with a funny scene that most people won’t see coming.

Overall this short was the best short in the showcase I viewed while at the D.C. Shorts Film Festival. While it was the first short, it left such a memorable impression that it was the short I wanted to write about. What set this short apart from most of the shorts that I saw was the way it ended and it’s hilarity. When it comes to how this short ended, it had a physical ending that left me satisfied while others in the show case such as “Sweetness & Art” left me wanting more. However “Interview Date” really set itself apart because it kept me interested throughout the entire short. While other shorts were great, some of them lost me very quickly or seemed to skip parts of a story. This doesn’t mean that there weren’t a few issues with the film such as spending too long in the apartment at the beginning however compared to everyone else it was by far the best. That’s why I was really happy to see that you got the DC Shorts 2011 Audience Honorable Mention and the 2010 DC Shorts Screen Play Competition. Congratulations on the awards and thanks for making such a great short film!

No Baque-Soatá

TITLE: No Baque-Soatá (On the Beat, by Soatá)

GENRE: Animation, Music Video

LENGTH: 3 minutes

DIRECTOR: Carlon Hardt

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Brazil

No Baque is essentially a music video that tells a story, but not a narrative. It utilizes food, dance, color,  to animate Brazilian culture and uses pop and urban influences to examine the musical trends in the song itself. In the link above there is a link to “the making of” video which explains a lot of the inspiration behind the artistic choices made in the video. The foods- beans, nuts, seeds, fruits, etc- are all local and beautifully arranged in each shot. 

This short really worked to capture all the aspects of the song, and of the culture the song comes from, by combining urban, pop, and traditional influences. We move from drummer to B-boy to dancer to city to brightly colored pencils and we do so seamlessly because of the unity of the elements, the colors, the textures. 

FIRST DATES- DC SHORT FILM FESTIVAL

Sam Wasserman, USA, 2010

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi979081497/

The film is about dating in the digital age and how awkward meeting people off the internet can be. The story has many different characters, all single men and women trying to date in a crazy world. The story seems to have a random structure following various people from one date to another but in the end it allows for a circular story and connects the characters. The plot was pretty shallow though ,the short snippets of dates were humorous but lacked real character and had little story development. Regardless of this I don't think a plot is necessary for this story and the short functions well. Everyone in the theatre including myself laughed many times throughout the screening of the film . I found it interesting that the directors cast two tv stars for the short film First Dates. Ryan Eggold from 90210, and Madeline Zima from Californiacation were two of the main characters in the movie. I feel like having the sitcom gave the whole film a more tv feel than cinema. Despite this I really liked the humor and think comedy is incredibly hard to write and execute well in film so I tip my hat to the director and writer!

Death of an Usher

Death of an Usher from Michael Tamman on Vimeo.

DEATH OF AN USHER

Directed by Michael Tamman, Written by Seth Sinclair (who also plays our protagonist)

England, 2011, 4 minutes

This 4 minute short is the story of an usher, who's trying to be an actor. After a string of unsuccessful auditions, he gets a call from his agent while at work and finally has another shot. He has to run to his audition which turns out to be for the greatest and most intimidating directors of them all.

When I looked over the list of films I would be seeing at the festival, this was one of the ones I was most looking forward to. There quite a few that I really liked (including A Wink of the Eye, UnderCover, and Masks) and when I first saw this one, I must admit to be surprisingly and disappointingly unimpressed and rather indifferent. The short happens extremely abruptly. It seemed to write off what it was trying to say extremely quickly. I felt like I had gotten attached to Michael, only to have him ripped from my fingers in mere minutes. That was one of the things this short managed to do well right off the bat. It made its protagonist extremely likable right from the start. However, that was also its downfall at first for me. Liking Michael made this short extremely unfair and frustrating.

It was during the Q&A session with the filmmakers that it hit me. Both Tamman and Sinclair were present and I knew I needed to ask a question, to somehow resolve some of the disappointment and frustrations I had been harboring. Then I realized: Michael could have been on his way to the audition of his life, his big break, and he was so young. What was the commentary on someone dying so young and so unfairly? (To be fair and clear, this short does not treat the death sadly and in fact, the end is quite funny but I obviously had to take a more serious stance with it.)

Tamman answered my question and with his answer, that was when my appreciation for this film grew tenfold. He mentioned that we need to laugh at the dark times and appreciate what we have now. It was a bit of a carpe diem moment. I realized how right he was and it changed how I viewed the film entirely. He said he wanted to make people chuckle in a few minutes and he definitely accomplished that. With his answer to my question, though, he made me do a lot more than chuckle.

As for filmmaking, I thought this short was a very smooth film in terms of shots and angles and how the camera was positioned throughout the film. It flowed very well for me. I particularly loved the beginning of the film, with the staccato shots as an introduction to our protagonist for the very first time. Overall, I think this was the perfect example of jumping the gun upon a first viewing of a film and not taking the time to really think about it. Eventually, I really grew to love this film.

SUDDEN DEATH!

*Note, I will be discussing the whole film, but the trailer is above.

Sudden Death!
Directed by Adam Hall, United States, 2010, 19 minutes.
Source: Vimeo

The one line blurb for Sudden Death! in the DC Shorts Film Festival catalog sums this film almost perfectly, "finally a musical where everyone dies." Though not the best made film in Showcase 6 at the DC Shorts Film Festival, it was the most funny. The film is about a doctor, Nathan Carlson, who creates a love drug that becomes lethal by a government military sect when manipulated. He does not know he is the cause until the end of the film, but he has to come to terms with his own death, right when he finds true love. This film focuses on a disease, only affecting Los Angeles at the moment, called Sudden Death Syndrome. The only symptom of this disease is spontaneously bursting into song and dance before dropping dead. Nathan and his new love, Rachel Hughes, also a doctor, search for a cure together while falling in love and singing.

I have chosen to write about this film because it is more of an admiration towards musicals than a joke. Yes, everyone dies in the end, but (spoiler, sorry) they come back because like the musical genre, people have to live, for the most part. For example, the film spoofs West Side Story's choreography, and therefore allows the idea that main characters can be killed, like Tony, Riff, and Bernardo, to permeate in audiences heads. This idea allows audience members to sit on edge because there seems to be no hope for finding a cure--all of the doctors are either already dead or too busy singing and dancing, or, in the case of Rachel and Nathan, falling in love. Who says our protagonist can't die? We can still like them even if they fail, and are therefore not heroes.

Musicals have unfortunately been lost to our culture these days and now we are left longing for more shows like Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Glee. If you like either of those, you would like this dark, humorous, and sing-along worthy film. It is also important to note that this film is considered as a political satire by the film's site, and that I had the honor of watching it the day Steven Soderbergh's star contagious film Contagion released in theaters. I do not plan to see Soderbergh's film because it is too close to reality, yet, I was willing, and honestly picked this particular showcase, to see a film with a similar premise. What better way to share something serious than in song and dance?

ADVENTURE GIRLS III

Adventure Girls III
Jon Deitcher, Canada, 2010, 1 minute

Adventure Girls III is a short film about two Japanese school girls (played by white women with sunglasses) who drive a stolen car across a flat stretch of America. After thirty-eight seconds we find out they're vampires and watch as they eat a hillbilly hitchhiker. Though the film's title states that this is the third in a series of Adventure Girl shorts, it is actually the first episode of a new web series.

Adventure Girls III is an abrasive short. The voices (taken directly from a Sailor Moon cartoon) are a little too high, the editing is a little too quick and the girls' whining screams are tough to listen to. Most damning, the film is a piece of manufactured kitsch. Bizarre, idiosyncratic films without self-awareness (The Room, Troll 2) will always be more interesting than films that wink and nudge their way to instant cult audiences (Snakes on a Plane, Piranha 3D) because the first type of film is sincerely trying to be a successful movie, while the second type of film is just trying to sneer its way to becoming weird. When Japanese school girl vampires rip up a yokel's neck, and when it's all placed under an intentionally false title, it's hard to see the film as anything but an attempt to create a meme by throwing calculated wackiness on top of calculated wackiness. This short just isn't all that exciting.

That said, I think you should watch Adventure Girls III. You should watch Adventure Girls III because it's one minute long.

I went to the E Street Cinema two days in a row this week. On Thursday I watched a package of eight shorts, the longest of which was twenty minutes long. On Friday, I watched the two hour long Bellflower, which, spoiler alert, features a scene where a man rapes a woman with a knife. Bellflower has received love it or hate it reviews; I would say I like it very much but can still recognize its flaws. I recommended the movie to a friend but noted the shocking violence that kicks in toward the end. He didn't want to watch the movie because, if he didn't like it, he would have wasted two hours of his weekend on a grating, gory, depressing flick. To have a full Bellflower experience, you need to invest two hours into something you may very well hate. To have a full Adventure Girls III experience, you need to invest one minute. The worst thing you'll be able to say is "I wasted a minute."

Adventure Girls III is not a great short, but what is great about it is that it is only boring for one minute. Anybody can spend one minute on a movie. I complained about the girls' screaming, but they only scream for 15 seconds. Sometimes it's difficult to pick up a potentially polarizing book or album, but wondering whether or not to watch a polarizing short film is never a hard decision. Anybody can have an opinion on Adventure Girls III because even the busiest person has the time to watch and analyze it fully.

The Quintessential: Grandma’s Funeral

Directed by Paul Olding, United Kingdom, 2007, approximately 8 minutes.
Source: DC Short Film Festival 2008 - Showcase 3

Grandma's Funeral was originally written by Laura as the review of DC Shorts Film Festival. I wrote a review about Diva at that time, but it was difficult for me to choose between Diva and Grandma's Funeral because I liked both films very much. Therefore, I decided to write about Grandma's Funeral this time for my quintessential and am happy to get a chance to talk about this short film.

Grandma's Funeral was shown in showcase 3. The film takes place in a room, and three women are getting ready to go to their Grandma;s funeral. They do not wear black clothes although it is a funeral, because Grandma never liked black. When one of the women, the mother of two other women, tries to wear her skirt, the zipper is stuck. All three of them try to make it work, but it is completely jammed. Forgetting that they have to hurry up for Grandma’s funeral, they are completely preoccupied with the zipper. Someone outside tells them to be prepared soon, but the women do not care at all. They laugh loudly looking at this hilarious situation before Grandma’s funeral. One of the women even tries to make a new skirt with a sewing machine. Then the mother figures it out. The zipper is finally working again. Hearing the person outside the door shouting at them to hurry up, they suddenly become silent with grief shown on their faces.

The three women in Grandma's Funeral pretend to be cheerful in order to hide the sadness deep inside them. They laugh out loud when the mother's zipper gets stuck and try to concentrate only on the zipper. They want to forget the fact that their beloved Grandma has died. But this attempt to avoid the reality soon ends as the zipper gets unstuck. Even though they were laughing so hard, it seemed to me that they are shedding tears internally and look even sadder than just crying out loud. The moment the women came back to reality was so sudden and unnatural that I could feel their sadness, as well.

Laura mentioned in her previous review that she liked the film's dramatic music, as well as it being like a cinematic snapshot, and I agree with her. Contrary to the sad situation in the film, the music is not gloomy at all; it is rather fast and exciting. According to Laura’s expression, "the music was similar to what would play in a horror film" and "it added levity" to the film. By playing music that does not match the circumstance, it emphasizes the situation. The music also makes the situation urgently, adding a lot of tension in the circumstance and it even made me, a member of the audience, want to do something to help them. While I was watching the movie, I kept thinking 'what happens if the mother cannot get the zipper fixed? Are they even able to go to the funeral?' In addition, Grandma's Funeral successfully captures a moment in our lives like a snapshot. A mother and her two daughters get together before their Grandma's funeral, and as they get prepared, they find things that remind them of the daughters' childhood. They also make a memory that will last in their hearts before the funeral. Even though they have to go to funeral, the family feels happiness from what they have shared together in the past, and will share in the future. Therefore, the scene makes the audience feel warmth.

Grandma's Funeral deals with grief in a very unique way. Generally, a film that deals with a funeral tends to be gloomy and sad, making the audience even sadder. However, by showing the hilarious situation and the three women laughing out loud, Grandma's Funeral effectively emphasizes the sadness inside them.

English Language (with English Subtitles)

This film was originally brought up on the blog in the context of the DC shorts film festival. This was my favorite film of that showcase, and I wanted go back to it to look at it a bit more closely. As we worked through the semester, I kept coming back to this film because I kept seeing new ways to look at it.

My favorite part of the film was the role of the subtitles. At my first viewing, I was so intrigued by the way that they started as conventional subtitles, but then took on new roles like adding inner monologue, interacting directly with the characters, acting as advertising, and then taking on their usual role but with a twist. Recently, this struck me as I was writing my paper about shorts challenging the rules of traditional film. Whoever said the subtitles had to say exactly what the film says? Whoever said the subtitles can't be a character? Subtitles are something film viewers take for granted when another language is being spoken in a film. This film provides subtitles for the silent languages, like the audience's expectations and desires, the subtext, and the musicians that get hired to play in the film. Usually, they are a familiar friend (or foe) that we expect to follow a particular form. This film takes something as obligatory as subtitles and gives them new life as something totally unfamiliar. Shorts allow for this kind of experimentation, and in this case it worked to great effect. It took me by surprise at first, but after a while it didn't seem so strange. The subtitles added a refreshing sense of self-awareness of the frankly overused plot line the film followed. I love films that can make fun of themselves, so I loved when the subtitles mocked the atypical lover's silent argument in bed that I see so often in couple-centric movies lately. I wish more filmmakers could take a step back and make fun of themselves every once in a while.

Another interesting element of the film was the way it morphed in the middle into nothing other than a music video, as seen in the clip above. The song is called "Afterglow" by Barbarossa, as described by the subtitles. The subtitles take on a new role, providing information on the song title and the band and where it can be bought, just like the small blurb at the bottom of music videos at the beginning and end. In class we classified music videos as shorts, so if that's the case, this segment is like a short within a short (which I don't think we talked about). This segment could very easily stand on its own in my opinion, but also enhances the short as well. This brings up the question: Are shorts indivisible or can shorts have other shorts within them?

This film was my favorite because it was clever to my untrained eye at the time, but I like it so much more now because there is even more for me to see after a semester in this class, so in that sense, I consider it my quintessential.

Uno Degli Ultimi

Uno Degli Ultimi
Directed by Paul Zinder
Showcase 2 of the DC Short Films Festival


Uno Degli Ultimi (“One of the Last”) is a 12-minute long documentary directed by Paul Zinder (who, interestingly enough, is a professor at The American University of Rome. Holla!). This film was part of the Showcase 2’s block of awesomeness: PATH, One of the Last, and The Replacement Child. The lone documentary in the showcase, its warm tone allowed the audience’s emotions to slowly adapt from the humor of PATH to the dark but touching tone of The Replacement Child.

The film profiles Mauro Selvetti, an elderly Italian farmer who is as ripe as the produce he cultivates. We see the farmer crouched down, scooping up cherries and grapes from a farm he very clearly takes pride in. This subject piece works well because Selvetti looks at life through his work as a farmer. Most of us view farm work as dreaded manual labor. Selvetti wonders how he could do anything besides it.

The camerawork picks up on this, making the Italian countryside the backdrop of the film. As Selvetti relays his views of the world, Zinder shows us close-ups of the farmer picking potatoes from the ground and climbing tree to shake out mass amounts of olives. There are long, panning shots as well, but they always have Selvetti in them. This element works particularly well considering how much the film is about its subject. I found myself fascinated by Selvetti and his work. I couldn’t help but think of my great grandfather, an Italian farmer from Fardella, Italy, enjoying himself the same way Selvetti does.

As the credits rolled, I questioned whether or not the film would work as a feature. It probably wouldn’t, as it is so subject-intensive and involves no action or conflict. To me, that says a lot about the strengths and abilities of shorts over features.

Surrendering Seamen

1:45
Comedy/Animation
United Kingdom

Showcase 5 had some memorable shorts - but for me, "Surrendering Seamen" stuck out the most. At under two minutes long, the director managed to use a simple setting of one man in a boat helping a stranded man in his boat. While this seems like a straightforward premise, the film team's editing skills is really where the genius behind this film came forward. Through editing and a narrator, a new story and plot came forward. It reminded me of those Japanese obstacle course shows that are aired stateside, with English voice overs that completely mock and turn each act into hilarity, even though its far from what the original intention of the video is.

Through this genius editing, "Surrendering Seamen" begins with one man approaching a stranded man, each man in a boat. The narrator, well, narrates the exchange, indicating that as one man is mocking the other for being in a broken boat, the other man rants about how big of a slut the man's sister is, and it just implodes afterwards. In the end, they each help eachother, and all seems to be forgiven between these two seamen.

It wasn't until after the short ended that it dawned on me that this video was quite possibly just a scene with no planning. What I mean by this is if it hadn't been for the editing technique, this would just be an everyday scene, something that would be equally exciting as watching someone change a tire or load groceries into their car. It's an interesting idea that many film makers toy with - extracting artistic practicality from everyday scenes. I felt caught up in the relationship between the two seamen through the passion behind the narrator's exchange. It gave life to this everyday event that was worth remembering.

Plus, it was hilarious.

The Third Parent

Showcase #8 at the DC Short Film Festival didn’t seem to have a consistent theme amongst the films.  Each film was a surprise as to whether it would be funny, dramatic, political, or even a musical.  At first it was an offsetting blend of films but seemingly random nature of each film brought a little more curiosity as to the contents of the next piece.  However, there were only a couple standouts in the whole showcase, one of them being a documentary entitled The Third Parent.

The Third Parent is a seemingly low-key documentary about the relationship between an 11 year-old girl, Ariana, and her 5 year-old autistic brother, Marcello.  The film centers around Ariana as she found it her obligation to raise her little brother with little help from her parents.  It’s never clearly stated as to where the parents are but Ariana consistently alludes to the notion that they’re rarely around, whether it be at work or just “staying out late.”  Ariana’s a girl whose childhood ended with the birth of her brother and she was forced to grow up too fast.

Ariana seems to have accepted her role as the “third parent” but there’s still sadness in her voice when she speaks of her absence from sleepovers, parties, and other activities kids her age participated.  She shows nothing but love for Marcello but there is still resentment for the situation.  We witness Ariana dealing with her brother’s tantrums and violent outbursts but we’re also let into some of the more endearing moments between the two siblings.

The Third Parent was an effective documentary because the filmmaker never showed anyone besides Ariana and her brother.  In one scene we could hear their father, frustrated, yelling at Marcello while Ariana sits on her bed reading but then Marcello enters the room because he’d much rather be with his sister than his parents.  It’s a tragic situation and the parents’ absence in their children’s lives is magnified by a world that consist solely of young girl and her little brother.

A Day's Work

Czech Republic
13 minutes
Directed by Edward Feldman



Midway through the uneven collection that was Showcase 5 at DC Shorts, one film really put the audience in a stranglehold: the Czech short "A Day's Work." Shot in high contrast black and white, the film unravels with the slow, languid pace of a dream. It's beautiful, moving, and strangely funny. Based on the audience's reaction, it was clear by the end that almost everyone in the audience had found themselves under its unique spell.

The plot is as follows: A young woman is having a terrible day. Her babysitter bails out on her at the last minute so she must take her son to work, and then on top of that she misses her bus. When she arrives at work, we find that she has been hired for a one-time voiceover gig for an American film (the woman is Czech). A pompous director and his assistant (this humorous moment was certainly not lost on the industry-types in the audience) attempt to give her her motivation for the scene, but their efforts at communication are lost on the woman. When the men in the booth finally hit the record button, we see that the scene calls for the Czech woman to provide the voiceover for a woman who is crying hysterically. And then, in a haunting medium shot that lasts for an uncomfortably long amount of time, we watch the Czech woman let out all of her frustrations (many of which we have not seen in the digesis of the film and can only assume) and cry her eyes out. At the close of the film, she and her son begin their walk back home in the cold evening.

When compared with "A Day's Work", most of the other short in Showcase 5 felt like one-note films. This short has such a peculiar and unforgettable tone: it's simultaneously both funny and sad, and it's incredibly relatable. I had an incredible feeling of catharsis once the credits began to roll. Though it only spans about 13 minutes, the viewer has been on what feels like a much longer emotional journey with this woman, and once she has let her pain out through crying, we feel a release as well. The film is structured very effectively; it withholds information from the viewer (we never know where she's going or why she's going where she is until she gets there), but it pulls you by the hand and commands you to follow it wherever it's going, no questions asked.

Niña Quebrada

NIÑA QUEBRADA
Written and Directed by Jen Kleiner, USA, 2007, 23 min
Source: DC Shorts Showcase 1

Afternoon, Mexico, somewhere near the US border; Lucena and her “loving and caring” boyfriend Tomas are planning to run away. Evening, Lucena on her way to out to meet Tomas has an argument with her dad because her clothes are inappropriate. Still evening, the couple meets Robert an American who has fake passports for them; the three cross the border. Morning, Lucena wakes up alone and naked in a dingy room, Tomas’ is nowhere to be found; instead Melinda her “owner” tells Lucena that she paid a lot for her, so she better get to work.

At first glance, the film is set to be yet another American Dream film, pretty-girl-and-loving-boyfriend-live-happily-ever-after-some-difficulties-in-USA. But, we start to get a different idea after Lucena argues with her dad. Things become a little more obvious through the cinematography and one shot specifically. When the trio is crossing the border, Lucena is sitting in the back seat, light is coming through the window-illuminating half of her face and shadows surround her. They get permission to pass and a few shots later we see Tomas gives her a pill. Next thing we know she’s been broken and the darkness that surrounded her in the car has completely fallen on her.

The scenes at the prostitution house/cock fighting range are indeed darker in mood and a little long. The short could, perhaps, be a little shorter and more poignant; maybe is just its theme makes us say here-we-go-again. While it does not give us a new and fresh view about child trafficking and prostitution; it does entice the audience visually and through less expected outcome and twists. Basically there are 3, first and least surprising twist, the already stated fact that Tomas used her. Second, when Lucena escapes from Melinda, she does not find a friendly Latin@ community and stays in the US. Third, she denounces Melinda, and we are left with the question of what would happen to her.

The last shot is of Lucena as she sits across the table from two detectives and the camera slowly zooms in to her. Fade to black, the credits begin to roll, and at the very end appears the AFI logo. Niña Quebrada is Kleiner’s graduate thesis film. It’s like that moment in the movie when Lucena asks a little girl at the prostitution house how is she and she responds 12. We as an audience want to know Lucena’s age but we don’t find that out until she’s at the police station. Personally, I think Niña Quebrada’s script is one of the few good ones in this showcase, and makes me wonder about the festival’s decision not to distinguish between the non-student films and the student ones.

THE REPLACEMENT CHILD

THE REPLACEMENT CHILD
Directed by Justin Lerner, United States, 2007, 25 minutes.
Source: DC Shorts Film Festival Showcase 2

The Replacement Child is a film defined in large part by ambiguity. The audience is introduced to a young man named Todd Turnbull who has been in reform school for violently attacking his stepfather, but the circumstances surrounding the fight are never revealed. We learn that Todd’s father has died, but the cause is unknown. And perhaps most importantly, we know that Todd and his family live in a devoutly religious rural community somewhere in America, but the exact state and denomination is unknown.

As these details fall away, the audience is left with an intensely impressionistic coming-of-age story. Todd (Travis Quentin Young) returns home to discover that the life he knew prior to incarceration no longer exists. His former girlfriend has married and is expecting her first child, and his stepfather has convinced his mother to throw him out of their house. But perhaps most devastating of all, Todd's best friend Michael (Matthew Fahey) is dying, but receives no medical care on the orders of his family and their pastor and chooses to instead rely on God for a cure.

Knowing that he will be sent to prison, Todd ultimately assaults two men, steals his stepfather’s squad car, and kidnaps Michael, all to ensure that his friend receives medical treatment and survives. If the movie wasn’t already rife with religious imagery, Todd comes to epitomize Christian self-sacrifice. Thus, the essential question of the story is established: who is godly, the family whose strict interpretation of the Bible has left their son on his deathbed, or Todd, who chose crime to ensure that Michael lives?

I saw Showcase 2 with the intention of blogging about Zombie Jesus. Unfortunately, that film was a disappointment to say the least. The Replacement Child, meanwhile, actually brought me to tears. The short accomplished more in terms of emotional impact than many films do in a full two hours. The acting was superb, especially on the part of Travis Quentin Young, whose success thus far appears to be limited to additional dialogue recording work for films including No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Hopefully he’ll get more screen time in the future, because his performance was one of the most impactful I’ve seen from a young actor in quite a long time. I was also impressed to learn that The Replacement Child was not the work of a seasoned director, but rather the MFA thesis of Justin Lerner, a recent UCLA grad. Though I certainly don’t want to reduce his directorial debut to a calling card, I would love to see a feature by Lerner based on the strength of this short.

The only question that lingers in my mind is meaning of the film’s title. Though Todd has certainly been replaced by his family and friends (though he proves to be essential in every way), who has Todd replaced?

Grandma's Funeral

Grandma's Funeral
Dir. Paul Olding
Premiered 9/12/2008

“Grandma’s Funeral,” which premiered last week, is a wonderful and touching film. A mother and her two daughters discuss a relative who just died. They remember happier times spent playing dress-up. One of the daughters mentioned that if you said you enjoyed a particular dish, she would then make it again and again, thinking it was a favorite. Trouble occurs when the mother cannot unzip her skirt. Numerous attempts are made in order to get the skirt on, one funnier than the next, however in the end, the mother is able to work the zipper, and they finish dressing. The moment of laughter is over, and there is nothing left for them to do but attend the funeral.

The film’s strength was its simplicity. It was a brief moment shared between a mother and her daughters. The piece could best be described as a cinematic snapshot. The short film contained many aspects that people, especially women could relate to. There have been times when I have had an inability to undo a zipper, right before an event. I vividly remember sharing family stories and laughing before a funeral. There was an emotional honesty to the piece-it did not come off as forced or sappy. I felt like a fly on the wall, observing a private family moment.

One aspect of the film, which I particularly enjoyed, was the dramatic music, which played when the mother was unable to unzip her skirt. The music was similar to what would play in a horror film, just before something awful happens. While the music was serious, it added levity to the situation, because having difficulty with a zipper and monster attack are two extremely different situations. While I saw 13 films at the showcase, “Grandma’s Funeral” was my favorite, and deserves recognition.

Speed Dating

Speed Dating



Directed by Crystal Liu
DC Shorts Film Festival Showcase 3

If audience response means anything, Speed Dating was definitely an audience favorite in showcase 3. It definitely received the most laughs and Crystal Liu had the privilege of being there for all of them, which I think is a great feeling for any filmmaker.

As for the film itself, I thought it was brilliantly put together and genuinely hilarious in its presentation. The film tells the story of an attractive young woman who is desperate to find companionship in a very lonely city. It begins with a run through of her typical day, starting with a long and arduous commute through California traffic. When she arrives at work, it seems as if none of her coworkers have time to talk to her. The desk receptionist is on the phone gossiping. The people in the break room are too engrossed in gossip to acknowledge her. Her answering machine sadly reports that she has no new messages. At this point, I wasn't sure if this film was going to leave me laughing or crying by the end.

When she gets home from work, she finds a message waiting for her on her answering machine. Her friends invite her out to a club to relieve her of her loneliness. When she goes however, she only gets more of the same. Her "friends" are absorbed in their own conversation, while she sits and drinks alone. I'm still wondering how this is going to end, by the way. She decides to leave after downing a few cocktails, and proceeds toward her car. (Gasp!) She starts it up and begins to back up, and BAM! She hits someone. Oops. The man turns out to be fine, in many senses of the word. After a soothing conversation with "Mr. Hot Super-Attentive guy" as he is called in the program's description, she is inspired to begin a new campaign to find a date.

This is where it gets good. The next morning, she buys a slew of first-aid supplies, gussies herself up, and gets in her car (with a fully stocked passenger area complete with champagne). Her mission: "Accidentally" hit guys on the street with her car to find her prince charming. Her plot is very revealed in a cleverly constructed freeze-frame sequence (as seen above) that felt almost like a video game in the way the icons appeared over the heads of the potential targets. In the Q&A session, Liu named this as her favorite part of the film, and I agree.

Who knew that vehicular battery could be so funny? In a montage fashion, the film runs through the myriad of encounters, each a little bit different but equally hilarious. One wails in pain and berates her the whole way to the hospital, another tries to walk it off, a third calls his mommy. This sequence definitely produced the most laughs from the audience (and me, clearly). The humor is non-stop and never gives you a break, which only makes the laughter in the theater grow more infectious with each cut.

In the end though, she doesn't find her prince charming. With a turn back to the depressing, she calls her friend and leaves a sobbing voice message about how hard it is to find a guy in the city and BAM! She disappears from the frame with a thud that sounds a lot like a body hitting car hood. The audience was in a quite state of shock at this point. The scene cuts to an upward shot of the sky, and mens' faces begin to appear.
"Are you alright, maam?" says the first.
"I'm a paramedic, are you alright?" says another.
"Well, I'm a doctor, are you alright?" says another.
"I'm a lawyer, are you alright, miss?" says another with a smirk and a wink.

Laying on the pavement, she smiles and whipsers "Thank you!" to the sky as the film ends.

Thank you, Crystal Liu, for making car accidents not only funny, but romantic and satisfying as well. Who knew?

The Letter (Pismo)

Pismo (The Letter)

Directed by Matvei Zhivov, Canada/Russia, 2007, 17 minutes
DC Shorts Film Festival Showcase 2

The Letter, a short film set in World War II Russia, ranked among the most interesting of Showcase 2. I’m not sure that it was placed in the right slot or even the right showcase, but I thought it ranked as one of the most notable in terms of what it was trying to do.

The story concerns Stepan, a partisan fighter who is wounded in battle against the Germans, and who, while recuperating in the hospital, hears a litany of sorrows from his fellow patients. One man recounts how he returned home to find his wife in bed with his neighbor. He then points out a man sitting alone at the other end of the room, and tells Stepan that the man was rejected by his wife after returning home with only one arm. All of this prompts Stepan, who hasn’t been home for three years, to write a letter to his wife, Shura, and in effect, test her, by telling her that he has lost both legs in battle and will be returning shortly.

The action switches to the homefront, where a malnourished Shura reads the letter, and tells her two sons to immediately prepare for their father’s homecoming by preparing a wagon for him to sit in (so they can roll him back to the station). As they prepare the wagon, Shura is surprised by the sudden and unexpected homecoming of Stepan, and is further surprised to see how ambulatory he is. When he reveals to her that he wrote the letter as a kind of test, she is crestfallen, and Stepan must engage in an emotional battle with her as bitter as the physical challenge he faces at the beginning of the film. I don't want to spoil the ending for those who still might want to see it, so I'll end the plot description there. Suffice it to say, things don't end well, and audience is left a bit stunned like they've been hit by an emotional freight train.

While the subject matter is heartbreaking, the film itself is a beautiful thing to look at, filled with vistas of the Russian countryside and a rather elaborate and intense battle scene (with what looked like historically authentic WWII armament). I was very impressed with the amount of money devoted to the project and the sweep itself of the story, which played out like a Russian novel in the space of only 15 minutes. I wasn’t surprised to see that it has won at least one festival award for cinematography. Perhaps Russian filmmakers are seeing the power and potentialities of short film?

I was also reminded of what Bill Nichols had to say of both festivals and Iranian cinema in his article, and the feeling of “losing oneself, temporarily, of ‘going native’ in the confines of a movie theater.” I felt this as I watched The Letter. The language, the visuals, the earnestness of the performances, and even the Russian score swept me completely into the world of WW II Russia. This piece of history, in which over 20 million Russians died, still reverberates strongly in the culture.

Lastly, I couldn't help but reflect on the ongoing situations in Iraq (and Georgia) as I watched The Letter. Like any good war film, it reminds us that the price of war is not only felt on the battlefield, but also reverberates in families and relationships when the soldier comes home.