Short Films

Today I'm taking a break from features and press conferences to explore the Marche du Film in the Palais basement. I just spent about two hours at the Short Film Corner, and thought I'd post about the ones I liked best. The festival has such a dirth of short films to watch, I felt totally spoiled by the (literally) hundreds of films I could choose from. Why isn't there a database like this on the internet, or iTunes? I doubt I'll be able to find these films easily once I leave the festival; it's a shame, some of them I could watch all day.

1. Jerrycan - a Trainspotting for children, this short by Australian director Julius Avery catalogues the power politics of a group of tween boys who decide to blow up something one afternoon to stave off boredom. Well shot, favouring the green tint and grainy handheld cinematography prevalent in the selection fo short films I saw, the short conveys struggles typical of most children transitioning into adolescence. It also shows how abject circumstance can affect young people, and force them to behave in more adult ways than expected. Watch the trailer here.

2. El Deseo - This Mexican short by Marie Benito confronts perceptions of older women as asexual through the journey of its protagonist from depressed chastity, after her husband leaves her, to the red light district. A bit uncomfortable at times, the long close-ups are meant to be combative against limiting stereotypes. There's a stunning shot of the protagonist's face in close up backlit with green light, which alone makes the film worth watching; it looks like a painting. A clip of the film is available here.

3. Megatron - A Romanian film by Marian Crisan in which a boy and his mother go to the McDonalds in town for the boy's birthday, where he hopes to meet his father. The tension between his desire to meet him and his mother's attempts to keep the two apart is conveyed well through the short depth of field used throughout the film to distance the two. One particularly bleak shot of the two riding their bikes to the train station shows the mother almost completely out of focus, following her son like a protective shadow. Big points for original cinematography, and largely shirking the green tint that was present in the other films.

4. 2 Birds - A dark Icelandic film by Runar Runarsson (yes, really), the title references the effeminate male and female leads who come of age in perhaps the bleakest way possible. It captures the awkwardness of that transitional period well in a party scene where the two try to talk to each other, and are driven to take drugs in hopes that it will make interaction easier. That goes horribly wrong, but the film reaches an uncomfortable resolution.


5. The Hole of Space and Time - A British short directed by Raza from Leeds, of the short film corner but not in competition, which compresses the present and the past into a single moment when an actor destroys his career with his alcoholism. An interesting concept played out well by the lead, but it could have done without the stock canted shots of him drinking. More information about it can be found here.

I'll see where I can find information about where you can watch these films in full. If I can't find anything, I'll make the reviews a bit less ambiguous and give away the endings.