GET YOUR SUNDANCE SHORTS WHILE YOU STILL CAN
If you’re among the many who decided to skip Sundance this year, one way to get a taste of the festival without leaving your own home has been to check out the portion of Sundance’s shorts selection that the festival puts online.
While they made more films available in previous years on there own site than they did on iTunes this year, with a bit of internet video scouring and you can watch as nearly twenty of the eighty of so shorts screening as this year’s festival. As more festivals embrace the notion of allowing the films they select to stream on the internet before or during their event, it seems the taboo of putting your short on the internet, in fear that it may hinder one’s festival run, is dying away. That said, a director, when I mentioned that I’d seen his short online and wanted to write about it, asked that I keep it on the “DL”, noting that he was still waiting to hear back from a number of fests and didn’t want to jeopardize his chances.
If you get a chance, here’s some of the Sundance shorts that are definitely worth finding on your laptop.
Acting for the Camera: A riveting investigation into the artiface and craftsmanship of film acting, this ingenious sixteen minute short by the Newell Brothers, Justin and Thomas, depicts an acting teacher who’s bullshit meter is set of when a female student and her awful scene partner perform the fake organism scene from When Harry Met Sally. As he shows them how its done and pushes them toward authenticity, he realizes more about the young woman in the Meg Ryan role that she’d necessarily like. See it on iTunes for one more day.
From Burger it Came: American animator Dominic Bisignano’s hilarious short takes a deeply funny look at a middle American child of the 80′s obsession with contracting AIDS from a cheeseburger and later, from a hand puppet that had for a few moments occupied the penis of an adventurous friend. Droll and matter of fact, the short is narrated by the boy as a grown man and by his mother, oblivious to just how confused her boy is/was; the synthesis of their voices and the animation makes all to hysterically clear the failures of American sexual education. Also on iTunes.
575 Castro Street: Overwhelmingly melancholy, this brief glimpse at Focus’ recreated Harvey Milk photo store/campaign headquarters is a beautiful addendum to Van Sant’s Milk. Filmmaker Jenni Olson half a dozen wistful shots of the interiors are accompanied by Milk himself, giving a rousing and terribly sad recorded speech “in the event of my assassination” he says, in which he details his hopes and dreams of equality and fairness for the gay community. On the FilminFocus website.
Hug: A brilliant Columbia MFA short about a young rapper who just needs a hug. Check out Nelson Kim’s review of this film from Hammer to Nail. Available on iTunes
Countertransference: Madeleine Olnek’s unforgettable Countertransference, about a woman working a an antique store who is neurotically stumbles through a life in which she can never seem to assert her needs or desires, her problems only exacerbated by an unhelpful therapist with exhibitionist tendencies, is a comedic goldmine. Available on iTunes.
Trece Anos: Even amongst shorts, Topaz Adizes’ devastating Trece Anos, originally part of a feature work in progress called The Americana Project, has a rigourous economy to it. Unfolding in just four brief scenes, its a tale of a Cuban man returning home from the states after twelve years to a family that isn’t the same one he left. Deftly exploring perceptions of America abroad, it articulates how national identity is something we often fail to transcend, especially when we most want to.
