short
Friday, June 11th, 2010
This year’s annual Labor Day ritual in Navada, Burning Man, will also be the site of the inaugural Black Rock City Film Festival (BRCFF), a festival dedicated to shorts which will take place on August 31, 2010. BRCFF is now calling for entries.
The fest is seeking shorts— anything under 30 min— that will appeal to the Burning Man crowd. The regular deadline is July 1, and the late deadline is July 15.
Learn more about submitting your film here.… Read the rest
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Sparrow Songs is a documentary project by filmmaker Alex Jablonski and d.p. Michael Totten, who are making and posting one short doc film per month on their site for a whole year. They are six episodes in, and the films are quite wonderful. Averaging about eight minutes, they are poetic essays that capture the essences of specific places, people, and moments, and that then, without pretension, build these observances into larger statements about love, truth, community, and the ways we are choosing to live our lives.
The films include Porn Star Karoke, about the crowd that gathers weekly at an L.A. club for an evening of karoke with adult movie stars. In Donut Shop, the filmmakers insert themselves into their film as they wonder why more people won’t talk to them during a night spent at a 24-hour donut joint. In the most recent, L’Arche, the filmmakers visit a home for the developmentally disabled in which the residents are cared for in a warm, non-institutional environment; they focus not only on the residents but also on the caregivers, who include a young woman who has just left a monastery. With their artful framings, precise editing, and sensitive use of sound and music, Jablonski and Totten capture the quest of everyone at L’Arche to find purer, less complicated ways of living.
Sparrow Songs is a beguiling project that gains its power by the commitment shown to it by its filmmakers. Their web page contains thumbnails of the six episodes finished so far and blank spots for the six that are yet to come. The knowledge that these are not just disparate short films but rather installments in time-based project give Sparrow Songs a quiet gravity. Watching these films, you find yourself drawing connections between them. You watch — and wait — for themes to develop, and you project onto the filmmakers an evolving recognition of their authorship. It is slow-motion filmmaking dispensed in short, elegantly realized segments.
After watching L’Arche, which I’ve embedded below, I visited the Sparow Songs site, signed up for the newsletter, and … Read the rest
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Category News | Tags: Alex Jablonski, Banksy, documentary, donuts, Exit through the Gift Shop, Michael Totten, porn, short, Sparrow Songs, Thierry Guetta,
Friday, January 19th, 2007
THE DAWN CHORUS.
This article is part of Filmmaker‘s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage.
Hope Dickson Leach’s short film, The Dawn Chorus, tells the story of two siblings who annually reenact—with other survivors—the plane crash that killed their parents. An MFA thesis film for Columbia University’s Film program (where Hope graduated with honors), The Dawn Chorus explores the process of grieving and, hopefully healing. A former assistant to Todd Solondz, Hope’s short films have played at festivals around the world, from London and Edinburgh to Boston and Austin.
The Dawn Chorus screens in Shorts Program 1, and the film’s path to Sundance can be read about at: www.the-dawn-chorus.blogspot.com
Can you say a little bit about your background? Where you’re from? Age? Education? Film experience prior to this film? I grew up in Hong Kong, was educated at boarding school in England and then read philosophy at Edinburgh. I turn 31 during Sundance. This is the third short film I’ve made — the first shot on 35mm, and the longest (at 15 minutes) yet.
Can you briefly describe what inspired your film? It was a “what if?” idea. I’d read somewhere that people who experience traumas stay in touch for years. I thought, “Why? What would they talk about?” And obviously the answer is their shared experiences, during and after it. But I started wondering, “What if they never got that far? What if they got stuck on the event, so hung up about how it happened that they never moved on?” I did a massive re-write on the story just after the 2004 elections when I was struck by how Americans (those who live in the large White House anyway) were obsessed with repeating the past, and how the elections seemed to have fallen to the same mistakes that were made in 2000. It helped me articulate the premise of the movie, which is that without change there is no future.
Can you talk about some of the people you collaborated with? ‘d worked with Valerie Shusterov (Bonnie) on a previous short film, and seen … Read the rest
Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
Wes Anderson now joins the other film figures hired by American Express to connect creativity with credit card debt, albeit his My Life, My Card is classic Wes Anderson.… Read the rest
Saturday, April 22nd, 2006
Alex Curtis at Public Knowledge created a short two-minute clip explaining just some of what’s at stake in the upcoming battle for “net neutrality.” And here’s from Save the Internet, a new website launched by a coalition supporting net neutrality.
From the site:
Congress is pushing a law that would abandon Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Network neutrality prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most. Your local library shouldn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.
Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn’t speak up now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.
This isn’t just speculation — we’ve already seen what happens elsewhere when the Internet’s gatekeepers get too much control. Last year, Canada’s version of AT&T — Telus— blocked their Internet customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating. And Shaw, a major Canadian cable company, charges an extra $10 a month to subscribers who dare to use a competing Internet telephone service.
Surf over to the site for more, or visit the group’s new MySpace page.… Read the rest
Sunday, November 20th, 2005
I flew back from London this weekend and, at the airport, picked up the new issue of the U.K. magazine Dazed and Confused. It’s typically full of interesting and very of-the-moment stuff, including a piece about photographer Nick Knight and his Showstudio, a website intending to bring the “‘tech hippie’ world of the internet into fashion,” according to the magazine’s Lauren Cochrane.
Through December Showstudio is presenting on its site “Moving Fashion,” a commissioned series of very short films — 30 seconds or so — by leading names in the fashion world. The films all incorporate items from the Autumn/Winter ’05/’06 collections, and the site also features a blog and forum in which the mostly fanciful and charmingly tossed-off shorts are discussed.
The shorts change each week; if you click today, you’ll see films by designer John Galliano, model and White Stripe wife Karen Elson, and Kate Moss, who dances — yes, topless — in her film to the Ramones’ “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.”
And re the title of this post… hey, gimme a break. One has to boost search engine traffic somehow.… Read the rest
Friday, March 4th, 2005
The Tribeca Film Festival has partnered with Amazon.com to launch a short film contest.
Filmmakers with works up to seven minutes in length can submit them now through April 13 to Amazon.com. Submitted films will be posted at Amazon beginning April 18 and will be voted on by viewers to the site. The top-five rated films will be available for viewing through the end of May, when one filmmaker will be awarded a prepaid AmEx card worth $50,000.
.… Read the rest
Monday, January 10th, 2005
The International Film Festival Rotterdam announced today that “Thirty-two short films from twenty-three countries have been selected for the [festival's] first TV5 Tiger Cub Awards Competition…
“The competition will be screened in five compilation programmes before a jury consisting of Kathleen Forde (USA, exhibitions and program coordinator for the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York), Mariska Graveland (The Netherlands, journalist and film critic of Dutch monthly magazine ‘De Filmkrant’) and Kerry Laitala (USA, filmmaker and teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute).
“Three Tiger Cub Awards, to be presented during IFFR’s Awards Ceremony on February 4, 2005, will come with a prize of Euro 3,000 each.”
TV5 Tiger Cub Awards Competition, IFFR 2005
Competition Programme I
TOZ (DUST) – H. Fatih Kizilgok (14 min., 35mm, Turkey), world premiere
DIMMER – Talmage Cooley (12 min., video, USA), international premiere
ELENI’S OLIVES – Yianna Americanou (19 min., 35mm, Cyprus / UK), world premiere
BREGMAN, EL SIGUIENTE (AS FOLLOWS) – Federico Veiroj (13 min., 35mm, Spain), European premiere
SZERELEM MEG HAL (GETTING EVEN) – Barnabas Toth ( 29 min., video, Hungary), world premiere
Competition Programme II
A ESPERA (THE WAITING) – Ernesto Sollis (8 min., 35mm, Brazil)
LATA AT TSINELAS (CAN & SLIPPERS) – Khavn De La Cruz (2 min., video, Philippines) world premiere
ESH (THE DONKEY) – Areg Azatian (10 min., video, Armenia), world premiere
TLAHUELPUCHI – Fabiola del Carmen Ramos (8 min., video, Mexico), international premiere
SUBROSA – Karoe Goldt (3 min., video, Austria), world premiere
PJATNATCAT LET (FIFTEEN YEARS) – Aslan Galazov (18 min., 35 mm, Russia), world premiere
DAJANG SOEMBI: THE WOMAN WHO IS MARRIED TO A DOG – Edwin (7 min, video., Indonesia), international premiere
DA JANELO DE MEU QUARTO (FROM THE WINDOW OF MY ROOM) – Cao Guimaraes (5 min., 35mm, Brazil), international premiere
LA GUERRA DE LOS GIMNASIOS (THE WAR OF THE GYMS) – Diego Lerman (28 min., 35mm, Argentina)
Competition Programme III
CELLULE 719 (CELL 719) – Annik Leroy (15 min., video, Belgium), international premiere
NUUK – Thomas Koner (6 min., video, Germany), world premiere
LOY FAH (TO INFINITY AND BEYOND) – … Read the rest
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004
Amazon.com has produced a series of five short films distributed only on Amazon.com as a free holiday gift to its customers. Each Tuesday from November 9 through today, Amazon.com released a new film in the Amazon Theater series, which customers can view directly from the Amazon.com homepage. All five films are available for viewing on Amazon.com through the end of the holiday season.
The final film in the Amazon Theater short film series, “Careful What You Wish For,” stars Geoffrey Gould, Patty Lotz, Raymond O’Connor, Pras Michel and Daryl Hannah and is directed by Acne Films. The film debuts today on Amazon.com’s homepage.
“With offices in Stockholm and London, Acne Films is an offshoot of Swedish-based design agency Acne. Acne Films has been producing and directing film projects since 1997. Early work includes five seasons of sketches on the hit late-night European talk show “Sen Kvall Med Luuk”; title sequences for several television shows; and music videos, including the 1999 Swedish Grammy Winner “Four Big Speakers” by Whale. The first foray for Acne Films in the American market was ESPN’s “Shelf Ball” TV spots. Acne Film is now expanding its reach to all kinds of filmmaking, including documentaries, short films and feature films. Acne Films currently has seven directors working in different constellations.”
… Read the rest
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004
The Sundance Institute today announced the films selected for the Short Film Program at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, taking place January 20-30, 2005, in Park City, Utah. The Festival selected 82 short films — dramatic, documentary, and animated — from a total of 3887 submissions from U.S. and international filmmakers. In addition to screening at the Festival in Park City, many of the short films will be available free-of-charge to film at the Sundance Online Film Festival starting January 20, for five months following the close of the Festival.
According to the release issued by the Festival, “This year’s short films take all the chances and push boundaries. From a compelling look at a former child star to a life lesson in infidelity; a satirical look at spelling bees and the conflict in the West Bank retold as West Side Story; a personal story about a young Inuit man who attempts to bond with his father; and the story of a love affair lasting 60 years — this collection of U.S. short films captivate the viewer as never before.”… Read the rest
