Reviews of screenings from the 2011 CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival (WSFF), Toronto, Canada.
The Short Take: Youth is always a fertile subject, given how our experiences then are seared in our memory. These films look at those heightened moments — and how they can still reverberate years later.
Picks:
Jam Today (Dir: Simon Ellis, 15 min.) While on a houseboat vacation, young Robert is mostly interested in lifting things (to get big, ripping muscles) and what the couple on the next boat over are getting up to, undertaking all of it with that deeply serious secrecy that resides in the young. An excellent performance from Oliver Woollford really animates this film, which stirs up all those awkward and bittersweet moments of finding out new things about bodies and people — even the things you never wanted to know.
Aglaée (Dir: Rudi Rosenberg, 19 min.) Benoit treads the line between attraction and animosity when he gives his classmate Aglaée a note asking if she wants to go out with him. Hurtful name-calling, boys crashing a girls' party, bad lying and a graceful rescue from ignominy all come into play. Top notch.
Pans:
The Ballad of J&D (Dir: Toni-Lynn Frederick, 9 min.) Something like an overly ambitious Powerpoint presentation tries to poetically sum up the ups and downs of a relationship, but this slideshow of old family snapshots alternating with intertitles never engages or makes us care about its characters.
Otherwise:
Missed Connections (Dir: Mary K Robertson, 8 min.) This documentary takes us to meet a few of the people who posted "missed connections" ads on Craislist — and even some who were the subjects of the same. A little breezy, but it shows us both the happy endings and romantic limbo that can result.
Repressed (Förträngd) (Dir: Jimmy Olsson, 15 min.) A technically impressive little morality tale from Sweden. On a late-night bus home, Kristoffer sees a very drunk teen girl and decides to intervene to help her. His reasons for doing so are ambiguous, but some veiled references — and that title — indicate that he might be atoning for his own youthful transgressions. The whole thing is pulled off in a single, continuous shot, which adds to the tension but fortunately never calls too much attention to itself as a mere trick.
Thermal Baths (Thermes) (Dir: Banu Akseki, 23 min.) Winner of the Mortifying Parent citation in this programme. Joachim wins a free trip to a spa and dutifully brings along his mother, who seems past caring too much about the present. Although there's tension between the two, Joachim seems to think that getting her away from the booze-filled squalour of their home could help her — until he meets a girl and is suddenly eager to avoid his mother at all costs. A little slow in spots, but beautifully photographed and taking full advantage of its location.
Dawn (L'aube) (Dir: Jean-François Proulx, 1.5 min.) The shortest short I think I saw at the festival. A computer-animated tale of how an accident can make a lifetime pass before one's eyes — and a lovely comedic payoff. (This one can be viewed on youtube.)
The Short Take: Everyone loves an underdog, and a second chance is usually a pretty compelling story.
Picks:
Lake Mandala (Dir: Steve Wood, 3 min.) Perhaps merely tangentially related to the rest of the programme, this experimental short was nothing less than hypnotizing. Consisting of watery lake sounds synced to a series of colour-shifting circles radiating outward — simply psychedelic on the big screen, totally mesmerizing and transporting as it creates a three-dimensional tunnel right into the subconscious. A purely blissful exercise in cinematic form, I dunno if there are deeper associations to be made as the meditative title suggests, but seeing it was its own reward.
The Last Norwegian Troll (Det siste norske trollet) (Dir: Pjotr Sapegin, 13 min.) Designed to resemble a nature documentary as much as a fable, this animation mused on the place of myth and magic in our modern world. I don't know every nook and cranny of the filmography of Max von Sydow, whose voice work added gravitas here, but I'd have to guess that this had more poo jokes than most films with his name. Delightful.
Pans:
Heinrich Drops Off The Kids At Half Past Two (Heinrich bringt die kinder um halb drei) (Dir: Hanna Doose, 17 min.) Moving from painfully banal to excruciatingly dull over the course of seventeen long minutes, this was about as exciting as watching paint dry — which was actually a plot point. Filmed like a docu-drama, this felt like an extended scene from a social-realist soap-opera, but instead of cutting to other characters, we were stuck in one apartment as two women argued over painting a wall.
Otherwise:
The Gallery (Galeria) (Dir: Robert Proch, 5 min.) Done with Steadman-esque pen-and-ink animation, this was a visually inventive trip to the mall, but not especially engaging.
The Origin of Creatures (Dir: Floris Kaayk, 12 min.) Creating and fully occupying its own surreal post-apocalyptic world, this computer-animated tableau showed a menagerie of bizarre creatures — each built out of an amalgam of body parts — trying to learn to work together to rebuild a lost civilization.
The Reception (Dir: Philip Riccio, 13 min.) A powerful performance from Nicholas Campbell as a father filled with ambiguous feelings at his daughter's wedding. This rang with the verisimilitude of the painful negotiations of how long-divorced parents should behave at their children's nuptials. But it tried a bit too hard to look "cinematic" and didn't quite bring it off, with lighting that never looked natural. Features some power ballad-y wedding music by Andre Ethier.
SAAB Story (Dir: Max Joseph, 19 min.) A peer to many famous comedians to emerge from LA's stand-up scene in the 70's, Billy Braver had his moment in the spotlight, but ended up as a car salesman. But that old fire is still there, and gets reawakened when the recession leaves him jobless. Can Braver pick up from where he left things a quarter-century ago? An interesting documentary with a great subject. (Sadly, this DigiBeta project had the distinction of being the least good-looking thing on the big screen I saw in the whole festival, badly interlaced throughout. It should be fine on TV or online, and is fully worthy of being expanded upon.)
Taxi Libre (Dir: Kaveh Nabatian, 13 min.) Exploring the rather trite notion of the cab driver with a PhD, this Montréal-set drama succeeded on the strength of animating the story with a dose of magic realism and a pair of fine lead performances.
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