We hosted Anna Boden as an Artist In Residence at The San Francisco Film Society recently. I found it interesting to hear her say she and Ryan Fleck had been inspired by Peter Sollet’s RAISING VICTOR VARGAS and the prize-winning short that preceded it 5 FEET HIGH & RISING. They had written the HALF NELSON script and in trying to figure out how to do a short that could help get the feature made they decided to shift the focus away from the focus on the teacher (later played by Ryan Gosling in the feature) and put in on Shareeka Epps the student (and who stars in each the short and feature). This is the short GOWANUS BROOKLYN that helped get the feature HALF NELSON shot.
Tag: short films
Julia Pott’s animated short “Belly” is a profoundly moving, visually stunning bit of cinema. So sad and lovely.
Hat tip to VHX.tv
If you were going to give an award to the “Best Short Film Director”, what would be the criteria? I think the director would have to have made at least three shorts. Maybe over a five year period. If a director only has made two shorts, my sense is that they aren’t doing it for the love of the short, but more for their “career”. Three shows a commitment to the form. Making one great, or even two great short films does not detract from the strength of those shorts, but again it does not show the devotion to the form.
Now, as I believe that the dominance of the feature film form is on it’s last legs, and that ending it is TGHOTFOC, I think we will see even more great short directors in the years ahead. Presently though, I am a bit at a loss to nominate multiple directors who have made three or more excellent shorts. Nonetheless, that limitation does not reduce my enthusiasm for my nomination.
I had the good fortune of being asked to be a judge at TropFest NYC this year. It was an incredible program, and in the highlights of years passed, I was reminded of how great Nash Edgerton’s short work is (I also dig his feature The Square). Can you name a filmmaker who has made three shorts stronger than these:
Or for that matter, what do you think can really change and move things forward in both the near and distant future? If we could ask five key people what they saw on our various horizons, what would they show us? Who should we ask? One of the great things about being pointed in a direction, is that it is almost a path. Could we have walked down that road when Francis Ford Coppola predicted YouTube in 1991:
It is not easy to just boil down to one specific all the various change that is swarming over us at this point. I see major shifts coming in so many different aspects of cinema: discovery, consideration, value/return, participation, collaboration, transitioning, immersion, and many others.
When you find someone to share your life with you are not about to let outside forces to separate you.
“Oktapodi” is an Oscar-nominated short from 2007 that captures this quite well.
Mickey Smith’s “Dark Side Of The Lens” captures a passion for a life worth living, or scraping as the case may be. A cool wave of water washing over the pleasure of using your labor towards creative ends. As we chisel and nail let’s not forget that the real reward is the doing.
DARK SIDE OF THE LENS from Astray Films on Vimeo.
