With a hefty stack still of screeners on my desk and opening night tomorrow night the challenge right now is to find time so I can guide you towards good programs in this year’s Worldwide Short Film Festival. Having been much of a doodler all my life putting pen to paper has come relatively easy for me. Putting that together and making animations and short films like this? Well, that proved to be the hard part.
But look at what can be done! Take for example the Film School Spotlight: Royal College of Art program, a ten year retrospective of some of the best the school has created. The program plays on Sunday, June 21st at the Cumberland 4. The mix is varied and diverse and favourites are a matter of personal taste and palate but with twenty-one shorts to choose from I am sure you’re going to have some of your own. Here are mine...
Bus Stop – A father and son wait for the next bus when extraordinary things begin to happen. Matt Abbiss creates this whole world and landscape without actually showing it. The boy descends behind a hill that you wouldn’t know is there. A zeppelin rises over the horizon where there was no horizon before. If all bus stops were like this perhaps we wouldn’t notice fare hikes and delays.
Dog – A very dark stop animated piece about grief and loss. It teeters almost to the brink of depressing but there are stunning expressions of sadness from the animations creator.
Adjustment – One of the most complex shorts in the program it is very likely also my favourite too. Ian Mackinnon has gone on to work on visual effects for Batman Begins and Brothers Grimm. The effects in his short are so diverse they meld together to comprise the world of a young man who thinks he is losing his girlfriend so he records everything on note pads and such.
Bipolar – Edward Barrett’s use of light and focus is spot on in his short about bipolar disorder. None of these shorts are long enough. I want to see more.
Balloon Tunes 1 – In the ‘It is just so wacky it might work’ category a colourful array of balloons and flutes serenade us with their own unique musical sound. The silly faces on each balloon certainly help too.
Me, The Other – What animator/student Marie Paccou achieves with light and shadow in her short is exceptional and the tones of the short sway towards the ominous.
