I was there, alone, but sufficiently inspired to share this with you.
Each film has the one liner they submitted to the festival, sometimes a link to the film’s site or preview then a comment, not a review, from me. I have described what I took away from it that might inform my and your film-making. The sites are worth looking at as everything you will produce from now should have prescenece other than the film itself.
Triumphant Tale, A (11 mins)
A soft-centred contest where the vanilla-slice is more than just a delicious pastry.
Poorly, shot, narrated and edited. Interesting characters that I would have loved to know so much more about. The upside is that much of our work is in with a chance, more than a chance if this got selected.
Szmolinsky (5 mins)
A German breeder sends off his monster bunnies to North Korea with unexpected results.
http://www.juliusonah.com/
A very surreal piece if only because it has the most abrupt, unresolved ending. But obviously rabbits the size of German Sheppards being shipped off to Korea is ‘not run of the mill’.
Ladies, The (13 mins)
Two elderly Hungarian sisters living in New York continue to cling to their craft, their grudges and each other. Screened at SXSW.
http://www.migrantturtle.com/theladies/
A beautiful humanist piece delving as deep as most of us will bear witness between two people of that age. Simply shot which belies the photographer’s attention to detail. We are not conscious of the filmmaker’s prescence. Probably a terrific interviwer who established a strong relationship with the filmmaker.
Under construction (10 mins)
Progress comes at a price: a two and three-dimensional flight across now destroyed neighbourhoods in Shanghai.
http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/films?film_id=9714 play trailer for a taste
The topic is alarming and draining and its treatment in this doco equally so. The fly through camera movement through the demolition site is sometimes too tricky. It is put together with 2D stills of the site which the camera navigates through. Then the camera jarringly dissolves to show a lady rocking back and forth on her bed ‘singing-crying’ of the impending demolition of her house. Then a man shows us his wounds after being bashed by the site’s security guards for not moving out
City of Cranes (14 mins)
A poetic ballet of cranes gives us a bird’s eye view of London’s ever-changing skyline.
www.cityofcranes.com
Ponderous, badly structured, clumsily edited film that proves that beatutiful cinematography, great sound, compelling subject doth not a film make. Cool sit though.
Cyanosis (32 mins)
A vivid portrait, animating the passionate work of Tehran street artist Jamshid Aminfar.
http://en.shortfilmnews.com/movies.asp?id=Cyanosis
OMG 32 mins of escalating drama. The character, drama, aesthetics, everything becomes more intense, more compelling as it reveals the artists neurosis and artistic drive and his infatuation for a woman he meets. This is juxtaposed and amplified with animation as beautiful and unnerving as the artist and his art. I normally found these type of animation inserts a yawn but not so here.
Dirty Pictures (14 mins)
Part seven in John Smith’s deceptively simple Hotel Diaries series, this time set in Israel.
I thought the screening would’ve/should’ve finished with the last film but a coupla minutes into this one I realised the programmer’s intent. Most of the films prior to this one lead us into different perspectives of different lives. Deeper and deeper the program takes us from the live’s we’ve just left. This allowed me to really savor the droll, banal tone of this film. If I’d have seen it cold it would’ve been just, droll and banal. The opening shot of a Palestinian hotel’s ceiling tiles flapping up and down is especially magical. But then so too is the five min pan around his hotel room which ends up on his shoes for probably two minutes is magic too.
