Six Short Short Film Reviews

I went to the Cleve­land Film Fes­ti­val on Fri­day for a show­ing of six short films. Short reviews of each, and spoil­ers of course, past the jump.

Birth of Indus­try — Direc­tor: Gabriela Toll­man

This film is a heavy-hand­ed alle­go­ry about the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion and how it has raped the world and how the world will still be around even after we kill our­selves. It had some good imagery at the begin­ning, sort of blend­ing evo­lu­tion with the myth­i­cal birth of Aphrodite, but after that it was just too preachy and pre­dictable. Das Rad does a bet­ter job of mak­ing the same point, and it uses ani­ma­tion and humor along with the moral.

Par­ents of the Year — Direc­tor: James Scur­lock

This was a short doc­u­men­tary about some Mex­i­can immi­grant par­ents [main­ly a moth­er] who paid for their chil­dren’s col­lege edu­ca­tions by pick­ing glass bot­tles out of the trash. It was a pret­ty stan­dard doc­u­men­tary. Noth­ing real­ly stands out about it that deserves men­tion­ing [good or bad].

L’HOMME SANS TÊTE — Direc­tor: Juan Solanas

This was my favorite short film at the show­ing. It was gor­geous­ly shot, quirky, light­heart­ed and poignant. So, quite French. The effects were good as well, and the mise-en-scene and pro­duc­tion val­ues were all top notch.

Con­ve­nience — Direc­tor: Ryan Kirk­wood

This was an ani­mat­ed stu­dent short about sub­stance abuse. Not the typ­i­cal kind though, but in a way… A kid is being raised by tele­vi­sion, and when he gets dis­tract­ed away from The Glass Teat he is hyper­ac­tive, until his par­en­t’s dope him up and stick him in front of the T00b again, so they can get on with their life. It was good for a stu­dent, shows some promise. I liked the con­tent over the form.

The Car­pen­ter and His Clum­sy Wife — Direc­tor: Peter Foott

This is a black hor­ror-com­e­dy about a car­pen­ter who makes new parts for his wife since she is always chop­ping them off. Then he gets the bright idea that he can make her bet­ter if just gets it over with and makes her all wood. Pret­ty good. I’m con­vinced it is based on an Irish folk­tale but I can’t find any infor­ma­tion online.

Unti­tled: 003 – Embryo — Direc­tor: Mike Goedecke

This was a lit­tle sci-fi movie about the dan­ger of liv­ing too much inter­nal­ly. An ago­ra­phobe gets a dream­catch­er giz­mo sent to him and he rais­es a dream crit­ter by steal­ing the dreams of peo­ple that stop by his place. The con­cept was neat, and the effects were pret­ty good, but the end­ing left a bit to be desired. There is also a cat dream sequence that total­ly creeped me out. Pic­ture an ani­mat­ed cat with a cou­ple hun­dred teats, nurs­ing kit­tens and telling them to take over the world; yeah.

Alto­geth­er the pro­gram was worth the price of a tick­et, even if none of the shorts blew my mind. I wish they still showed short films and ani­mat­ed shorts before fea­tures at the movies.