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Mar. 9th, 2004 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jfbOne of my favorite programs every year is Student Shorts--that's right, a collection of short movies by film students. I like short films in general. Maybe it's a short attention span thing, but I tend to think most films don't earn their length. Keeping your running time under half an hour gives you a leg up with me.
Student films are hit or miss, and the misses are painful. But the hits are fascinating, often among the most creative things I see all year.
Some of my favorites this time out: Dandelion, an animated fable of future war; Haircut (official site), sort of like Better Off Dead with air guitar contests and mullets; and Spin, a life-and-death exploration of quantum physics. (For what it's worth, the philosophizing in this one reminded me of The Matrix, except that the actor made it sound like he understood what he was saying.) Spin and Dandelion are both available from the Cinequest page, as is The Promethean, a sort of abstract mythic sci-fi thriller that was also really good.
But the short film (not by a student) that really blew me away was the last segment of A Bus Came... (official site, Cinequest page) , a compilation of short films by different directors that all, well, have a Budapest city bus in them. I liked the wordless cross-section of urban life "Shoes," and the superhero struggle between Sha-Man and Daedalus (and his son, the winged bus Ikarus). But listen, the last segment begins as a cinema verité documentary about a bus accident, and then suddenly it blooms into a 20-minute modernist opera about Joan of Arc, a heroin addict who takes part in staged accidents. I have no way to explain it. I was staring open-mouthed at the screen for most of its length. It was bizarre, beautiful, and not quite like anything I've ever seen before.
And that is why I am here.
Student films are hit or miss, and the misses are painful. But the hits are fascinating, often among the most creative things I see all year.
Some of my favorites this time out: Dandelion, an animated fable of future war; Haircut (official site), sort of like Better Off Dead with air guitar contests and mullets; and Spin, a life-and-death exploration of quantum physics. (For what it's worth, the philosophizing in this one reminded me of The Matrix, except that the actor made it sound like he understood what he was saying.) Spin and Dandelion are both available from the Cinequest page, as is The Promethean, a sort of abstract mythic sci-fi thriller that was also really good.
But the short film (not by a student) that really blew me away was the last segment of A Bus Came... (official site, Cinequest page) , a compilation of short films by different directors that all, well, have a Budapest city bus in them. I liked the wordless cross-section of urban life "Shoes," and the superhero struggle between Sha-Man and Daedalus (and his son, the winged bus Ikarus). But listen, the last segment begins as a cinema verité documentary about a bus accident, and then suddenly it blooms into a 20-minute modernist opera about Joan of Arc, a heroin addict who takes part in staged accidents. I have no way to explain it. I was staring open-mouthed at the screen for most of its length. It was bizarre, beautiful, and not quite like anything I've ever seen before.
And that is why I am here.
