Show Me Shorts Film Festival

Kia Ora and welcome to the May edition of the Show Me Shorts Screening Room. My name is Gina Dellabarca, and I am the Festival Director for Show Me Shorts. This month I have chosen some interesting short films to share with you by two of my favourite filmmakers who have a unique way of looking at the world.

I was thinking recently about how some of my favourite filmmakers have an eye for the little details.

I have a friend with an unnatural fear of buttons. Like to the point where if there is a loose one sitting in the corner of the room he would cover it with a piece of paper rather than touch it. Dressing must be a nightmare! I myself love buttons. There’s something about the simple beauty of them, the variety of colours and styles as well as their usefulness that appeals to me.

Jane Campion is a filmmaker renowned for her striking visual palette, and subtle attention to seemingly small details. The scene in Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano where Harvey Keitel’s character fixates on a tear in Holly Hunter’s stocking, and the illicit intimacy of touching her there, is one of my favourite examples of the way a small mundane thing can be invested with meaning through the lens of perspective. Campion is a master of using the camera to show us a different way of looking at the world.

An Exercise in Discipline- Peel

This was Jane Campion’s first film, and already her particular style was taking shape. The film is about a family on a road trip together – always an emotionally fraught time! Campion uses close camera angles to convey a sense of uncomfortable confinement. When a piece of orange peel is tossed carelessly out of the window it ignites a father’s anger. His frustrations aren’t really about the peel at all, but this brightly coloured object is the centre of a thoughtful and observant story about family and what binds them together.

Campion went on from this small beginning to create an oeuvre of unique films, which form a cultural touch point for people around the world. All of them capture her voice in a way that marks Campion as an auteur with a new perspective to offer audiences.

Night of the Hell Hamsters

So what other auteur filmmakers do we have in New Zealand? Through programming Show Me Shorts I have had the privilege of keeping up with new work from our established short filmmakers like Grant Lahood and James Cunningham. Show Me Shorts is constantly digging up fresh talent and showcasing it during the festival each November. In 2006 we played Sunday the first short film by Leo Woodhead, who went on to make the award winning Cargo in 2007 and Zero in 2010, which we also played. In 2007 we played Paul Campion’s first short film Night of the Hell Hamsters. This low budget ‘splat-stick’ short is full of playful comedy and warm affection for the horror genre, and was a promising sign of films to come.

Paul followed Night of the Hell Hamsters up with the much slicker sci-fi creature-feature Eel Girl (which you can watch here) and just last year his first feature film: The Devil’s Rock. Paul Campion is no relation to Jane, and his films are very different though no less inventive. His aesthetic is dark and populated by things that go bump in the night and gnash their bloody teeth. This is his slimy yet alluring half-eel half-human hybrid!

Paul Campion is bound to come up with an even more creepy and wonderful creature in his next filmmaking venture. Both Paul and Jane Campion are now making films with much higher production values than when they first started with short films, and I think it’s interesting to look back at where they began.

It’s exciting to be able to watch filmmakers’ work evolve and anticipate what they might create next! Who knows who the next big celebrated filmmaker might be? We might already have seen their first short film in our programme.

Kia Ora and welcome to the April 2012 edition of the Show Me Shorts Screening Room. Here we’ll take a look at some short films you can find online that we find interesting and try to give some perspective, background, or at least some (hopefully) relevant anecdotes about the films we discuss on the 1st of each month .

I’m Rebecca, the Awards manager, and when Gina our Festival Director called out ‘who’s up next?’ I immediately jumped at the chance to share with you one of my favourite short films. This got me thinking of a theme, and I’ve chosen three animated films that fuse practical art, music and film .

Destino

The first film I’d like to share with you is one many people have no idea even exists. What is so special about this film? Well, it is the fantastical collaboration of two mega-stardom artists: Walt Disney and Salvador Dali (yep it’s pretty ace). I saw it at my very first film festival ever (Melbourne International Film Festival 2003). As I sat at a cheap eats Chinese takeaway authentically slurping my noodles, I spotted it in the programme and immediately marked it on the calendar.

The film is Destino, a poetic take on love and time, an artistic marriage of two cultural titans, and a truly beautiful and historic piece of short film cinema. It had been shelved since 1946 but when (over 50 years later) the full storyboards, sketches and original score were discovered in a Disney vault, Roy Disney (Walt’s son), assembled a creative team and the film was completed.

When I delved deeper into the ‘behind the scenes’ I found that the surrealist short had mysteriously been abandoned before it reached completion and was considered a lost cause. At the Melbourne festival screening they mentioned that there was difficulties at the time with making final decisions (no surprises there). I’m guessing Salvador Dali’s fiery temper and emotional impulsiveness got Walt up and packing… with all the work locked up in his possession.

Can you imagine finding this discovery? It’s not like finding your matching sock at the back of the washing machine (although that is greatly satisfying). Fortunately for us, someone’s spring clean brought this beautiful film out for the rest of the world to finally enjoy.

The story is told to a song of love lost and re-discovered; a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover’s face melts off, she dives into the shadow of a bell, which turns into her dress then her head becomes a dandelion. A pod from her floats to a statue to awaken the man. Who then has ants crawl out of his hand that turn into Frenchmen riding bicycles with baguettes on their heads… Oh there’s plenty more but you should watch for yourself.

There is all the favourite imagery that we are most familiar with of Dali’s – the melting clocks and hourglass sand, the checker boards, the playdoh-esque stretched faces propped up with crutches – and yet the film is still full of Disney, especially the musical score with its emotive orchestral crescendos. Also the heroine who dances & floats elegantly in time to the sorrowful tune reminds me of the little Mermaid, while the use of birds and creatures to help her through her journey is classic Snow White. Aside from the sheer beauty of this short and the opportunity it offers to view a unique collaboration, I just love that it’s made so long ago.

Blue Willow

In revisiting Destino I had flashbacks to another favourite festival short, this time a local short film. Another animated flick of love and also inspired by art (or more specifically the ceramic design of the late English Potter, Tom Winton). The film is Veialu Aila-Unsworth’s Blue Willow.

I didn’t realize this, but in fact this film played in the inaugural Show Me Shorts Film Festival. Blue Willow is an animated fable influenced by the Chinese porcelain plate that most of us at some point in time have eaten baked beans and toast on.

The story tells of a wealthy Mandarin, whose beautiful daughter, Kong-Se falls in love with her father’s humble accounting assistant, Chen. Due to different social class the angry father sacks the young man and arranges a marriage with the powerful warrior, Ta Jin, a far better suitor for his daughter to marry her. But! On the eve of the wedding day young Chen slips into the palace and the two lovers escape. I won’t completely spoil it for you by revealing the climax – you should see for yourself how it ends for the two lovebirds.

Blue Willow is a totally unique animated short film, beginning with real imagery of the plate within which the pattern quickly morphs to animation as the story unfolds.

Apparently the story was one of Aila-Unsworth’s favourites as a child. To capture that feeling she drew the characters on cardboard and painted them to look like a child’s drawing. There are moments where images metamorphose in her short which are similar to Destino, like cloudy childlike dreams. Click below to watch courtesy of NZ On Screen.

Watch via NZOnScreen

Muto

My last film for this month’s Screening Room is not a love story but it is animation, it’s most definitely art inspired and it’s all about one Artist’s creations mutating to form image after image. The film is Muto, by the graffiti/street artist Blu, painted on public walls on the streets of Buenos Aires and Baden.

There is no storyline as such, but if I was to write a synopsis it would go something like; a plethora of creatures and adult-looking babies take a journey round the ‘burbs while feeding on human heads (sometimes their own) to the point of implosion. Blu just called it an ‘ambiguous animation’ (yeah that probably works better…).

Blu’s structure for his films/art begins with original sketches jotted down on his sketchbook, which in turn acts as an image database for his murals. Then, in combining his images with the surrounding architecture, Blu uses the most traditional painting tools: brushes and a paint roller. And with only two colours (black & white) he applies his designs.

His ideology behind the work is fueled from a desire to take domestic walls and ground in urban environments and majestically turn these ordinary areas into animated sketchbook masterpieces. The result (as you will see) is a simple idea, yet dramatic in execution.

If any of you readers are already Blu fans you will be happy to know there is a new documentary that follows Blu called Megunica (www.megunica.org.)

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Ok, so that’s a wrap for this month! Admittedly this may be my own ambiguous take on tying these films together, but to me all three films fuse art, music and film to provoke childlike wonder in visual elements not from the world that we live, but seen and interpreted in the minds of the Artists. The world of the subconscious is one we all love to indulge in and animation is a perfect medium for this. I hope you enjoy these films as much as I have.