Short films…. Short films can appear to explore a single topic, but on viewing and reflecting, one realizes how complex each is, even in barely fifteen minutes. The short films selected to tour after this year’s Sundance Film Festival are no different: complex, breathtaking, beautiful, deep, heartwarming, and utterly strange.
The first film, SMILF, seems basic on its surface. But once you start unpacking the layers, the uncomfortable issues rise. Self esteem (or the lack thereof), love, loneliness, craving for intimacy, devotion, desperation, maternal bonds—all of these issues and more come onto the screen in this short clip in a one-room apartment during a toddler’s naptime.
Object is a Polish film that absolutely mesmerized me. Its ability to create beautiful images in ice and cold initially held my attention firmly, simply from that imagery. Although it was not perfectly clear to me what was happening, I was glued to the screen as the film used close-ups and angles to showcase nature’s elements—not simply that of weather, but the individual elements of beauty that make it up—the hard edges, the splittering cracks, the uneven surfaces. Then, as the story unfolded, silently as there is no dialogue, I held my breath, tensed my shoulders, then felt my heart sink. The film’s ability to convey this story without words made it my favorite among the six.
A Japanese film is the longest, Oh Lucy! This film took a lot of turns, making me think it was going down one terrible path after another. But after the piece ends, the gentle hug it delivers in closing helped me let go of the anticipation of despair that had held me up until that point.
A Ukrainian piece, The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul, uses clips of audition interviews (to play Oksana Baiul) to tell the story of the importance of her tears, letting the viewer think about where tears come from within a person and how they can offer healing. This was the shortest of the films, but it said a lot with these pieced-together clips.
Finally, there were two animated films. My movie companion for the Sundance short films had seen this past year’s Oscar Animated Shorts with me as well. I recall some of the strange ones among that offering (and I wasn’t sure my judgment would be trusted again in film selection). I had no idea then, however, how much farther a film could go in its strangeness. I’m glad there were only two animated films in this group.
The first animated film, a French offering, is Storm Hits Jacket. This, to me, felt like taking the bizarre that it the story of Alice in Wonderland and adding more hallucinogenics. Between nature, spies, cow storms, scary aliens, and love interests, the film just piles on one thing after another, barely loosely tying the threads as the frames transition into the next.
World of Tomorrow (which I call Emily Prime) is the other animated piece. It made me feel like someone watched a conversation between a fantasy-filled seven-year-old and her three-year-old sister and turned it into a drawing. It attempted to address the future, emotion, memories, time travel, and clones, but it delivered it all in a bleak, hopeless manner. My companion liked this one a lot more than I did.
But isn’t that the beauty that is art, including film? We can each interpret each piece as we do. No one is wrong. And as long as we keep watching—and reflecting—film as art is good. Even, and sometimes especially, when short.