Xixax Film Forum

The Director's Chair => The Director's Chair => Topic started by: Just Withnail on February 03, 2017, 04:02:57 AM

Title: Excellent Short Films
Post by: Just Withnail on February 03, 2017, 04:02:57 AM
We should definitely have a general short film thread.

Maybe someone can change the title, removing the "well known directors" part?

Most of the films that excite me these days are shorts, let's have a place to put those. This older thread is a bit messy and most of the links dead, so maybe we could also make it a separate thread? What say you? Linking-wise, it's good that people link from official places, as they are likely to stay up.


TEN METER TOWER

Wilder already posted Ten Meter Tower in the Shoutbox but it feels like a good one to kick off with. It's produced by Ruben Östlund's company Plattform, who always make really interesting things and I'm sure I'll post more from them.

Ten Meter Tower (doc) (https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000004882589/ten-meter-tower.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news)

Such a brilliant study in human behavior. The fact that they know they're being filmed really makes this a film about how people want to portray  themselves. 

The couple near the start, with their wonderfully overdone romantic banter, that almost feels perfectly scripted, tells us so much about how they see their relationship, who they want to be to each other (at least in the eyes of others). The line that's translated as "heaven" is actually "Nangijala", which is the first fictional afterworld in Astrid Lindgren's Brothers Lionheart, that ends with the main characters jumping to their deaths and into the next afterworld. It's such a grandly romantic thing to reference in this moment, and the way the couple builds the situation up to be like a huge fictional crescendo-moment where they get to confirm their love and security to each other is just incredibly endearing to watch. That moment when the boy says he's just "blocking her out for a bit" and she thinks she's talking too much and he rushes to say that "no no that's not what I meant" is very revealing.

The older woman in the middle is like a Bergman actor in every way. The way she casts a quick almost-glance at the camera before staring into space like an actor about to monologue, before delivering her extremely Bergmanesque "Nej, ja vägar inte!" / "No, I don't dare" + clenched fists, arms locked and one big downwards movement enunciating "dare". When she stops in the stairs we also notice her impeccable sense of dramatic pause, and a kind of familiar synecdoche where the absence of her face suddenly tells us so much more about what she's thinking than if we actually saw it - everything around her tells us what she's thinking.

The dynamic between the two boys right after is also very interesting: how the one who is going to jump starts off scared like everyone else, and spends a long time working up the courage, and after he finally does it, and returns, he has no sympathy for the completely similar fright of his friend.

These, and about a thousand more things to say about it.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: Just Withnail on March 06, 2017, 09:39:31 AM
Chekhov (https://vimeo.com/album/4244083/video/189734384)

I love this film so fucking much. Have seen it again and again. Family, love, time, troubles. So deceptively simple, and the simlicity forefronts everything: the familiar sadness of home-video accentuated and made stranger by that empty blackness surrounding it, the distancing phone-noise of a phone-voice constrasted to the banter that reveals years spent in close spacial proximity (love), the minimalist cosmology of families, love and time that it draws up.

Heart-wrenching.

5 mins.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: jenkins on March 06, 2017, 11:14:28 AM
you seduced me maybe but maybe you didn't because it's everything you said
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on June 14, 2017, 05:47:08 PM
Dude who directed the latest Weeknd music video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXDU9um19HM) has some other interesting stuff on his vimeo channel. The latter two music videos are also chock-full of great brutalist architecture

You Are Awake (https://vimeo.com/170638114)

Squire and Partners - Perspectives (https://vimeo.com/118302748)

Territoire - Blanc (https://vimeo.com/76418753)
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on May 23, 2018, 05:13:12 AM
Man Gives Birth - Directed by Brent Weinbach

NSFW

Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: Alethia on June 11, 2018, 02:40:45 PM
Here's one that has received a great amount of attention as of late, including a nice little write-up and interview over at ebert.com (https://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/short-films-in-focus-fry-day)

One of the best shorts I've seen.

Fry Day (https://vimeo.com/263043936), Directed by Laura Moss.

On the night of serial killer Ted Bundy's execution, a Florida teenager is taken for a ride.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: Alethia on July 10, 2018, 12:13:39 PM
Observatory Blues (https://vimeo.com/219242516)

An L.L. Bean-clad ode to writers, their loved ones, and the expanding universe narrated by Hugo Guinness (The Grand Budapest Hotel).

Starring Tom Schiller (SNL) and Amy Sedaris.

With Ana Fabrega, Jo Firestone, Eric Johnson, Casey Jost, Lucian Julianelle, and Michael McKean.

16mm


This shit is absolutely glorious.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on September 09, 2018, 03:19:44 AM
"Language Academy" web series (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4D9VNTIsqbKZHyXdqrP18A/videos) written and directed by Jacob Farmer and Philip Hoover







Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on December 10, 2018, 05:30:49 PM
Seems to be cause for Kate Arizmendi  (http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=14105.msg355652;topicseen#msg355652)appreciation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZBrowcWnMU

Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on February 05, 2019, 06:14:07 AM
Diagnosis (2017) - Written and Directed by Eva Riley


Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on February 11, 2019, 07:48:49 PM
Growth (2016) by Sil van der Woerd

Growth portrays the rise and downfall of a family over the course of 20 years, in one living room, in a single shot.

Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on February 12, 2019, 05:40:05 AM
All directed by Henry K. Norvalls. Can't wait for a feature from this guy.




NSFW


NSFW
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: ©brad on February 12, 2019, 02:55:25 PM
He's talented for sure. Thanks for sharing Wilder, these were great.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on May 04, 2019, 12:36:16 AM
Written and Directed by Erlendur Sveinsson

NSFW
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on July 02, 2019, 05:50:22 PM
Directed by Anna Roller / Written by Anna Roller & Wouter Wirth

NSFW



Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on October 21, 2019, 01:30:07 PM
It's a shame they had to film a whole movie to get this scene

Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: jenkins on October 21, 2019, 07:46:26 PM
mm. great scene. i haven't seen Shame in years and i'm a little afraid of going back to it
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on January 03, 2020, 08:01:55 PM


Directed by Casper Balslev, shot by Joao de Botelho
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: jenkins on January 06, 2020, 07:01:52 PM
is an excellent short film
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on March 01, 2020, 09:09:40 PM
Directed by Jean Amb

NSFW



Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on March 26, 2020, 08:06:41 PM
https://www.mizukofilm.com/about.html
Mailchimp + Oscilloscope are hosting a slate of SXSW shorts (https://mailchimp.com/presents/sxsw/) that didn't get to premiere at a proper fest ~
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: putneyswipe on April 05, 2020, 05:50:01 AM


Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on April 05, 2020, 11:52:11 AM
https://twitter.com/gossipbabies/status/1247407633881075713
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on April 11, 2020, 05:31:31 PM

Higher quality on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/84866413)

An artsy and devilishly playful pitch for an advert shot on film in Italy by Jonathan Glazer, which Cadbury inherently rejected for pushing things too much further from the traditional Flake ad. Starring Denis Lavant (Holy Motors, anyone?) as the devil.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: jenkins on April 11, 2020, 05:36:27 PM
pretty on point ad too
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on April 16, 2020, 07:31:51 PM
Raúl Ruiz's Colloque de chiens aka Dog's Dialogue (1977)

Lodge Kerrigan listed this as one of a few films he wanted Criterion to release in a 2013 interview with Marcus Pinn (http://www.pinnlandempire.com/2013/01/a-brief-interview-with-lodge-kerrigan.html).


A charming tale of murder, perversity and narrative echoes told through shots of barking dogs and a La jetée-like series of stills.

Quote from: Strictly Film SchoolDogs' Dialogue opens to a shot of an abandoned dog that has been tied to the structural frame of a discarded piece of broken furniture at a derelict open field, territorially barking to ward off an unleashed, stray dog hovering nearby. The image of vicious, primal social interaction carries through to an idiosyncratic visual transition: a sequence of photographic stills presented against the thoughtful, expressive voice of an off-screen narrator (Robert Darmel) as he recounts the tragic tale of a little girl taunted by her classmates who accidentally learns one day that her mother is in fact not her biological mother. The traumatic revelation would inevitably mark the young heroine's life as she confronts her biological mother in an attempt find to the reason for her rejection only to discover even more heartbreaking evasion and ambiguity in her parental identity. Unable to find closure, Monique (Silke Humel) runs away to Bordeaux in order to escape her past and falls into a reckless, sordid, and emotionally vacuous existence as a prostitution and later, as a kept woman to a wealthy older man. Driven by a pathological attraction towards ephemeral and transitory affection, Monique would stumble through a series of meaningless affairs until an encounter with a television repairman named Henri (Eva Simonet) from her hometown seemingly offers her a glimpse for the possibility of a respectable, normal life away from the streets.

Recalling the photographic fictional essays of Chris Marker (most notably, La Jetée) infused with the tongue-in-cheek, sexual role-reversal chamber melodramas of R. W. Fassbinder (most notably, the staged, hermetic insularity of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and In the Year of 13 Moons), Dogs' Dialogue is a wryly overwrought and vertiginously intricate, yet intelligently constructed austere comedy on identity, longing, and inextricable destiny. Reducing character interaction and narrative progression into a series of highly formalized essential images supplemented through explicative third-person narration - a playfully synthetic and intentionally self-conscious distillation of the role of the actor that the filmmaker would subsequently re-examine in his integration of tableaux vivants in The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting and Genealogies of a Crime - Raoul Ruiz presents an insightful (and incisive) exposition on the deconstruction of performance in the narrative and thematic development of a film. Ruiz juxtaposes recurring, interstitial active footage of leashed and caged barking dogs and aesthetically (and oppressively) commodified urban landscape of sidewalk barriers, multi-directional road signage, and architecturally identical (and visually interchangeable) high-density residential complexes against the film's drolly convoluted and infinitely recursive plot (from a script co-written by Nicole Muchnik and Raoul Ruiz) in order to create an intrinsic sense of claustrophobia and inescapability that reflects the characters' own circumstantial entrapment, anonymity, and existential limbo. It is this pervasive sentimental inertia and illusory search for transcendence that is invariably revealed in the static, lingering snapshots of the dissociated, archetypal characters: a subtly reinforcing image of transitory validation captured within the ephemeral frames of an alienated and impersonal conventional motion picture.

English subtitles are available here (https://www.sendspace.com/file/wuk988).

If you download the youtube video (https://www.4kdownload.com/products/product-videodownloader), rename it exactly the same as the subs save for the file extension, toss both files in a folder together and open the video with VLC, they will play.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on February 25, 2021, 05:31:42 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEwLiC50-TY
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on July 10, 2021, 04:51:48 AM
Written and Directed by Meredith Hama-Brown

Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on October 13, 2021, 02:46:41 PM
My friends made this and it's p fkn cool
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilberfan on October 13, 2021, 03:30:40 PM
p fkn cool, indeed!   :bravo:

And, yes, David and I are contemporaries.  Only he had way cooler hair.
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: Alethia on October 14, 2021, 07:41:47 AM
Ugh god damn it NY is dead now
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on October 21, 2021, 03:36:06 PM
Directed by Carlota Pereda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHgh2ajazTw

Currently being expanded into a feature (https://variety.com/2021/film/global/charades-morena-films-piggy-carlota-pereda-1235004335/)
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on January 26, 2022, 01:58:19 PM
Enter Achilles (1996) (https://www.ubu.com/dance/dv8_achilles.html)

QuoteSet in a British pub, eight men have their night out. Blokish fun is balanced on a knife-edge of tension, where weakness is exploited and violence covers up vulnerability. Originally created for the stage by DV8 Physical Theatre.

"In Newson's case, that complication is rooted in the personal. Born in Albury, the young Newson moved around the country with his Air Force family and was exposed, in numerous locations, to the expectations and limitations that hover around orthodox notions of maleness. For a young, gay man growing up in the regions, this was problematic.

"I have a very complicated relationship with the whole notion of working class masculinity," he admits. Yet, he still considers himself working class and feels "connected" to that community. This, despite moving to the UK in 1980, and enjoying a stellar, award-winning career in dance.

"We accept that men have traditionally oppressed women," he continues, "but how oppressive have men been to themselves? [And so] in making this work, it's very important to me not to vilify, particularly now. I definitely don't want to vilify working class men...because I understand their rage against the cultural elite."

Little wonder the company he co-founded in 1986, DV8, has a reputation for challenging the aesthetic and class norms of contemporary dance. As he notes, he is known for saying "dance is the Prozac of the artforms." He consciously and consistently breaches the stylistic and physical parameters of dance and, indeed, is no great fan. "After about five minutes, I'm bored of the pointy feet and the pretty lines and the abstraction.""
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: WorldForgot on March 02, 2022, 12:55:33 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW70uMnNthY
Title: Re: Excellent Short Films
Post by: wilder on August 10, 2022, 05:16:39 AM
Quote from: wilder on February 12, 2019, 05:40:05 AM

Just realized this is her