on September 21, 2009
With Summer drawing to a close it seems to be the season of online short film contests. A bunch of high profile ones recently drew to a close, and since I like themes so much (see our recent student film series), I’m going to share some of the winners this week via Short of the Moments.
This first one is called Market Price. Its a brief 3 minute piece about a young Asian woman who has to be bullied by her grandmother into haggling at the local ethnic market. Its a cute little story, and timely too. With the economic downturn frugality is suddenly in vogue, but I think anybody under 35 experiences some angst at the prospect of bargaining down prices.
Market Price won the audience competition for something called Project: Involve, Film Independent’s “signature diversity program”. Film Independent as you may know is the non-profit that puts on the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival. For this endeavor they landed Banana Republic and Vanity Fair to sponsor. It’s your basic, “give money and sponsor donated gear to some up and comers and then turn ‘em loose on a short based around a theme.” Nothing revelatory, but skillfully handled, with some name talent nurturing the filmmakers. The theme was “City Stories” and smartly the 10 films in the project films were limited to 3 minutes or so. They were supposed to display the style of the French New Wave, but the directors of the films I saw seemed to miss that memo. No loss.
Watch Market Price at: Project: Involve
I like it. Sure it’s overly simple and not all that dramatic, but it shows an interesting perspective that brings depth to a side of life that I’ve typically only see the surface of. Any film that does this is worth watching.
True true. The acting was only so-so, but Grandma is adorable in that old-person way.
[...] contest over in LA, which we featured on this site a few weeks ago via the Short of the Moment, Market Price. What I love is that the internet has played a crucial role in gaining both films exposure, lending [...]