Life & Society

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Checkmate

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

dir: Casimir Nozkowski, 9:44—Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam are two guys from New York. They both have day jobs and their own separate blogs, but together, under the nom-de-vid the Internets Celebrities, they create short, bristling, funny documentary essays on topics ranging from how to remix the Big Mac to the role of the bodega […]

Dad’s Clock

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

dir: Dik Jarman, 7min—With a background in puppet animation and a thriving commercial practice as an architect, Dik Jarman celebrated the life of his late father in a very special autobiographical account of a complex relationship. Fearing at first that animating the story might be too clichéd, Dik was persuaded by friends and family that […]

Rapping at Fear

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

Andrés Tabares, 6:44—Do movies really matter? Can a short film possibly make a difference in this world? Andrés Tabares, a high school senior from the slums of Bogota, Colombia sure thinks so.
Tabares is both the director and subject of Rapping at Fear, a short documentary currently competing in the 7th annual Media That Matters Film […]

And She Stares Longingly at What She Has Lost

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

Phillip Van, 2:31—I spend a lot of time, perhaps more than could reasonably be considered healthy, trolling around webland looking for forms of visual entertainment to while away the day, so when I come across something that’s completely new to me but has been hiding in the open for a while it has the unsettling […]

Terminus

Monday, January 21st, 2008

dir: Trevor Cawood, 8:22—Terminus (Latin for “boundary stone”) is a dark comedy about the self-destructive nature of the human mind and the dangers of urban isolation. In this film, a colossus made of concrete pilings follows a lonely man throughout the city tormenting him as he goes about his daily life on the subway, at […]

A Portrait of Envy

Sunday, January 6th, 2008

Enrique Garcia, 9:07-Cementing her status as a promising young actress, Riley Rose, star of the award-winning “Archer House” short film, shows up again in A Portrait of Envy, a 9-minute short film written and directed by Enrique Garcia. Rose portrays Gillian, a timid yet artistic young woman who believes she’s finally won over Jerry (Kris […]

Birdhouses

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

dir: Sam Goetz, 14:44—When I was a young boy, I would gather every Saturday evening around the television for our weekly family tradition of watching “Hee Haw,” an hour of country music, down home silliness and simple family fun.
As I grew up, my musical tastes moved more toward The Ramones and The Dead Kennedys and, […]

Balance

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

dir: Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein, 7:23—A platform floats in a neutral space. Strange men, identical except for the numbers on their back, appearing as though out of some dystopian future, must work in concert to prevent the platform from tipping. The emergence of a strange box, a new development in this closed and sterile […]

The Shock Doctrine

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

dir: Jonás Cuarón, 6:46—I find this week’s short to be interesting for a myriad of reasons, perhaps the least of which are its controversial politics. Part documentary, half advertisement and in places an artistic short film, with a solid dose of agit-prop thrown in, The Shock Doctrine is a slick piece of media that employs […]

Hotel Chevalier

Sunday, October 7th, 2007

Dir: Wes Anderson, 13:01—Hotel Chevalier is probably the highest profile short making the rounds. That’s no surprise with name stars, rumors of nudity, and the creative hand of cult favorite Wes Anderson. Anderson, who somehow has managed to cling to his indie cred even after casting Ben Stiller, burst onto the scene in […]