dir: Chris Landreth, 13min—

The film animates the interactions between its director, Chris Landreth, and a panhandling, ex-addict named Ryan Larkin. What elevates these interviews beyond simple sympathy, a mere portrait in degradation, is the relationship between the two. Ryan is a hero to Chris. An Oscar-nominated animator in his own right, Ryan Larkin is a man whose work in the 60’s and early 70’s “secured his place in the history of animated fimmaking” as the film states. But artistic and commercial frustration, paired with a debilitating addiction brought Ryan low, out onto the streets where Chris finds him.

While blessed with a fascinating subject in the figure of Ryan, Landreth finds more than mere tragedy, he finds a cautionary tale. The film emphasizes a kinship that Landreth feels towards Ryan, and finds him terrified. This emphasis on Landreth’s self-recognition is represented from the beginning as the film opens with him talking about his own failures. Thus the film morphs from what on first glance is a reclamation project, into as much of an examination of Landreth as of Ryan. Throughout the interviews he inserts himself into the work, and as a result the film becomes a meditation on the madness and sacrifice of the art.

This theme is represented verbally through the interviews and through Landreth’s voice-overs, but the film, as an animation, won most of its acclaim though its ability to impart these themes visually. The characters in the film are animated in realistic CG, but are damaged. Landreth has been mutated in a psychedelic fashion, and his fear of failure pops up periodically throughout the film as a literal entitiy, colorful strips which bind his head and face, blinding him. While Landreth has his scars, even missing part of his head, Ryan is simply lacking. In a literal sense. Ryan is represented more or less normally, but huge chunks of his face and head are simply missing. The metaphor is clear—The ravages of his lifestyle clearly have damaged him, but more sinisterly, it can be read that his art has in fact consumed him as well. That the self-destructive impulses of creativity, have hollowed Ryan out.

Ironically, in the film Ryan talks about his Oscar nomination. About how he lost out to Walt Disney. Later in the film he decries the lack of money as something that killed his animation career. The awarding of an Oscar to this film therefore brings out an added level depth when watching, and reiterates the importance of these awards to independent filmmakers, a point I made much more eloquently around this time last year. Thanks go out to the Youtube Screening Room for bringing Ryan to us for free in a way that still benefits the filmmakers. Youtube is really bringing great films into this series as the last couple of weeks have showcased Short of the Week 2008 faves, I Love Sarah Jane and The Bloody Olive. Thanks go to NFB Canada as well for their continued production support of great artists, but also for bringing some of their illustrious catalog to Youtube.

Watch Ryan at: Youtube

This month, in honor of all the golden statues soon to be handed over to Hollywood, we here at Short of the Week will focus on honoring the many overlooked short films that have earned accolades on a smaller stage.

All the short films we feature during the month of January 2009 have received an award of some kind. It may be as big as an Oscar or as small as an audience favorite award at a community festival. Either way, be assured that someone else likes it as much as you.

#2 The Big Empty, 21min—A beautiful and bittersweet story about inner emptiness. Read | Watch

#3 I Love Sarah Jane, 14min—A zombie movie that’s not really about zombies but the confusion around falling in love for the first time. Read | Watch

#4 There is Only One Sun, 8min—Wong Kar Wai spins a dreamy futurist world filled with bright lights and deep thoughts. Read | Watch

#5 Jettison Your Loved Ones, 6min—Nothing sums up the avant garde of today’s filmmaking quite like this: weaving meaning into the nonsensical with a playful irreverence for the old masters. Read | Watch

#6 Father and Daughter, 8min—Heartfelt animation about a longing that defies logic. Read | Watch

#7 The Bloody Olive, 10min—Classic black & white noir with a twist—a few twists. Read | Watch

#8 More, 7min—Dark claymation about the dangers of corruption. Read | Watch

#9 Mankind Is No Island, 4min—A visual essay shot entirely with cell phones on the streets New York. Read | Watch

#10 One Rat Short, 9min—A rat finds love in a lab in this animation that immerses you in the action. Read | Watch

Dir: Lars Henning, 12min

While not specifically identifying itself as a holiday movie, Security, with its ubiquitous snow and setting (a Wal-Mart-esque store) certainly display imagery consistent with the season. Peter Kurth plays a security guard for this box store. In the early portions of the film we see this character going about his duties—silent patrols around the store, interrupted by silent cigarette and food breaks in his dank office in the back of the building. The time does come for action though. A young, pretty woman is caught shoplifting. Our man does his job and stops her, but from here the story becomes more human, more gray. What is right or wrong is less clear as our security guard must juggle duty with compassion and perhaps…longing?

The leads, Peter Kurth, playing a tough no-nonsense type just trying to do his job, soul-crushing job though it may be, and Susanna Rozkosny as the shoplifting woman, do excellent work playing off each other. They beautifully extract a lot of complexity out of brief interactions. Lars Henning, the director does a very professional job as well, truly achieving that “invisible” style that used to be so prized in film work, where one does not aspire to flashiness, but in simply immersing your audience into the story in such a way that they forget about the film’s direction.

While a little long, Security is the kind of film that is confident in what it wants to achieve. It does not reach for too much, and ultimately leaves you in quiet contemplation long after it is over. Please enjoy this, our last film pick of the year. Check in next week again as we compile our top ten list of films we reviewed in 2008!

Watch Security at: UndergroundFilm

dir: Vincent Bal, 10min—

The film, shot in a faithfully hi-key B&W and seemingly set in the 1940’s, quickly sketches out its scenario in broad strokes. Werner and his lovely wife Mylene, are busy making their apartment festive for Christmas, when Werner’s friend from work, Sam arrives. Sam is not looking to share in the joys of the season however, instead he accuses Werner embezzling money from the company ever since the recent and mysterious death of the company’s managing director. From this point forward, the comedy starts and violence, tricks and double crosses abound.

The true enjoyment of the film is its playful subversion of genre. In craft, it is a very faithful homage to work of the era, from the aforementioned lighting, to its staging and orchestral swells. This referentiality, allows for the absurdity to do its work as the script goes big with the genre tropes. The intention of the film to engage in postmodern reflexivity is made very clear with the film’s opening and closing. The film’s opening credits begin with a song; a vintage number about going to the movies. The ending similarly comments upon itself as a work of film, as a character addresses the audience directly in order to impart an old truism as the moral to the story.

Yet pleasing as it is on an analytical level, the film is still just a whole lot of fun. It’s great to look at for one. It’s shot on 35mm, a real pro production all the way, and excellently photographed. The pacing is excellent as well. Obviously as I’ve alluded to, there are a lot of developments in which to keep the film humming along, but there is undeniable skill in the management of tension, its ebb, flow and release. The Bloody Olive is definitely a film where I wasn’t watching the clock.

With the defining traits of the film being self-awareness and absurdity, I was surprised to find out the film was not French. (Sadly all those European languages sound the same to me I guess). Instead it is the work of a Belgian director name Vincent Bal. Seeing as how this film was produced way back in 1996, I hoped to find more recent short film work by him, but to no avail. It seems he has stayed busy in Europe with features and TV work though fortunately. Fortunately for my ego as well, I found that a French connection does exist—Bal adapted the story from a comic strip by famed cartoonist Lewis Trondheim. This link from the P.O.V. journal compares the various versions of the story.

I ran into this film while exploring the FutureShorts Youtube channel. FutureShorts is a fascinating short film enterprise that I have been peripherally aware of for some time due to its heavy operations in the U.K.—the place to be it seems for exciting short film developments. Looking more into it for this review though I have to say it sounds really cool. FutureShorts is a hybrid, part festival, part label, part distributor, which really seems to try and address some of the gaps in the current short film political economy. I’d encourage you to check out their website. They also have their first compilation DVD coming out, which features work from SotW certified filmmakers Gaelle Denis and Arthur de Pins.

Watch The Bloody Olive at :Youtube

Your suggestions will help shape the decisions we make, so don’t hold anything back. We have loads of ideas already, and we need your help deciding which are the best. We’ll be working hard over the holiday break with plans to unveil the re-crafted site by Spring ‘09. Participate Now! And as always, thanks for tuning in!

dir: Juan Delcan, 3min—This chillingly simple animation of Gabor Barabas poem “The Spider” cracks into the depths of the human cycle in a sharp three minutes. Inspired by the art of sculptor Louise Bourgeois (known for her nightmarish 30-foot spiders), The Spider shows us the contradictions of life—love and death, beauty and indifference.

“If her web be art, then she is an artist of symmetry who walks on air…”

The simple, child-like illustration style draws much from Bourgeois’ spindly sculptures. The Spider won a 356: AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Artists) Award for motion graphics this year (where I found it online), so it speaks well to my design-conscious side. The motion is well-choreographed, moving and morphing in time and breaking dimensional boundaries at key moments to create a visual style who’s perceived simplicity is broken by a deep and textural world teeming just beneath the surface.

“And if it is true that the great themes are death and love, then surely she is preoccupied with greatness.”

The filmmaker, Juan Delcan (Nola Pictures), has said he’s interested in expanding this idea to other contemporary poems—perhaps enough for a feature.

Watch The Spider online at: Vimeo | StudioDaily

Larry Ziegelman, 5min—Stuffed with cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie (pumpkin cheesecake if you wish to pry), my mind is forced to focus on those things that define Thanksgiving: food, family, and discomfort. Ah, those Thanksgiving Day accusations and thinly veiled insults, covered superficially by over-cooked turkey and faux familial warmth.

Check Please captures the true cynical depth of the holiday without concern for the date. After all, dysfunction is for everyone at anytime. Poor Julie seems unaware of that as she takes part in the painful ritual of meeting the boyfriend’s parents. But things seem not to be painful at all. Doug is being affectionate and humorous, in that too-broad-for-reality way most grown children adopt around their folks. His parents are his equal in fake pleasantness. With superb food, it’s hard to see how it could go better. Then the check comes.

The situation is a familiar one, which is exactly what I want in a five minute comedy where there is no time to create new worlds. We’ve all been there, both in that first family meeting, and in the argument over who pays the check. Check Please finds the absurdity in the situation, and amplifies it fifty fold, giving it that dark edge that lifts it above the quick-joke-routine fray. Monty Python became masters of this brand of humor closing in on forty years ago with sketches like “The Dirty Fork.” This too is sketch comedy, just quite a few notches up from your standard SNL gag.

Director and co-writer Larry Ziegelman learned his craft in advertising, where his commercials have won numerous awards. The move from one-minute advertising productions to five-minute short films is a sidestep, with all the skills from one transferring naturally to the other. Check Please isn’t a “directorially” tricky piece. There’s one table, five actors, and not much movement. But Zieglman makes it look good, and uses the camera to give just enough variety to what is essential a static event. It’s made a splash on the festival circuit and won the state of Illinois’s film contest.

Check Please can be seen online at: Atom.com

dir: Ian Mackinnon, 6min30—

The film moves effortlessly between passages of time, tracing the break-down of the relationship precipitated by and relived through an obsessive requirement to record events the two have shared. The greater Rob’s fear of losing her the more desperate is he to preserve Alice’s image.

The narrative is presented in flip book animation and live action. Narrated by Rob (Simon Perry) we watch as Alice attempts to wrestle him back to reality. “Can you just STOP for one minute to talk about this?” she writes. I can scarcely conceive of a form of flip book ignored in this classy film: conventional, hand machine operated, toilet tissue unravelled, images discarded on the floor, cascading in the air, even, at one stage, pasted to the London Underground wall behind Alice as she sits alone with the possessions removed from their apartment.

If the use of animation is extraordinary, the filming is subtle with a curiously detached quality about it. Many of the shots of Alice are full on portraits, reflecting her partner’s obsessive need to record their relationship. The walls of the apartment itself are white and at times it is as if the director has drained much of the colour from the action so that it echoes the flickering white paper of the flip books. Technically and artistically accomplished, Adjustment is beautifully edited, cutting from past to present almost as if the photographs and drawn images are shuffled into a different order, as indeed they are in the film.

The movie formed part of Ian’s graduation from the Royal College of Art in 2006. He also studied and taught Computer Animation at Bournemouth University. He is one of the UK’s young directors with huge potential.

Watch Adjustment at: IanMackinnon.co.uk or Youtube

dir: Daryl Wein, 11min—

Wrong footing the audience is a difficult task for a filmmaker to pull off without leaving them ultimately feeling like the victim in a bait and switch scam, but in Unlocked the mis-stepping is completely a self-imposed affair. Perhaps it’s as a result of our implicit understanding of film language through narratives such as The Vanishing and Silence of the Lambs, reinforced by the caution inherited from parents and trusted adults that when a stranger with a van meets an attractive young women the natural result is capture closely followed by some kind of ordeal.

However, that’s not the path Wein takes us down despite signs to the contrary and a cut to black that gives you time to image a potentially gruesome fate for our heroine. His intentions are perhaps the opposite, although it’s not until the final shot of the film that you’re released to dissipate the built tension of ever present danger, and see that what we actually have is a chance encounter that acts as a severely needed catalyst for complete emotional release.

There’s no shame in letting it all go whilst you watch Unlocked.

View Unlocked at: darylwein.com