Short Film

  • Shirin Neshat – Tooba (2002)

    Shirin Neshat2001-2010IranShort FilmVideo Art

    Quote:
    Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat’s video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbolising its soul. They stand, alone, in a stone-walled garden set in a mountainous landscape. Men and women draw near and enter the enclosure, seeking refuge, as the Tooba-woman disappears into the Tooba-tree. The piece is ambiguous. Who has agency? Is it the crowd, who ‘invade’ the garden or the tree-woman who draws them towards her like a magnet? Tooba is dedicated to Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipour, whose novel Women without Men concerns five women sojourning in a garden, one of whom is transformed into a tree.Read More »

  • Douglass Crockwell – Glens Falls Sequence (1937)

    1931-1940Douglass CrockwellExperimentalShort FilmUSA

    An experimental animated short from Douglass Crockwell which derives its subject matter from his home Glens Falls.

    Just sit back and watch….

    This is just one of many strange films from the DVD collection “Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941” and it’s from Disc 3. In “Glen Falls Sequence”, Douglass Crockwell used non-drying paints to finger paint or sandwiched the paint between glass panes to create some very unusual kinetic art. Despite being made well into the sound age, there was no accompanying music. The result is very interesting to watch but many will most likely not enjoy it because there is no narrative–just cool artsy images. It’s not bad at all for what it is and must have taken a lot of work to create. However, due to the type of film that it is, you really can’t give it any sort of numerical rating–but instead just sit back and enjoy it.Read More »

  • Takashi Ito – Wall (1987)

    Takashi Ito1981-1990ExperimentalJapanShort Film

    Takashi Ito wrote:
    The further developed and completed version of a 15-second advertisement for an interior design firm on which I had worked. It repeats over and over again the violent back-and-forth, half-revolving motions of a giant brick storehouse inside the frame of a hand-held photograph. I wanted to emphasis the flat nature of the photograph while creating a dynamic feeling of depth inside the photograph’s frame.Read More »

  • Hong-joon Kim & Joo-ho Hwang – Seoul 7000 (1976)

    1971-1980ExperimentalHong-joon KimJoo-ho HwangShort FilmSouth Korea

    Quote:
    According to the information written in the credit roll of “Seoul 7000,” the film was filmed in Seoul in November 1976 with an ‘Elmo 108’ 8mm camera using Kodachrome 40 film. It was also stated that “it was filmed frame by frame, and the shooting speed was adjusted differently for each shot,” and “the number 7000 in the title of this film represents the total number of frames in all parts except for the title.”Read More »

  • Shirin Neshat – Rapture (1999)

    Shirin Neshat1991-2000IranShort FilmVideo Art

    Quote:
    Rapture is an installation of two synchronized black-and-white video sequences that are projected on opposite walls; large in scale, they evoke cinema screens. Working with hours of footage and a team of editors, the artist constructed two parallel narratives: on one side of the room, men populate an architectural environment; in the other sequence, women move within a natural one. The piece begins with images of a stone fortress and a hostile desert, respectively. The fortress dissolves into a shot of over one hundred men—uniformly dressed in plain white shirts and black pants—walking quickly through the cobblestone streets of an old city and entering the gates of the fortress. Simultaneously, the desert scene dissolves into a shot of an apparently equal number of women, wearing flowing, full-length veils, or chadors, emerging from different points in the barren landscape.Read More »

  • Newsreel (Geri Ashur, Peter Barton, Marilyn Mulford, Stephanie Pawleski) – Janie’s Janie (1971)

    1971-1980DocumentaryGeri AshurMarilyn MulfordPeter BartonShort FilmStephanie PawleskiUSA

    In this personal documentary, Jane Giese, a working class woman in Newark, comes to realize that she has to take control of her own life after years of physical and mental abuse.

    One of the most moving documentaries of the era, Newsreel’s Janie’s Janie breaks with their usual format for a more personal approach, following one woman’s journey to self-determination, or as Janie says, “First I was my father’s Janie, then I was my Charlie’s Janie, now I’m Janie’s Janie.”Read More »

  • Lynne Ramsay – Kill the Day (1996)

    Lynne Ramsay1991-2000DramaShort FilmUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    A junkie breaks into a locker and steals a bag, to get money for drugs. Later we see him in prison. He seems like a loner. Guards taunt him and try to make him lose his temper, so that he will be denied parole. When he’s released, he tries to go straight. Interspersed with these scenes are flashbacks of his younger life.Read More »

  • Christian Berger – Evolution of Reflected Light (2021)

    2021-2030AustriaChristian BergerDocumentaryShort Film

    Christian Berger invented the Cine Reflect Lighting System which he used on his latest films.

    This documentary shows how this technique has evolved.Read More »

  • Carroll Ballard – Rodeo (1969)

    1961-1970Carroll BallardDocumentaryShort FilmUSA

    Quote:
    Shown in a new restored print at the 2011 Telluride Film Festival, screening before Aki Kaurismaki’s new film Le Havre, Carroll Ballard’s 1969 documentary short Rodeo became the talk of the festival. For those who don’t know Ballard, he did 2nd Unit work on the original Star Wars film, and had a relatively successful career as a studio director before disappearing to a ranch in New Mexico, finding the studio system soul-crushing. When Francis Ford Coppola received his Lifetime Achievement Award from the DGA, he passed the award onto his old friend and classmate Ballard. Caroll Ballard is one of the great unsung heroes of the American film galaxy, and nowhere does his prowess shine more than in this early short, Rodeo.Read More »

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