This week I have added a new page of the best short films from the UK to my short films website.
The first short film on the page is Sign Language by Stephen Fellows, which won the reed.co.uk short film competition and the Virgin Media Shorts competition in 2010. It is a subtle and very likeable romantic comedy narrated by a 'board guy' - those guys standing on London's Oxford Street holding up signs - who spends his life making announcements but is too shy to talk to the co-worker that he fancies.
The next film is This Way Up by Adam Foulkes & Alan Smith (co-written by Christopher O'Reilly). I assumed it was American the first time I watched This Way Up. It shows just how good a short animation film can be even if you're not Pixar. Nominated for an Oscar in 2009, This Way Up sees two undertakers encounter a series of comical obstacles as they try to get their client to the graveyard in time. Events take a supernatural turn near towards the end with moments reminiscent of Disney's Skeleton Dance (hidden here).
The third films is Soft by Simon Ellis, which won the International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008 with his great short film. Soft is the gritty story of a son and father tormented by a gang of youths, but with neither apparently being brave enough to fight back. Simon Ellis went on to make the feature film, Dogging: A Love Story, in 2009 but scored less success with this film.
The final film is Creature Comforts by Nick Park... visit the website to find out more!
Showing posts with label film festivals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film festivals. Show all posts
Monday, 16 May 2011
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Asian Short Films
This week I have added a new page of Asian Short Films to my short films website.
The first of the new films is Two Solutions For One Problem by Abbas Kiarostami, Iran's most illustrious filmmaker. Kiarostami wrote and directed a whole heap of short films in the 1970s and 1980s, starting at the Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (I kid you not!). Two Solutions For One Problem is a simple story of right and wrong that still resonates today (and Ahmadinejad should watch it!).
The next new film is Strangers by Eraz Tadmor. Ezra, a filmmaker from Tel Aviv, suggested I use one of his short films and I was happy to oblige. Strangers is a vignette from his feature film of the same name, but it works very well as a stand alone short and won several awards on the short film festival circuit. Two strangers exchange glances on the Tel Aviv underground but are then joined by an unwanted mob.
The tension rises as they approach the next station... can they escape the situation?
Another new Asian film is Little Terrorist by Ashvin Kumar. Little Terrorist was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. Set on the border between Pakistan and India, where a village has been split in two during the partition, it follows the travails of a Pakistani boy who is caught on the wrong side of the fence when he goes to retrieve a cricket ball. An Indian father and daughter disguise him and shelter him for the day but their deep-rooted suspicion of Muslims is impossible to disguise.
I'll leave the rest for you to watch. Enjoy!
The first of the new films is Two Solutions For One Problem by Abbas Kiarostami, Iran's most illustrious filmmaker. Kiarostami wrote and directed a whole heap of short films in the 1970s and 1980s, starting at the Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (I kid you not!). Two Solutions For One Problem is a simple story of right and wrong that still resonates today (and Ahmadinejad should watch it!).
The next new film is Strangers by Eraz Tadmor. Ezra, a filmmaker from Tel Aviv, suggested I use one of his short films and I was happy to oblige. Strangers is a vignette from his feature film of the same name, but it works very well as a stand alone short and won several awards on the short film festival circuit. Two strangers exchange glances on the Tel Aviv underground but are then joined by an unwanted mob.
The tension rises as they approach the next station... can they escape the situation?
Another new Asian film is Little Terrorist by Ashvin Kumar. Little Terrorist was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. Set on the border between Pakistan and India, where a village has been split in two during the partition, it follows the travails of a Pakistani boy who is caught on the wrong side of the fence when he goes to retrieve a cricket ball. An Indian father and daughter disguise him and shelter him for the day but their deep-rooted suspicion of Muslims is impossible to disguise.
I'll leave the rest for you to watch. Enjoy!
Monday, 14 February 2011
Best European Short Films
This week I have added a second page of Best European Short Films to my short films website.
But I have rearranged the previous Best European Short Films page slightly to make way for it, adding the brilliant Gridlock by Dirk Belien to the first page - primarily to make sure people see it before anything else.
On the new second page, we start with The Last Gunfighter (L'ultimo Pistolero) by Alessandro Dominici, the one and only Italian film to make it on to the website. I have a theory that the cinematic culture of Italy - espoused by the likes of Fellini - simply does not translate well to short films.
In The Last Gunfighter, heavily indebted to the Spaghetti Western, a solitary gunslinger walks through a desolate industrial estate before firing his gun for the last time. It is dialogue free and much better for it.
The next film is Black Rider (Schwarzfahrer) by Pepe Danquart. This won an Oscar for Best Short Film in 1994 but, shot in black & white, it has a much older feel to it. It is a German film about a bigoted woman berating a black man who has sat next to her on the tram. The black rider sits passively as she throws insults out but then gets a comical revenge at the very end. You'll have to watch it to see what that is!
The third film is Sniffer by Norwegian filmmaker Billie Peers. Sniffer, which won the Palm d'Or for the best short film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, is an unusual but beautifully shot tale, set in its own grey and apparently gravity-free world, about a man who works as a sniffer (watch it to find out!) and dreams off escaping the leaden boots that hold him down.
The last film is a Christmas film from Belgium, Tanghi Argentini (Argentine Tangos). It is utterly brilliant and was nominated for a Best Short Film Oscar in 2008 (losing out to this). A beautiful comedy drama full of Christmas spirit, it follows a middle-aged office-worker trying to fulfill his Christmas passion and conceal a snowy-white lie. I promise you will thank me for showing it to you. It is in Dutch with English subtitles.
Enjoy!
But I have rearranged the previous Best European Short Films page slightly to make way for it, adding the brilliant Gridlock by Dirk Belien to the first page - primarily to make sure people see it before anything else.
On the new second page, we start with The Last Gunfighter (L'ultimo Pistolero) by Alessandro Dominici, the one and only Italian film to make it on to the website. I have a theory that the cinematic culture of Italy - espoused by the likes of Fellini - simply does not translate well to short films.
In The Last Gunfighter, heavily indebted to the Spaghetti Western, a solitary gunslinger walks through a desolate industrial estate before firing his gun for the last time. It is dialogue free and much better for it.
The next film is Black Rider (Schwarzfahrer) by Pepe Danquart. This won an Oscar for Best Short Film in 1994 but, shot in black & white, it has a much older feel to it. It is a German film about a bigoted woman berating a black man who has sat next to her on the tram. The black rider sits passively as she throws insults out but then gets a comical revenge at the very end. You'll have to watch it to see what that is!
The third film is Sniffer by Norwegian filmmaker Billie Peers. Sniffer, which won the Palm d'Or for the best short film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006, is an unusual but beautifully shot tale, set in its own grey and apparently gravity-free world, about a man who works as a sniffer (watch it to find out!) and dreams off escaping the leaden boots that hold him down.
The last film is a Christmas film from Belgium, Tanghi Argentini (Argentine Tangos). It is utterly brilliant and was nominated for a Best Short Film Oscar in 2008 (losing out to this). A beautiful comedy drama full of Christmas spirit, it follows a middle-aged office-worker trying to fulfill his Christmas passion and conceal a snowy-white lie. I promise you will thank me for showing it to you. It is in Dutch with English subtitles.
Enjoy!
Saturday, 5 February 2011
Sundance Film Festival Animations
This week I have added a page of Sundance Winning Animations to my short films website.
The first film, Doc Ellis and the LSD No-No, comes from last year's Sundance Film Festival. Doc Ellis, who died in 2008, was a major league baseball player for the Pittsburgh Pirates and best known for throwing a 'no-hitter' or 'no-no' (like bowling a lot of maiden overs!) against San Diego in 1970 and then admitting that he had thrown this 'no-no' while under the influence of LSD. It is this infamous incident that he narrates himself to a drug-fuelled backdrop in this engrossing Sundance animation.
Ryan by Chris Landreth is on one of my oscar animation pages too so I won't got into too much detail here. It is, of course, brilliant.
The next film is Papillon d'Armour by Nicolas Provost. I will tell anyone who will listen to me that Kurosawa was the best director that ever lived. Most of Hollywood is indebted to him on some level. So imagine my delight that Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost created this mesmerizing, reflective montage of Kurosawa's work.
Papillon d'Armour (Butterfly of Love) won an honourable mention at the 2004 Sundance Flim Festival.
The last film on the page is More by Mark Osborne, which won at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Mark Osborne was a co-director on the Dreamworks film,Kung Fu Panda, so has now 'made it'. In this Sundance winning and Oscar nominated short, a factory worker is at odds with the dark world he inhabits as he plays his part in the mass production of devices that promise happiness. In his spare time he creates something he wants to share with the world. To embed More I have had to replace the original soundtrack with DJ Shadow's Building Steam with a Grain of Salt...
Enjoy!
The first film, Doc Ellis and the LSD No-No, comes from last year's Sundance Film Festival. Doc Ellis, who died in 2008, was a major league baseball player for the Pittsburgh Pirates and best known for throwing a 'no-hitter' or 'no-no' (like bowling a lot of maiden overs!) against San Diego in 1970 and then admitting that he had thrown this 'no-no' while under the influence of LSD. It is this infamous incident that he narrates himself to a drug-fuelled backdrop in this engrossing Sundance animation.
Ryan by Chris Landreth is on one of my oscar animation pages too so I won't got into too much detail here. It is, of course, brilliant.
The next film is Papillon d'Armour by Nicolas Provost. I will tell anyone who will listen to me that Kurosawa was the best director that ever lived. Most of Hollywood is indebted to him on some level. So imagine my delight that Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Provost created this mesmerizing, reflective montage of Kurosawa's work.
Papillon d'Armour (Butterfly of Love) won an honourable mention at the 2004 Sundance Flim Festival.
The last film on the page is More by Mark Osborne, which won at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Mark Osborne was a co-director on the Dreamworks film,Kung Fu Panda, so has now 'made it'. In this Sundance winning and Oscar nominated short, a factory worker is at odds with the dark world he inhabits as he plays his part in the mass production of devices that promise happiness. In his spare time he creates something he wants to share with the world. To embed More I have had to replace the original soundtrack with DJ Shadow's Building Steam with a Grain of Salt...
Enjoy!
Thursday, 23 December 2010
Sundance Film Festival
Having decided that Oscar and BAFTA winners weren't strictly festival winners (though to be nominated you have to have been shown in at least one several specified festivals) I felt it beholden upon me that I add another festival page, on top of the two Cannes Film Festival pages I already have.
So I have added a new page for the Sundance Film Festival at filmsshort.com This had an unexpected benefit of allowing me to upload High Maintenance to the website, as I had admired the subtlety of this science fiction film (when compared to other science fiction films) but had decided to add Alive In Joburg instead to the sci-fi page.
The Sundance Film Festival has a habit of rewarding unusual films, and historically far more documentaries than most short film festivals. Thus I have uploaded two of the best documentaries to have won at the festival in the last decade: Terminal Bar and Undressing My Mother. Documentaries are hard to pull off in a short time period, for it can be difficult to adequately address the subject (both literally and thematically). It's not up to me to decide how successful these two film are, but I feel that each attempts it in two very different but very effective ways. They are certainly worth watching for any aspiring documentary makers out there.
So I have added a new page for the Sundance Film Festival at filmsshort.com This had an unexpected benefit of allowing me to upload High Maintenance to the website, as I had admired the subtlety of this science fiction film (when compared to other science fiction films) but had decided to add Alive In Joburg instead to the sci-fi page.
The Sundance Film Festival has a habit of rewarding unusual films, and historically far more documentaries than most short film festivals. Thus I have uploaded two of the best documentaries to have won at the festival in the last decade: Terminal Bar and Undressing My Mother. Documentaries are hard to pull off in a short time period, for it can be difficult to adequately address the subject (both literally and thematically). It's not up to me to decide how successful these two film are, but I feel that each attempts it in two very different but very effective ways. They are certainly worth watching for any aspiring documentary makers out there.
Saturday, 18 December 2010
Festival Winning Shorts
In order to research what films I should put on my short film website I had a good trawl of the major short film festival winners, both by going to their websites and by looking on the imdb, the trusted source for film.
One of the strangest consequences was that I realised that there was often no correlation between how good a film is considered by those who vote on the imdb and whether it won an award at this or that festival. Of course, the best films do tend to rise to the top like the proverbial cream but consider a film such as Megatron, which one the Palm d'Or for Best Short Film in 2008 at Cannes. It has averaged only 5.9/10 after 63 votes. That's simply not that great. And many directors fail to secure a career on the basis of such an award.
Thus I had to pay heed to these votes and watch as many of the films as I could myself to decide whether they deserved to go on my website - rather than just adding festival winners no matter what.This created some major problems because Megatron is by no means unique. The Cannes Film Festival throws up other problems: I began by researching Cannes, the Oscars and BAFTA. But unlike the latter two, which hand out awards for live-action and animated short films separately, Cannes has decided to judge both types of film together. One might argue that comparing different short film of the same type is difficult enough (consider how the brilliant Father & Daughter, and Rejected, were both nominated in 2000), but the Cannes Film Festival has decided to make matters that much more tricky by failing to distinguish between the two. Having said that, some of the animations the Oscars and BAFTA have rewarded have been rather poor!
One of the strangest consequences was that I realised that there was often no correlation between how good a film is considered by those who vote on the imdb and whether it won an award at this or that festival. Of course, the best films do tend to rise to the top like the proverbial cream but consider a film such as Megatron, which one the Palm d'Or for Best Short Film in 2008 at Cannes. It has averaged only 5.9/10 after 63 votes. That's simply not that great. And many directors fail to secure a career on the basis of such an award.
Thus I had to pay heed to these votes and watch as many of the films as I could myself to decide whether they deserved to go on my website - rather than just adding festival winners no matter what.This created some major problems because Megatron is by no means unique. The Cannes Film Festival throws up other problems: I began by researching Cannes, the Oscars and BAFTA. But unlike the latter two, which hand out awards for live-action and animated short films separately, Cannes has decided to judge both types of film together. One might argue that comparing different short film of the same type is difficult enough (consider how the brilliant Father & Daughter, and Rejected, were both nominated in 2000), but the Cannes Film Festival has decided to make matters that much more tricky by failing to distinguish between the two. Having said that, some of the animations the Oscars and BAFTA have rewarded have been rather poor!
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