Romantic Short Films

This week I have added a new page of romantic short films to my short films website. 


The first romantic short film on the new page is Validation by Kurt Kuenne (2007) (US). 


Validation is an amusing film that could easily be in the comedy section. Validation is a modern-day fable about a guy who is validating parking tickets at the mall but also validating the customers by giving them compliments. He likes to see people smile but there's one girl he meets who appears to be a lost cause. 


A slightly mawkish ending is outweighed by Validation's general awesomeness.

House On Little Cubes (Tsumiki No Ie) by Japenese animator Kunio Kato is the next romantic short film.


This short film won the Best Short Animation Oscar in 2009. As his town floods, an old man is forced to add levels onto his home in order to stay dry. But when he drops his favorite pipe into the watery levels below, his scuba-diving search for the pipe prompts him to keep on descending and relive scenes from his life. 


It's a real weepy of a romantic short and could be considered the animated version of The Last 3 Minutes...


The next romantic short film is a science-fiction short romance. World Builder was written and directed by a digital effects artist looking to display his skills: Bruce Branit has worked on Hollywood series such as Lost and Pushing Daisies, and this was his fifth (and by far his best) short film. 


The final film is Mei Ling, an unusual 'romantic' animation film but I like it!

New Short Animations

I recently added a new page of animated short films to my short films website.

The first new animation film is Alma by Rodrigo Blaas, a Spanish animator who has worked on Pixar features such as Wall-Eand Up.  Alma is something close to an animation horror! Alma is the name of the title character, an angelic little girl who is writing her name on a wall when she spies a doll in a shop window that looks exactly like her.

She enters the empty shop. The doll keeps moving but Alma is determined to get her hands on it…


Alma won the Best Animation award at the LA Shorts Fest.

Another new film is Bob’s Birthday by David Fine and Alison Snowden. This short animation is an amusing look at modern, middle-class life and how the best laid plans can go horribly wrong. It is dentist Bob’s 40th birthday and his wife has organised a surprise party. Unfortunately, the depressed Bob loses his pants as soon as he comes in the door and continues to say the wrong things while his party-guests are hiding and waiting to shout ‘surprise’.

It also won an Oscar in 1995.

The God is from Russian Konstantin Bronzit, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2009. In 2004 he created this brilliant film in which a statue of Shiva is irritated by a  fly and comes to life in order to rid himself of it. In his increasingly frustrated attempts, Shiva causes himself more and more problems… enjoy!

New Oscar Short Films

This week I have done a fair amount of reorganising on my short films website. This was prompted by an email from Shorts International, a company of which I had never heard, claiming copyright on several short films.

Anyway, it has forced me to watch yet more short films from those that were Oscar nominated over the last few years and I have found many that I prefer to the eventual winners.

One of those films now added to the Oscar Short Films page is The Substitute (Il Supplente) by Andrea Jublin. The director plays the main character himself – a substitute teacher who seems to be more hormonal than his class and instigates a series of crazy games in which his students are marked on their ability to mimic animals… you’d be forgiven for asking whether this guy really is a teacher…

Another new short film is Miracle Fish, written and directed by Luke Doolan. This is one of only two Australian films on the site and was nominated for its Short Film Academy Award in 2010. It is something of a slow-burner but worth the patience. We follow unpopular schoolboy Joe on his 8th birthday. After suffering at the hands of the playground bullies, Joe sneaks off to the sick bay, wishing that everyone would go away. 

He soon finds that his miracle fish may have turned his wish into bloody reality… enjoy!