Yesterday was the opening day of Shortsfest at SIFF so I decided to get in on the action. I went to see the ALT shorts. Now, I know what you're going to say, "You've already made it clear you don't like experimental film, why would you ever go watch nine short bits of it back to back?". This is a very valid point. I would, however, urge you to remember that I am terrible at thoroughly reading what these films are about. I read enough online to see that it was shorts and some were animated. My brain did not connect the dots that ALT is short for alternative. Thankfully the shorts, overall, were a much better experience that A Shape of Error. I decided to discuss them all in one long post instead of breaking them up because, frankly, I don't have much to say at all about some of them.
Keep a Modest Head
This first short was about the life of Jean Benoit (the i in his name actual has some accent thing over it that I am not technologically capable of inserting). The short informed me that Jean Benoit was the last of the great surrealist sculptors. (I know nothing of surrealist sculptors, so this may or may not be true, wikipedia does agrees on the fact that he was a surrealist sculptor.) The short also asserted that he lived a surreal life and when on to narrate that. Obviously, it was surreal. Which I really enjoyed. As I've said before, fragmented bits and pieces of stories are something that really grab my attention.
The second half of the short contained Jean in a room looking at moving pictures on the wall. Sometimes he was small boy then the shot would change and he would be young man. The pictures on the wall reworked snippets of conversation that had been shown previously. It was a little confusing and disorienting and wonderful.
To me, the best part of the short was the fact that it ended on a shot of Jean Benoit himself smoking a pipe. It turned out they got him to narrate the whole short. It was a very satisfying way to end a short that halfway explained some aspects of the man's life.
Sunny Afternoon
I loved this short. And honestly, I'm not sure if I can explain why. The first half is a man sitting down on a chair. The rapidly switch from a shot of him being at Point A of the sitting process to Point B, then from Point B to Point C and so on. Each point has a different tone played with it and eventually they cut together certain points in order to make a melody. It's really just shots alternating extremely quickly to show a man sitting in a chair, and then spinning around in the chair. It's hard to explain. Go watch it.
The second half uses some of the musical ideas from the beginning and the man sitting in the chair then sings a song about the sunny afternoon that is occurring. Like I said, I don't really understand why I liked this short, but I was smiling the entire time.
Retrocognition
This short had really interesting animation. Each characters main body was a shot of a real person, but to construct the faces they used fragments of a shot of the persons face arranged in a way that looked similar to a cracked mirror. The set was all created in a collage/cracked mirror manner as well.
The short was set in the 50's-ish and all of the dialogue (from what I could tell) was fragments of 50's sitcoms. It made the conversation a little disjointed, but in a good way. It also incorporated laugh tracks which were out of place with the storyline of the short but must have fit with the original dialogue.
The storyline of this short was not the best. They were trying to depict a husband killing his baby with a big twist at the end, I think. Honestly it was just a little too long. And at one point they tried to show the man's inner turmoil, which, with the disjointed dialogue, did not work out well in my opinion.
Tricolor
If you wanted to watch old film changing color in front of your eyes and flashing on and off for four minutes this short is for you. I took a nap.
In Transit
If you want to watch two girls roll/dance/something around a parking garage in an airport for five minutes with industrial/airport noise in the background this short is for you. Also, it didn't seem like they had a good camera. Also, the quick changes between shots of dancing and shots of an empty parking garage made me queasy.
Charade
This short focused on Cary Grant being a wanted man. Parts were funny, for expample they listed his alias which were all characters he had played. Parts were odd but interesting, like when they showed scenes where Cary Grant (I presume) was overlayed with a shot of a cracked sidewalk. Parts were annoying, they kept using the sound of a pickax hitting metal, which elicits a bit of a 'nails on a chalkboard' response in me.
Radio Minos
I don't honsetly remember this short much. A lot (all?) of it was in fuzzy black and white. There was a thirty second scene where a man held a TV and danced around a bit.
A Beginning a Middle and an End
Guess what? More color/really grainy shots of something on the screen for five minutes.
Funny Games Ghost
This short started out so well! It played two differently families going on vacation at the same time. The families both consisted of a mother, a father, and a young boy. They played the same opera in the car at the beginning, which did not start at the same time but still fit together nicely.
Then the opening credits started and there was loud death metal. Loud. Very loud. And very not soothing opera. They were also too long for the opening credits of a short if you as me. The main storyline of the short was interesting and hard to follow (in a way that I appreciated). One family spoke German and the other family spoke English so it was hard to understand what was being said all the time, but that was okay.
Then the end credits were another long stint of loud metal. Which was, again, upsetting. I think it was supposed to fit with the short, but to me it did not.
Alright, well I'm off to see two movies at SIFF with my roommate, be back soon.
