Last week, Scott posted Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person, one of the first short films to be featured on The New Yorker‘s new shorts catalogue. Another 25 New Face, Bernardo Britto, has now joined the site with his Sundance Jury Prize-winning Yearbook. The animated film imagines a man who has been tasked with cataloguing the world’s history before an alien-sent missile destroys earth. It’s poignant, funny and quietly heartbreaking in equal measure.
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 22, 2014The New Yorker streams short films — who knew? This discovery is particularly welcome because just posted on the magazine’s YouTube channel — and embedded above — is Dustin Guy Defa’s terrific Person to Person, one of the works that landed the filmmaker on our 25 New Faces list this year. Here’s Brandon Harris on the film here at Filmmaker: Speaking of throwback cinema that doesn’t simply appropriate but forges its own thing out of the familiar, Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person is a film one could watch a dozen times. Assuming he doesn’t change the Vimeo password and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 16, 2014You know the best way to fall in love again with your city? Invite a friend to visit and see it anew through their eyes. Despite the truth of that statement, however, I can’t say that’s exactly what happens in Gooses, a lovely short film by directors Shawn Sullivan and Joe Peeler. Lucinella visits her “spirit animal” (actually, her sister Lore) in Los Angeles, and her trip is both an impressionistic journey through the sights of L.A. as well as a more nuanced tale of sibling rediscovery. Gooses, which premiered on NoBudge and stars Zena Gray and Katy Knowlton, is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 23, 2014The tropes of American independent filmmaking — in this cast, the tale of a latchkey child wandering the city — are a deceptive red herring in the surprising and rewarding short film Bag Man, by commercial directors Jonathan and Josh Baker. Currently making the online rounds, the film blends a sensitive, character-based tale of a Harlem youth left on his own with… well, I won’t spoil the surprise. The directors were interviewed over at Short of the Week: BAG MAN feels like it takes a narrative-first approach to filmmaking, serving up its audience an intriguing and well-considered storyline, how did […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 22, 2014It’s March 2012. I’m standing outside a warehouse with 18 people. We’re about to watch a pig die. Three cameras are ready to roll: two for the movie and one for legal purposes. My actors have the morning off; because of my agreement with SAG, they’re not allowed to be on set for this particular scene. Rory Royston, the operator of an independent slaughterhouse, as well as his assistant, stand in for my lead actors, dressed in their wardrobe; they will make sure the slaughter about to be performed is both safe and humane. Rory looks to me; it’s time. […]
by Jason B. Kohl on Oct 21, 2014Celebrating its Online Premiere over at No Budge, Jay Giampietro’s Whiffed Out is a throwback rendition of a neurotic New Yorker’s summer of suck. The short film, an official selection of Maryland Film Festival and BAMcinemaFest, derives its humor from situational minutiae, and in the below guest post, Giampietro discusses his source of inspiration in the five-minute film series of Mike Leigh. — Sarah Salovaara I was turned onto the Mike Leigh five-minute films by Ronnie Bronstein about a year and a half ago, and even though I am obsessed with Leigh and had seen every one of his features (I used to […]
by Jay Giampietro on Oct 7, 2014Director Matthew Frost and actress Kirsten Dunst team up for this short film, Aspirational, about celebrity fandom in the age of the selfie. A tag is worth more than a moment as Dunst encounters two fans outside her house. Via VS Magazine.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 29, 2014The distribution rollout for short form work remains a tenuous enterprise, at best. Aside from throwing it up on Vimeo or YouTube, and hoping it catches the eye of a curated site like Short of the Week, many filmmakers end up sitting on their shorts for months after their festival premiere. Vimeo is shaking up that paradigm by offering 17 shorts from the Toronto International Film Festival’s Short Cuts program — which the streaming site sponsors — online through September 19. These include the Jury Prize winning A Single Body, which offers insight into an earnest male friendship; the Shane Carruth-starring everything & everything & everything; the sci-fi Entangled, from […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 17, 2014Remember We Think Alone? Miranda July’s investigatory aggregate into the emails of famous people? July is again re-examining how people communicate in the age of information with a new app/messaging service entitled Somebody. Some sort of sick combination of texting and Tinder, Somebody ensures human contact upon receiving a message because that message is not your own — it belongs to someone nearby, and you are tasked with delivering it. To promote the project, Miu Miu commissioned a short from July that premiered today at the Venice Film Festival. In the supplement, a varied cast of characters (including July herself) […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 28, 2014In his short film Not So Fast, filmmaker David Sandberg managed to achieve a dramatic tunnel effect with no more than a few Ikea products and the free 3D modeling app, Blender. The very embodiment of DIY ethos, Sandberg fashioned a portable light — enclosed in a trashcan — to his dolly — a bit of shelving — and orchestrated the action atop his PVC pipe track. Granted, his battery pack and Black Magic Cinema Camera don’t exactly run cheap, but the homemade equipment used to relay his protagonist’s sleepwalking probably rounded out to no more than $30. Watch Sandberg break down his […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 5, 2014