Sci-Fi Shorts: Out There

Space. The final fron­tier. To boldly go where no short film­maker has gone before…I was looking for­ward to this col­lec­tion of sci-fi shorts for two reasons. First was to see the sort of kitschy retro-camp stuff where the effects and cos­tumes are crappy on pur­pose. But secondly, I wanted to see if some of these dir­ectors could use the lim­it­a­tions of the short film format to explore some idea about the future in an inter­esting way. I’m happy that this pro­gramme came through on both fronts.

• Die Schneider Krankheit (11 minutes, Spain, Director: Javier Chillon): I had higher hopes for this film, a mock 50s short filmed in pro­pa­gand­istic style. A space­ship crashes in West Germany with a chim­panzee astro­naut aboard. He quickly infects the whole country with a strange virus, which changes life for everyone. The fact that it’s made to look like a German film though actu­ally made by Spaniards may have dif­fused some of the impact, as we heard the Spanish nar­rator dub­bing the German soundtrack, with English sub­titles as well. Some great visuals, though (and not a frame of archival footage, though it all looks archival). (Official site with trailer, poster and even lobby cards.) (7/10)
• Civilian (4 minutes, USA, Director: Seaton Lin): Based on real inter­views with a woman who claimed to be abducted by aliens, this short film focuses too much on por­traying the act of hyp­not­izing her and not enough on what she claims to have seen. Far too short to be mem­or­able, even with such com­pel­ling sub­ject matter. (See the whole film here.) (6/10)
• Marooned? (15 minutes, USA, Director: Ryan Nagata): Filmed in Death Valley, Marooned? got quite a few laughs with its story about a live-action role­playing game that goes very wrong. Michael McCafferty is well-cast as the middle-aged sci-fi nerd who hires a couple of guys to play in the desert with him before a knock on the head has him won­dering if he really is stranded on an alien planet. (Official site) (8/10)
• Star Games (3 minutes, UK, Director: Jasmin Jodry): Stunningly cho­reo­graphed gym­nasts and divers are com­bined with archival footage of zep­pelins and Art Deco New York to create a gor­geous nar­rative of ath­letes becoming lit­eral stars. (Watch the whole film here.) (9/10)
• The Attack of The Robots From Nebula-5 (El ataque de los robots de nebulosa-5) (7 minutes, Spain, Director: Chema García Ibarra): A men­tally dis­turbed man believes that a robot inva­sion is imminent. His attempts to warn his family are futile, mostly because his draw­ings of the invaders are so childish. A great mix­ture of sweet­ness and menace, with great deadpan nar­ra­tion from the mis­un­der­stood mes­senger of doom. (Official site) (8/10)
• The Survivor of The Hippocampus (Le res­capé de l’hippocampe) (13 minutes, France, Director: Julien Lecat): French chanteuse Juliette Noureddine (above, left) is bril­liantly cast as a madam who enters her friend’s brain on his request to delete the memory of his brother. Wildly inventive on a tiny budget and extremely short pro­duc­tion schedule (the film was cre­ated for a con­test). (Official site) (9/10)
• 2000: A Documentary Science Fiction (7 minutes, Bulgaria, Director: Andrey Paounov): From the dir­ector of quirky doc The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories comes this pseudo-doc, sup­posedly made in 1973 by the mem­bers of a metal­works’ cinema club in Communist Bulgaria. Its view of the year 2000 is charm­ingly off-kilter, fea­turing inter­mar­riage between humans and robots, and fam­ilies of space explorers. Certainly loses some­thing out­side of Eastern Europe, where its satire would feel sharper. (7/10)
• Cold and Dry (Tørt og kjølig) (12 minutes, Norway, Director: Kristoffer Joner): Essentially a thought exer­cise: what would happen if we could freeze-dry people and revive them in the future? Scientist Torstein thinks he’s helping society by freezing the crim­in­ally insane, the sick and the old, reas­oning that surely society will be able to help these people in the future. But soon, freezing begins to appeal to anyone with a problem that can be solved in the future; that is, everyone. Smart and lean. (9/10)
• Postman Returns (3 minutes, Netherlands, Director: Mischa Rozema): So short as to be essen­tially plot­less and char­ac­ter­less, this anim­ated short nev­er­the­less pushes the bound­aries of whatever type of 3-D ren­dering soft­ware was used to create it. (Watch the whole film here.) (8/10)
• Captain Coulier (Space Explorer) (13 minutes, Canada, Director: Lyndon Casey): Inspired, according to the dir­ector, by Canadian win­ters, this campy space sitcom felt like being trapped in a van with four of your friends driving across the prairies. The humour is as spon­tan­eous as the sniping is inev­it­able, but it’s all hil­arious. Purposely cheesy art dir­ec­tion serves the overall goal of por­traying an inad­equate space­ship crew whose cap­tain struggles with his own, um, inad­equacy. (Official site) (9/10)

Tagged as: #wsff09, scifi, shorts, worldwideshortfilmfest