I’ve been paying a lot more attention to short films over the past few years, and I’m exited to have found a really excellent resource for finding and seeing these bite-sized gems of cinema.
Short of the Week is a fabulous site where short films are presented, reviewed and discussed. Not only is it attractively designed, but the curators have done a great job in presenting a variety of great work, both animated and live-action. Short films are difficult to see in the same way as we consume traditional films (theatrically and on DVD) so it only makes sense to present them online, and this site, established in 2007, has been amassing a great collection. The short reviews are also well-written and informative. I’ve made Short of the Week a regular stop on my film surfing, and so should you.
While we’re on the subject of shorts, I held an event for a few friends last weekend that I hope will develop into a regular series. Shorts That Are Not Pants featured a mixed programme of recent short films mostly screened from issues of Wholphin:
- El ataque de los robots de nebulosa-5 (The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5) (Dir. Chema Garcia Ibarra, Spain, 6 minutes)
- Land of the Heads (Dir. Cédric Louis and Claude Barras, Canada, 6 minutes)
- Isabelle au bois dormant (Sleeping Betty) (Dir. Claude Cloutier, Canada, 9 minutes)
- Love You More (Dir. Sam Taylor-Wood, UK, 15 minutes)
- Glory at Sea (Dir. Benjamin Zeitlin, USA, 25 minutes)
- Two Cars, One Night (Dir. Taika Waititi, New Zealand, 12 minutes)
- Tørt og kjølig (Cold and Dry) (Dir. Kristoffer Joner, Norway, 12 minutes)
- Smafúglar (2 Birds) (Dir. Rúnar Rúnarsson, Iceland, 15 minutes)
- New Boy (Dir. Steph Green, Ireland, 11 minutes)
The two that generated the most discussion were Glory at Sea and Smafúglar (2 Birds), which didn’t surprise me at all. They were the two most dramatic films in the programme, and I look forward to more great work, of whatever length, from both directors.