While GUTV and cohorts have yet again collaborated to host the Third Annual Student Film Festival on campus, perhaps some would rather spend their lunch money on a more culturally diverse bunch of shorts-that’s short films for you uninformed folks.
This weekend Visions Cinema and Bistro Lounge will again be showing Oscar nominated short films from around the world. This is the perfect chance for all you kids with attention deficit disorder to sit through a foreign film. Featuring shorts from Poland, Germany, Japan and others, the films run from four minutes up to 29, but either way, your interest won’t wane.
As Academy-Award-nominated films, these are the best of the best. Stylistically, the films are diverse, ranging from American computer animation to Japanese rough-drawn cartoon to German claymation, to regular human character acting.
The short Inja earned a nomination for Australians Steven Pasvolsky and Joe Weatherstone. The film takes place on a South African farm during apartheid and centers around a white landowner who is dedicated to separating his dog from the love and care of a young African boy. The film’s brilliant color and excellent acting leaves no doubt about why this film was nominated.
Next up is a Polish film, The Cathedral, animated by Tomek Baginski. The style is reminiscent of “H.R. Geiger without the phallic images and Jesus shit” (according to Chad). Half-apocalyptic and half-Dark City, this short is about a pilgrim’s journey through a dark forest to find his true calling. Someone might have been playing too much Magic: The Gathering, but regardless, it’s visually stunning.
Das Rad, from Germany, is an artistic feat from a collective of filmmakers. These personified “rock people” are intrigued by human ingenuity but eventually come to realize the folly of technology. They watch as humanity builds, discovers, and ultimately overtakes the land the rocks once knew. Much like Claymation, the rocks were constructed by the collective with plaster, wire, plaster, foam and paint. Running only eight minutes long, you’re sure to hope they come out with a feature-length film soon.
Mt. Head, a Japanese film, is a break from stereotypical Japanese anime. With animations similar to Edward Gorey’s illustrations, the short is about a stingy old man that refuses to throw away cherry pits, and instead eats them. Standing out in the rain, he discovers that a cherry tree has sprouted out of his head.
While the animated shorts are somewhat more creative than the dramatic productions, all are entertaining. This is the last weekend Visions will be showing the shorts, so unless you can find them on Kazaa, they’ll be gone after Sunday. And after this, if you thirst for more, you could head to the GU Film Fest and catch almost six hours of student shorts, one of which you’ll maybe see nominated for an Oscar someday.
Oscar Shorts are showing Friday through Sunday at 9:45 p.m. Visions Cinema is located at 1927 Florida Ave., N.W.
