Please enter your email to be kept informed about Future Shorts screenings and special events
March 2012 IN
FUTURE SHORTS March 2012
This is the current Future Shorts Festival Programme.
Click on the drop-down menu above to view events in your country and use the right-hand drop-down menu to navigate between cities.
Future Shorts Festival - Spring Season 2012
Future Shorts Festival brings the best in short film to audiences around the world.
Dir: Nash Edgerton
Australia - 2011
Edgerton, who wrote, directed and starred in “Bear”, the sequel to “Spider” (2007), centers around the main character Jack to unfold his tangled relationship and examines whether he’s learned his lesson or not. Described as a black comedy without social commentary, “Bear” is a follow up but also stands alone as it’s own piece. “Because I tend to play things fairly straight and never set things up like it's a drama or a comedy, the audience doesn't know what it's going to be, and something about that really works,” said Edgerton.
Dir: Amy Grappell
United States - 2010
An examination of a four-way affair, this documentary explores the story of two “conventional” couples who swap partners and live in a group marriage in the early 1970s. Set in Long Island, New York, this domestic living experiment unravels and challenges and boundaries of social convention, marriage, monogamy and desire. “Inspired by the discovery of my father’s photographs, taken at the height of the poly-amorous affair, and in an effort to come to terms with my own past, I decided to interview my parents. The film does not propose answers and strives to remain objective. It explores two people in a certain time. It tells a story,” said Grappell.
Dir: Sam Taylor Wood
United Kingdom - 2007
Inspired by the hit song ‘Love You More’ by the Buzzcocks, this short is the tale of two punk lovers, Georgia and Peter, in London, 1978. Tender and explorative, this short film directorial debut by Taylor-Wood was written by Oscar nominee Patrick Marber and produced by Oscar winner Anthony Minghella.
Dir: Spike Jonze & Simon Cahn
France - 2011
Created from 3,000 hand-cut pieces of felt, Jonze’s tragicomic stop-motion animation takes place in an old, Parisian bookshop where at night the covers come to life. It’s the story of a felt skeleton who falls in love with a beautiful and sassy vixen. Co-directed by filmmaker Simon Cahn with designs by Olympia Le-Tan, this short is sweet, sad, spooky and a bit whimsical. Jonze said, “A short is like a sketch. You can have an idea or a feeling and just go and do it.”
Dir: Juan Solanas
France - 2003
Created over 4 years, Solanas’ short debut is the story of a man who lives alone, head-less, in a room overlooking a vast industrial space. Visually astounding and technically accomplished, this animated short reveals love and happiness and one man’s pursuit for romance amidst life without a head. "We're living in a period where cinema is a product; movies are becoming more and more commercialized. Short films are one of the last real places for artistic freedom - they're important to celebrate just for that," said Solanas.
Dir: Tor Fruergaard
Denmark - 2012
Venus, a 7-minute claymation, is an erotic comedy about rediscovering one another and finding the spark where you least expect it An official selection at the Los Angeles and Annecy Animation Festival, among others; Venus tells the story of Caroline and Rasmus, a confused couple who've not had sex in for four months. To solve this, they decide to visit a swingers club and see if it will salvage their relationship, or not.
ALL FILMS LISTED BELOW ARE A PART OF THE WINTER SEASON PROGRAMME
Future Shorts Winter Season Programme is available for screenings until the end of April 2012.
The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film which depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film for while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman”. Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.
Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.
Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.
Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said“the more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.
Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.
Dir: Ruben Östlund New Europe Film Sales
Sweden - 2009
A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.
Dir: Juan Pablo Zaramella
Argentina - 2011
Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), “Luminaris” tells the story of a man living in a world controlled and timed by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, "Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”
Winner of Audience Award at Annecy International Animation Festival
Dir: David O'Reilly
Germany - 2010
A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, “The External World” is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”
