Still shot from “8″ Short Film Directed by Julie Gould and Daniel Laabs.
The Short Film categories at the DALLAS IFF spread across numerous genres and styles. In this post we’ll take a look at the 2 Short film programs as well as the Documentary Shorts and Animation Shorts section.
University of Texas at Arlington graduates Julie Pool Gould, Daniel Laabs and DP Bret Curry bring home their SXSW TEXAS SHORTS JURY AWARD winning film “8″ to DIFF 2011. The Short “8″ is part of the Shorts Program 1 with 6 other films.
Shorts Program 1
8
Directed By: Julie Gould,
Daniel Laabs
USA, 2011, 8 min
A daughter spends the anniversary of her father’s death with her mother.
The Long Lonely Walk
Directed By: Leon Chambers
United Kingdom, 2010, 13 min
In all walk of life, there are challenges that lie ahead.
Green Crayons
Directed By: Kazik Radwanski
Canada, 2010, 11 min
An elementary school parable involving Xavier and Liam, two 7-year-olds that are moulded by their actions following a classroom spitting incident.
WAITING ROOM
Directed By: Robert Machoian,
Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck
USA, 2010, 10 min
The mundane and not so mundane moments in ones life.
Crazy Beats Strong Every Time
Directed By: Moon Molson
USA, 2011, 26 min
An African American 20-something finds his Nigerian immigrant stepfather passed out drunk in their building hallway and is pressured into murdering him.
The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting
Directed By: Emily Carmichael
USA, 2010, 8 min
A Brooklyn couple have dinner with a hunter and his girlfriend, a magical swan woman; it doesn’t go well.
Pioneer
Directed By: David Lowery
USA, 2010, 15 min
A father tells his little boy the most epic bedtime story ever.
Director David Lowery completed a survey for the DALLAS IFF folks and here are some of his wonderful insights into his short film, PIONEER starring Will Oldham.
“Lead actor Will Oldham is a renowned indie / folk musician who records and performs under the moniker Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. As an actor, he starred in Kelly Richardt’s ‘Old Joy,’ and appeared in her follow-up film ‘Wendy & Lucy.’ His songs are beloved far and wide (Johnny Cash covered one of his songs on his American IV album) and he was the subject of a lengthy profile in the New Yorker. Will’s costar in ‘Pioneer’ is Myles Brooks, who was 4 years old at the time of production and had never acted before. A Dallas native, Myles more than held his own with 12 pages of dialogue. Hopefully this leads to more work in the future!
“I was inspired by thoughts of fatherhood – I wanted to make a movie for my dad, and in writing the script I was really inspired by the crazy bedtime stories my dad told my growing up.”
David is a previous award winner from DIFF as he took home the Texas Filmmaker Award (AFI Dallas 2009) for his gripping short, St. Nick.
The Shorts Program 1 runs just over 90 minutes and can be seen:
Friday April 1st at 9:45 pm at the Angelika Film Center #7.
Saturday April 2nd at 3pm at the Angelika Film Center #6.
Shorts Program 2
PSD favorites Blair Rowan and Chris Gardner bring their dark comedy style to the DIFF once again.
Narcissism & Me
Directed By: Blair Rowan
USA, 2010, 10 min
A dark comedy about Ivan Carrol, an intensely unhinged man isolated from reality and trapped in an infinite loop of perverse fantasy, murderous intent, and worthless therapy.
Deeper Than Yesterday
Directed By: Ariel Kleiman
Australia, 2010, 20 min
After three months submerged underwater, the men have become savages. Oleg fears that losing perspective may mean losing himself.
Protect The Nation
Directed By: C. R. Reisser
Germany , South Africa, 2010, 17 min
When faced with the unexpected kindness of a stranger, a young boy begins to question himself. Does he have the courage to do what’s right.
Director Candice Reisser completed a DIFF film survey and here are some of her responses.
“62 people were murdered and 90,000 foreigners were displaced from their homes during a wave of xenophobic rioting in South Africa in 2008. How was this possible? How can we prevent this from ever happening again?”
“Our film was shot on exactly the same grounds where the xenophobic attacks took place only two years earlier. This is still an extremely controversial topic in South Africa, and to recreate scenes of rioting and looting did create quite a stir in the community. Amazingly we received many messages of support for what we were doing. A lot of people thanked us for bringing a difficult and uncomfortable subject out into the open.”
Worst Enemy
Directed By: Lake Bell
USA, 2010, 13 min
A comedy about a female misanthrope who gets herself stuck in a full-body girdle.
A Seizure By Nathan Jones
Directed By: Charles Son
USA, 2010, 8 min
Drawn from the fragmented memories of one man, this film is the reconstruction of a seizure from beginning to end.
A film that deals with the horrible effects epilepsy can have on a person. The screenwriter Nathan Jones took part in a survey for DIFF and had some awesome insight into epilepsy and more. He started off by explaining his fun connection to Dallas.
“My father grew up in Dallas so I frequently made trips as a kid. I also worked as an extra in Friday Night Lights in Austin for a bit. Love Texas! And Sonny’s BBQ.”
Nathan talked about epilepsy in more detail.
“People used to think that those who were affected by epilepsy were also affected by the devil. In fact, Canon Law used to cite that anyone with epilepsy could not become a priest. A friend and advocate Tony Coelho is credited for swaying the pope to reverse canon law and allowing people who have epilepsy to join the seminary. Tony Coelho was also the primary sponsor of the American with Disabilities Act, resulting from the hardships brought upon by living with epilepsy.”
“This film was made to enable others to empathize with people who have seizures. Nine seizures later and hundreds of conversations about what epilepsy is and isn’t, a passion project as an artist became clear as day. If people are going to understand what a seizure is then people need to experience what it is like to have a seizure from my point of view. They need to be on that gurney and in that ambulance for themselves-seeing, hearing and feeling what I have during these convulsions. Come live in my shoes for a second.”
Behind the Scenes shot of BAD DADS which stars Michael Cera.
Bad Dads
Directed By: Derek Westerman
USA, 2011, 14 min
This is a look into the life of a man (who should not have procreated) and his son. It deals with oftentimes inappropriate situations.
Another PSD favorite, Director Michael Mohan brings his short film Ex-Sex to DIFF.
Ex-Sex
Directed By: Michael Mohan
USA, 2011, 8 min
A one night stand between two people who used to be in love (or so they thought).
Michael shared his thoughts with DIFF and he began by explaining how this film is a very personal tale.
“I once dated this girl. She was too good for me. She was smart. She was pretty. She laughed at my dumb jokes. I knew that I wanted to marry her. The only problem with that, I hadn’t dated that many people up to that point. I was afraid that I’d marry her, and like on my 40th birthday or something, way down the road, I’d start to wonder if there was someone else out there that was even more perfect for me. I know, it was dumb. I just didn’t have that much experience at relationships. So in the months that followed, as she and I would get together and secretly continue to hook up, I went on dates with a handful of people. All of which paled in comparison. She started going on dates too, and I got intensely jealous. It was rough, but I quickly learned my lesson, she took me back, and we are now happily married. Every once in a while, I wonder what would have happened if during that time we were broken up she decided to move on. This is that version of the story.”
Some other awesome tidbits of info from Mike. How about his connection to a past DIFF STAR AWARD recipient.
“I currently live in Los Angeles, in the same exact apartment where Robert Towne wrote Chinatown. Chinatown was written within the same four walls that Ex-Sex (and all of my work) was written.”
And how about a little shout out to Facebook?
“We pretty much cast the movie via Facebook. Jacob was introduced to us via another director friend of mine, and Kristen had acted in a music video we made a year prior. I reached out to them via FB and we were off and running.”
Wednesday April 6th at 7pm at the Angelika Film Center # 6
Thursday April 7th at 10:15pm at the Angelika Film Center # 7
Documentary Shorts
Program Running Time is 65 min
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Sunday April 3rd at 7pm at the Angelika Film Center # 7
Monday April 4th at 9:45pm at the Angelika Film Center # 8
Animation Shorts
Program Running Time is 75 min
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Monday April 4th at 7:15pm at the Angelika Film Center # 7
Tuesday April 5th at 10:00pm at the Angelika Film Center #6
DALLAS IFF 2011 kicks off TOMORROW!!!