The Wexner Center for the Arts welcomes a program of short films highlighting selections from the Sundance Film Festival. This Friday, September 5th at 7pm, the 94-minute slate of 8 documentary and narrative shorts unspools.
According to the Sundance website, the festival, “over the course of its 30-year history, has been widely considered the premier showcase for short films and the launchpad for careers of many now-prominent independent filmmakers.”
“We like to take a small part of the Festival across the country so audiences that don’t come in January can still see what we do,” says Mike Plante, who programs the touring package for Sundance. “And we’d love to help inspire anyone that is thinking about making a short to see what’s possible.”
Dave Filipi, the Wexner Center’s Director of Film and Video, was eager for the Wex to be a stop on that tour. “Mike Plante asked if we would be interested in presenting their touring package of festival shorts and we enthusiastically said yes.”
It’s the second year the Wex has taken part in Sundance’s bill of touring shorts.
“The program was very well-received last year,” says Filipi. “The audience really enjoyed the program and I think appreciated having a small selection from such a high-profile festival made available to them in Columbus. The Sundance brand is so well-known by those who follow film, and I think that also plays a big part in piquing people’s curiosity about the program.”
The event contains a mix of US and foreign titles, award winners and not, and one film based on a deposition from the Supreme Court of Ohio. Trevor Goth, Director of Programming for the festival, says, “With both fiction and documentary, the diverse 2014 program ranges from beautiful insight and the struggle to understand life to a hilarious, all-too familiar government deposition.”
When determining the makeup of the lineup, Plante says, “We try to showcase the variety of film stories and styles that we show at the Festival every year. It’s actually a wide range of movies that make a roller coaster of a program. We don’t want one experience to play over and over, but for people to laugh and cry, to really think and to just be entertained.”
Given that Filipi didn’t have a hand in choosing the shorts included, is there one, in particular, he’s most interested in seeing?
“That’s a tough one. Rose McGowan is probably the most recognizable name among the directors,” Filipi says. “The great thing about the program is that is selected carefully and presents a thoughtful variety of themes, tones, styles. You really get a full evening of experiences in a relatively short 90 minute program.”
Says Goth of the bill, “The Short Film program for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival features an astonishing array of new stories, viewpoints and filmmaking talent, positioning it at the core of our work to discover and share independent perspectives on our culture and world.”
That array is composed of the following:
Afronauts
Written and directed by Frances Bodomo
USA, 12 minutes
It’s July 16, 1969: America is preparing to launch Apollo 11. Thousands of kilometers away, a group of Zambian exiles are trying to beat America to the moon.
The Cut
Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction
Written and directed by Geneviève Dulude-Decelles
Canada, 15 minutes
The Cut tells the story of a father and a daughter, whose relationship fluctuates between proximity and detachment, at the moment of a haircut.
Dawn
Directed by Rose McGowan, Written by M.A. Fortin, Joshua John Miller
USA, 17 minutes
Dawn is a quiet young teenager who longs for something or someone to free her from her sheltered life.
I Think This Is the Closest to How the Footage Looked
Short Film Jury Award: Non-fiction
Directed by Yuval Hameiri, Co-Director: Michal Vaknin
Israel, 9 minutes
A man with poor means recreates a lost memory of the last day with his mom. Objects come to life in a desperate struggle to produce a single moment that is gone.
I’m a Mitzvah
Directed by Ben Berman, Written by Ben Berman, Josh Cohen
USA, 19 minutes
A young American man spends one last night with his deceased friend while stranded in rural Mexico.
Love. Love. Love.
Short Film Special Jury Award: Non-fiction
Directed by Sandhya Daisy Sundaram
Russia, 12 minutes
Every year, through the endless winters, her love takes new shapes and forms.
MeTube: August Sings Carmen “Habanera”
Written and directed by Daniel Moshel
Austria, 5 minutes
George Bizet’s “Habanera” from Carmen has been reinterpreted and enhanced with electronic sounds for MeTube, a homage to thousands of ambitious YouTube users and video bloggers, and gifted and less gifted self-promoters on the Internet.
Verbatim
Directed by Brett Weiner, Screenwriter: Court Document
USA, 7 minutes
A jaded lawyer wastes an afternoon trying to figure out if a dim-witted government employee has ever used a photocopier. All the dialogue in this short comes from an actual deposition filed with the Supreme Court of Ohio.
Tickets are $6 for Wexner members, students and seniors, and $8 for the general public. They can be purchased at wexarts.org.
A full slate of movie reviews is available on my website www.maddwolf.com.
You can also follow me on Twitter @maddwolf and like me on Facebook at facebook.com/MaddWolfColumbus .