Short Film Showcase - Rosa (2011)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

Rosa, 2011.

Written and Directed by Jesús Orellana.

Spanish comic book artist Jesús Orellana's post-apocalyptic CG-animated short Rosa has been making quite a stir after being released online on Thursday. Producing the no-budget film at his home in Barcelona over the space of a year after teaching himself the animation package, Orellana went on to screen the visually impressive short at a number of festivals including the Seattle International Film Festival, SITGES, Los Angeles Short Film Festival, Screamfest and Toronto After Dark. With the film proving such a hit following its arrival online, Orellana is attracting interest from Hollywood producers and studios and now plans on turning Rosa into a live-action feature.

"Rosa is an epic sci-fi short film that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where all natural life has disappeared. From the destruction awakes Rosa, a cyborg deployed from the Kernel project, mankind’s last attempt to restore the earth’s ecosystem. Rosa will soon learn that she is not the only entity that has awakened and must fight for her survival. "


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Short Film Showcase - The Woman in the Room (1983)

The Woman in the Room, 1983.

Written and Directed by Frank Darabont.
Based on a story by Stephen King.
Starring Michael Cornelison, Dee Croxton, Brian Libby, Bob Brunson and George Russell.

Before he earned critical acclaim adapting Stephen King's material for the big screen with The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999) and The Mist (2007), Hungarian-American filmmaker Frank Darabont turned his hand to one of the King's short stories, The Woman in the Room, which had first been published in the author's 1978 collection Night Shift.

Securing the rights to the tale for $1 - thereby launching the concept of the 'Dollar Baby' - Darabont's thirty-minute adaptation went on to become a semi-finalist on the shortlist for the Best Live Action Short Film nominations at the Academy Awards and was later released on home-video in 1994 as part of a double-feature with Jeff Schiro's The Boogeyman (1982) entitled Nightshift Collection.

The Woman in the Room was produced by Gregory Melton - who would continue his association with Darabont as producer of The Majestic (2011), The Mist and The Walking Dead (2010) - and also featured cinematography by Juan Ruiz Anchía (Dying Young, 1991; Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992; and the upcoming Untitled Phil Spector Biopic starring Al Pacino).

The Woman in the Room: Part 1...


The Woman in the Room: Part 2...


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Short Film Showcase - Captain EO (1986)

Captain EO, 1986.



Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Written by Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Rusty Lemorande.

Starring Michael Jackson, Angelica Huston, Dick Shawn, Tony Cox, Debbie Lee Carrington and Gary DePew.



Created as a '4-D' Disney theme park attraction, Captain EO stars the King of Pop Michael Jackson as the eponymous spaceship captain, who sets off on a mission with his ragtag crew to deliver a gift to the Supreme Leader (Angelica Huston), a wicked queen on a dark and desolate world.



Produced at a cost of $30m and running at just seventeen minutes, the original 3D film was accompanied by physical 'in-theatre' effects such as lasers, smoke and starfields. Along with the involvement of director Francis Ford Coppola, executive producer George Lucas and editor Walter Murch , the film featured a musical score from two-time Academy Award-winner James Horner (Titanic), while the soundtrack also incorporated the Michael Jackson songs We Are Here to Change the World and Another Part of Me.



Captain EO ran at various Disney Parks between 1986 and 1998 before being reopened last year as a tribute to Jackson following his death in 2009.





Related:



The Man and His Dream: A Francis Ford Coppola Profile

A Legacy of His Own: A George Lucas Profile

Assembly Required: A Walter Murch Profile



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Short Film Showcase - Rats: A Sin City Yarn (2004)

Rats: A Sin City Yarn, 2004.



Directed by David Brocca.

Produced by Albert Brocca and David Brocca.

Starring James Peak, Alan Rackley and John LaMotta.



Based upon the final 'yarn' of Frank Miller’s 1996 Sin City graphic novel, Lost, Lonely and Lethal, Rats tells the story of an old Nazi war criminal living in filth and poverty; as he reflects on his past life, death comes knocking at his door and he must pay the price for his sins. Produced by Pitch Films and directed by David Brocca, Rats: A Sin City Yarn is a highly stylised short that manages to capture the distinctive visuals of Miller’s tales with stark, comic book panel-styled photography. The short was released in 2004 – a year before Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City feature film – and running at just 3 minutes in length, it’s certainly a must-watch for fans of Miller’s gritty, noir-soaked world.





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Short Film Showcase - Destino (2003)

Destino, 2003.

Directed by Dominique Monfery.
Written by Salvador Dali, John Hench and Donald W. Ernst.

Destino is an animated short that first began as a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali in 1945, with Dali and Disney artist John Hench working on storyboards and producing 15 seconds of animation before the project was put on hiatus due to the studio's financial concerns. The short was later discovered by Roy E. Disney during production of Fantasia 2000, and French animator Dominique Monfery was brought in to direct the short based on the original storyboards and using traditional hand drawn animation and CGI in addition to Hench's original footage.

Described by Disney as "a simple love story", Destino is a surreal and experimental work that features classic Dali imagery set to a haunting melody from the Mexican composer Armando Dominguez. The short premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2003 and went on to pick up a number of festival awards. It also contended for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar at the 76th annual Academy Awards, losing out to the Australian claymation Harvie Krumpet.


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Short Film Showcase - Cashback (2004)

Cashback, 2004.

Written and Directed by Sean Ellis.
Starring Sean Biggerstaff, Emilia Fox, Stuary Goodwin, Michael Dixon and Michael Lambourne.

Cashback centres on an aspiring art student, Ben (Sean Biggerstaff), who spends his nights working the graveyard shift at his local 24 hour supermarket. While his co-workers all have their own methods of wasting time as the clock ticks down on their shift, Ben has his own unique technique for fending off boredom by imagining that time stands still, giving him the freedom to explore his creative side.

Although Cashback received some criticism towards its excessive nudity, the short went on to win 14 awards including Best Narrative Short at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival, while it was also nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in March 2006, losing out to Martin McDonagh's Six Shooter. Cashback also went on to inspire the full-length feature of the same name, which premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival before receiving theatrical runs in the UK and North America.


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Short Film Showcase - Knick Knack (1989)

Knick Knack, 1989.

Written and Directed by John Lasseter.
Original Music by Bobby McFerrin.

The final computer animated short produced by Pixar before the release of their debut feature Toy Story in 1995, Knick Knack revolves around a snowman, Knick, who finds himself trapped inside a snowglobe while the rest of the souvenirs on his shelf are enjoying a party in the sun. Desperate to join in the fun, Knick employs a number of methods to break free of his glass prison and eventually finds a means of escape, only for his plan to backfire on him.

Knick Knack was Pixar's first foray into 3D and premiered in this format at the 1988 SIGGRAPH Animation Show. It was later completely rebuilt for a 2D theatrical release alongside Finding Nemo, with this new version incorporating reduced breast sizes on two of its characters, the Miami bikini girl and the Atlantis mermaid. This updated version also enjoyed a theatrical 3D run in 2006 when it was attached to the 3D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Knick Knack (2003 version):


Knick Knack (original version):


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile
Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.
Short Film Showcase - Luxo Jr.

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Short Film Showcase - Bottom of a Glass (2011)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

Bottom of a Glass, 2011.

Produced, Directed, Shot and Edited by Xavier Neal-Burgin.
Co-Directed by Joe Will Field.
Assistant Director Rene Gromotka.
Starring Coryanne Gromotka and Rene Gromotka.

SYNOPSIS - In the blink of an eye our protagonist loses everything he's loved. With nothing to live for he fills his life with a collection of self-deprecation to fill the empty void. His life seems lost until someone comes along to remind life is worth living even after tragedy.

Bottom of a Glass is a student short from Xavier Burgin, a Film Production major at the University of Alabama, which adopts the rather unique approach of employing a puppet as its main character. Bottom of a Glass features some striking black and white cinematography and is a touching short that sensitively explores its themes of loss and grief. It was named Best Drama at the Campus MovieFest at UA as well as being a semi-finalist for the Rethink Possible Award, and has recently been accepted to the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival 2011.


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Short Film Showcase - Shooter (2009)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

Shooter, 2009.

Directed by Ronnie B. Goodwin.
Starring Paul Hunter.
Written by Ronnie B. Goodwin and Paul Hunter.
Produced by Ronnie B. Goodwin and Basil Khalil.
Music by Gregor Narholz.

Shooter is a multi-award winning short from director Ronnie B. Goodwin about an ex-soldier (Paul Hunter) haunted by his experiences of conflict. Seeking solitude in the wilderness of the mountains, lochs and forests of Scotland, the shooter is torn between the images of the inhumanity of war that plague his imagination and the natural beauty that surrounds him. Running at just five minutes, Shooter does a fine job of conveying the protagonist's internal struggle to deliver a thought-provoking and emotive piece of filmmaking.

The film has enjoyed a successful run on the festival circuit these past two years, including 27 Official Selections (including the Cannes Short Film Corner, Palm Springs International Short Fest and the Edinburgh International Film Festival), 2 Jury Nominations and 4 International Awards, while it was also named Best in Festival at the Swansea Bay Film Festival in 2010. Shooter has also recently enjoyed its British TV premiere on the Sky Super Shorts Channel, and you can find out more about the film and Ronnie's upcoming projects at his official site.


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Short Film Showcase - Diary (2010)

Diary, 2010.

Directed by Tim Hetherington.

Earlier this week came the sad news that acclaimed British war photographer and documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington was killed in a mortar attack while covering the ongoing conflict in Libya. Having spent much of the past decade in war zones such Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Afghanistan, Hetherington had contributed to the acclaimed documentaries Liberia: An Uncivil War and The Devil Came on Horseback before receiving an Oscar nomination for his work as co-director (alongside Sebastian Junger) of Restrepo (2010), the Grand Jury Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival last year.

In tribute to Tim here is his most recent work, the short film Diary, described by the filmmaker as "a highly personal and experimental film that expresses the subjective experience of my work, and was made as an attempt to locate myself after ten years of reporting. It’s a kaleidoscope of images that link our western reality to the seemingly distant worlds we see in the media."


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Short Film Showcase - We Were Once a Fairytale (2009)

We Were Once a Fairytale, 2009.

Written and Directed by Spike Jonze.
Starring Kanye West.

After first working together as co-directors on the music video for Flashing Lights in 2008, acclaimed filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Grammy Award-winning rap artist Kanye West next collaborated on the surreal 11-minute short We Were Once a Fairytale, which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival back in June 2009 and was released online later that year.

Shot over two days in West Hollywood's Foxtail nightclub, West stars as himself - or rather an overly-inebriated, obnoxious and embarrassing version of himself - whose night takes a bizarre turn after vomiting rose petals in the club bathroom. Cutting into his stomach with a bowie knife, West empties the contents only to discover Henry, a rodent-like creature who is attached to the musician by an umbilical cord.


Embed courtesy of DailyMotion.

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Short Film Showcase - Factory Farmed (2008)

Factory Farmed, 2008.

Written and Directed by Gareth Edwards.
Starring Jacob Court and Allen Leach.

After spending the early part of his career supplying visual effects on documentaries such as Seven Wonders of the Industrial World (2003), Space Race (2005) and In The Shadow of The Moon (2007) and directing the BBC TV docudrama End Day (2005), British filmmaker Gareth Edwards went on to win SCI-FI-LONDON'S 48-Hour Film Challenge in 2008 with the five-minute short Factory Farmed. Written, shot and edited in just two days with a team of four, Factory Farmed is a superb technical achievement that fully demonstrates the director's impressive visual flair.

Edwards has since went on to continue his 'one-man' film revolution with the release of the lo-fi sci-fi Monsters last year, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer, losing out to Four Lions' Chris Morris. Edwards is now taking his talents to Hollywood where he is busy developing a big-budget Godzilla reboot for Legendary Pictures.


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Short Film Showcase - The Key to Reserva (2007)

The Key to Reserva, 2007.

Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Simon Baker, Kelli O'Hara, Michael Stuhlbarg, Christopher Denham and Richard Easton.

Collaborating with screenwriter Ted Griffin (Ocean's Eleven, Matchstick Men) and long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese directed and starred in The Key to Reserva, a 10-minute short film which was created as a long-form commcercial for Spanish wine company Freixenet.

The film begins with Scorsese giving an interview about a supposedly unfinished three-page screenplay by Alfred Hitchcock which has recently been discovered. Scorsese intends to produce a screen version, faithfully recreating Hitchcock's style as a tribute to the legendary British director, with the remainder of the short then intercutting between the interview, the production stage and the final 'film-within-a-film', The Key to Reserva.

Joining Scorsese in the cast for the short are Simon Baker (The Killer Inside Me), Kelli O'Hara (Sex and the City 2), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Simple Man), Christopher Denham (Shutter Island) and Richard Easton (Revolutionary Road), along with appearances by Griffen and Schoonmaker as themselves.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - Luxo Jr. (1986)

Luxo Jr., 1986.

Written and Directed by John Lasseter.

Luxo Jr. is the first short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, which arrived in 1986 to coincide with their establishment as an independent entity following Steve Jobs' purchase of the Computer Graphics Group from George Lucas. Written and directed by John Lasseter (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2 and Cars) as a demonstration of Pixar's technical capabilities, the two-and-a-half minute piece follows the antics of a small desk lamp, Luxo Jr., who would go on to become the company's unofficial corporate mascot.

Luxo Jr. premiered at the 1986 SIGGRAPH conference in Dallas, Texas, where it received a standing ovation from those in attendance. It was the first CG-animated film to receive an Oscar nomination (although it lost out to A Greek Tragedy for Best Animated Short Film at the 59th Academy Awards) and is credited with shifting opinion on the possibilities of computer animation within Hollywood. Luxo Jr. also enjoyed a theatrical run in 1999 when it played alongside Pixar's third feature, Toy Story 2.


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile
Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of Andre and Wally B.

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Short Film Showcase - StreetFighter: Legacy (2010)

Presenting short films from independent filmmakers...

StreetFighter: Legacy, 2010.

Directed by Joey Ansah and Owen Trevor.
Written by Joey Ansah and Christian Howard.
Starring Jon Foo, Christian Howard and Joey Ansah.

It's fair to say live-action adaptations of Capcom's Street Fighter video game franchise have been utterly disappointing - first up was the Jean-Claude Van Damme monstrosity Street Fighter (1994) from writer-director Steven E. de Souza, followed by the equally appalling 2009 reboot Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. Step forward British filmmaker and actor Joey Ansah (The Bourne Ultimatum) who, driven by his love for the video game series, looked to rectify the situation with the highly impressive three-minute fan film StreetFighter: Legacy.

Working alongside co-director Owen Trevor (Top Gear) and a team that included producer Jacqueline Quella (Toolbox Murders) and executive producer Anthony Waye (the James Bond franchise), Ansah secured Capcom's blessing for the project, which faithfully recreates a showdown between fan favourites Ryu (Jon Foo) and Ken (Christian Howard). Having debuted the film online in May of this year to much success, Ansah is now hoping to nab the rights to develop an official live-action Street Fighter series.

For more on StreetFighter: Legacy, visit the offical website.


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Short Film Showcase - The Big Shave (1967)

The Big Shave a.k.a. Viet '67, 1967.

Written, Directed, Produced & Edited by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Peter Bernuth.

For his final project as a student of New York University's film school, Martin Scorsese produced the six-minute short The Big Shave as an anti-Vietnam piece for an "Angry Arts Against The War" demonstration. Dialogue-free and employing only a single location and character, Scorsese took a simple premise and crafted an accomplished and unsettling piece that is said to be a comment on the self-destructive nature of U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

Set to the musical styling of Bunny Berigan and his jazz classic I Can't Get Started, The Big Shave sees a young man (Peter Bernauth) enter a bathroom and begin shaving, only to repeat the action over, mutilating his face into a bloody mess. Scorsese makes great use of the stark contrast in colour between the deep red blood and the pristine whiteness of the bathroom, and utilises inventive editing techniques such as repeat cuts to enhance the graphic imagery.

The success of The Big Shave paved the way for Scorsese to move into feature filmmaking by completing a project that had began in 1965 as a student film entitled Bring on the Dancing Girls, which went through a number of changes before being issued in 1968 under the title Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, 1963.

Written and Directed by Martin Scorsese.
Starring Zeph Michelis, Sarah Braveman, Fred Sica, Mimi Stark and Robert Uricola.

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is one of the earliest shorts from legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese and was shot on 16mm while he was studing at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 1963. Considered by the director to be his first real film (he had previously made the 'miniature epic' Vesuvius VI in 1959), the 9-minute surrealist comedy is described as "a tale of pure paranoia" and revolves around a writer, Harry (Zeph Michelis), who becomes obsessed with a picture of a boat on a lake, leading to a frustrating bout of writer's block.

For its time, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is a remarkably inventive student film, employing rapid-fire editing and clever cinematography techniques to give an early indication of Scorsese's dynamic visual style. Scorsese would follow this up with a further two shorts - It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964) and The Big Shave (1967) - before making his feature debut in 1968 with Who's That Knocking at My Door.


For more on Martin Scorsese check out our latest filmmaker profile Understanding Scorsese.

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Short Film Showcase - The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984)

The Adventures of André and Wally B., 1984.

Written and Directed by Alvy Ray Smith.

The Adventures of André and Wally B. is an early computer-animated short created in 1984 by the LucasFilm Computer Graphics Project, which would later become Pixar Animation Studios following the purchase of the company by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. Directed by Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith and featuring animation by John Lasseter and sound design from LucasFilm regular Ben Burtt, the 2-minute short centres on a character named Andre, who is awoken from a restful nap in the forest by a pesky bee intent on stinging him.

The short film is notable for its groundbreaking animation techniques including the first use of CG motion blur, and premiered at the 1984 SIGGRAPH conference in Minneapolis. It was also shown theatrically before Terry Gilliam's cult sci-fi Brazil (1985), and was reissued a decade later alongside Pixar's debut feature Toy Story (1995).


Related:

Animated Storytellers: A Pixar Animation Studios Profile

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Short Film Showcase - Aventure Malgache (1944)

Aventure Malgache, 1944.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring Paul Bonifas, Paul Clarus, Jean Dattas, Andre Frere, Guy Le Feuvre and Paulette Preney, a.k.a. 'The Molière Players'.

Originally entitled Madagascar Landing, Aventure Malgache is the second of two British propaganda films produced by Alfred Hitchcock for the British Ministry of Information. Shot in French and intended as a morale booster for the Resistance, Hitchcock used his experience with the French government on the preceeding short Bon Voyage to explore the disjointed nature of the Resistance movement and its infiltration by Nazi spies and Vichy collaborators.

Aventure Malgache's government backers were unimpressed with Hitchcock's numerous jokes and stereotypes, not to mention his depiction of the French as 'anti-British', and the film was never released for public screening until it reemerged in the early 1990s as part of a double-bill with Bon Voyage.


Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

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Short Film Showcase - Bon Voyage (1944)

Bon Voyage, 1944.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring John Blythe and 'The Molière Players'.

The first of two propaganda films made by Alfred Hitchcock on behalf of the British Ministry of Information and designed to boost morale for the French Resistance, Bon Voyage tells the story of a daring escape from a Nazi prison by RAF Sergeant John Dougall (John Blythe). Co-scripted by Angus MacPhail, the man credited by Hitchcock as coining the term 'MacGuffin', Bon Voyage is also notable for its early use of multiple viewpoints - a technique employed by Akira Kurosawa to great effect in the 1950 classic Rashomon - and the 'unreliable flashback' that Hitchcock would revisit that same year with Stage Fright.

Receiving only sporadic screenings in France at the time of its release, Bon Voyage was shelved for a number of years before being broadcast on US television alongside follow-up Aventure Magalache in the early 1990s.


Embed courtesy of Internet Archive.

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