It’s time to start in on some of the animated fare at HollyShorts Film Festival. HollyShorts is an Oscar-qualifying festival, so award winners here can be considered for Academy Awards. I’m never surprised when the nominations come out that I’ve seen a few already. This group contains a few promising films.
The Girl Who Cried Pearls (18 minutes), directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, is a story that is ultimately about storytelling. A grandfather tells his granddaughter about the most precious thing in his collection. Now living in a beautiful Paris apartment, he tells of growing up as a poor waif scrounging for food on the Montreal docks. In the apartment next to his lived an abusive family. One night the girl next door cried to sleep, but he saw that her tears turned to pearls. He could get money for the pearls, but it didn’t want her to be sad. The story includes a greedy and unscrupulous pawnbroker, and a jeweler who marvels at “the endless greed of men and the mysterious working of the divine.”
What to make of this valuable pearl that changed his life? Is the story real? Is the pearl? “It’s always the story that gives something it’s value.
Acid City (13 minutes), directed by Jack Wedge and Will Freudenheim, is dark and dystopian. We visit an island in the midst of an acidic ocean. This is a Mad Max type of world of violence and limited resources. It serves as a reminder of what can be lost if the environment is not cared for.
The Gun (13 minutes), directed by Randall Christopher, is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. A space ship is shot down on a barren planet. During repairs, a group heads off to find who shot them. There is an automated weapon that they destroy, but a bunch of bots begin repairing it immediately. The story was written early in the Cold War. It speaks very clearly about how weapons take on a life of their own. It is worth considering recent developments in AI—including the possibility of autonomous killing machines—in light of Dick’s story as seen here.
Cracked (5 minutes, directed by Jessica Rizk, is more animation exercise than story. We watch as a naked woman makes breakfast. The drawings make interesting comparisons of food and body parts. There are some strange bits that suggest perhaps the woman is on the edge of reality.
Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town (8 minutes) directed by Daniel Kreizberg, will delight fans of E. E. Cummings. The late Jane Goodall narrates the Cummings poem (which has been made into short films a few times before). The poem is a celebration of love, life, belonging, and perhaps eternity. The brilliantly colored artwork the illustrates the story is based on Cummings’s water colors.
Apart (20 minutes) directed by Pola Maneli (with a writing credit for Spike Lee), takes us to South Africa under apartheid. Joel (who’s white) and Siya (who’s black) are best friends. Siya’s parents work for Joel’s parents. Joel’s father is a police officer. When Joel needs a kidney transplant, Siya is happy to be a donor and save his friends life. But can Joel’s father overcome his prejudice? This is a story that makes a point that racism is deadly—for everyone.
