ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

documentary shorts

Slamdance 2022 – Sampling shorts

by Leave a Comment

One of the parts I love about film festivals is the chance to watch shorts. Slamdance Film Festival has so many to choose from. I dipped into three of the short films sections for just a sampling of each.

Animation shorts:

Sensual Pill (4 minutes), by director Sam 3, is a fast-paced trip all over our planet using time-lapse satellite photography and Google Earth. It is a wonderful job of editing to give us a chance to see bits of our home, even if the frenetic pace doesn’t let us focus on any one thing for long.

(Cathedral) (7 minutes), by director James Bascara, is a computed animated journey through a canyon as we follow a seemingly unending trail of ants.

Crumbs of Life (7 minutes), by director Kararzyna Miechowicz, is a surreal story of a woman and her yeti-like mate, a TV reporter who grows a life-draining growth after being spat on by a pony. Yeah, it’s strange, but oddly engaging.

Open One’s Mouth (5 minutes) by director Akane Murata, is all about the art. There is neither plot nor characters. This is more a work of modern art than surrealism.

Documentary shorts:

No Soy Óscar (15 minutes), from director Jon Ayon, is a look at the US-Mexico border area. Ayon, a first-generation Latinx father, is fascinated by a news story of Óscar Alberto Maritínez Ramírez and his 23 month old daughter who drowned together in the Rio Grande. He travels to various points of the border, only identifying them by the name of the indigenous peoples who never ceded the land that is now divided into two nations.

Gladiolus (6 minutes), from director Azedeh Navai, is a very brief overview of how the flower came to be popular in Iran since 1950, becoming a symbol of celebration, and then later, a popular decoration for graves.

Telos or Bust (12 minutes), from director Brad Abrahams, is a look at some of the people of small town Mt. Shasta, California, and their beliefs about the spiritual and metaphysical nature of the mountain they believe is the location of a portal to an underworld filled with immortals. Lots of New Age spirituality here, but very interesting people.

A Table Is as Good as Nine Lives (12 minutes), from director Christina Leonardi, uses home movie footage and narration by elder family members to create a piece of oral history spanning several generations.

Unstoppable shorts (featuring stories [either narrative or documentary] of people facing the hurdles of life):

Signs and Gestures (13 minutes), from director Itandehui Jansen, is a feel good story of a young blind woman who is going to meet a man from a dating app. She hasn’t mentioned on her profile that she’s blind. When she arrives, there is another problem, he never mentioned that he only spoke sign language. Can love bloom?

Ipseity – Marisa’s Story (5 mintues), from director Nicholas Stachurski, is the story of a young mother who gives us much of what we might call beauty. When she was 18 she lost all her hair to alopecia. Now, because she has the BRCA breast cancer gene, she has opted for mastectomy. Just as she felt she found a new beauty when she lost her hair, she now expects that her life will find new value after her surgery.

Audible – Teen Angst in Silence

by Leave a Comment

The teen years can be a challenge. It is a time when people struggle with their identity and their place in the world. Even for the most “normal” of teens, these years can be a struggle. Add to that having to deal with a disability. In Matthew Ogens’s documentary short Audible, we meet a young football player at a school for the deaf as he struggles with teen angst, deafness, and the loss of a friend.

Amaree McKenstry-Hall plays for football for the Maryland School for the Deaf. At the beginning of the film we see the team losing its first game against a deaf school in sixteen years. It also breaks the 42-game winning streak against all teams. For regular high school athletes, this would be a difficult time. We watch as Amaree and his schoolmates deal not only with the defeat, but with the struggles of facing a world as a deaf person. When school is over Amaree and his classmates will face discrimination and isolation.

As we get to know Amaree, we learn that his father left when he became deaf, and the two are working on rebuilding a relationship. His father, a onetime drug dealer, is a minister in a local church. He also is a bit unsure of his relationship with a girlfriend. Amaree’s biggest emotional challenge is dealing with the suicide of a classmate.

All of these are issues that many teens face. As such this is very much a look at coming-of-age in America. But when you include the challenges of getting ready to move into living fully in a hearing world, it all becomes multiplied.

Because it is a short (running time:39 minutes), it doesn’t have a chance to go very deep into Amaree’s stuggles, but we do see enough to understand that like all teens, he has many pressures. But we also see that he has qualities that may be helpful as he moves on in life.

AUDIBLE/NETFLIX © 2021

Audible streams on Netflix.

Photos courtesy of Netflix.

Looking Ahead to AFI Docs

by Leave a Comment

One of my favorite film industry events is the annual AFI Fest in the fall. It always has a collection of the best films of the year. The American Film Institute has another important festival each year, AFI Docs, that centers on documentary films. AFI Docs usually takes place in Maryland (close to Washington, DC, since political issues are often central to documentaries), but this year it is a hybrid festival with live screenings as well as online availability of the films.

AFI Docs is a bit shorter than AFI Fest. The program begins Tuesday night, June 22 with a showing of Naomi Osaka. A full set of films begins releasing on Wednesday, with the festival finishing on Sunday, June 27. Some of the feature films I’m planning on taking in are  The First Step, a story of the workings of the political world, Fathom, about humpback whales, LFG, focusing on the US Women’s Soccer Team’s lawsuit for equal pay, The Lost Leonardo, about a surprise discovery of a DaVinci painting, Pray Away, a look at those who try to “cure” homosexuality, and many others over a wide range of subjects.

There are also a few documentary series that will be previewed at AFI Docs. 9/11: One Day in America looks at one of the darkest days in American history. Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union looks at Barak Obama’s journey from the Illinois State House to the White House. Some of the episodes of these will be shown.

There are also industry forums that address issues facing documentary filmmakers and the changing landscape for the industry. One I’m looking forward to will speak of how documentaries can help shape the conversation about race in America.

There will also be several programs of short documentaries covering sports, science, everyday life, war and peace, and the kinds of dreams people had during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shorts can always bring incredible insights. Each day when I report of what I’ve seen, I’ll include of few notes on some of the shorts.

But wait, you don’t necessarily need me to tell you what has happened at AFI Docs. As I note above, this festival is virtual! You can watch some of these films at home. Some of the screenings and all of the industry forums are free (but you must get a ticket). Go to https://docs.afi.com/how-to-fest/ to learn more about being part of AFI Docs this year. Then we can compare notes.

Reporting from Slamdance – Documentary Shorts

by Leave a Comment

As with most festivals, Slamdance offers a chance to see short films. Shorts give filmmakers a chance to work on their craft with much lower budgets, but shorts can also be an artform or storytelling technique in their own right. That is especially true of documentary shorts that can bring informative and thought-provoking stories that could easily be overlooked. Here are the documentary shorts at Slamdance.

A Family that Steals Dogs (8 minutes, directed by John C. Kelley). This is animated in a somewhat experimental blend of visuals and speaking. It serves as a meditation on loss, family, and mental illness.

About a Home (10 minutes, directed by Daniel Chien and Elizabeth Lo). The Sarria Family documents their life in housing insecurity. It reflects the life of many who live a difficult life in a very well to do area.

Ain’t No Time for Women (20 minutes, directed by Sarra El Abed). This Canadian film takes place in a Tunis hair salon. The women who come in talk about the importance of women to the Arab Spring, but as they look to upcoming elections, they fret about losing the gain in women’s rights to more conservative parties.

Faraway (18 minutes, directed by Aziz Zoromba). Scenes covering four seasons as an Arab man living in Canada who is estranged from him family because of his homosexuality tries to reconnect with his mother.

Field Resistance (16 minutes, directed by Emile Drummer). Another that has an experimental feel to it. No real narrative, but we see agricultural related bits of Iowa joined with more dystopian scenes and comments.

I Think It’s Enough, Isn’t It? (5 minutes, directed by Emily Shir Seagal). As we see videos of father and daughter, a young Israeli woman reflects on the death of her father from COVID when she could not visit him or see the body after his death.The film conveys a small bit of the heartbreak that so many families around the world have encountered in the last year.

Miss Curvy (25 minutes, directed by Ghada Eldemellawy). We watch a 34 year old mother and teacher in a Ugandan beauty pageant for plus-sized women. As she goes through the bootcamp and pageant she deals with the trauma of her marriage and finds value in who she is.

Sleeping with the Devil (24 minutes, directed by Alisa Yang). When the filmmaker told her mother she no longer believed in God, her mother began taking her to faith-healers and exorcists. This film is a Skype exorcism session with an evangelical pastor, Bob Larson. There is no commentary to go along with it. For me, the spiritual (and fihnancial) abuse here is truly cringe worthy.

The Length of Day (18 minutes, directed by Laura Conway). The filmmaker uses archival footage to try to connect with her grandparents who were Communists, and the struggle to bring revolution.

Unforgivable (36 minutes, directed by Marlén Viñayo). A look inside a Salvadoran prison that is essentially run by evangelical churches. Geovany is serving his time in a special locked unit. Not because of his past as an assassin for a street gang, but because he is gay—something that is not accepted by either the gang or the church.

My favorites of the section are Ain’t No Time for Women, I Think It’s Enough, Isn’t It? and Miss Curvy.