What’s short, makes you laugh, cry and teeter on the edge of your chair? Short films, that’s what.
This year the bite sized stories have been granted their own weekend as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), to ensure they don’t fall into the shadows of their larger feature length peers.
This year’s program of shorts demonstrates that you can’t judge a movie by its size. Although MIFF’s shorts are only around 30 minutes long, they rival any of their feature length peers in terms of storytelling, action and emotion.
Short films are an art form in themselves, according to short film curator at MIFF, Chloe Brugale, who is perhaps one of the biggest supporters of the filmmaking style.
Brugale says the best part about MIFF’s schedule of 11 shorts programs is the diversity of the films being screened.
“The festival is very diverse, so when you see a program of shorts you’ll see six totally different stories, so they’ll give you a very wide range of emotions,” she says.
“Usually in shorts, in a short time they’ll tell you a story that a feature will tell you in an hour and a half, you know, it’s really quite exciting to be told a story, sometimes in only ten minutes … they’re full of different fillings and really creative … sometimes they’re more free to say things.”
The shorts to be screened at MIFF this year certainly earned their right to the spotlight. Each short was scrutinized by a panel of industry experts, including directors and academics, having to battle for a place with another 1,200 entries from around the world.
Australian short filmmakers made up a sizeable part of this year’s hopeful entrants, with 400 films sent in by locals.
And this is no surprise, as the local industry for short films is very active according to Brugale.
“It’s [the Australian short film industry] huge, and there’s so many short film festivals. It’s incredible how many short films get made in Australia in a year,” she says.
Local short films may not share the stage with their bigger brothers at cinema chains around the country (and with popcorn costing $10 a bucket, maybe this is not such an inconvenience.), but their quality and quantity has earned them a special place in this year’s MIFF schedule.
“We really wanted to give the shorts a better profile … the MIFF program is so big, sometimes the shorts get lost amongst all the other amazing films,” Bugale says.
“We thought if we brought them together people would see them more … It’s also a good way to bring the filmmakers together … kind of like an industry meet and greet.”
Brugale is positive about the Australian film industry as a whole, brushing off concerns that it has to struggle to compete for audiences with the global giant that is Hollywood.
“There is a lot of Australian films [being released] recently that have been huge at the box-office, like Animal Kingdom, this shows the industry is going well. There’s new talent coming out ever year …,” she says.
MIFF ticket sales support this idea.
“People want to see the Australian films. Most of the Australian films always sell out at MIFF. So far it’s going really well, the first film that sold out was an Australian film,” Bugale says.
It’s no wonder then that MIFF holds its own against other film festivals around the world, rating as one of the largest.
“It has recognition internationally and there’s a lot of directors that want to travel to MIFF … it has a really good reputation internationally. It’s a long festival, 17 days, so [there is] much to choose from,” she says.
The Australian short films selected for the festival are also holding their own on the world stage and gaining international acclaim.
Muscles, the graduate film of VCA student Edward Housden premiered in the 2010 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, while Franswa Sharl by Hannah Hilliard recently received the prestigious Crystal Bear at Berlin 2010.
Bugale says MIFFs local shorts are an eclectic bunch.
“We have a lot of comedy … Australian script writers are very funny this year … we have a lot of dramas as well,
“Quite a lot have been shot overseas, they have an Australian director and crew but they have been filmed in different countries … or even if they have been shot in Australia they have different languages.
“We have a lot of newcomers, and a lot of strong writer and director teams.”
Always supportive of new talent, MIFF makes sure it does not ignore the filmmakers behind the movies, with programs and workshops set up so that those sweating behind the scenes get the opportunity to work on their professional development.
This is the idea behind MIFF’s Accelerator program. The program gives selected filmmakers from Australia, New Zealand and, for the first time this year, Canada the chance to undertake a four-day series of workshops meetings and functions with international and Australian industry professionals to gain a greater understanding of the dynamics and possibilities of cinema.
Festival goers can see the fruits of these up-and-comers’ labours over the weekend, with two Accelerator programs showcasing their work, a total 40 films.
The MIFF Shorts Weekend runs from Thursday July 29 to Sunday August 1, culminating with the MIFF Shorts Awards – an Academy accredited competition – on Sunday and the Best MIFF Shorts Screening the following Sunday.
MIFF Controversy
It was the zombies’ erect penises that did it this year. Yes, MIFF managed to ruffle feathers once again, with one of the films from its program of 227 features and 99 shorts across 50 countries striking the wrong chord with the Australian film censor.
Only days before the red carpet was rolled out, MIFF director Richard Moore received a letter from the Film Classification Board saying L.A, Zombie could not be shown, in the expectation that it would be refused classification.
It’s not the first time the festival has made headlines. Last year MIFF screened a documentary on the exiled leader of an ethnic minority group in China, The 10 Conditions of Love, which saw the festival’s website hacked for its efforts, with a Chinese flag and an angry message criticizing the film’s protagonist, Uighur leader, Rebiya Kadeer.
But do not fear. Despite the unexpected loss to the program, there is still plenty of films to see, especially for those who weren’t really hanging out to see the “wound-shagging and more penises that you can shake a stick at,” that the MIFF review promised L.A. Zombie would be, anyway.
Local flavor
Australian films are proving popular this year, with the first film to sell out a local romantic drama set in Mildura. Summer Coda features a cast of well known local actors, including Angus Sampson (Thank God you’re here, Wolf Creek), Alex Dimitriades (Underbelly, Wog Boy II: Kings of Mykonos) and Rachel Taylor (Transformers). The movie follows Heidi (Taylor) as she returns to Australia in search of family and friends. She follows a handsome farmer (Dimitriades) home to his orange grove and thus the story unfurls, with love, attraction and tweaked heartstrings played out amidst the sun-drenched citrus groves. A host of quirky characters keeps the mood lighthearted.
Red Hill is also proving popular. Although this could be driven by True Blood fanatics eager to glimpse Ryan Kwanten, who incase you were wondering, yes, did used to star in Home and Away. The film is a thriller, the kind featuring an escaped murder on the loose in a country town. Kwanten plays a police officer who moved in the hope of finding the quiet life with his pregnant wife, but ends up in the middle of all the action.
The Wedding Party, which celebrated the premiere on MIFF’s red carpet last week, has drummed up press with the kind of cast which makes you wonder whether this year’s entrants were trying to one-up one another with stars. Expect to see Josh Lawson, Isabel Lucas, Steve Bisley, Heather Mitchell, Essie Davis, Geoff Paine, Nadine Garner, Adam Zwar, Kestie Morassi, Rhonda Burchmore, Nikita Leigh-Pritchard and Bill Hunter in a vodka-sodden romp of wedding festivities and family drama, with the odd spot of illegal immigrant issues making this a politically timely comedy. The soundtrack also features local artist Clare Bowditch.
Of a slightly different flavor, Machete Maidens Unleashed is an Australian documentary on Filipino genre films of the 70s and 80s, promising a tantalizing serve of blood, breasts and mutated beasts.
Of the 17 Australian feature films showing in the festival, five are premiering: The Wedding Party, Machete Maidens Unleashed, Blame, a revenge/murder story, Matching Jack, a tale of a family coping when their son is diagnosed with leukemia, and Mother of Rock: The Life and Times of Lillian Roxon, a documentary on an Australian music journalist who was queen of the heady underground music scene in New York, 1968.
Celebrities and cinema legends
MIFF has enticed an array of A-listers from around the world this year, headlined by Adrian Grenier (Entourage), who presented a special screening of his documentary looking at 13-year-old paparazzi, Austin Visschedyk; Joe Dante, an American cinema legend who has directed cult classics Gremlins, Innerspace, and The Burbs, who will be a various events and screenings, including an ‘In Conversation’ event. Fans can also catch his epic four-hour feature The Movie Orgy, which, if you think that is long, was actually cut down from its original seven-hour length. Also expected to draw a crowd is Indian film icon Aamir Khan, who starred in classics including Lagaan, Ghajini and the highest grossing Hindi film of all time 3 Idiots. Khan will present Peepli Live which he recently produced.
This is only a taste of the full program, which also features drive in cinema at Docklands, Psycho screened with an orchestra, the short film weekend, and films screened at IMAX and the Melbourne Planetarium.
MIFF runs until August the 8th. For more information visit the MIFF website.
