The Sundance Film Festival Explorer Pass
Sundance's Explorer Pass gave me online access to all of the Shorts programming as well as some episodic series. (I didn't end up watching those, but they were available to me.) I watched over a dozen short films for $25 total! What a steal! Here are my reflections on what I watched on my first day at the festival:
Short Film Program 1
Help Me Understand – Dir. Aemilia Scott
Six women come to a consensus.
Help Me Understand was a delightful exercise in slowly having character relationships reveal themselves via great acting performances and the script’s exploration of group dynamics. Six women are part of a focus group for detergent. All except one prefer sample A to sample B. Chaos and arguments ensue. I really appreciated how each character felt fully realized both despite and because of the tiny container of the one board room (and the 15 minute run time). Having the woman who preferred B explain why was heart wrenching, and I adore that the short ended without a decision. Great.
Parker – Dir. Sharon Liese and Catherine Hoffman
Three generations of a Kansas City family are finally unified when they do something that countless other Black Americans could not — choose their own last name.
This felt like something I would watch on PBS while sitting on the couch with my family. Which, upon looking at the directors’ bios, makes sense, as they have worked for National Geographic and PBS, respectively. The graphics are clean, the storytelling is concise and lovely, and I’d like to see more of this kind of filmmaking in the world. It’s not fully to my taste, but I liked it.
Sweatshop Girl – Dir. Selma Cervantes
Inés works as a seamstress in a sweatshop where pregnancy tests are periodically administered. When she becomes pregnant, she is sure that her condition will get her fired. She does everything she can to keep it a secret.
This has beautiful shots, great acting, and a very dramatic and grounded plot. The way everything was woven together to make sense later on was done with real care. Worth watching for the shot composition alone, but everything else is wonderful as well.
Sunflower Siege Engine – Dir. Sky Hopinka
Movements of resistance are collapsed and woven together, from reflections of one’s own body in the world today to documentation of Alcatraz, the reclamation of Cahokia, and the repatriation of the ancestors.
This collage made my brain buzz. It made me want to make things. It was great.
Inglorious Liaisons – Dir. Chloé Alliez and Violette Delvoye
On the night of a big party for Lucie, Maya, and their friends, Jimmy has also come. Everyone knows he is here for Maya, but does she have the same feelings for Jimmy?
This is one of those pieces I watch and wonder why it was made in the format it was. I suppose the fact that everyone is a light switch and plug makes it very visually iconic – the designs are very expressive and varied. But I wonder if I would care all that much about it were it to be a “real people” short. I wonder if this was purely because they are both animators versus this “needing” to be told in animation. (Ouch I sound like an exec or a cop.) But, let me refocus on what is. I like the complex frustration of peer pressure represented here. It kind of surprised me when the first kiss between the two lead girls happened; I’m noticing a theme here, of the stories in these shorts leaving the very end to our own conclusions as an audience. I like that.
Finally, I started this one, but actually watched it the next day:
Ricky – Dir. Rashad Frett
This short accidentally gave me a great idea for an emotional editing choice; it started buffering really dramatically at the beginning, but the timing was just so that it synced up with when the main character was trying to recall something dramatic. The video stuttered and the audio was choppy and distorted. I fully thought it was intentional in that he was recalling something traumatic or scary. I rewound to watch it again and it played totally normally. I’ll have to use that glitch!
(I’ll also have to try watching this tomorrow since it’s very committed to not playing correctly tonight.)
>> Side note: I think it’s neat that all these filmmakers have their contact info under their film’s listing