A bouncy rom-com, Read Between The Lines is funny, textured with inside jokes, and an overall efficient entertainer. Written and directed by Adante Watts, the 14-minute film follows a college-going boy with a crush on his classmate, and the trials and tribulations of trying to ask someone out when every cell in your body wants to collapse… Continue reading Read Between The Lines: Come For the Romance, Stay For The Personal Growth
Tag: Private
The Doll: Why A Child Sees Marriage As Escape
Elahe Esmaili’s 33-minute documentary, The Doll, on the deliberations and uncertainty over the marriage of a 14-year old Iranian girl is a gripping film with an uncanny ability to be subtle and maintain restraint, and yet pose questions for its subjects and its audience. This leads to fascinating character studies, as well as the depiction of… Continue reading The Doll: Why A Child Sees Marriage As Escape
Farewell Symphony: A Drama About Impossible Choices, Shrouded In Music
The clash between ambition—however radical or modest—and the ties of duty is a conflict with extensive history. The options are thus: sacrifice your aspirations entirely, reach a compromise, or reach for your goals and be forever marked selfish. For the protagonist of Farewell Symphony, Yang Yang, it is a choice that haunts the majority of her adult life, and one she… Continue reading Farewell Symphony: A Drama About Impossible Choices, Shrouded In Music
Polaroid: Revenge Drama Dipped In Mystery And Megalomania
Dante Aubain’s Polaroid takes Patrick Bateman, and everything he represents, perhaps even more than that, and makes it anew, this time allowing the other side a spot at the table as well. In some ways, it is the familiar revenge drama, but looked at through the lens of American Psycho (as it is intended to be), the subtext comes… Continue reading Polaroid: Revenge Drama Dipped In Mystery And Megalomania
Change of Course: On The Profound Powers Of Art During Grief
Andreas Ortner’s fourth wall breaking pandemic short, Richtungswechsel or Change of Course, is a 9-minute film set in the picturesque village of Stall, Austria, where the pandemic has not wreaked the same havoc that the rest of the world has had to face. Two aspects of the human condition, personified, debate over the state of the world and the… Continue reading Change of Course: On The Profound Powers Of Art During Grief
Macy’s Goes To War: Bite-sized Satire On History
Duncan B. Putney’s 5-minute short, Macy’s Goes To War, dressed as an archival newsreel, is a satire set in 1942 about the considerable contribution of rubber by the famed Mr Macy of Macy’s reputation. Short as it is, the film’s humour is enjoyable, what with the juxtaposition of war with huge balloons of beloved cartoon characters.… Continue reading Macy’s Goes To War: Bite-sized Satire On History
Hollow Pond: Globalisation Is A Horror Story
Rolfin Nyhus’s Hollow Pond, written by Adam Anson, narrates a tale that, for reasons, is rather common to far too many peoples, but does so in experimental form, using elements of surrealism and horror. And though it may be rough around the edges, the film can safely boast of its texturized storytelling. It does not become… Continue reading Hollow Pond: Globalisation Is A Horror Story
Face To Face: In Pursuit Of Revenge And Closure
Caio Alves’s Face To Face is an 11-minute thriller following the escape of a murderer-maniac from a high-security institution. The only person to survive his last murder spree is now faced with the threat of murder, and reliving the horror and trauma of the past. The film opens with the silhouette of a person lurking outside a… Continue reading Face To Face: In Pursuit Of Revenge And Closure
Lachesis: An Experimental Short Of One Man’s Journey To Self-Actualisation
It’s a lot to pack in an 8:30-minute long narrative. Philosophical, yet pragmatic; reflective, yet pointed, writer-director-editor Gregory Alexander Foltynowicz’s Lachesis is abstract and layered. Shot entirely in the monochromatic undertones of grey across stunning locations of Gainesville in Georgia, the film is a textbook representation of Freudian theory, or better still Ingmar Bergmans’ approach.… Continue reading Lachesis: An Experimental Short Of One Man’s Journey To Self-Actualisation
Just Like Water: A Meditation On The Vagaries Of Life
Writer-director Manos Triantafillakis’s Just Like Water opens with a quote by Heraclitus on the nature of water and the soul: For souls, it is death to become water, and for water death to become earth. Water comes into existence out of earth, and soul out of water. It evokes both the inevitability of death, as well as anxiety… Continue reading Just Like Water: A Meditation On The Vagaries Of Life