Short Films

High Maintenance (Philip Van, 2006)

Take one mind-blowing twist, a softly-lit, Film Noir aesthetic, a lot of dark humour, and yet another mind-blowing twist and you get…. High Maintenance: a student film that won its director a $12000 scholarship - not bad for just over a week’s work, eh?*  It’s hard to describe without spoilers, but it’s ostensibly a film that depicts the future of internet dating.  It’s super-cool, super-slick and super-disturbing, super-SciFi!

The Gunfighter (Kissack, 2014)

Have you ever wondered what would happen if everyone around you could hear what you were thinking?   The Gunfighter plays out that concept to its most absurd and grisly end.  The film looks like a classic period western, and uses many of its character archetypes and tropes – including a spectacular Mexican standoff at the climax.   The Gunfighter won the Audience Award for Best Short Film at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival and was a "Best of Fest Selection" at the 2014 Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. 

Connect (Abrahams, 2010)

If I told you that this film is about someone who deliberately touches a stranger on a bus, you might get the wrong idea… OK, so illicit touching is technically what happens in the film, but it’s really about the isolating experience of modern life, and the transformational potential of the human imagination.  Connect is a pure gem: so simple, yet so evocative, with moments of black humour and joyful magic.  You won’t regret spending 5 minutes of your time on it! 

About a Girl (Percival 2001)

About a Girl opens with a striking shot of a silhouette — against a skyline of clouds above a field — of a girl singing the Britney Spears song "Stronger" and doing the dance routine. It cuts abruptly to a close-up of the girl talking to the camera. She is walking against a backdrop of Manchester's industrial landscape, talking non-stop, mixing wry statements about stardom and singers with random quotes from her parents and descriptions of her life: her relationship with her dad, her frustrations with her mum, her desire to become a famous singer, and the band she has formed with her friends.

Wasp (Arnold, 2003)

Zoë is a single mother who lives with her four children in Dartford. She is poor and can't afford to buy food. One day her ex-boyfriend drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he doesn't want to go out with her, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years. 

Swimmer (Ramsay, 2012)

A young man swims across the rivers and lakes of Britain to a soundtrack of assorted nationalistic music. As he passes people on the banksides including children, lovers and a tramp their thoughts and conversations are also heard. Ultimately, after walking through a wood at night, the boy returns to the water and appears to sink below the surface. 

Stutterer (Cleary, 2015)

For a lonely typographer, an online relationship has provided a much-needed connection without revealing the speech impediment that has kept him isolated. Now, however, he is faced with the proposition of meeting his online paramour in the flesh, and thereby revealing the truth about himself.

When the Day Breaks (Forbis & Tilby, 1999)

A chance encounter, a juicy yellow lemon and an unfortunate twist of fate will reveal that the symbiotic relationship between people is inextricable.

A rooster has his last biscuit for breakfast and goes grocery shopping. A pig prepares her breakfast (potato peelings, with the potatoes thrown in the trash) and discovers she needs more milk. Their paths cross, a lemon falls into the sewer, and both lives are changed.

La Ricotta (Pasolini, 1963)

La ricotta is an exuberant film, part in color and part in black-and-white and mixing comedy and tragedy in an unnerving way. It is also quite savage in its attacks on various targets, notably the Italian film industry, and arguably disrespectful to say the least toward Catholic tradition if not Christianity itself.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s contribution to the omnibus film Ro.Go.Pa.G. casts Orson Welles as a director attempting to make a film of the crucifixion of Jesus—all while he, the cast, and crew behave in the most un-Christlike ways imaginable

Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, 1943)

A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.

The Grandmother (Lynch, 1970)

A lonely boy looks for an escape from his abusive parents, so he plants some strange seeds to grow a grandmother to love and comfort him.

It uses a mix of animation and live-action for the sort of surrealistic horror that would be typical of Lynch's entire career. 

Made by Lynch for the American Film Institute on a budget of $7200. The AFI gave him a grant on the basis of two micro-short films he'd made as a student.

Curfew (Christensen, 2013)

Having reached the lowest point in his life, a self-destructive man on the brink of demise receives an unexpected call from his estranged sister to look after her young daughter for the night. Could this be the beginning of a new reality?

Curfew is a 2012 American short film directed by Shawn Christensen. The film won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards.

The short is the basis for a feature film which premiered at SXSW 2014 titled Before I Disappear.

Pitch Black Heist (Maclean, 2012)

Liam (Liam Cunningham) and Michael (Michael Fassbender) are professional safe crackers who meet on a simple job to relieve an office safe from its contents. The catch is a light activated alarm system impelling the men to embark on a pitch black heist.

BAFTA winner Best Short Film.

The Silent Child (Overton, 2017)

Joanne, a social worker, teaches sign language to a four-year-old Libby, who has a hearing disability. However, Libby's family is ignorant of her needs and instead force her to learn lip-reading.

Hair Love (Cherry, 2019)

Hair Love, is an animated short film that centres around the relationship between an African-American father, Stephen, his daughter, Zuri and her hair. Despite having long locks, Stephen has been used to his wife doing his daughter's hair, so when she is unavailable right before a big event, Stephen will have to figure it out on his own. 

Two Cars One Night (Waititi, 2004)

The film is about two young boys and a girl meeting in the carpark of a rural pub in Te Kaha, New Zealand. What at first seems to be a relationship based on rivalry soon develops into a potential friendship.

Wild Tales - Pasternak

• Black comedy 

• Slow zoom and long take as co-incidences revealed 

• Pace of editing increases 

• Non-diegetic music – low strings – to build tension 

• Satire 

• Male arrogance 

• Wild animals theme – closely beneath ‘civilisation’

• Silent sequences – vicarious experience

Wild Tales - The Rats

• Horror aesthetic 

• Pathetic fallacy 

• POV shots 

• Framing to show differing outlook of the two women 

• Political corruption 

• Male arrogance and abuse of power 

• CU alignment with waitress and cook 

• Shallow focus and pull focus to direct attention 

• Non-diegetic music for sadness and tragedy

Wild Tales - The Strongest

• Car commercial aesthetic 

• Beautiful scenery/ugly behaviour 

• Dark comedy 

• Patriarchal power 

• Class differences 

• Atavistic masculinity 

• Horror aesthetic through music and very long shot to show isolation 

• Ironic humour at the end

Wild Tales - Little Bomb

• In media res at the opening – surreal tone – foreshadowing 

• Low angle shots of the demolition expert – powerful in a masculine environment 

• Dark humour 

• Corrupt, uncaring capitalism 

• Revenge 

• Close ups for alignment 

• Long shot to show the extent of the queue and his sense of entitlement and male power 

• Ordinary person vs corrupt institutions 

• Power of social media 

Wild Tales - The Proposal

• Class divisions – wealth through mise-en-scene 

• Autumn leaves symbolic of change 72 

• Non-diegetic music – high strings tension – thriller 

• Gender stereotypes of parents 

• Entitled, weak son – stereotypes of wealth 

• Power of the wealthy and corruption of the judiciary 

• Society of huge class differences 

• Victims of the wealthy

Wild Tales - Till Death do us Part

• Wealth through panning shots – amount of wedding guests 

• Song ‘Titanium’ – inner strength of the bride – foreshadowing – about to be tested 

• Fast cutting rate, exposition – happiness, celebration 

• Editing emphasises gender divisions 

• CU of bride – dark comedy – insincere performance with his family – sets up conflict 

• Close-up and slow zoom for the inciting incident – her realisation 

• POV shots – alignment with the bride 

• Aerial shot of the roof – implies suicide rather than revenge 

• Dark comedy – revenge is through money 

• Materialistic, class ridden Argentinian society 

• Absurd comedy,

Wallace and Gromit

• Animation/claymation 

• Comedy 

• Three act structure 

• Classical Hollywood narrative structure 

• Good vs evil 

• Hollywood parody 

• British stereotypes

The Human Voice (Almodovar, 2020)

A woman watches time passing next to the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up, but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him. Two living beings facing abandonment.

Elephant (Clarke, 1989)

The recurring action of "Elephant" consists of the camera closely following someone walking down a small path and then shooting other person, then the camera stays there with the victim for a little while. This goes on and on for about 40 minutes, and that's the whole movie. Pounding our minds with this cold-blooded, disturbing and unexplainable scenario, barely containing any dialog and not giving any reasons behind those acts, director Alan Clarke and his last film deals with 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland but it also seems more than just that. One can view it with a wider perception. Why such title? It comes from Bernard MacLaverty's description of the troubles as "the elephant in our living room", a reference to people's denial of the underlying social problems of Northern Ireland.