Filminute: the International One-Minute Film Festival, Sept. 1-30
The festival that challenges filmmakers, writers, animators, artists, designers, and creative producers to develop and submit the world's best one-minute films
September 02, 2009 14:09
EYE WEEKLY film critic Chandler Levack has chosen her top 5 FILMINUTE entries from this year's crop and written 60 words on 60 seconds. Watch the films below, and be sure to leave your own review in the comments section. Visit filminute.com to vote for your favourite film from now to Sept. 30.
In Michael Davies’ film, a mum tries to explain sex to her daughter, while roughly stirring a bowl of batter. Visual puns aside, her awkward descriptions (“Daddy takes his special thing and puts it in mummy’s special place”) and the film’s hurried pacing yield a punchline (too good to spoil) worth many rewarding chuckles. Kids do say the darndest things!
In this Stranger Than Paradise-styled short, a would-be filmmaker tries to convince his friends that his genius would reveal itself in a meeting with director Jim Jarmusch. When the two do meet in a dream sequence (featuring Jarmusch himself), it turns out he’s just another idiot. Mark Nava’s film is coolly original, the makings of a talent like Jim himself.
In this chilling, enigmatic, animated short set in outer space, two celestial beings slink to the lower depths of hell. The images created by filmmaker David O’Reilly are equally terrifying: kitten skulls splitting in two, excavated SS planes and the flying head of Walt Disney. With a tempestuous orchestral score, O’Reilly has created a memorable vision of the other side.
Hungry zombies turn into the Jerky Boys as they prank call an unsuspecting hipster, screaming “BRAIIINNS” into the payphone receiver. Bored with the antics, two men stand armed with baseball bats for when they eventually tire of their one-note punchline. Great performances allow Michael Piece and Shaun Boyle’s short to acheive the same slacker hilarity as Shaun Of The Dead.
A bored office employee finds a photocopied piece of paper with the power to transcend space and time. Soon he moves from stealing candy bars to pilfering bricks of cash from the company safe. Structured around this high concept, Black Hole is a well-executed short — a true testament to how well any story can be told in a minute.
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