As my sixth year at TIFF, I decided to try something a little different. Rather than trying my hand at the toughest tickets, I would experiment with the smaller stuff. I wanted to see what kind of output was coming from Canadian short directors who range from students to veterans. I’ve been to many short festivals and screenings for Canadian stuff, but TIFF is probably the place to get the cream of the crop, one could only assume. The experience was a good one, the very modest talent and audience who engaged in a light Q&A was humbling in the midst of usual film-fest chaos unleashing in the streets just outside. Next year I think I will try a Wavelengths program instead and see where that takes me. These reviews are my reflections on these shorts – I have no idea if they will be distributed in any other fashion. Hopefully they will go online so these reviews may guide you there, or maybe if the filmmakers ever cross this blog can see some reception to their film. All the films were accomplished pieces and worth being proud of by each of the directors, so if you’ve been on the fence about checking out the Short Cuts programme, I suggest you take the leap. There are several programmes for Shorts, I chose #1, not only because it fit my schedule nicely, but because the selection seemed to have the widest range and the most interesting ambition.

 

Bardo Light dir. Connor Gaston Starting off the programme with the assumed quirk of independent short films, Bardo Light is a small, isolated picture that takes place almost entirely in a generic interrogation room where a young boy is questioned by a cop who’s so sure he’s got his guy that he entertains himself to listen to the young man’s bizarre defence. The allegation is murdering his father, his defence? The TV did it. And not metaphorically either. This type of wacky concept sends alarm bells ringing right off the bat — TV culture moralizing? Media violence debate? Surprisingly, Gaston doesn’t go in that direction, at least I don’t think. The story briefly shows us flashbacks of the man’s eccentric father who builds TVs that play at framerates enjoyable by wildlife. It’s cute, quirky, and plays well, but this fantasy-verse is too obtuse to make heads of tales of. It’s silly and light, but then introduces elements of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Enter the Void flashback chills ran down my spine) and a spiritual connection to the TV. What is Gaston saying here? Is he saying anything at all? Naturally, the cop thinks this is quite an amusing story and leaves the room to check the TV for himself. Based on the strong performances by both actors, we actually believe the accused and his insistence that the cop not look at the TV, even though it’s so ludicrous. Gaston smartly keeps us isolated in the room while the accused is alone, only able to imagine what is happening. Unfortunately, he returns to his mythology building by forcing the spiritualism back in rather than letting our imaginations wander. C+

 

Malody dir. Phillip Barker This rhythmic headpiece begins with an exterior of diner with the same car passing by it in what seems like a looping outside world. Inside, Barker gets straight to the bizarre with a sick girl sitting idly while two men do… something… with a cardinal. By the time a tap-dancing girl appears standing on the table that only one of the characters can see it is obvious that this isn’t a movie that has a message we are meant to interpret, so I quickly ditched my detective cap and started viewing the images as images rather than symbols. The decision payed off as the film becomes increasingly eccentric as the diner begins to spin, seemingly at the will of the ill girl (all ill girls are destructively psychic I guess) and while there is literally nothing happening, it is very visually engaging. Barker brings structure to the film with what is almost like an epilogue of the girl, no longer ill, with a younger sister in the wilderness featuring some of the objects from earlier – frustratingly reverting the nonsensical images into symbols once again. Still, I ignored them. It’s frustratingly ambiguous either way, my friend found it tedious and self-important, but as an exercise in control it works great. One bizarre knee jerk though was the decision to pull OUT of the scene when the diner is spinning and show a behind-the-scenes shot of a crew literally spinning the room. It felt like a masturbatory pat-on-the-back showing off how the shot was accomplished. Granted, it is very impressive and we’d probably never have seen it otherwise, but it served no purpose, even Barker didn’t have an answer for it, saying that he was curious if the audience was capable of being pulled out of a scene, then able to re-engage with it once the magic was gone. I admire his boldness and willingness to potentially ruin his entire film for an experiment, but he ignored the cardinal rule of magic: never reveal the trick. B

 

Keep A Modest Head dir. Deco Dawson Supposedly being inspired to head into film after taking a course by Guy Maddin, Dawson creates a film that steals far too much from his teacher’s aesthetic. Dawson has apparently been in the Short Cuts programme year after year, and this film is an old leftover than he finally completed. Well, it feels that way. A “biography” of surrealist artist Jean Benoit quickly descends into a spinning wheel of visual chaos. Of course, the moment you hear “biography” and “surrealist” in the same sentence you can get an idea for what you are in for: not a biography. Attempting to visually construct the incomprehensible thought and memory process of a surrealist, the film uses simplistic computer effects to paint it’s world and a mixture of shot footage and found footage to populate the content. The protagonist fluctuates ages on a whim as he looks through moving windows and mirrors within a boxed in room with admirable attention to detail. Initially fun and thoughtful, the wheels keep spinning and it begins to grate on you – without much momentum and repeating the same tricks that we’ve already seen it quickly hops the line to indulgent. It doesn’t take much to turn on a movie like this and it takes a lot to keep an audience’s good faith because of the deliberately ugly aesthetic and eccentric character – it channels much of Guy Maddin’s adoration for rear-projection and play with memory, but only superficially. C

 

Apart dir. Theodore Ushev Ushev admitted right off the bat that he wasn’t sure if this was a film or a political statement. It’s a political statement. This animated short feels more like a political ad to run on television than a short film to run in this programme. Visually, it’s abstract, but conceptually, it’s a shotgun to the face. It’s brief and relatively to the point, the noisy soundscape of public unrest and murky brown visuals made out of Persian iconography are relieved by cuts to single, digestible words followed by a to-the-point call to action at the end. There isn’t anything to ponder here. It’s an angry artist who is contributing to a battle happening in his home country of Iran. You can appreciate that and his strong virtues, but it’s no film. C-

 

Lingo dir. Bahar Noorizadeh Although excruciatingly simple and treading down the well-worn path of language barrier issues, Lingo succeeds and frustrates thanks to a Steve McQueen style single-take that encompasses the majority of the short. But the exercise isn’t in indulgence, it’s thematically relevant to the vulnerability and confined feeling that the situation calls for. With a lengthy, naturalistic dialogue that has an excessively slow, uneasy pace reminiscent of a David Lynch scene (save for the naturalism), Lingo lingers for too long to maintain much of a punch but it’s an achievement in control, and emotion which is delivered as much by it’s imposing (and beautiful) cinematography as it’s great acting. B

 

Bydlo dir. Patrick Bouchard While the other films here have either been pretty heavy-handed with their exposition or far too elusive, Bydlo is visual storytelling at it’s finest. With breathtaking stop-motion that often makes you wonder just how they did it, it features mud that becomes humanoids and a large, powerful bull. The characters build and then destroy. They die to create and die to abolish. It’s a full-circle story in a matter of minutes that is rewarding on a purely visceral level with images of savagery and struggle as well as a metaphoric level where the people, essentially cogs in the machine, die for a capitalist bull only to each other alive over it – it’s a like a micro-sized version of the worker-eating monstrosity from Metropolis. A

 

A Pretty Funny Story dir. Evan Morgan Comedies have some of the biggest risk/reward factors at festivals. A comedy that misses it’s mark leaves an audience silent, making your reception to it even colder than if you sat at home without the acknowledgement of everyone else’s opinion. By contrast, a theatre laughing up a storm can fuel a sort of mob mentality that makes the comedy the clear favourite for an audience feeding off each other’s laughter. A Pretty Funny Story hit it’s mark and it’s easy to say, “yep, it was the clear winner”, except for the fact that, yep, it was the clear winner. Comedy looks easy but is excruciatingly difficult to pull off and Morgan does it very naturally here taking the narrative in unexpected directions with constantly rewarding results. Escalating a story about spotting a neighbour acting strangely into a horror story of home invasion and security, the story is silly in all the right ways and shot with precision to highlight the humor and all-around excellent performances. The key to the success is how Morgan naturally captures and plays on very relatable family life situations like childish use of the word “gay”, eating vegetables, water-cooler office banter, weird childhood games, and phony neighbour relations. Morgan himself comes off as the casual guy who hangs out with the “serious artists” but his attitude is in such sharp relief from theirs that he is refreshing and a very welcome change of pace. A