We decided that the (18) certificate was given to these collections of short films as they were unclassified films in the first place -- certainly there was nothing particularly shocking about anything presented.
The way this worked is that we were shown 10 short films by new or just relatively unknown (at least to me) filmmakers. We were also given a form so that we could vote on what we thought of each. Apparently the one with the highest score gets their film displayed at all the "City Screen" cinemas in the country. So here is the list:
- The Bag of 1000 Pockets. Made by Anthea Kennedy she films her father sitting on his bed and rifling through his bag, and each of the 1000 pockets has a memory. The audio was edited quite well between the various recollections of his life in Germany before he escaped to Russia by crossing the frozen Baltic Sea. The film was only 8 minutes long and it was well made, but unfortunately I did not really get on with this film! The inclusion of showing the subject struggling to zip up his coat did nothing for my enthusiasm� agh!
- I vote for art. This was a slightly pretentious, but reasonably thought provoking German piece about a filmmaker balancing the various emotional, political and economic issues that face most of us to a greater or lesser extent every day. I suspect the film was slightly self-referential, being about a filmmaker attempting to create a film about anti-Semitism (there was more to it than this actually). Personally I'd stay away from political or religious themes in my films, but I quite liked this though as it was well made.
- City Light. This sub 2 minute film was very interesting visually, using animation from shots of the various lights you get in large city centres. They actually showed it twice for the benefit of the audience as it was quite fast moving. I thought it was quite good, it was also a proper short film it did what it did very quickly and then stopped.
- Jetzt Im Kino. I really disliked this film, mostly it was a collection of tracking shots around Berlin using the train to move the camera, the shots themselves were quite interesting as tourist fodder but the filmmaker had ripped off some text from other sources and put it on the screen for us to read. Pretentious in the extreme, it stuffed its point about media expansion and the human condition down the throat of the viewer� AGH x2!
- Frozen War. This was an interesting film made by John Smith, I don�t know whether it was made on the spur of the moment, or if it was a cunningly constructed fabrication. The eleven-minute film shows the interior of a hotel room (supposedly in Ireland), and the director, cameraman, and narrator (all John Smith) draws our attention to a frozen frame on the BBC News 24 TV channel at 1.41am on the second day of air strikes in Afghanistan. Making good points about the media, censorship and the potential inaccuracies of what we see on "the box" he also launches at times into a slightly "Derek and Clive" style rant about the furnishings of his room�.
- Hollow Bones. This bland (no pun intended) film shows director David Blandy miming to "Is It Because I'm Black" (a soul classic by Syl Johnson). This wasn't very inspiring at all. A little more effort would have still made the point about cultural identity and been more fun to watch!
- Puppet Access TV. This was quite a good idea. The idea is that we are watching "daytime TV" here in the UK, "Judge Judy", "Trisha", "Big Brother", etc etc are all being flicked through on the dial. Except there seems to have been an invasion of funny looking puppets taking over some of the roles. I thought the best bit was the inclusion of "Countdown" from Channel 4, with the word "MORESHITE" spelt out in the anagram box. The only slightly disappointing thing about this film (which was one of my favourites of the bunch) was the fact there wasn't quite enough development for the run-length (7 minutes) of the film. It was brilliantly executed!
- Apathy. I had already read the review of this one and looked forward to it, but sadly the animation and dialogue suffered from the same condition as the title! Of course, this could have been the point!
- Mother Nature. Two estate kids talk to the camera about the political and military situation in the Gulf, and demonstrate that they should never, never, never be allowed anywhere near any machinery or people ever.
- The Delmarva Chicken of Tomorrow. This was a slightly overlong but very well made feature making points about capitalism consumerism and globalisation. Using what I presume was all found footage, largely from America and either Vietnam (or Korea), the images mostly revolved around food and used this as a metaphor for the wider message. I gave this one a high mark, as it seemed that director Andrea Zimmerman had a very good grasp of filmmaking technique.
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