Why it’s time to start tak­ing short films seriously

Despite the ubiq­ui­tous­ness of social media and var­i­ous self-pub­lish­ing plat­forms, expo­sure is still a major con­cern for short film­mak­ers. There is almost no the­atri­cal or dig­i­tal on-demand plat­form for short films that is as acces­si­ble or far-reach­ing as your local mul­ti­plex or stream­ing ser­vices such as Net­flix. The father of the envi­ably cool and inscrutable French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, famous­ly the­o­rised short film as ​“anti-cin­e­ma” in Decem­ber 1958’s ​‘Cahiers Du Cin­e­ma’, describ­ing it as an impure art form that, ​“does not have time to think” and is thus use­ful to the film­mak­er as a kind of tar­get practice.

Yet the state of short film today is any­thing but doom and gloom. Pro­vid­ing both an indis­pens­able plat­form for young and estab­lished film­mak­ers to prac­tice and hone their craft and cre­ativ­i­ty with­out a fea­ture film’s finan­cial risks, short films tran­scend tra­di­tion­al modes of cin­e­mat­ic sto­ry­telling. It’s a way for film­mak­ers, fes­ti­vals and dis­trib­u­tors to exper­i­ment, as evi­denced in the 13^th Lon­don Short Film Fes­ti­val which returns to the ICA and Hack­ney Pic­ture­house from 8 – 17 January.

In the past few years, fea­ture-film fes­ti­vals like the East End Film Fes­ti­val and the Roy­al African Society’s Film Africa have also allo­cat­ed shorts more space in their pro­grammes, pro­vid­ing short film­mak­ers fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties for expo­sure. It’s not all hap­pen­ing in Lon­don either – York’s Aes­thet­i­ca Short Film Fes­ti­val is fast becom­ing a UK heavy­weight, recent­ly earn­ing BAF­TA-qual­i­fy­ing sta­tus. Mean­while US film fes­ti­vals con­tin­ue to help launch the careers of emerg­ing tal­ent: the Palm Springs Short­Fest boasts Ava DuVer­nay and Jean-Marc Val­lée among its recent alum­ni. The same holds true for devel­op­ing coun­tries with dynam­ic economies and a ris­ing inter­est in the arts, where pri­vate and cor­po­rate sup­port of short film is keep­ing fes­ti­vals like Istanbul’s Akbank Short Film Fes­ti­val and Seoul’s Asiana Inter­na­tion­al Short Film Fes­ti­val run­ning into their first decade. Audi­ence response, expo­sure, awards and net­work­ing: fes­ti­vals are here to stay, and they are wel­com­ing short film­mak­ing more than ever.

Cham­pi­ons of short film are also crop­ping up in unlike­ly places. The inter­net may have enabled a bar­rage of free video con­tent, but it has afford­ed count­less short film­mak­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent ways of reach­ing their audi­ence while main­tain­ing almost full rights over their own work. Tens of thou­sands of YouTube views on your first online release is now a greater bar­gain­ing chip with Hol­ly­wood execs than film school cre­den­tials, and new online ser­vices such as Dis­trib­ber are even remov­ing the indus­try mid­dle­man from the equa­tion completely.

If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it’s that noth­ing is as intim­i­dat­ing as a blank page (or sto­ry­board tem­plate). To that end, today’s short films are more than deliv­er­ing on inspi­ra­tion: win­ner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sun­dance, Indie ani­ma­tor Don Herzfeldt’s World of Tomor­row was the director’s first ven­ture into dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion after years of hand-drawn ani­ma­tion. The result­ing mix of stick fig­ures and vec­tor art grabs the heart of its audi­ence with its child pro­tag­o­nist and sci-fi themes.

A recent win­ner of the Short Film Palm d’Or at Cannes was Simon Mesa Soto’s Lei­di, set in the bar­rios of a moun­tain­ous Colom­bian town and mas­ter­ful­ly walk­ing the line between doc­u­men­tary and fea­ture to tell the sto­ry of the women in this com­mu­ni­ty. A des­per­ate son recon­nects with his father in the hilar­i­ous A Rea­son­able Request by Andrew Lau­rich, which pre­miered online for free but will still hit screens at Sun­dance this month. Whether through wit, humour, hard-hit­ting real­ism or bold exper­i­men­ta­tion, these films not only prove that the medi­um is alive and well but are rapid­ly shap­ing the future of the artform.